15. “The Doors” (1991)
A semi-factual look at the life and times of Jim Morrison and his acid-rock band The Doors, this biopic is marred by standard tripped-out and conspiracy-laden rhetoric typical to Stone. Who was Jim Morrison, and why did he fall apart? No matter how romantic/tragic a hero Stone views him as, it feels ridiculously overblown to ascribe such importance to these questions. The half-baked memories from Morrison’s early years do little to illuminate his evolution into the Messianic creature Stone has him become, and with all the sex, drugs and rock n’ roll that were key notes of the 1960s, Stone leaves out any real sense of the soul and the art they helped create and then destroy. It’s shot and edited like a film school project and is littered with throwaway characters, though Val Kilmer is sensational —he makes it difficult to think of Morrison without conjuring up his portrayal. But what could have been an in-depth look at a tortured musician battling America’s prudish and naive idealism becomes two hours of an insufferable whining rock star and shaky camera work, and if it’s watchable, it’s only for the soundtrack, an underutilized Kyle MacLachlan as Ray Manzarek, and Kilmer.
14. “Savages” (2012)
After Stone’s run of flops in the ’00s, culminating in the bland disappointment of his 2010 “Wall Street” sequel, hopes were high that the new decade would see the director return to the provocative firebrand experimentalism of yore. And an adaptation of a Don Winslow novel, starring a fresh and hungry cast of attractive rising stars certainly seemed to have more in common with the sensibility of “Natural Born Killers” than that of “World Trade Center.” But be careful what you wish for: while somewhere under the redundant voiceover and painful flashy posturing of “Savages,” the heart of Winslow’s novel does beat, mostly it’s a muddled, irritating mess that has nothing to do with the drug trade. Two young marijuana dealers (an ex-Navy SEAL and a Buddhist played by Taylor Kitsch and Aaron Johnson, respectively) share the love of O (Blake Lively, whose present comeback can largely be seen as a retreat from this sort of role), but their idyllic sun-and-sex Cali lifestyle is threatened when a cartel headed by Salma Hayek and Benicio del Toro moves into town, with Tarantino-indebted violent results. Though there’s some sort of plot involving John Travolta‘s DEA agent, nothing can conceal the vapidity of this exercise, which attempts to at once grapple with weighty, high-stakes issues and have Lively, in voiceover, deliver a description of the different climaxes she has with her two lovers (orgasms vs “wargasms,” smdh).
13. “U Turn” (1997)
Standing out like a sore thumb in the director’s filmography, “U Turn” sees Stone set aside the political commentary to have some lunatic pulp fun, turning in a film stylistically similar to “Natural Born Killers” but freed of the desire to make a meaningful point about global affairs. Sean Penn is as close to an everyman as he’s ever played and gives a solid performance, but he’s overshadowed by supporting players who seem to be in some kind of competition to out-crazy each other: Every inhabitant of Superior, Arizona is more batshit than the last, from Jennifer Lopez‘s femme fatale to Joaquin Phoenix‘s combustible Toby N. Tucker. It’s a crude, unrestrained piece of work, and the fun that Stone seems to have with the “Bigger! More!” direction of his actors and lurid visual excess doesn’t translate to the experience of the viewer, except in the most fleeting of ways. We’d be tempted to say that any film involving a hideously-made-up Billy Bob Thornton playing solo Twister has to be worth tracking down, but “U-Turn” is eternally less than the sum of some individually entertaining parts.
12. “Any Given Sunday” (1999)
“JFK” marked the perfect balance between Stone’s experimental tendencies and his storytelling rigor, but after that picture and “Natural Born Killers,” he succumbed to a kind of schizophrenic overkill for a while. When he finally calmed down (slightly), he tackled football drama with “Any Given Sunday,” but if it’s Stone on downers, the picture is still hilariously amplified and exaggerated. Note the synopsis that describes the film as a “look at the life-and-death struggles of modern-day gladiators and those who lead them.” Al Pacino, at his hammiest, loudest and most over-the-top, plays the utmost cliché version of the frustrated coach trying to bring his broken team back to glory and tame the arrogant young quarterback (Jamie Foxx), who just won’t play by the rules —literally, he just does what he wants and changes plays mid-field. Co-starring Cameron Diaz (the team’s owner), Dennis Quaid (a fading quarterback losing his edge), James Woods, L.L. Cool J (all-around hilarious), Matthew Modine, Charlton Heston, Ann-Margret and Lauren Holly, “Any Given Sunday” is so melodramatically over-the-top that the film becomes like an unintentional parody of a sports film. But laughing-at is still laughing, right?
11. “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” (2010)
Long after-the-fact sequels are rarely a good idea, and Stone’s only time returning to past glories is further confirmation of just that. It’s easy to see why the film came to pass: the 2008 economic crash made the original seem particularly prescient, and it seemed like the time was ripe for Stone to turn his lens back on the high finance milieu. And some of the old magic does return: Michael Douglas, reprising arguably his most iconic turn, doesn’t miss a beat, giving a lovely ambiguity to Gekko’s quote-unquote rehabilitation. It’s one of Stone’s slickest-looking films, thanks to the sleek cinematography by Rodrigo Prieto, but the whole thing feels unnecessary and surprisingly low-stakes. Allan Loeb and Stephen Schiff‘s script never really scratches the surface, and it suffers from a lead —Shia LaBoeuf’s Jacob Moore— who is much less interesting than Charlie Sheen in the original, and whose half-baked revenge motivation and insipid romance with Gekko’s daughter (an entirely wasted Carey Mulligan) feel like distractions from what the film should properly be about. It’s perfectly watchable on a craftsmanship level, and is even momentarily diverting, but a film brought into being because of its apparent topicality should not be so toothless..
