Amazon.com video review:
Oliver Stone would like to have the last word on America's
media culture of voyeurism and violence, but whatever he's trying to
say in this grisly, unconventional movie comes across terribly
garbled. Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis play traveling serial
killers who become television celebrities when a Geraldo-like
personality (Robert Downey Jr.) turns their madness into the biggest
story in the country. Stone extensively rewrote an original script by
Quentin Tarantino, and he employs a mosaic of different film stocks,
video, and pop pastiches to create a sense of blurred lines between
visual phenomena. (The background on Lewis's character's life as an
abused child, for instance, is presented as a sitcom starring Rodney
Dangerfield.) But the result of these experiments is a pompous, even
amateurish effort at grasping the reins of a real-life national
debate. One almost wants to tell Stone to sit down and raise his hand
next time if he thinks he has something to say. The controversial
director would like Natural Born Killers to be nothing less
than a monumental achievement, but it's one of the emptier entries in
his filmography. --Tom Keogh
Amazon.com video review:
While this monumental retrospective of Oliver Stone's directorial career
doesn't include Salvador or Platoon--Stone's early,
acknowledged masterpieces of history and remembrance--it certainly sheds some
light on the more controversial arc of his work ever since.
Beginning with 1987's Wall Street, Stone's barbed tragedy about
corporate raiders and blinding greed during the Reagan years, this cinematic
six-pack represents a curious odyssey of generational touchstones, outright
obsessions, and feverish experimentation. 1994's Natural Born
Killers, for instance, is an explosive critique of inflamed media in a
society of hapless onlookers. A wildly ambitious farce about two lovers who defy
TV-manufactured perceptions by becoming notorious murderers, Killers
pushes the limits of screen violence, visual literacy, and the mixed-media
technique (juggling film stocks, incorporating video, etc.) that Stone
introduced in JFK. If the result is somewhat cold and forced, it's also
brazen.
Most significant is the way this collection underscores Stone's drive to
fuse historical drama with lingering emotions about the past. Stone, a Vietnam
War vet, revisits that haunting debacle here in the masterful Born on the
Fourth of July. Yet some of his most famous efforts
still draw heaps of scorn for narrative hubris and factual recklessness.
(Does anyone really believe John F. Kennedy was assassinated during a
Lyndon Johnson coup d'état?) But time, as this collection proves,
is on Stone's side. Eventually, JFK and The Doors will be seen not
as a failed objective history, but as the experience of a tumultuous era in the
imagination of a man who lived through it all and can't shake it off.
The collection concludes with the unexpectedly entertaining football saga
Any Given Sunday. After this came Stone's humanitarian relief drama,
Beyond Borders (not included), which found the director on familiar
footing. As Stone's legacy continues to grow, there is a remarkable career
here to revisit with these six films. --Tom Keogh
Amazon.com video review:
While this monumental retrospective of Oliver Stone's directorial career
doesn't include Salvador or Platoon--Stone's early,
acknowledged masterpieces of history and remembrance--it certainly sheds light
on the more controversial arc of his work ever since.
Beginning with 1987's Wall Street, Stone's barbed tragedy about
corporate raiders and blinding greed during the Reagan years, this
cinematic 10-pack represents a curious odyssey of generational
touchstones, outright obsessions, and feverish experimentation. The minor, 1988
Talk Radio, for instance, introduced Stone's then-evolving critique of
inflamed media in a society of hapless onlookers. But it was 1994's
Natural Born Killers that exploded the theme in a wildly ambitious
farce concerning two lovers who defy manufactured perceptions by becoming
notorious murderers. Killers pushes the limits of screen violence,
visual literacy, and the mixed-media technique (juggling film stocks,
incorporating video, etc.) that Stone introduced in JFK. If the result is
cold and forced, it's also brazen.
Most significant is the way this collection underscores Stone's drive to
fuse historical drama with lingering emotions about the past. Stone, a
Vietnam War veteran, revisits that haunting debacle here in the masterful
Born on the Fourth of July and the moving Heaven & Earth.
Yet some of his most famous efforts still draw heaps of scorn for narrative
hubris and factual recklessness. (Does anyone really believe John F.
Kennedy was assassinated during a Lyndon Johnson coup d'état?) But
time is on Stone's side. Eventually, JFK, The Doors, and
Nixon will be seen not as a failed objective history, but as the
experience of a tumultuous era in the imagination of a man who lived
through it all and can't shake it off.
The collection concludes with the flawed contemporary noir U Turn and the
unexpectedly entertaining football saga Any Given Sunday.
Stone bided his time following this extraordinary body of work, until the
humanitarian relief drama Beyond Borders (not included) found the
director on familiar footing. As Stone's legacy continues to grow, there is a
remarkable career here to revisit with these 10 films. --Tom Keogh
