Oliver Stone
Liked NBK, Salvador, Talk Radio and Platoon, all for different reasons. Reckon the last decent film he did was 12 years ago now (U-Turn – 1997). JFK is one of my top ten films of all time though.
i also think “natural born killers” is a great movie. certainly my favorite of his. i dont know if its his best though. “jfk” is the work of a brilliant filmmaker.
a lot of his films i still havent seen though. but he wrote “scarface”. so he’ll forever be enshrined in the cinematic hall of fame in my book!!
I like Salvador and JFK a lot. NBK is poorly acted and too self-conscious for my tastes. Any Given Sunday was an insult to both cinema and football.
I think Natural Born Killers fits within the ‘therepist’ framework you mentioned, dealing as it does with the media fixation on violence and our consumption of it.
All of Oliver Stones films are flawed, all of them, but his best is JFK.
a lot films are flawed but, i think somewhere he lost it, i lost track of him but NBK it is bad ass… U turn was really good too, I saw W and wasn’t impressed, JFK was good, Platoon really good, so i guess he should go back to doing those movies… those controversial movies..
I’d say Platoon is his best because it just totally sums up his ideology as (as aforementioned) the self-proclaimed therapist of the U.S., but I find him to be just a terrible director. I saw W. in theatres hoping he’d surprise me because he does have potential to make a truely great film, but I was underwhelmed. It wasn’t a terrible film, but it wasn’t a good film either, it didn’t evoke any kind of emotion out of me at all, just a waste of time. And the final scene is probably one of the best ideas (in concept) for the subject used really amateurishly.
The film 9/11 was as bad as I thought it would be and everything else with the possible expcetions of Natural Born Killers and Salvador, was just typical reimaginings, no real input or stance from the director, just a bunch of good actors thrown into a poor script.
His writing on Scarface was good, but I’m not a huge fan of Scarface (in part because of De Palma’s directing), so I’m biased on that one.
yeah I haven’t seen WTC, but I heard it was one his weakest…
yeah I haven’t seen WTC, but I heard it was one his weakest…
He’s one of the contemporary American greats. I thought “W,” for the most part, was very entertaining. I love the Felliniesque influences brought to NBK and The Doors. They were quite obvious. NBK, JFK and Nixon stand out as his greatest works.
I think overall his body of work is fairly average. He’s done a few that are great e.g. Salvador and JFK. My favourite of his though would have to be Nixon. It may well be his most accomplished political film and he’s at his best when he’s tackling politics not individual human stories.
Sensationalistic middle of the road populist.
He gets a great big “Meh.” from me. Wall Street was awful, same with W. Platoon has its moments but overall its just average. NBK is a poor, impatient, tasteless man’s Badlands. A bit of a coward, always seems to be struggling with this objectivity that renders most of his films impotent.
Over-rated. The unintentional comedy WALL STREET plays like some last project of Ed Wood’s. PLATOON has not held up well at all, and the less said about such drivel as ALEXANDER the better. Stone should be deeply ashamed of himself over the colossal rimjob of W.
Oh, I forgot he did Alexander! That’s an atrocious movie!
>>“Natural Born Killers” does not really fit into that scheme (or does it?)<<
Better than ALEXANDER does.
And what Roscoe & Joshua W said about it.
“Feel better with Oliver Stone
till I almost smacked him
(felt right that night…)
I dunno what takes hold
out there in the desert cold.
These guys think they must
try and just get over on us.”
You know you are in sorry shape when the likes of Tori Amos is scoring coolness points off you.
i also thought “platoon” didnt age too well. saw it last year and it didnt impress me very much at all. i wouldnt even put it in the upper echelon of vietnam war movies.
I forgot to say “Demagogue”.
One thing is certain: He’s definitely more consistent than Tarantino.
Yes, but Stone is consistently shitty. On the other hand, at least Tarantino made one good film: RESERVOIR DOGS.
He knows his craft, but his choice of subject matter of late is somewhat odd. I appreciated Natural Born Killers more after watching it with making of commentary through the entire film by Stone.
Well, Natural Born Killers and JFK were certainly no Duck Amuck.
JFK is one of my favorite movies. Spectacularly edited, great tension, and Costner’s even half-decent in it. Wall Street is flawed (Charlie Sheen was waaaaay out of his league), but it paints a nice picture of the greedy Reagan era and is consistently entertaining. Platoon is good but overrated. Born on the Fourth of July is very good. Nixon could’ve used more judicious editing but is very good overall, in my opinion.
He’s a conspiracy nut, and for that I will never fully embrace him, but Stone is a fairly brilliant filmmaker on a technical basis. My own two cents.
Fandorin-san
What is your opinion on him? To me he is the self-proclaimed therapist of America. He makes movies about every single traumatic event in America’s history. The JFK assassination, Vietnam, Nixon, Corruption, 9/11, W. Bush. That being said, his best movie “Natural Born Killers” does not really fit into that scheme (or does it?). Even though I like most of his movies (yes even JFK and W.) I think he could show his talent a lot better by concentrating on other subjects? What do you think?