Sorcerer (1977)

For its first 20 to 30 minutes you wouldn't know that 1977's Sorcerer is in fact a remake of the French produced 1953 masterpiece The Wages of Fear.  Both films are about a group of desperate expatriates who take on the dangerous job of transporting volatile nitroglycerin over hundreds of kilometers of rough roads in a never named Latin American country. However the beginnings of Sorcerer wants to give you detailed backstories for our leads, something Wages of Fear doesn't bother with. So you have assassinations, terrorists attacks, bank fraud and armed robbery before our four principal characters start to interact with each other in a sweltering banana republic. Interestingly while I know much more about the characters in Sorcerer, I actually cared about the characters in Wages of Fear far more.

While this latter films does a few things arguably better then its predecessor, such as explain how the nitroglycerin is insulated against road turbulence, and the way one particular road obstacle is blown up, on the whole it is a far less interesting film, because it is a far less tense one. Now part of this is because I've seen this story before, and while its not a strict beat per beat remake even in the trucking scenes, it sticks mostly close to the original. But part of this also has to do with the way the thing was mounted. There is a sequence where they take the trucks over a bridge that is so ridiculously rickety you would never dare try to drive a truck over it because you would surely die. I mean it just looked ridicules and took me right out of the movie. On paper remaking Wages of Fear sounds like a great idea, but in practice, even with a serviceable cast (highlighted by Roy Scheider, 2 years off Jaws) and an expert like William Friedkin (The French Connection, The Exorcist) helming the thing it was still just a pale imitation. Oh and 'Sorcerer' is the name of one of the trucks, so that's where the stupid title comes from. **

Heaven & Earth (1993)

Oliver Stone directed this adaption of the true life story of Vietnam native Le Ly Hayslip. Hayslip's story is an incredible one, what this woman went through is amazing, so I'm not going to go into any real specifics because it might be best to see this movie in relative ignorance of its story. Hiep Thi Le who plays Hayslip is excellent by the way, and the supporting cast is strong including Joan Chen, and Oscar winners Tommy Lee Jones and Haing S. Ngor. Bear in mind the film is not strictly historical, one major character is a composite and a number of things are simplified, but the core is true. While the film got bad to mixed reviews upon its release, and was a major box office failure for the then hot Stone making only $5.9 million off a $33 million budget, it's really something of a lost classic, at times hard to sit through but really an accomplishment and quite a moving story. ****

Men in Black: International (2019)

This soft reboot / tangential sequel is an attempt to bring new life, but which I mean profits, out of an old franchise. Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson have a passable platonic chemistry as they do in Thor and Avengers movies. While the audience I saw this with seemed to really like Kumail Nanjiani's "Pawney". However this movie is just of kind of there, while competently done it is unwanted, unnecessary, uninspired. But I still paid $2 to see it. *1/2

Natural Born Killers (1994)

Oliver Stone's film about celebrity, violence, and the celebration of violence. Natural Born Killers is highly stylized, highly violent, and highly unpleasant. Maybe it would have been different seeing this in 1994 when stories and films of this sort weren't so commonly done, but seeing it now I found that the movie did not enrich as entertainment, nor did it creatively convey to me anything new, or repackage anything in a way that felt worth while. I'm not saying that Stone is wrong in a lot of what he has to say in this film, in some ways it feels precinct, but I didn't enjoy watching it, I didn't get anything from it, and I didn't like any of the characters in it with possible exception of the Indians. *

Alexander: The Directors Cut (2004)

It's kind of funny that while 9/11 and its aftermath were happening, and in the early days of the Iraq war, events that would call out as being veritable trigger words for Oliver Stone, this most political of directors was tied up, his energies focused on an unwildley bio-pic of Alexander the Great. There are four different cuts of this movie, it's as though the director thinks if he just keeps re arranging things eventually the picture will work, this does not appear to be the case. Alexander is a mess, it's all over the place, it's over long, and it just doesn't engage, I just couldn't get myself to care. Colin Ferrell is miscast as the ancient Greek leader, and the films handling of his reported bisexuality has been widely regarded as Luke warm and non-committal. Oh were that you could care for any character in this movie, but you really can't. A disaster.  *

Flashdance (1983)

Succinctly the plot:

Just a steel town girl on a Saturday night
Lookin' for the fight of her life
In the real time world no one sees her at all
They all say she's crazy

Locking rhythms to the beat of her heart
Changing movement into light
She has danced into the danger zone
When the dancer becomes the dance

Flashdance stars a doe-eyed and highly charismatic Jennifer Beals as Alexandra "Alex" Owens a recent transplant from Altoona to Pittsburg, Pennsylvania who works as a welder in a steel mill while perusing her dream of professional dancing. A sort of female Saturday Night Fever there is not a lot of plot per say, though there is a slightly creepy romance between Alex and her boss at the mill (Michael Nouri) who is twice her age, as well as a nice assortment of colorful supporting characters. While certain plot elements are trite or ridicules it's got a nice spirit to it and a catchy soundtrack. Not well received by critics when it came out, it still only has a 35% Rotten Tomato's Score, it produced multiple hit songs including the Oscar winning "What a Feeling", and made $201.5 million at the box office off of a $7 million budget. I did not expect to like this but it won me over. ***

Any Given Sunday (1999)

Director Oliver Stone's movie about professional football. Stone fancies himself the cinematic chronicler of the foibles of post World War II America, and there are few things as American as professional football. However there are also few things of which I am less interested then professional football so this movie didn't really work for me. There is some good stuff in it, some good performances, some interesting scenes, it has things to say about its subject matter though nothing really that earth shaking. Mostly I found the film kind of boring and unpleasant, as much of it is about the egos of those in the world of professional football, the players, the coaches, the owners, the journalist, not really the fans thought, not in this movie. 2 hours and 42 minutes in length  so a little shorter then an NFL game, though both things are too long for my taste. **