Movie Review: Black Coal, Thin Ice

Black Coal, Thin Ice
Directed by: Yi'nan Diao.
Written by: Yi'nan Diao.
Starring: Fan Liao (Zhang Zili), Lun Mei Gwei (Wu Zhizhen), Xuebing Wang (Liang Zhijun), Wang Jingchun (Rong Rong), Yu Ailei (Captain Wang), Ni Jingyang (Su Lijuan).

Not long ago, there was a series of crime movies where it seemed like the closer you looked at a crime, the less clear the whole thing became – while the movies often “solved” the crimes at their core, they could not explain them. Films like Bong joon-ho’ Memories of Murder (2003), David Fincher’s Zodiac (2006) and Nuri Bilge Ceylon’s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011) come to mind. Yi’nan Diao’s Black Coal, Thin Ice tries to tap into that same uncomfortable ambiguity that made those films (among others) so great – but he doesn’t quite pull it off. The movie is awash in crime movie clichés, features an overly complicated plot which is actually relatively straight forward when you untangle all the knots Diao throws into it, and at times is too self-consciously art-y for its own good. Those other films walked that fine line between regular crime film and art film masterfully – Black Coal, Thin Ice stumbles and doesn’t quite pull it off. It’s a hell of an effort though – that despite its flaws, remains at the very least interesting.

The movie opens in 1999 – when two cops, including Zhang (Fan Liao) are investigating a series of murders that involve people being chopped up, and their body parts end up across a very large area, in different coal plants. The latest victim Liang Zhijun, has been identified, and Zhang quickly identifies a suspect – but the arrest goes awry, and more than one person ends up dead. Flash forward five years, and Zhang is now a drunk – little more than a security guard – but is consulted when a similar series of murders begins again. Zhang is drawn to Liang’s widow – Wu Zhizen (Lun Mei Gwei) – both professionally and personally, as the two intertwine in classic noir fashion.

Like the best noirs of the past, Black Coal, Thin Ice takes place in a world without heroes and villains – but rather a morally grey area, in which people are flawed, and drawn into a world of violence and murder beyond their control. Even as the various murders become clear, everyone involved grows more complex, rather than less, and the world depicted is a bleak one. The visual look of the film masterfully creates that feel as well – with the neon streets of the city, and the cold, snow covered expanses around the coal factories being equally cold and foreboding. The film takes place in Northern China – and shares some visual cues, and the moral outlook, of Jia Zhang-ke’s masterful A Touch of Sin – in particular the first couple of chapters of that film. I cannot imagine that the film is overly popular with the Chinese authorities – A Touch of Sin certainly wasn’t – as it presents a similar worldview of China, in an emerging economy, becoming de-humanized.

The problems with the film exist because Diao never quite manages to bridge the gap between the noir genre film he is making on the surface, and the political art film that is going on underneath the surface. The film alternates between scenes that would not be out of place in an American police procedural, and self-consciously arty depictions of the new China, which often drags the films plot to a halt. It doesn’t help that the story itself is relatively straight forward – you know where it is headed from fairly early on in the film, and the film proceeds to go there fairly slowly. The closing scenes of the film – after the case is resolved – are perhaps the most problematic, as they don’t seem to fit with the rest of the story.

Still, there is enough in Black Coal, Thin Ice to make it worthwhile. The visual look alone is brilliant, and enough to get you through the film. The two lead performances are also quite good – even if as the alcoholic ex-cop looking for redemption, and the potential femme fatale are really stock characters, that Diao doesn’t do much with beyond the normal. Black Coal, Thin Ice has lofty ambitions – it wants to take its place among the best crime dramas of its time. It doesn’t reach those levels – but you have to admire it for trying.

The Films of Oliver Stone: Platoon (1986)

Platoon (1986)
Directed by: Oliver Stone.
Written by: Oliver Stone.
Starring: Charlie Sheen (Chris), Tom Berenger (Sgt. Barnes), Willem Dafoe (Sgt. Elias), Keith David (King), Mark Moses (Lt. Wolfe), Forest Whitaker (Big Harold), Francesco Quinn (Rhah), Kevin Dillon (Bunny), John C. McGinley (Sgt. O'Neill), Reggie Johnson (Junior), Corey Glover (Francis), Johnny Depp (Lerner).

American filmmakers didn’t really start making movies directly about the Vietnam War until 1978 – when Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter and Hal Ashby’s Coming Home both came out (and subsequently dominated the Oscars between them). Those are both great films, and the following year’s Apocalypse Now, by Francis Ford Coppola, is the greatest film ever made. There were other good-to-great films made about Vietnam before Oliver Stone’s Platoon (The Killing Fields for example), but Stone’s film does something different than the rest. More than any other film about Vietnam – before or since – Platoon shows the confusing, chaotic nature of the Vietnam war, from the point of view of a grunt who is torn between patriotism and doing the right thing. Apocalypse Now is a better film than Platoon – perhaps The Deer Hunter is as well – but neither is really a realistic depiction of the day-in, day-out nature of the life of most of the soldiers who to Vietnam.

The film stars Charlie Sheen as Chris Taylor – a stand-in for Stone himself – who is a young, patriotic kid, from a good family, who drops out of college to sign-in for the Army and be sent to Vietnam. When he tells his fellow soldiers this early in the movie, they look at him like he’s insane. Why would anyone volunteer for this shit? He believed it was his duty – and like many young men is a little headstrong and cocky, and wants to prove himself in war. It doesn’t take long for him to become at least a little bit disillusioned.

The Platoon he enters is basically split into two factions. The gung-ho, anything to win, violent, old school soldiers fall in behind Sgt. Barnes (Tom Berenger) – who has a scar on his face, isn’t afraid of anything, and isn’t above crossing many lines to get what he wants. The other group fall in behind Sgt. Elias (Willem Dafoe) – and spend their off duty time getting high, and just want their time in Vietnam to be over. Both Barnes and Elias are skilled fighters – they’ve been in Vietnam for years at this point – but they approach their job differently. In theory, the Platoon is led by Lt. Wolfe (Mark Moses) – but he is weak and ineffectual at best, screws up more often than not, and basically allows himself to be bosses around by Barnes. A letting Barnes run things is not a good idea.

Many of the other films about Vietnam use the war as a metaphor for some larger point – that’s certainly true of films like The Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now – but that isn’t what Stone is interested in doing in Platoon. This film is much more straight forward then that. It is a film about Taylor, who comes over a true believer, and leaves entirely changed. The story of a young man who thought he knew what he was getting into, and quickly finds out he was wrong. How at times, he wishes he could be more like Barnes – when the Platoon finds one of their own tortured and strung up by the Vietcong, Taylor is as mad as anyone, and when they soon enter the village nearby (where the Vietcong sometimes hid), he wants vengeance as much as anyone. He crosses the line with some of the villagers he finds hiding in a hole – but when he sees what Bunny (Kevin Dillon) and later Barnes does – he is horrified. He may have crossed a line – but they are so far across it they don’t even see it anymore. He develops a case of hero worship for Elias – but in the end does something that Elias probably would not have done. There’s still some Barnes in him.

And, what Stone wants to do – and succeeds brilliantly in achieving – is during the battle sequences make everything seem chaotic. There is not one shot in the movie of a Vietcong soldier that is seen clearly. They appear in shadow, if at all. The battles mainly take place at night – or else in the jungle that is always at least kind of dark. This isn’t like a WWII movie, with our side and their side dug into trenches – no is ever quite sure where anyone else is. Any movement may be one of your guys, or one of theirs. Stone places the camera right alongside the American soldiers, who never know for sure what they are shooting at, or who they are fighting.

Platoon was really the film that made Stone’s directing career. After two failed movies (Seizure and The Hand), and Salvador, which was released earlier the same year that Platoon came out, to very good reviews, but little box office (the film, in fact, barely got released at all), Platoon became a major hit (third highest grossing film of 1986 – behind only Top Gun and Crocodile Dundee according to Box Office Mojo) – and won four Oscars, for Picture, Sound, Editing and Director, for Stone himself. It is not as complex as some of Stone’s other films – but in some ways, it is the simplicity of the story, and the characters, that give Platoon its power. Tom Berenger and Willem Dafoe were both nominated for Oscars for their work, and deserved it, as they do manage to give humanity to what are essentially archetypes. Sheen is the calm center of the film – and it works for him. The supporting cast includes fine work by actors like Keith David, Forrest Whitaker, Johnny Depp, John C. McGinley and Kevin Dillon. Platoon is in some ways the prototypical Vietnam War movie – or as Roger Ebert remarked that the film should have been made before the other Vietnam War films, as it provides a base for everything else to build off of. The film has earned its place on every list of the greatest war films of all time (and it always makes those lists). Perhaps the film didn’t need its voiceover narration – particularly over the final scene, which explains things a little too neatly. But the film does show, in unflinching detail, what it is that the American men who fought in Vietnam lost, in black and white terms. It is one of the best films to ever win the Best Picture Oscar – and one of the best in Stone’s career.

The Films of Oliver Stone: Salvador (1986)

Salvador (1986)
Directed by: Oliver Stone.
Written by: Oliver Stone and Richard Boyle.
Starring: James Woods (Richard Boyle), James Belushi (Doctor Rock), Michael Murphy (Ambassador Thomas Kelly), John Savage (John Cassady), Elpidia Carrillo (María), Tony Plana (Major Maximiliano 'Max' Casanova), Colby Chester (Jack Morgan - State Department Analyst), Cynthia Gibb (Cathy Moore), Will MacMillan (Colonel Bentley Hyde Sr.), Valerie Wildman (Pauline Axelrod), José Carlos Ruiz (Archbishop Romero), Jorge Luke (Colonel Julio Figueroa).

Oliver Stone has admitted to thinking that Salvador may have been his last chance to direct. He had a successful screenwriting career by the mid-1980s, but his two previous directing efforts (Seizure and The Hand) had did nothing for his career. Salvador was his chance to finally make the type of film he wanted to make – even if he had little money to do so – and Stone wasn’t going to screw it up. Salvador has all the markings of a filmmaker trying to do too much for one movie to realistically do. The film is somewhat scattershot, verging between comedy and heart wrenching drama to thriller to political sermon, and back again. Stone makes that work for the movie though – this is the type of film where everything can turn on a dime, so that tone is appropriate. The biggest asset Salvador has though is a brilliant, Oscar nominated performance by James Woods – perhaps the best the actor has ever given. The film makes full use of Woods’ slimy charm – but also finds a real person underneath that. The film has its flaws to be sure – none of them involve Woods.

In the film, Woods stars as Richard Boyle – a reporter who was on the ground throughout the Vietnam War, who has had trouble keeping a job since the war ended. Back in the States, he has a wife and a kid – but they leave him fairly early in the movie. He gets arrested, and calls on his friend Doctor Rock (Jim Belushi) to get him out of jail. He then convinces Rock to come with him to El Salvador, where Boyle is convinced he could make some money as a journalist covering the Civil War in that country that is just starting to heat up. The film takes place in 1980 – in literally the last days of the Carter administration before Reagan becomes President – and a new Ambassador comes to the country. There is a lot of arguing about whether the rebels are communists or not – and whether the Americans should be supporting what is essentially a military dictatorship or not. Boyle – and by extension Stone – are really arguing that this is nothing more than a Civil War, and America is backing murderers, and should stay out of it. Boyle doesn’t find too many people who agree with him during the course of the movie.

I’ve seen Salvador at least three times before this latest viewing, and to be honest, I always forget just how much political talk is in the movie. That’s because the movie is least effective when it sets Woods out to debate different government officials – military men, politicians, etc. – and have him debate the merits of whether or not they should be there. Stone simultaneously explains too much and not enough about the situation in El Salvador – too much in that there are political conversations that grind the movie to a halt at several points, lacking any sort of dramatic flow, and yet not enough, as the specifics of the conflict remain murky – as if Stone assumes the audience will already know some of them (which may well have been the case back in 1986).

But if the movie fails as a political sermon – which most movies that attempt to be that do – it works on a number of different levels beyond that. As Roger Ebert pointed out, and Stone has confirmed, at times Boyle and Rock’s journey through El Salvador brings to mind Hunter S. Thompson, and his gonzo journalism style – where he’d show up in place, do as many drugs and drink as much alcohol as possible, and simply have a good time, writing whatever he could. The opening scenes of the movie certainly bring that to mind – and there drunken moments throughout that recall Thompson as well.

The movie is also effective as puncturing that drug and alcohol produced bubble that Boyle created for himself, as the movie gets very violent, and shows disturbing scene after disturbing scene of people being killed for no reason – and where even the most innocent of interactions threatens to boil over into violence, chaos and bloodshed. If Boyle starts the movie as a seemingly cynical, uncaring asshole – he doesn’t come out of the movie the same way.

Woods navigates the different things the movie asks him to do with ease. It was apparently not an easy shoot – and Woods was unhappy throughout – but he never let that affect his performance. The early scenes of Boyle – where he’s a cynical prick – give us the Woods we all know and love – but as the film progresses, it requires him to go deeper than he usually has a chance to do. The infamous confession scene is perhaps the best acting of Woods career – and there are moments in the back end, where he has found his humanity and desperation, that rival it. No matter the other flaws in the film, Woods helps to cover them up.

Salvador does have its share of flaws. Once again, I have to say that a Stone film has a “woman problem” – nowhere more so than in its depiction of a female reporter that feels unnecessarily harsh, and borders on misogyny at times. The rest of the female characters don’t do much to help – not even Woods’ girlfriend in the film, played by Elpidia Carrillo, who remains so passive in the film, you keep forgetting about her. There is another, seemingly better, journalist in the film – played by John Savage – but he isn’t given much to do, and his big moment rings false.

But for the most part Salvador works. Yes, Woods has a lot to do with that. But it’s also Stone’s direction – which has an urgency about it. At times, Stone seems to want to be making a Costa-Gravas-style political thriller/docudrama, complete with handheld camera work. Stone just does that better than most. The film can be funny, and then turn on an instant – and captures both of things amazingly well. This is a huge leap forward in his directing career from The Hand – and his next film (made the same year), would be another one.

Salvador has too many problems for it to be a truly great film, but it’s better than I remembered it being at the same time. It’s too much of a sermon, and has other problems to be sure, but at its best, Salvador is pretty damn terrific.

The Films of Oliver Stone: The Hand (1981)

The Hand (1981)
Directed by: Oliver Stone.
Written by: Oliver Stone based on the novel by Marc Brandel.
Starring: Michael Caine (Jonathan Lansdale), Andrea Marcovicci (Anne Lansdale), Annie McEnroe (Stella Roche), Bruce McGill (Brian Ferguson), Viveca Lindfors (Doctress), Rosemary Murphy (Karen Wagner), Mara Hobel (Lizzie Lansdale), Pat Corley (Sheriff), Nicholas Hormann (Bill Richamn), Ed Marshall (Doctor), Charles Fleischer (David Maddow), John Stinson (Therapist), Richard Altman (Hammond), Sparky Watt (Sergeant), Tracey Walter (Cop), Oliver Stone (Bum).

After winning an Oscar for writing Midnight Express (1978), Oliver Stone was given a chance to direct a feature for the second time – this time for an actual movie studio, rather than just a cheapie company. He still had to make a B-horror movie, but still, Stone had been waiting for his chance to direct, and with The Hand he found it. The film is one of Michael Caine’s infamous “pay cheque” movies – a series of films he made in the late 1970s and early 1980s simply because he wanted the money. That explains how an Oscar-nominated (he hadn’t won either of his Oscars at that point) movie star agreed to be in a horror movie about a writer who severed hand murders people for an unproven director. The interesting thing about The Hand however is even if Caine did it for a pay cheque, and Stone did for a chance to direct, they both take the movie quite seriously – and the result is a movie that could have been pure camp turning into something darker and more disturbing than it has any right to be. The Hand may not be a masterpiece of the horror genre – but it’s a hell of a lot better than its premise seems to suggest.

In the film, Caine stars as Jonathan Lansdale – a somewhat successful comic artist, living in the Vermont countryside with his wife, Anna (Andrea Marcovicci) and their daughter Lizzie (Mara Hobel). The marriage is in trouble – she wants to move to New York for the winter, and he wants to stay put – and a miscommunication between the two of them has resulted in her thinking that she and Lizzie would move to New York without him so they can have a “break from each other”. So he’s already pissed when he gets into the car with his wife – who is driving. They argue, she drives recklessly, he sticks his hand out of the window to try and wave off another driver, and before you know, there has been an accident, and Jonathan is missing a hand. What’s worse, it’s his drawing hand, meaning his career in comics is over. Looking for a way to make money, Jonathan ends up taking a teaching job in California – meaning his wife is going to that break after all – but only after he has destroyed pretty much any chance he has of continuing to make a living in comics. Jonathan’s now disembodied hand – that was never found – starts to murder people who anger him, seemingly without Jonathan’s knowledge.

This all sounds incredibly cheesy to be sure. There are two ways you can decide to make a horror movie about a killer, disembodied hand – the way Sam Raimi did in Evil Dead 2 (1987), which is to pretty much make it into a gruesome comedy, aided greatly by the rubber faced Bruce Campbell. Most directors would probably go in that direction. What Stone does is different though – he takes the premise seriously. The scenes with the hand itself can get gruesome to be sure – Stone isn’t one to skimp on blood – but they make a surprisingly small amount of the films runtime. For most of it, it is a portrait of a man coming apart at the seams – a man who has lost his career, his marriage and potentially his daughter all at once. When he’s confronted by someone who reminds him of himself – a one armed bum (played by Stone himself), the hand snaps into action. Later, during his “break” in California he starts an affair with one of his students – and when things start to go bad there, the hand handles things. What do you think the hand will do when his wife shows up?

So despite the gruesome killings, The Hand is more psychological horror than anything else – and this is where Caine makes his presence felt. The movie could have become too serious and ponderous, and slowed down, but Caine is too skilled to allow that to happen. He makes Jonathan’s descent into madness feel real – so the movie remains grounded no matter how outlandish it gets.

The Hand has mostly been forgotten in the years since it came out – and to be honest, there is a reason for that. Had John Carpenter or David Cronenberg directed The Hand, it may well have become a classic (although two very different classics in either of those directors hands). What Stone does is make a competent, intriguing, disturbing and dark little horror film – not something that will go down as one of the best the genre has ever produced, but a decent film for genre fans. The ending of the film gets weird – the final scene is the creepiest in the movie, with a terrific performance by Viveca Lindfors as a strange “Doctress”, but shares some of the same problems the ending of Seizure had – namely, trying to pull the rug out from under the audience one too many times. You can certainly also say that like other Stone movies, The Hand has a “woman problem” – as the wife is pretty much painted as a one-dimensional, selfish bitch, and the young student Caine sleeps with in the movie is just a sex object. The other female characters – Caine’s agent, and the Doctress in the final scene, aren’t really portrayed well either. Then again, everyone in the movie – including Caine – is kind of an asshole. Caine is just the only one given any sort of depth.

In the end, The Hand is an intriguing early film by Stone. You see some of what would make him a great director here (as well as some of the flaws that are also in later films). No one is going to mistake it for a great film – but if you’re a Stone fan who has been avoiding it for years (like me) – The Hand is deserving of your attention.

Classic Movie Review: Searching for Bobby Fischer

Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993)
Directed by: Steven Zaillian.
Written by: Steven Zaillian based on the book by Fred Waitzkin.
Starring: Max Pomeranc (Josh Waitzkin), Joe Mantegna (Fred Waitzkin), Joan Allen (Bonnie Waitzkin), Ben Kingsley (Bruce Pandolfini), Laurence Fishburne (Vinnie), Michael Nirenberg (Jonathan Poe), Robert Stephens (Poe's Teacher), David Paymer (Kalev), Hal Scardino (Morgan), Vasek Simek (Russian Park Player), William H. Macy (Tunafish Father), Dan Hedaya (Tournament Director), Laura Linney (School Teacher).

How many times have we heard that the most talented people work the hardest? That Michael Jordan or Wayne Gretzky or any other famous athlete may have been gifted from birth with a load of skill, but they still worked more than anyone else on improving their skills. How many movies have we seen about the sacrifices made by the gifted for the passion in their lives? We receive the message over and over again that we owe it ourselves – and our god given gifts – to make the most of the skill we have been given. But what if that single minded passion makes you miserable? What if you don’t want to focus on one thing to the exclusivity to everything else in your life? What is interesting about Steven Zallian’s Searching for Bobby Fischer is that it takes this question seriously. It is about a child chess prodigy named Josh Waitzkin, who looks at a chessboard and sees things that most people who have dedicated their lives to the game will never see. He could be the next Bobby Fischer if only he would put his mind to it. The movie asks the question though – what if you don’t want to be the next Bobby Fischer. Fischer may well be the best chess player in history – he is certainly the most famous – but by all accounts, he lived a mostly miserable life. Mental illness most likely played a role in that – but what most people can agree on when it comes to Bobby Fischer is that while playing chess, no one was better. He just couldn’t do much else in his life.

When Josh’s father, Fred (Joe Mantegna) notices that his son has a gift at chess, he does everything he can to encourage it. Fred is a sportswriter, and knows the sacrifices it will take for Josh to be the best at anything. He goes to see Bruce Pandolfini (Ben Kingsley) – who once worked with Fischer – to try and get him to be his teacher. Pandolfini initially doesn’t want the job – he even takes Fred to one of the prestigious chess tournaments in the country – a smoke filled room, full of men (they are almost all men), who live and breathe chess, make little money at it, and get almost no attention from the outside world. They don’t care – they play chess. He doesn’t do this to try and convince Fred not to encourage Josh – but just to give him an idea of what may be in store for Josh if he isn’t the next Bobby Fischer – but just one of the best chess players in the country.

Fred hires Pandolfini anyway, and soon Josh lives and breathes chess – he goes to many chess tournaments for children, and he wins them all. But some of the joy of the game drains out of him. He loved playing chess is Washington Square Park – his first teacher was Vinnie (Laurence Fishburne) – who may in fact be homeless. Vinnie’s view of chess is almost the exact opposite of Pandolfini – there is a lot of talk about when you move your queen out, Vinnie wants to do it early, Pandolfini late. But this isn’t a movie about chess strategy – I’m still not quite sure why the queen is such a big deal. In a way it doesn’t matter. It’s not really about when you move your queen – but about taking joy in the game. This is something Josh learns before Fred – but the father eventually catches up with his son.

Searching for Bobby Fischer is the type of film that got made often in the 1990s, but I have a hard time believing would be made at all today. It isn’t a big budget movie, but it isn’t an indie either. It was written and directed by Zallian; the same year he won an Academy Award for the screenplay for Schindlers List. It has a fine cast, is well written and brilliantly shot, by the late, great Conrad Hall – who received the films one Oscar nomination for best cinematography. It is probably the definition of a middle-brow movie – but it’s a movie that works well on its own terms. 21 years later, I think it’s fair to say that Josh Waitzkin did not, in fact, become the next Bobby Fischer. The movie ends with an epilogue that tells us Josh still plays chess – among many other things – and that he is the top ranked player under 17 in America. I have no idea what became of him. I could, probably, look it up if I was so inclined – but I don’t much care. What Josh realizes in the movie is something that many adults never realize – if you’re happy, you are a success – whether or not you’re the best in the world at something. Waitzkin may never have become the next Bobby Fischer – but I find it hard to believe he didn’t live a happier life.

The Films of Oliver Stone: Seizure (1974)

Seizure (1974)
Directed by: Oliver Stone.
Written by: Edward Mann & Oliver Stone.
Starring: Jonathan Frid (Edmund Blackstone), Martine Beswick (The Queen), Joseph Sirola (Charlie Hughes), Christina Pickles (Nicole Blackstone), Hervé Villechaize (The Spider), Anne Meacham (Eunice Kahn), Roger De Koven (Serge Kahn), Troy Donahue (Mark Frost), Mary Woronov (Mikki Hughes), Richard Cox (Gerald), Timothy Ousey (Jason Blackstone), Henry Judd Baker (Jackal), Lucy Bingham (Betsy), Alexis Kirk (Arris).

Like many aspiring filmmakers in the early 1970s, Oliver Stone’s first feature was low budget, B-grade (or lower), horror film – made on the cheap, to try and turn a quick buck and get some attention for the filmmaker to be able to make something bigger and better. Stone had graduated NYU in 1971 and made a well-received short documentary Last Year in Vietnam (1971). This was the time when many aspiring filmmakers got their start making low grade exploitation flicks for the likes of Roger Corman. Peter Bogdanovich’s Targets (1968) got his career off the ground, and just three years later he made The Last Picture Show – his masterpiece. One of Stone’s teachers, Martin Scorsese, had done the same thing with Boxcar Bertha (1972) – which he was able to follow-up with Mean Streets and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore in the next two years. No doubt Stone hoped that Seizure would do the same thing for him that Targets and Boxcar Bertha did for Bogdanovich and Scorsese. But it was not to be. It took Stone four years before he had another screen credit – for writing Alan Parker’s Midnight Express (1978) – for which, Stone won an Oscar – and another seven years before he would directed again. There is a reason for all of this – the biggest one probably being that Seizure is a horrible movie – one that would likely be entirely forgotten and lost to history had a director of Stone’s stature not directed it. As it stands, it has almost been entirely forgotten – for years, it was unavailable, and many still think of Stone’s next film – 1981’s The Hand – as his directorial debut. Stone doesn’t much like Seizure either – fully admitting its flaws. It exists now on Blu-Ray, although I saw it on regular old DVD – with a transfer that they clearly didn’t put much money into (not that it would have helped much. There are some directorial debuts in which you can see seeds of the future great director in – but you have to really, really want to see those seeds when looking at Seizure.

The film stars Jonathan Frid – best known for the cult soap opera Dark Shadows – as Edmund Blackstone, a bestselling author of the macabre, who is haunted by a recurring dream. On a weekend in which he has invited a group of friends to visit he, his wife and their at their isolated country estate, three homicidal maniacs show up and start terrorizing the group – killing them off one by one, starting with the dog, and forcing the survivors into a series of brutal games in order to survive. They are told that in the end, there will only be one survivor. The maniacs are a cackling dwarf with a knife known as The Spider (Hervé Villechaize), a hulking, mostly silent beast of a man in S&M gear known as Jackal (Henry Judd Baker), and their leader known as The Queen (Martine Beswick) – a sexy woman who pretty much want to devour them. Edmund dismisses his dream as simply that – until, on a weekend when all their friends are coming over, the dog disappears – and Edmund eventually finds it hanging from a tree. It isn’t long before more and more of his dream starts to come true.

Seizure was apparently inspired – I kid you not – by Ingmar Bergman’s Hour of the Wolf (1968), which wouldn’t seem to lend itself to this sort of adaptation at first – yet when you think of it, Hour of the Wolf is more horror film than pretty much anything Bergman ever directed, and The Virgin Spring (a better film than Hour of the Wolf), was turned into The Last House on the Left by Wes Craven in 1972. Craven’s film works amazingly well (lots of critics hated it at the time, but its reputation has grown over the years) – perhaps because Craven is a natural at horror movies. Stone, however, is not – and it shows throughout Seizure. The movie is never really scary – it never generates any sort of tension at all really, because Stone doesn’t really know what he’s doing. There are some logistical gaffes that make no sense – like Spider being out among the guests who are being forced to run for their lives, then immediately back in the house coaxing another woman to suicide, and then right back in the middle of the field again. The games they are forced to play are really kind of lame – running through a field, a knife fight (in which a woman decides to wear a bikini too naturally), etc. Say what you will about the Saw films, but those people really had to earn their way out of the traps devised by Jigsaw. Not only that, but the trio of maniacs don’t seem to have too good on a hold on anyone, even though they don’t really try to get away either.

In the film’s worst scene, Stone pretty much grinds the entire film to a halt, to have one character explain precisely who each of the maniacs represent in terms of the psychology of their creator – Edmund – and their place in history. There is little that is more boring than psychoanalyzing killers like this – even Hitchcock couldn’t pull it off in Psycho (1960) (although, amazingly, the brilliant TV series Hannibal does). This sequence strikes me as if Stone were trying to make Seizure into something more important – and deeper, - than the cheapie horror movie that it is. It doesn’t work.

There are a lot more with Seizure. Like many, later Stone movies, it does seem to have a woman problem – with the female characters being either sex objects, or else, in the case of Edmund’s wife (Christina Pickles), who in a late twist, turns from a supportive, old fashioned wife into a bitch who seems to exist only to belittle and emasculate Edmund, and then morphs into something else entire. Or I could complain about the ending – that tries to have at least two “twist” endings that pull the rug out from underneath the audience.

But you get the idea. Seizure just isn’t a movie – even by the low standards of low budget horror films from the 1970s – which aren’t very high. There is a reason so few people know Seizure – and why even Stone himself doesn’t much talk about it. It would have been better for all involved had it been lost somewhere along the way.

The Films of Oliver Stone: Introduction & Intial Ranking

On Rogerebert.com, they have a Movie Lover’s Questionnaire that all of their reviewers have answered to let readers get to know them and their movie going tastes, preferences and experiences. One of the questions on that quiz is: “What's the first movie that made you think, "Hey, some people made this. It didn't just exist. There's a human personality behind it"? My answer to that question would be Oliver Stone’s JFK (1991) – which I saw at the tender age of 11 – on a long bus ride back from one of my brother’s hockey games. Despite seeing it on a tiny bus TV screen, the movie blew my 11 year old mind at the time – and has remained one of the most memorable movie watching experiences of my life – and most likely started me down my movie lover’s path. A few years later – in 1994/95 – Stone became, alongside Quentin Tarantino – the first director I truly fell in love with. That was when I saw both Stone’s Natural Born Killers and Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (both 1994). Tarantino had written the first draft of Natural Born Killers as well – and hated what Stone did with it, and the two filmmakers have taken some pot shots at each other ever since. To me though, they were both masterpieces – and that was when my movie obsession came on full bore. Scorsese, the Coens Kubrick, and Paul Thomas Anderson came in the next few years – but it started with Tarantino and Oliver Stone.

What I didn’t know then was that Stone was just finishing what would easily become his greatest era. In fact, I think there are few filmmakers in history who can claim to have as great of a 10 year stretch as Stone did between 1986 and 1995. During that time, he made 10 films, won two best director Oscars (for Platoon in 1986 and Born on the Fourth of July in 1989), made a few films I would consider to be masterpieces (at minimum JFK, Natural Born Killers and Nixon (1995) – and perhaps Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July as well), and never made a bad film. Sure, Wall Street (1987) has aged – and not well – in the decades since, and The Doors (1991) is wildly uneven, and I’ve never loved Salvador (1986) the way some do – but none of them are bad films in the least. Talk Radio (1988) and Heaven & Earth (1993) are less well known than some of his other films of that era – but both are great films in their own right, and deserve to be more widely seen and talked about.

Before 1986, Stone had directed just two films – Seizure (1974) and The Hand (1981) – both of which I will be watching for the first time as part of this series (when I was obsessed with Stone, I don’t think either was available). In the 20 years since 1995, Stone has only directed 7 additional features (along with some documentaries – with another, Snowden, due next year). None of these films has garnered Stone the kind of recognition he had during his peak – and while I like nearly all of them, and even love a couple, it’s easy to see why. Stone, who used to be the most controversial filmmaker in Hollywood, has hard time drumming up that kind of controversy in the past couple of decades – or perhaps, he just tired of it, since really only 1 of those films (2008’s W.) courted controversy in any real way.

To a certain extent, Stone has been a victim of the vanishing “middle class” movie – movies that exist in budget ranges below blockbusters but above Indies – which is where he did his best work. Studios aren’t much interested in those anymore. Part of it is unquestionably Stone’s fault as well though – the one hugely budgeted film he has made in this time was 2004’s Alexander – a massive critical and commercial failure. He rebounded somewhat with his follow-up – World Trade Center (2006) – which got respectable reviews and box office (which is impressive when you consider it was made during a time when pretty much every movie about 9/11 or the War on Terror was bombing). Perhaps it didn’t help that World Trade Center seemed so unlike an Oliver Stone movie – it almost seems like a Ron Howard film at times, even if I doubt Howard would have painted Michael Shannon’s heroic character in such a dark way (had the entire movie been about him, it may have been a masterpiece).

Perhaps it’s something even simpler than that though. Stone, whose best films seem to be documenting America in the 1960s and 1970s – perhaps ran out of things to say about that time period. Three Vietnam War films, a film about the JFK assassination, and one about Richard Nixon, what else is left for him. Stone certainly had things to say about the 1980s – in films like Salvador, Wall Street and Talk Radio – and I would love to see Oliver Stone’s Reagan – but despite the fact that Stone made one of the great films about the 1990s in Natural Born Killers, he is on shakier ground when dealing in the present. The exception for me is his under rated W., which came out during the tail end of George W. Bush’s Presidency, and was largely greeted with a shrug – probably because to Conservatives it was too much of a hit piece, and for Liberals not enough of one. That film is nowhere near as complex as Stone’s Nixon – but for a very good reason: George W. Bush is nowhere near as complex as Richard Nixon. Stone saw a seemingly average – not stupid – man who got into the White House to prove himself to his dad, which he could do because of who his dad was, and was woefully over the head the entire time.

At this point, I find it hard to see Stone ever truly returning to form again. The type of movie that he is best at making, is the type of movie that doesn’t get made anymore. Perhaps Snowden will do it – I certainly hope so, but we’ve been down this road before.

Stone does, however, remain one of my favorite filmmakers for those films that meant so much to me as a teenager. They meant so much to me in fact that I’ve actually avoided watching many of them for the past decade or so. I have certainly seen JFK and Natural Born Killers in that time period, as well a re-watch of Wall Street before the ill-advised sequel, and I seem to recall a viewing of Talk Radio a couple years ago for some reason. Part of the reason I haven’t re-watched them is simply time – I tend to get wrapped up in the current year’s movies, and don’t watch as many from the past as I probably should. But also partly, I think, I’ve been avoiding them in case I don’t love them the same way now I did as teenager. I’ve certainly changed as a movie lover over the years, so perhaps what once seemed so great, no longer would, and would end up tainting my memory of them. I hope not, but you never know.

So, before Snowden hits next year (when I started re-watching, it was supposed to come out at Christmas – had I known it was going to be next year, I may have put this series off – but, oh well), I plan to go back and watch all 19 of Stone’s previous feature films. I considered added his screenwriter credits as well – Midnight Express (1978 – for which he won an Oscar), Conan the Barbarian (1982), Scarface (1983), Year of the Dragon (1985), 8 Million Ways to Die (1986) and Evita (1996), but adding another six films to the list seemed like a little too much (for these retrospectives, I tend to prefer directors with 15 films or less – they’re easier to get through, and I don’t burn out on them as easily, so 19 films was already pushing it). I also considered adding his documentaries – Commandante (2003), Persona Non Grata (2003), Looking for Fidel (2004), South of the Border (2009), Castro in Winter (2012), The Untold History of the United States (2012-2013), Mi Amigo Hugo (2014) – but that caused the same problem, along with two additional ones – finding 12 hours to watch The Untold History of the United States, and sitting though the docs (most of which I have seen) again. For the most part, I think Stone gets a bad rap for being overly didactic in his films, as I think normally he provides more complexity than he is given credit for (for example, the sympathy he shows for Nixon the man in Nixon, but not Nixon the President) – but that’s a complexity he is either unwilling or unable to show in his docs, which I find rather insufferable at times, despite their good qualities.

So, that leaves 19 features to revisit (or in the case of Seizure and The Hand, watch for the first time). I’m looking forward to this, with equal parts excitement and trepidation. As always in these introductions, I provide a preliminary ranking of the 17 Stone features I have already seen – based on my memory – along with a few thoughts. At the end, I will provide an updated ranking – and yes, some things always change.

17. Alexander (2004) – I’ve only seen this film once – in theaters – so it’s obviously based on the theatrical cut of the film. For this retrospective, I’ll watch the so called “Final” – which is 214 minutes (I would choose the 207 minute “Ultimate Cut”, which Stone says will be his final one – it is his 4^th – but as far as I can tell, it’s not on Canadian iTunes, and even Bay Street Video doesn’t have it – I cannot say I blame them, they have the Theatrical Cut, Directors Cut and Final Cut version, for a movie no one really wants to watch)– which may be a colossal mistake. I will say this though for Alexander – whatever it’s (many) flaws are, being boring or unambitious are not among them, so while I may well think it’s Stone’s worst film, I actually am looking forward to watching it again.

16. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010) – I actually remember liking this film back in 2010, even if I can barely remember it now, just five years later (and no, I have never had the urge to revisit it). Probably the only film on Stone’s resume I could describe as wholly forgettable.

15. World Trade Center (2006) – The film is actually very well made – and had the film focused on Michael Shannon’s, heroic true believer (who Shannon gives dark under currents to, even if we never see him do anything not heroic) it may well have been a masterpiece. The main thrust of the story is rather forgettable though – which should be possible considering what an incredible true story it is based on.

14. Wall Street (1987) – Michael Douglas’ Oscar winning performance remains great – not much else about the rest of film does however, which is a quintessential 1980s Hollywood film, in ways both good, and bad.

13. Any Given Sunday (1999) – Yes, at nearly 3 hours, the film is too long. And no, Stone’s portrait of professional football as being mainly about greed is not overly shocking. Still, it has some great performances (Jamie Foxx can probably thank Stone for his Oscar, since his “serious” career started here), the bone crunching football sequences are fun to watch, and Al Pacino rips into the scenery just enough to keep his coach from being a caricature, but still be a hell of lot of fun. I rarely think about this film – but every time I see it, I like it.

12. Salvador (1986) – James Woods’ excellent, Oscar nominated performance elevates this movie, about a cynical American reporter in El Salvador, just as the country seems ready to explode. Surprisingly for a Stone movie, it isn’t all that interested in politics – the movie actually gets awkward when they try to discuss them directly – but is rather a character study. On that level, it works fine – and Woods, as mentioned, is terrific. Still, it is in many ways another movie where a white character is at the center of a story that barely involves him – while the darker people who should be at the core, are shunted to the side.

11. Savages (2012) – Stone’s most recent film, is a straight ahead genre piece – an action/thriller about two pot growers/dealers, who end up in the middle of a war between different drug cartels and a corrupt DEA agent. As that, and only that, it is a hell of a lot of fun – although I have to admit the trio at the center of the movie (Aaron Taylor Johnson, Taylor Kitsch and Blake Lively) aren’t nearly as interesting as the supporting cast – Benicio Del Toro, John Travolta and especially Salma Hayek.

10. The Doors (1991) – An uneven movie to be sure, but when the film works, it is amazing – and Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison truly is terrific. Part of the problem, as Roger Ebert pointed out, is that there isn’t much of an arc to Morrison’s life – he was born, got stoned, made some great music, and died. What Stone does do in the film – which makes it somewhat different than many rock biopics, is not overly romanticize Morrison – seeing him mainly as a selfish prick – which is an odd choice, but one that works.

9. U-Turn (1997) – The film that marked the end of Stone’s run on top, was a bomb both critically and commercially back in 1997, and hasn’t earned a lot of fans since. But damn it, I like it for it’s insane weirdness, and willing ensemble, who embrace all that craziness. You meet 10 people who have seen U-Turn, and 9 will hate it. I’m the other guy – and occasionally I come across a fellow traveler who feels the same way. What can I say – we’re weird.

8. W. (2008) – Throughout the George W. Bush years there were a lot of jokes about how dumb he was – but I never thought he was dumb, and neither, really, does Oliver Stone’s film. Instead, it sees him as an average man, born into an extraordinary family, and in an effort to prove himself worthy, he ends up the President of the United States of America, where he proceeds to screw everything up, by letting everyone around him walk all over him, like they have his whole life. Josh Brolin gives a great performance in the central role. No, this is not a complex movie – but W. isn’t a complex man, so it’s a fitting one.

7. Heaven & Earth (1993) – The least well known of Stone’s Vietnam war trilogy, Heaven & Earth deserves to have a much wider audience. Stone doesn’t really portray the Vietnamese people in either Platoon or Born on the Fourth of July – instead, locking in on the American perspective. In Heaven & Earth, he corrects this – telling the story of a Vietnamese woman (a wonderful Hiep Thi Le), who sees her country destroyed – ends up marrying an American soldier, and moving there, to a land of even more confusion. There have been a lot of American movies about the Vietnam War – Heaven & Earth is one of the only ones to tell a story from the other side – and as a result, it should be far better known.

6. Talk Radio (1988) – Talk Radio gets my vote for the most underrated film of Stone’s career – a screen adaptation of Eric Bogosian’s play, starring Bogosian, as a controversial talk radio host, with a death wish, who pokes and prods the jackasses in his audience to respond. Stone avoids almost all of the traps of stage to screen adaptations, and makes an intelligent, funny, brilliantly acted film. Somehow, in the middle of his most well-known period, Stone made this under the radar gem, and not many noticed. That’s a shame.

5. Born on the Fourth of July (1989) – The story of a true believer, who goes to Vietnam, comes back paralyzed from the waist down, as well as bitter, angry and cynical – who tries to drown himself in drugs and alcohol, before he recovers, and comes back to the land of the living. The film functions brilliantly as a companion piece to Platoon – which was about the war itself, whereas this one is about the aftermath of it. As is true of many Stone movies, there is a great performance at the center of the film – this time by Tom Cruise, who has arguably never been better.

4. Platoon (1986)

Platoon was the Best Picture Winner of 1986 – and it has aged better than practically any other film to win the prize that decade (only Amadeus is really in the same class). It is a Vietnam war film, based on Stone’s own experiences, who went over there as a true believer, only to become disillusioned by what he saw there, and torn between two mentors – Tom Berenger’s win at all costs, hardnosed sergeant, and Willem Dafoe’s, drug using hippie, who is still smarter than Berenger. The film is appropriately chaotic, and shows how a young man becomes confused and disillusioned. The film remains one of the best Vietnam War films ever made.

3. Nixon (1995)

Stone’s long (192 or 212 minutes) movie about the life of Richard Nixon is perhaps the greatest film ever made about a real life President. It shows some scenes of Nixon as a boy – but it mainly concentrates on him as a man, and politician, brilliantly played by Anthony Hopkins, as a man driven by his need to be loved to become the President – who is then destroyed by his hubris. It’s a Shakespearean story – brilliantly directed by Stone to be sure, and also brilliantly well written and acted. An utter, and complete, masterwork.

2. Natural Born Killers (1994) – This is perhaps the film I have seen more than any other – not just Oliver Stone film, but any of them. This chaotic, nightmarish vision of hell is over the top and violent from the first frames, and just keeps getting crazier. The film almost plays like its channel hoping, from one demented vision of America to the next – painting a portrait of lovers/killer on the run as heroes, villains and everything in between – but mainly as a product of their violent surroundings – and how they really are the quintessential American couple. Natural Born Killers was a favorite of mine in the 1990s – and continues to look better and better as the years pass.

1. JFK (1991) – Quite simply one of the most stunning films ever made. You don’t need to agree with Stone’s theories in the movie – just like you don’t really need to see Nixon or George W. Bush the same way he does to like those movies. What Stone captures in JFK is the massive sense of loss America experienced when JFK was assassinated. Yes, Stone is spinning a counter narrative here – and whether you see it as true, or the paranoid rantings of a madman, I really do not care. The skill in which Stone makes his argument, the mastery of style is stunning. One of the greatest films ever made.