5. “Talk Radio” (1988)
Stone found a partner in crime in Eric Bogosian, whose play that this film adapts, and performance supplies much of the grunt work in this tightly wound drama. Essentially a one-man show, Bogosian is aces as Barry Champlain, a shock jock whose passion for spitting vitriol at anyone unfortunate enough to cross his path is matched only by his own self-aggrandizing, caustic personality. Stone follows Champlain through a sweltering, nerve-wracking day, whirring his camera around the sound booth like a madman but maintaining a firm grip on Bogosian’s exacting performance (despite an over-reliance on sarcasm that typically goes hand in hand with the nervy Jewish film stereotype), while Leslie Hope, Alec Baldwin and Stone regular John C. McGinley all do solid work behind the scenes. “Talk Radio” must have been a passion project for Stone: it’s an unusual choice to follow two of his biggest successes, and it shows. This is personal work for both author and filmmaker, but he renders it just conventional enough to stay on the rails, speeding to a surprising and saddening conclusion. Like Barry Champlain, Stone likes to go all out, but his direction here thankfully shows noticeable restraint.
4. “Wall Street” (1987)
The film that spawned ’80s American icon Gordon Gekko, as well as numerous pop-culture catchphrases that Michael Douglas would spend the majority of his subsequent career riffing on, and which made Charlie Sheen a legit box office star, “Wall Street” is so much a product of its time that it fares better than other films from Stone at the time, purely because it defines its time. Stone and Stanley Weiser’s propulsive screenplay moves like a whippet; Sheen, as the naive newbie with his post-“Platoon” baby-face still intact, is a great match for Douglas’s icy villain; and their Central Park showdown, as photographed by the incomparable Robert Richardson, reaches near epic/mythic proportions as the two trade verbal blows before Gekko pops his top. It’s father vs. son, mentor vs. student, man’s-man vs. boy-man. And that’s what Stone has always excelled at —showcasing men of strong will going up against one another until someone hits the floor. “Wall Street” has a lot in common with De Palma’s “Scarface” (scripted by Stone), and much like that film, has taken on a deserved new life over the last decade as one Stone’s most influential films and a defining work in his canon.
3. “Nixon” (1995)
Stone’s catalog contains more than a few films that have aged badly, but also at least one truly underrated work. “Nixon” could easily have been a sanctimonious hit piece on the infamous 36th POTUS, but Stone, with a crack team of collaborators (many of them from “JFK,” like composer John Williams and cinematographer Robert Richardson) creates a rich, layered portrait of a weak-willed but power-hungry man with more than a few co-conspirators just as ruthless and cutthroat as he was. The movie lost money and was received tepidly by critics, though most remember Anthony Hopkins’ hypnotic performance as Nixon: sweaty, anxious, capable of furious rages and somewhat in thrall to wife Pat (Joan Allen), who comes off as more than a little Lady Macbeth. Despite the scope and seriousness of the subject, Stone really pushed the envelope in terms of experimentation; in what other major studio presidential biopic would you see a scene of a bigwig meeting with Nixon superimposed with time-lapse imagery of a flower blossoming? “Nixon” combines the trippy go-for-broke-ness of “Natural Born Killers” with a much more coherent script, an impressive all-star cast and an epic rise-and-fall story that justifies his over the top filmmaking.
2. “Born on the Fourth of July” (1989)
With “Born on the Fourth of July,” Stone finds an outlet for his Vietnam fascination that’s altogether different from the ideological jungle hell of “Platoon” or the straight-laced drama of “Heaven & Earth.” The story of Ron Kovic, based on his own memoir, stars Tom Cruise as the paralyzed Vietnam vet struggling to come to terms with a life-changing condition and a country that labels him a hero but treats him as anything but. All sarky “Oscar bait” memes aside, Cruise really is good here, delving heart and soul into Kovic and spending most of the film in a wheelchair, but more importantly channelling the broken spirit of a young man unwilling to assume the role everyone wants him to play. The supporting cast is as good as they come, with Willem Dafoe again making his mark as another wheelchair-bound veteran who whisks Kovic away to a temporary paradise. Stone’s stylistic choices are right on the money here, whether he’s using color temperature to separate flashbacks from the main story, or a brief display of slow motion to capture the incident that permanently upends Kovic’s existence. “Born on the Fourth of July” plays like a howl of anguish, but feels thoroughly earned and deeply moving.
1. “JFK” (1991)
Stone’s most intricate picture and still his best, “JFK” takes up the cause of controversial Louisiana district attorney Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner), who prosecuted local businessman Clay Shaw (Tommy Lee Jones) for involvement in a conspiracy to assassinate President John F. Kennedy. Historically speaking, the evidence is thin, but as a piece of propaganda, it’s second to none; even if it doesn’t convince you, by its very craft and professionalism it at least legitimizes conspiracy theorizing to a level it had never enjoyed before. The director expertly lines up the inconsistencies of the official story —the “back and to the left” scene describing the impossible arc of the “magic bullet” is still an all-timer— and makes a talky, three-hour-plus story fly past by sheer dint of bravura direction. The fill-in-the-blanks sequence with Donald Sutherland alone is a masterclass in editing —indeed “JFK” remains one of the best edited Hollywood movies of all time. And one should not undervalue the performances: Costner’s likable, principled everyman schtick has never played better, while the mammoth supporting cast, from a near-unrecognizable Jack Lemmon to a scenery-chewing Tommy Lee Jones to a brilliant Gary Oldman as Lee Harvey Oswald, is uniformly excellent.
Tell us your own favorite Oliver Stone films, take us to task for our takes, or suggest some wild conspiracy theories as to the rankings, in the comments below.
–Jessica Kiang, Drew Taylor, Nick Clement, Oliver Lyttelton, Mark Zhuravsky, Kevin Jagernauth, Rodrigo Perez, Danielle Johnsen