Oh, that felt good. . .
By From David Edelstein’s review of Alexander:
Please understand the source of my vitriol: I consider Stone’s Natural Born Killers to be, hands down, the worst movie ever made—and not the worst in the manner of Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space. I mean the worst in its combination of aesthetic and moral ugliness, in the way it bombards you into accepting the idea that a pair of serial mass murderers could be enlightened hipsters. (The original script, by Quentin Tarantino, was a heavy-handed but amusing satire of sensationalistic media; by the time Stone had gotten through with it, the serial killers had evolved into existential heroes.)
Thank you, thank you, thank you. And Edelstein doesn’t even bother mentioning that anything Natural Born Killers had to say had already been said, much more eloquently, by Badlands twenty years before. Some people I know adore this film, which I simply cannot understand. I have difficulty even having conversations with people on why they like this movie, a phenomenon I refer to as the “Chasing Amy Effect”.
I hate Oliver Stone movies. I’ll admit that I find the fascination of many of my idiot friends with Natural Born Killers the most perplexing, but I really dislike almost all of his films. I’ve never seen Any Given Sunday, Heaven and Earth, Salvador, or (mercifully) JFK. Of the rest, I have a bare tolerance for Platoon, and some genuine respect for Nixon. U-Turn and Natural Born Killers must rank among the worst films ever made by a “serious” director. I once quite liked Wall Street, and it certainly has some powerful moments, but I don’t feel that it’s aged well, and I think Stone’s bombasity managed to obscure whatever message he was trying to tell. Although I suppose that Terence Stamp’s “I should dump the stock just to burn your arse” will always remain with me. . .
So, all that might make you wonder why I still plan see Alexander. In short, I am a fool. I like watching depictions of ancient warfare. I saw Troy, for crying out loud. Put a bunch of Greeks in a phalanx and march them at some Persians, and I’ll apparently plunk down my hard earned cash. Are there limits to this disorder? Well, if Alexander does well, and four more ancient warfare clones appear next summer, we’ll know. Fortunately, I can’t imagine that Alexander will be anything but a box office disaster; Red America won’t take to a bisexual hero, Colin Farrell or no.