Love Him or Hate Him...

 Here's three must-see Oliver Stone flicks

  U-Turn 

Sean Penn, Jennifer Lopez, Billy Bob Thornton Powers Booth and Nick Nolte

.A dark comedy with badass soap opera tendencies, U-turn tells the tale of one mishap after another. A corrupt sheriff, in a dysfunctional little town keeps drifter Penn stuck in psychotic limbo. He kills time enticed by the alluring femme fatale in this Twilight Zone-like messed up little flick that’s like a combination of the Postman Always Rings Twice and Red Rock West.  This one of Stone’s most overlooked flicks. A perfect desert film noir boasting some of the best cameos ever! Check out Billy Bob’s grease monkey. This flick is also famous for driving a wedge between Stone and Penn’s relationship that is vile to put it mildly. Neither has a kind word for each other to this day

Natural Born Killers   

Woody Harrelson, Juliette Lewis, Robert Downey Jr., Tommy Lee Jones and Tom Sizemore

The quintessential commentary of violence in the media as serial killers Mickey and Mallory Knox become folk heroes and legends thanks to reality TV and the media’s warped overblown power. Written by Quentin Tarantino, Stone’s psychedelic onslaught of sex, violence and the media’s propaganda machine is satirized to the point of desensitization and overload. Stone’s vision uses every camera trick in the book, different film stock, quadruple soundtracks and insanely paced editing. Through Stone’s never-ending adherence to Native American mysticism he skewers consumerism, superficiality, mediocrity, and banality within the media and pop culture.  Plus every single actor chews up the scenery every chance they get.

 Scarface

 Al Pacino, Michelle Pfeiffer, Steven Bauer 
Who hasn’t seen this expletive laden masterpiece? Scarface is the all-encompassing saga of Cuban immigrant Tony Montana who takes over a drug cartel while succumbing to greed. This Stone penned cult classic directed by Brian DePalma is the ultimate sprawling violent gangster movie. Scarface almost reinvents the “so bad it’s good” category from the bloody chainsaw scene to the riveting shoot outs to the terrible Cuban accents unevenly spewed by Al Pacino, Stephen Bauer and Robert Loggia while coke sniffing Michelle Pfeiffer looks nice and wrecked…a laugh riot from beginning to end. One of the most quoted movies of all times--do I really have to say “Say hello to my little friend” here? Point of interest: as I left the theater the first time, I was like “who wrote this, a ten year old kid?” Nope, just the always immature Oliver Stone and that’s when he’s the most fun

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Natural Stoned Killers

 Stoners versus cartel in fragmented cartoon

By Morgan P Salvo

Just because Oliver Stone makes movies look cool doesn’t mean he always makes cool movies. Savages falls somewhere in between cool and ludicrous. Okay let’s just say it has it moments. Depicting overtly dark secrecy to over-the-top camp, Savages delivers a cartoonish vision of a deadly violent subject matter.

When Stone isn’t making some valiant statement in a lavish production (JFK or Wall Street) he tears his style down to fit his concept of bare minimum. Here he dishes out a pretty standard story about drug dealing and a hostage situation, but doesn’t make us believe much of anything through the black and white to color storytelling, non linear editing and different film stock.

The plot focuses on a pair of drug dealers: two stoners who have been friends forever. One’s a botanist genius Ben (Aaron Johnson) the other a military dude Chon (Taylor Kitsch) doing tour after tour in Afghanistan. They make the best weed on the planet (smuggled in from Afghanistan) and have built up an empire that on one hand does good deeds like helping out Africa and supplying medical marijuana but on the other hand supports dirty drug dealers. They both love and live with “O” (Blake Lively) the chick who loves them both right back and whose story we get to hear recanted. They all reside in Laguna Beach CA in a blissful love triangle made in heaven, that is until the evil drug cartel in Mexico wants a piece of the action. O is kidnapped to get Ben and Chon to comply with their demands.What they are asking for is equivalent to having a Ben and Jerry aisle in Wal-Mart  It’s easy to comprehend the bad guys won’t play fair. The stoners do not go for the plan and the cartel reciprocates by resorting to… umm… savagery and violence.

There’s no doubt as to why Stone made this pic as it centers on the ramifications of cannabis, a favorite indulgence of his. Stone has a way to suck you in with mood and color but he’s frustrating because just when you think his morality is going one way he stumps you. This happened with his bio-pics W and Nixon: you expected him to ream them a new one from his political leanings but instead he was sympathetic to their plights. In this case with blood spewing ultra-violence Stone paints his easel with stupidity instead of insight. There are a ton of messages to read into this mess of a movie, like while a war rages in the Middle East there’s an even bigger one at home, and the war on drugs isn’t a war at all it’s just police and political corruption, but the main implication is no one can be trusted as evidenced by the double dealing, backstabbing and requisite graphic depiction of blood guts torture and mayhem. We’re all familiar with the term “we don’t negotiate with terrorists” and yet that’s all the characters in this movie seem to do.

The best thing to say about Stone is he gets great performances out of his actors (he even got one out of Tom Cruise in Born on the Fourth of July), and Savages is no exception.

Performance wise it’s a gold mine and the best reason to watch this flick.  Benicio Del Toro takes on one of his more entertainingly funny roles as a crazed hit-man who runs a Mexican landscaping cleanup crew, and should change his last name to Del Evil or Del Knucklehead depending on the scene. It’s hard to look at the portly Travolta the same since the tabloid massage accusations but he’s a great whiny slime-ball. Selma Hayek is at her diabolical nuttiest as the wicked witch with a black heart of gold. Then there’s Kitsch, who besides having a really bad last name, is unrecognizable from his last outing as John Carter. Blake Lively is, well, Blake Lively and finally gets a lot of screen time even if she doesn’t take off her top. But Aaron Johnson is the guy to watch in all movies from now on. I didn’t even put it together till way later that this is the same guy from Kick-Ass! and Nowhere Boy (playing John Lennon) - this dude is a true chameleon.

Savages’ underlying message of “If you can’t beat ’em join ’em” is clear but the generic storyline and ending is a huge let down even though there are three finales, which lets the first one off the hook and that’s a good thing because it was god-awful.  But never fear, stick with it as the film ends on a high note—pun intended. After all the smoke clears in this never confusing, easily established flick we are left pondering “was that good or just about the worst thing I’ve ever seen?” Maybe it’s implied to smoke a strong strain of weed similar what the dealers grow and forget this movie ever happened. 

 

Savages

Starring Aaron Johnson, Blake Lively, Taylor Kitsch, Salma Hayek, Benicio Del Toro
Directed by Oliver Stone

Rated R

2 ½ stars

The South Shall Rise Again

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter mixes History and fantasy and fails miserably

 

By Morgan P Salvo

The craziest thing about this movie is the film doesn’t live up to the campiness conveyed by the title. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is so deadly serious that it should be absolutely ashamed of itself. It’s as if the history channel morphed with a bad action movie and the now standard Matrix-like effects. Sure there’s blood spraying and wild wire work acrobatic fight choreography but this dang kung fu kickery in the hands of a huge influential and total historical figure is a trend that has got to stop. The “what if” theory requires so much suspending of disbelief, that it literally defies description. What’s with this Hollywood trend to rewrite history by putting real people of influence in completely farfetched scenarios like the recent Raven where Edgar Allan Poe helps fight crime? I just don’t get it.

In case you haven’t guessed, this move would like you to believe (really believe) that while Honest Abe (Benjamin Walker) was out there learning the law and stumping for politics he was also hacking, slicing and dicing evil bloodsuckers.

According to a dairy left by Lincoln, his mom was killed by a vampire and he swore revenge. Luckily a vampire Guardian angel (Dominic Cooper) mentors him in a kind of Obi-Wan Kenobi meets Karate Kid in a True Blood kind of way. We are also treated to Rocky-like training including an axe spinning montage and nuggets of wisdom dished out like “real powers comes from truth not hatred”. This is possibly one of the biggest travesties ever to hit the big screen. The only problem is that it’s kind of fun to watch thanks to director Timur Bekmambetov.

So what we get is a boring rendition of Lincoln’s life with all the elementary school trimmings including meeting wife Mary Todd (Elizabeth Winstead hot off The Thing remake) the Lincoln/Douglass debates, slavery, his presidency, The Civil War and finally the ending of Mary beckoning “Come Abraham  we’ll be late for the theater”. While Abe is struggling with his dark secret of being a fierce killer of dark undead entities, the filmmakers are busy trying to intertwine slave trading with vampire evil.  It’s as if the filmmakers decided to spruce up Redford’s just as dumb and lifeless tale of Lincoln’s assassination conspiracy (The Conspirator) by adding the juicy concept that perhaps there was more than meets the gouged out eye.

Then there’s the vampire thing. This part stretches the imagination to the snapping point. Without any explanation, vampire hunting involves killing not by staking but decapitation. Firewood-splitting Abe goes on an axe wielding mission to rid the world of vampires, one by one, sometimes ten by ten. The legend of Paul Bunyan & the Blue Ox is more believable. Plus anyone who knows anything about vampires will be aghast at the liberties taken with their legend. Like why the hell do they survive in daylight and why on earth would they ride horses around when they can easily fly in fast motion wherever they want?

Even more ludicrously, through weird sepia tones and washed out colors to convey the saga more “historically” like the film is faded from time, the serious tone employed is even more mind numbing. This flick plays out all wrong. Culminating in Gettysburg ALVH thinks it is pulling out all the stops by cramming Roadrunner cartoons, Buster Keaton antics and good old fashioned serial cliff hangers into one movie. It’s like taking one hyper creative idea and making mincemeat out of it. This flick just becomes more indulgent in absurdity. Just when I say to myself at least they’re not depicting the South as bloodthirsty bloodsucking ghouls, BAM there are confederate soldiers baring bloody fangs.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is a highly original idea that falls prey to unoriginal conventions. Unfortunately producer Tim Burton and director Bekmambetov clearly had a vision of what they wanted to convey but somehow the delivery is overwrought with loopholes and mishaps. Far too serious for its own good, this movie screams out for cheesy laughs of which it is totally devoid.. So much for history…

 

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Starring Benjamin Walker, Dominic Cooper, Rufus Sewell, Anthony Mackie Mary Elizabeth Winstead

Directed by Timur Bekmambetov

Rated R