The House Next Door

From SB's Philadelphia Weekly review: "But with WTC, you never forget you’re watching a movie. It’s a good movie, but a movie nonetheless—one with big stars, cliches, a rousing score and a happy ending that bends over backward to warm your heart. I don’t want to sound like those people who whine that it’s 'too soon' for movies about 9/11, but maybe a small part of me still feels it might be too soon for one this slick and reassuring."

I was dreading exactly this sort of movie. Stone is a vital and important filmmaker even now -- and I'm one of about nine critics who found much to admire, and even love, in Alexander, which was wrongly judged according to commercial narrative standards when Stone was actually aiming for something more cosmic and ruminative. But he insists on working with gigantic budgets, and you can't keep doing that without make a certain number of hit movies that don't challenge mainstream ideology or Hollywood formula.

Of course I'll see it, and I'll keep an open mind, and since I've liked or loved most of Stone's movies, I'm predisposed to give him the benefit of the doubt. But the above is what I'll be fretting over before the lights go down.

That said, it should be fun to see reviewers carping that they miss the old Stone, when so many of them took such glee in whacking him with two-by-fours from JFK onward.

I must say, I thoroughly enjoyed "World Trade Center," but it is indeed great to see the Oliver Stone rear his head too ... Now, if he could put his camera where his mouth is and make the movie from Clarke's book, rather than have that hack Haggis do it, than I'd be thrilled

Duly seconded.

MZS (out on a big limb): I'm one of about nine critics who found much to admire, and even love, in ALEXANDER

I got your back on this one, pal. While it's often embarassing, there's still a deeply personal lunatic grandeur to that movie that I found rather compelling. As far as the recent, lamentable spate of sword and sandal epics goes, ALEXANDER is probably the only one I could stand to watch again.

But I guess that's the thing about this guy - he doesn't make small mistakes, but even a bad Oliver Stone movie is a heck of a lot more memorable than most directors' best films.

MZS: it should be fun to see reviewers carping that they miss the old Stone, when so many of them took such glee in whacking him with two-by-fours from JFK onward.

It probably has something to do with the guy's uncanny ability to piss off pretty much everybody in the media every time he opens his mouth, but I never thought Stone got enough credit for the way he expanded the grammar of mainstream big-budget films during that scarily prolific early 90's period.

(I remember being in a theater lobby reading one of those big cardboard blow-ups of a RUN LOLA RUN review that heralded all sorts of "cinematic breakthroughs" - while a friend stood beside me pointing out that everything this critic singled out already was done in NATURAL BORN KILLERS several years before.)

And damn you, Reel Fanatic for making me salivate over how awesomely insane an Olvier Stone version of AGAINST ALL ENEMIES could have been... he's perhaps the only living filmmaker fit to adapt that opening chapter with the Cheney's bickering in the bunker!

Which reminds me, when I first saw the trailer for WORLD TRADE CENTER it looked so much like a Ron Howard movie, I started thinking about how great it would have been if Ollie and Opie had swapped summer movies. If you just gave him a massive budget and endless quantities of cocaine, I bet Oliver Stone's DA VINCI CODE would have been a masterpiece.

SB: " I bet Oliver Stone's DA VINCI CODE would have been a masterpiece."

Almost certainly. And it would have gained him a new enemy, a win-win situation for everyone, seeing as how conservatives, academic historians and mainstream media columnists have been hating him for so long that I bet even they're bored with it.

I picture Paul Bettany stalking Stone through the DVD aisles at Amoeba Music on Sunset while the audio track to "Bring me the Head of Alfredo Garcia" plays in the background.

In a scathing, very personal review on his site Like Anna Karina's Sweater, Filmbrain writes: "At the conclusion of Monday night's screening of Oliver Stone's World Trade Center, I found myself the lone dissenter among the small group of film critics I was chatting with. While not overly enthusiastic about it, they all felt the film had its merits, and found it to be a well made and effectively moving drama. Their reaction left me questioning my own — was my utter disdain for the film purely a subjective response based on personal losses, grief, and suffering on that ill-fated day? Or is the film truly nothing more than a piece of patriotic propaganda that panders to the pro-family Christian right?

"Days later, I'm still at a loss in understanding exactly what purpose the film serves. That Stone exhibits restraint in telling the story of two men who survived beneath the rubble is hardly grounds for praise. This emphasis on what the film isn't takes away from what it is — an unabashedly sentimental procedural that wouldn't have found its way to the Hallmark Channel if it wasn't enveloped in the 9/11 tragedy."

An honest, powerful piece of writing. Do read the whole thing.