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Three-time Oscar winner Oliver Stone has courted controversy with a series of technically ambitious, rabble rousing political dramas, chronicling the highs and lows of American history. But how many of his titles remain classics? Let’s take a look back at all 20 of his narrative films, ranked worst to best (not including documentaries).

Born in 1946, Stone served in the Vietnam War before enrolling in NYU film school. He first came to prominence as a screenwriter, winning an Oscar for penning “Midnight Express” (Best Original Screenplay in 1978) before writing “Conan the Barbarian” (1982), “Scarface” (1983) and “Year of the Dragon” (1985). During this same period, he directed the low-budget horror films “Seizure” (1974) and “The Hand” (1981).

He emerged as a an A-list director when he was 40 years old with a pair of acclaimed war dramas released in 1986: “Salvador” and “Platoon.” Both earned him Best Original Screenplay nominations, while “Platoon,” which was based on his...

The 1986 war drama "Platoon" was Oliver Stone's fourth film as a director, but it proved to be his breakout in the public consciousness. Before 1986, Stone helmed two horror movies and a biopic of war photographer Richard Boyle ("Salvador"), but "Platoon" put him on the map. It was nominated for eight Academy Awards, and won four, including Best Picture and Best Director. Stone immediately emerged as an enfent terrible, ready to interrogate and criticize previously romanticized American institutions. He also became wildly ambitious, seemingly possessing the temerity to assume his films would change the way the public thinks. In some cases, he was right. 

Stone wore his politics on his sleeve, and often spoke about how much he hated the American right wing. Two of his films are deeply critical biopics of Republican presidents, and several of his more recent documentaries analyze politicians in power. He has turned his lens on Vladimir Putin,...

Director Oliver Stone, speaking from his Twitter account on August 1, 2023, mentioned that he finally managed to see Christopher Nolan's new hit biopic "Oppenheimer," and that he was incredibly impressed with the result. This is no small praise, as "Oppenheimer" might be compared to Stone's own work. Stone has made several stylized, big-budget biographies in his career as well, often peppering them, just like "Oppenheimer," with fistfuls of notable stars. He also likes to use multiple film formats, often flipping from color to black-and-white in the middle of a scene, a technique that Nolan also employed (the "present-day" segments in "Oppenheimer" were in black-and-white). Stone's biographies also tended to look at the wounded aspects of intense men, revealing how those in positions of power aren't always there because of resolute intelligence. Sometimes, ego is all that matters. "Oppenheimer" might be seen as a spiritual Hollywood successor to "JFK," "The Doors,...

Oliver Stone has joined Paul Schrader in praising Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” as an instant classic.

The “JFK” and “Natural Born Killers” director shared on Twitter that he finally saw the three-hour J. Robert Oppenheimer epic over the past weekend, saying he was “gripped by Chris Nolan’s narrative.” Stone also added that he was familiar with the source material, the nonfiction book “American Prometheus” by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, as he “once turned the project down because I couldn’t find my way to its essence. Nolan has found it.”

Since “Oppenheimer” opened on July 21, the film has already grossed $405 million globally and it continues to sell out across IMAX venues, with viewers flocking to Nolan’s preferred 70mm IMAX experience.

Two weeks ago, fellow filmmaker Paul Schrader praised “Oppenheimer” as “the best, most important film of this century.”

Stone, meanwhile in a Twitter thread continued, “His...

JFK filmmaker Oliver Stone posted a series of tweets Tuesday praising Christopher Nolan’s latest film Oppenheimer during which he revealed he once turned down a project based around J. Robert Oppenheimer’s life because he couldn’t crack the narrative.

“Saturday, I sat through 3 hours of Oppenheimer, gripped by Chris Nolan’s narrative. His screenplay is layered & fascinating. Familiar with the book by Kai Bird & Martin J. Sherwin, I once turned the project down because I couldn’t find my way to its essence. Nolan has found it,” Stone tweeted.

Stone continued to describe Nolan’s direction in Oppenheimer as “mind-boggling and eye-popping” before heaping praise on the film’s cast.

“Each actor is a surprise to me, especially Cillian Murphy, whose exaggerated eyes here feel normal playing a genius like Oppenheimer,” Stone wrote.

Stone concluded by describing Oppenheimer as a “classic” that he “never believed could be made in this climate.

Once upon a time, clean nuclear energy was the future. Had things turned out differently, the 21st century would be an era with virtually zero carbon emissions, with coal, oil, and natural gas all but phased out entirely. However, a perfect storm of circumstances, from 1950s monster movies to good old-fashioned fearmongering, led to the potential of nuclear power getting cut off at the knees. That's the premise of Nuclear Now, the latest documentary from legendary filmmaker Oliver Stone, based on the book, A Bright Future: How Some Countries Have Solved Climate Change and the Rest Can Follow, co-written by Joshua S. Goldstein.

Nuclear Now follows Stone as he examines the potential of nuclear energy and uncovers why the industry was crippled before it could get off the ground. Nuclear power has always been controversial, as it can't help but conjure images of atomic devastation, radioactive wastelands, and giant irradiated...

Oliver Stone believes we will never really get to the bottom of the many conflicting accounts of the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963 – but he will never let the issue go, he says.

Speaking via video link to a small but fascinated audience at the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival, who had just seen his doc “JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass,” Stone also confessed he feels “helpless” in getting at the full story as the slow drip of declassified documents have emerged since that fateful Nov. 22 day in Dallas.

“All we could do was occasionally raise our little voices,” the Oscar-winning former Vietnam soldier recalled of his 30-year quest to get to the bottom of America’s most public crime in modern history.

One major burst of once-secret records, the four-year investigation of some 60,000 documents by the U.S. House of Representatives Assassination Records Board in 1994, has led to scores of revelations,...

“JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass” lives up to its title. Directed by Oliver Stone, it’s a kind of documentary companion-piece sequel to “JFK,” and yes, it takes you through the looking glass again. There are moments when it gives you that heady, tingling, oh-my-God-i-have-seen-the-truth-that-was-hidden! sensation of revelatory immersion, the kind that hits you when you’re confronted with an autopsy photo in which a wound is said to have mysteriously disappeared, or when you’re staring at a declassified page from the Warren Commission Report in which Gerald Ford, with a few penciled-in words, literally shifts by six inches the place where the first bullet entered JFK. At moments like that, you feel the frisson of the junkie-hit injections that conspiracy theory is built upon. They’re the moments you can feel yourself slipping through the looking glass, or down the rabbit hole, or wherever else it is...

Cannes — Agc Television, the TV production-distribution division of Stuart Ford’s still fast expanding independent content studio Agc Studios, has landed worldwide rights to another high-profile doc-series which it describes as “probing” and “explosive”: Oliver Stone’s “JFK: Destiny Betrayed.”

The acquisition was announced early Monday by Agc Television president Lourdes Diaz.

The acquisition continues Agc Television substantial investment in non-fiction which is in high-demand in the streaming and premium cable space, allowing operators to reach diverse audience segments with high-profile original content at relatively modest cost.

Few filmmakers are as high-profile as Oliver Stone and“JFK” has proved the most controversial of his films. In the new doc-series, Stone and writer James Dieugenio, author of “Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, and the Garrison Case,” place now declassified files related to President Kennedy’s assassination in a far larger context, aiming to shine more light on what really happened in...

Oliver Stone celebrates his 73rd birthday on September 15, 2019. The three-time Oscar winner has courted controversy with a series of technically ambitious, rabble rousing political dramas, chronicling the highs and lows of American history. But how many of his titles remain classics? In honor of his birthday, let’s take a look back at all 20 of his films, ranked worst to best.

Born in 1946, Stone served in the Vietnam War before enrolling in NYU film school. He first came to prominence as a screenwriter, winning an Oscar for penning “Midnight Express” (Best Original Screenplay in 1978) before writing “Conan the Barbarian” (1982), “Scarface” (1983) and “Year of the Dragon” (1985). During this same period, he directed the low-budget horror films “Seizure” (1974) and “The Hand” (1981).

SEEOscar Best Director Gallery: Every Winner In Academy Award History

He emerged as a an A-list director when he was 40 years old with a pair of acclaimed war dramas released in 1986: “Salvador” and “Platoon.

Oliver Stone and Vladimir Putin are a match made in heaven. Stone’s upcoming documentary series “The Putin Interviews” could be just the project to give the filmmaker’s career the shot in the arm in desperately needs. The director of iconic films like “Platoon” and “JFK” has never wavered from tackling challenging political stories, both documentaries and narrative features, but the results as of late have been lackluster.

Read More: Michael Moore on Broadway: 5 Things You Should Know About His Attack on Trump

“The Putin Interviews,” a four-night series airing on Showtime this June, could change all that. While Stone has always been an outspoken critic of governments around the world, the recent rise of issues like surveillance, hacking and cyberwarfare have made him even more energized, and concerned, about current events.

“What’s going on right now is pretty shocking,” Stone said at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

Oliver Stone has interviewed Russian president Vladimir Putin more than a dozen times over the past two years. Now, Stone and his documentary producer Fernando Sulichin have turned those chats into “The Putin Interviews,” a four-hour documentary series airing over four nights this June on Showtime.

Check out a first look at “The Putin Interviews” below. Stone most recently interviewed Putin in February, after the U.S. presidential elections (in which Putin and Russia are believed to have actively influenced). Showtime compares “The Putin Interviews” to David Frost’s famed conversations with Richard Nixon in 1977.

Stone and Sulichin were granted wide access to Putin’s personal and professional lives. “It’s not a documentary as much as a question and answer session,” Stone told the Sydney Morning Herald. “”It opens up a whole viewpoint that we as Americans haven’t heard… He talks pretty straight. I think we did him...

Stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Shailene Woodley also set to attend.

Zurich Film Festival (Sept 22-Oct 2) has landed one of the first screenings of Oliver Stone’s whistleblower drama Snowden and will host the film’s director as well as stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Shailene Woodley.

The gala screening - the first to be announced for this year’s festival - will take place on Sept 24, just weeks after its world premiere at Toronto (Snowden debuted to an invite-only screening at Comic-Con last week).

It marks the fourth visit to Zff for Stone, who was previously the subject of a tribute strand and most recently screened his film Savages as the festival’s opening night gala in 2012.

In Stone’s latest film, Gordon-Levitt stars as Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency (Nsa) employee who blew the whistle on the Us’s mass global surveillance programmes. The cast also includes Woodley, Melissa Leo and [link...

Jury of three to award $22,000 prize in the “open zone” strand.

The 64th San Sebastian Film Festival (Sept 16-24) is to make its Zabaltegi strand competitive and has changed the name of the section to Zabaltegi - Tabakalera.

At the upcoming edition, films will compete for the Zabaltegi - Tabakalera Award and a €20,000 ($22,000) prize, of which €6,000 ($6,600) will go to the director of the winning film and the remaining €14,000 ($15,000) to the distributor of the film in Spain.

The winner will be decided by a jury of at least three professionals from the world of film and culture.

The competition has been established following a pact between the festival and the Tabakalera - International Centre for Contemporary Culture.

The previously non-competitive strand was considered an “open zone” for a variety of films, documentaries, shorts and television - “works with no limitations as regards format or subject matter”.

Zabaltegi has included works by Alexander Sokurov, Laurie Anderson, [link...

Has filmmaker Oliver Stone ever met a political controversy he didn’t want to make into a movie? Though to be fair, the director’s been somewhat inactive in the world of mainstream movies in recent years, focusing on documentaries about the late, former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. Stone’s last two dramatic features were 2010’s “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps,” and 2012’s “Savages,” two forgettable movies that both critics and audiences didn’t really care for. And Stone’s interests seemed to take him elsewhere (“Mi Amigo Hugo” and the 10-part "The Untold History of the United States," the latter of which premiered on Showtime), but the Edward Snowden story seemed to reinvigorate his passion for topical political drama and the project came together really fast. Shot earlier this year in May and due, with a quick turn around, by year’s end, “Snowden” focuses on what else, the...

Well, I guess this was just a matter of time... But The Guardian UK is reporting that Oliver Stone, the Oscar-winning director of such conspiratorially minded gems as "JFK" and his bafflingly overlooked documentary series "The Untold History of the United States," is set to bring the story of Nsa whistleblower to the big screen in "The Snowden Files," an adaptation of the book written by Luke Harding.

The thriller will, according to the Guardian's report, follow Snowden, an Nsa contractor who decided to leak thousands of classified documents to a former Guardian columnist in June, 2013, causing the government (and everyone else) to seriously reassess the widespread use of surveillance in the United States and elsewhere. (Snowden is in Russia currently seeking asylum and faces a 30-year prison sentence should he ever re-enter the United States.)

This seems like perfect material for Stone, who has built his career around historical...

After the success of True Detective, award-winning film-makers are being lured to TV with the promise of more creative control, Does this herald a new golden age for viewers?

There was a time when American movie stars and big-ticket directors wouldn't touch TV. Now, thanks to hit series such as True Detective, not only movie actors but major Hollywood directors are flocking to the small screen.

The critical and commercial success of the series starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson – currently on its fourth of eight episodes in Britain – heralds a potential TV revolution in which a series is created in one "block" by a single feature film director – in this case Cary Fukunaga, maker of the 2011 adaptation of Jane Eyre, starring Michael Fassbender.

"Movie directors have flirted with TV for years, but they've typically only done the first episode," explains producer Richard Brown. "TV is made fast, but often lacks the tools of cinema.

The first day of the Havana Film Festival I was at the Hotel Nacional, registering for the festival, seeing familiar faces from Cuba and the Caribbean and old friends from the USA: Oleg Vidov and his wife Joan Borsten were there as Oleg who had starred in 3 Soviet films made in Cuba was an honored guest. Havana regulars were there: Marlene Dermer, director of Laliff and Laurie Anne Schag, VP of International Documentary Association. Laurie Anne not only gives tours of Cuba with her colleague Geo Darder, but this year she also screened her film at the festival, the documentary Oshun’s 11 about a tour of the Yoruba Orisha religion in Cuba.

Harlan Jacobson of Talk Cinema and Sarah Miller brought in tours as well and we went together to the Acapulco theater to see the Puerto Rican romantic heist movie Hope, Despair (La Espera Desespera) by writer/ director Coraly Santaliz Perez (♀) . Im Global’s Bonnie Voland the VP of Marketing was there with with Stuart Ford and his friend. Bonnie gave a great presentation on marketing which I will report on in these pages soon. Im Global and Mundial, their their new joint venture with Gael Garcia Bernal, showed The Butler and Bolivar: The Liberator. This new Mundial title was oddly programmed at the same time as the Venezuelan version of the exact same story, Bolivar, el hombre de las dificultades by Luis Alberto Lamata, a Venezuelan-Cuban-Spanish co-production. I wonder if both cinemas were packed or if one was more popular than the other. Publicity and marketing at this festival is a strange and unknown process, though I know Caroline Libresco-produced and Grace Lee-directed American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs brought in audience after a radio interview with Caroline and Grace had aired.

Ruby Rich was also here giving a very interesting presentation on Queer Cinema whose historical roots (Todd Haynes, Derek Jarman) were mostly unknown to the young Cuban audience. She is an old hand in Havana, having attended the festival in the heady days of the 1970s. The theme of homosexuality was prevalent in many of the films this year. A government Institute of Human Sexuality has been established under the leadership of the daughter of Raul Castro, and Cuba has apologized for its past treatment of homosexuality. This reversal has opened the doors of freedom. Filmmaker Enrique Pineda Barnet, the writer of Soy Cuba, the great Russian-Cuban epic, used to have to work underground with his personal homosexual films (After his fame was established with La Bella del Alhambra he was “allowed” to work underground). He is now able to be officially accepted with his works like Verde, Verde which showed in the Festival. Venezuelan Miguel Ferrari’s Azul y no tan rosa was feted for his treatment of this little-discussed issues in his home country.

Enrique Pineda Barnet’s meditation on what it means to be gay in Havana (Verde, Verde) marks his first film in years to be accepted into the official festival.

The U.S. invitees who give workshops here and at the international film school Eictv makes me wonder who is making the connections and how. Last year Hawk Koch and Annette Benning were here and created a support mechanism of AMPAS with the festival. This year, aside from Oleg Vidov Bonnie Voland and Ruby Rich, other American invitees giving workshops included Robert Kraft (Avatar, Titanic, Moulin Rouge) on film music was obviously brought in by the Academy. Mike S. Ryan, an independent filmmaker from New York was the big surprise as we never knew his role as producer of such films as Todd Solondz’s Palindromes and Life During Wartime, Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy and Ira Sach’s Forty Shades of Blue, Hal Hartley’s Fay Grim and many more including Liberty Kid, the winner of HBO’s Latino Film Festival 2007 and Bela Tarr’s final film, The Turin Horse. His newly finished film is Last Weekend starring Patricia Clarkson and Zachary Booth. This Independent Spirit “Producer of the Year” winner was here working with filmmakers at Eictv, the international film school and also did a presentation in the festival conference series.

Im Global’s Stuart Ford and friend with Bonnie Voland at the Hotel Nacional

Oliver Stone, a favorite of Cuba since his HBO films Comandante and Persona Non Grata, brought in a History Channel doc series called The Untold History of the United States, made up basically of interviews with key people in the eras of World War II: Roosevelt, Truman and Wallace [sic],The Bomb, Cold War: Truman, Wallace [sic], Stalin, Churchill and the Bomb, The 1950s: Eisenhower, The Bomb and The Third World.

A fruit vendor on our walk to the Infanta Theater

Laurie Anne Schag secured radio promotion for Caroline Libresco of Sundance Institute and Grace Lee, here as a producer and director to show their new film: American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs. The audience at the Infanta Theater was mainly brought in by the radio show but also included us, the friends, and the Trinidad + Tobago delegation. The Q&A sessions were informed and informative as the Cubans and Americans discussed the notion of Revolution as put forward by Grace Lee Boggs a 90+ year old community organizer who came out of Barnard College in the 40s to Detroit and has never abandoned her Marxist Socialist standards but recognizes that social revolution can only succeed if the people themselves are revolutionized from grassroots action and within the individuals carrying out the action. Without transformation from within, action to change the government is only a rebellion. So what about the Cuban Revolution? The discussions were very enlightening and the audience felt that this film was new and interesting.

I attended the first of four screenings of Caribbean films hosted by ttff (Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival) at the Infanta Theater. My readers know from my blogs of last November how astonished and moved I was by the population makeup of Trinidad + Tobago and of the Caribbean in general. This area of small islands, formerly colonized by Spanish, French, German and Dutch has created a particular island culture society whose film culture is taking the next evolutionary step. Forming a marketplace and a place of cultural exchange among its constituents, ttff’s director Bruce Paddington is working with Cuba’s national film organization, Icaic’s Luis Notario to develop a real film market for Caribbean film. Apropos, Bruce was also showing his documentary on the Revolution in Grenada, called Foreward Ever: The Killing of a Revolution, which was the motto of Maurice Bishop the elected president who was forcefully removed and murdered by the opposition when the U.S. army under the Commander-in-Chief, President Ronald Reagan sent in forces presumably to protect the American medical students attending medical school there in 1983.

Twenty-five Cubans were also killed in the fighting which ensued on this otherwise always peaceful island where now a reconciliation among neighbors is still in process.

The other four screenings of ttff were varied and interesting in their unique Caribbean points of view. The opening film, Poetry is an Island: Derek Walcott was a portrait of the St. Lucia poet and Nobel Prize winner for literature. The short film, Passage, by Kareem Mortimer, a filmmaker I have known for many years from the Bahamas and Trinidad, was astounding in its recall of one of the most degrading aspects of the slave trade, as black Haitians huddled in the tiny hold of a decrepit fishing boat as they were smuggled into Florida from Haiti. Another short, Auntie, from the Barbados by Lisa Harewood told of a current social issue in which “Aunts” take care of young children while their single mothers go abroad to earn money for their care. As the child in this movie reaches her teen years, her mother sends for her which leaves a grieving single woman “Auntie” alone with no thanks and no child to care for in her older years. Other shorts included The Gardener by Jo Henriquez from Aruba and One Good Deed by Juliette McCawley from Trinidad + Tobago.

The window on Caribbean issues was opened wide. The Barbados comedy Payday in which two friends decide to leave their job as security guards and open their own business was made on a shoe string but gave a picture of how the youth are living today with ganga, grinding dancing, sexy encounters told with a sweet mischievous naughtiness. Songs of Redemption, by Miquel Galofre and Amanda Sans, winner of ttff’s Jury Prize and the Audience Award goes inside what had been Kingston Jamaica’s worst prison until the new prison director introduced classes to educate the prisoners, including a music rehabilition program which goes beyond all expectation… Truly redeeming.

Trinidad + Tobago filmmakers Karim Mortimer from Bahamas, Lisa Harewood from Barbaddos, Alex (Egyptian/ Austrian / Bahamanian business partner of Karim, Shakira Bourne

The film program was suspended for a full day in which all cultural and entertainment events throughout Cuba were cancelled to observe a national day of mourning for Nelson Mandela.

“Back, and to the left… back, and to the left… back, and to the left”

It was the hottest ticket in town on the 50th anniversary of one the most tragic events of the 20th century! Director Oliver Stone, who made the historically dubious, but entertaining as hell JFK in 1991 spent the 50th anniversary of the JFK Assassination here in St. Louis as part of The St. Louis International Film Festival. The event was last night at The Tivoli. The sold-out crowd was treated to a speech by Stone reflecting on the historic date. This was followed by a clip reel highlighting his 40-year Hollywood career (but not a single clip from Seizure!) and a 15-minute segment from his Showtime documentary series ‘The Untold History of the United States‘. After receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award from Cinema St. Louis, Stone took to the stage for an interview moderated by St.

Chicago – Oliver Stone reached the peak of his fascination with controversy, history, and epic productions when he made 1991’s “JFK,” arguably the masterpiece of the director of “Platoon,” “Natural Born Killers,” “Nixon,” and many more beloved films. “JFK” is a remarkable cinematic achievement, a movie that has lost none of its power 22 years after its release, looking like something that could come out today, especially now that we’re in the peak of Kennedy mania as we approach the 50th anniversary of his assassination, one of the most important events in American history.

Rating: 5.0/5.0

Whether or not you believe Stone’s conspiracy-based version of events or not, “JFK” is a masterful film in terms of acting, directing, and every technical element. It is a major accomplishment treated as such in this collector’s edition that includes three other discs besides the Director’s Cut of the film, all feature-length, along with unique physical collectibles.

The highlight of the 22nd Annual Whitaker St. Louis International Film Festival (Sliff), held Nov. 14- 24, (aside from the Ray Harryhausen Tribute November 15th) is an appearance by famed writer/director Oliver Stone. A three-time Academy Award® winner, Stone has written and directed more than 20 feature films, among them some of the most influential and iconic films of the last decades. Stone will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award at 7 p.m. Friday, Nov. 22, at the Tivoli Theatre, 6350 Delmar Blvd. Directors who have previously been honored with a Sliff Lifetime Achievement Award include Paul Schrader, John Sayles, Michael Apted, and Joe Dante.

Held on the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the program will feature a screening of the director’s cut of Stone’s “JFK.” The evening will begin with a clip reel surveying Stone’s career, the presentation of the award, and a conversation between Stone and St.

Ever since President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed on November 22, 1963, many people have wondered: What actually transpired on that Friday in Dallas? Did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone? What about the Cubans and the Mafia? Did our government have something to do with it? 28 years later, filmmaker Oliver Stone created the award-winning movie JFK to illustrate his very personal point of view.

What Are Oliver Stone's 10 Best Movies?

JFK chronicles an investigation by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner) and the subsequent conspiracy case he brought...

Ever since President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed on November 22, 1963, many people have wondered: What actually transpired on that Friday in Dallas? Did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone? What about the Cubans and the Mafia? Did our government have something to do with it? 28 years later, filmmaker Oliver Stone created the award-winning movie JFK to illustrate his very personal point of view.

What Are Oliver Stone's 10 Best Movies?

JFK chronicles an investigation by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner) and the subsequent conspiracy case he...

A lot of film fans had their eyes opened by the trippy blur of David Lynch, who showed them that movies need not be literal or especially concerned with losing audience members for one or two or all the moments. For me, such a cinematic shakeup didn’t come from Lynch, but Oliver Stone. Much like his underdog characters, he continually challenges the norms of his field. Throughout his career, Stone has been able to shift between yarns spun with either a calm eye or full-on bombast, whether he’s showing modern gladiators in Any Given Sunday, the fractured life of Richard Nixon, or hell’s dirty underbelly as depicted in U-Turn. It’s also obvious that Stone is a history nut, and, with The Untold History of The United States, he spent these past four years crafting a project he’s called his most “ambitious.” It’s a comprehensive, warts-and-all...

This week's show is a little light on Halloween goodness but what's there is, is choice. Night Tide is an early Dennis Hopper vehicle full of sea siren sideshows and tragic surrealism. The Purge is one of the better home invasion movies in recent times. Also appearing for the first time on stateside Blu-ray are High Plains Drifter, in which Clint Eastwood may or may not be a ghost, the shorts compilation Chilling Visions (go Emily M. Hagins), and the scary no matter how you look at it The Untold History of the United States from Oliver Stone. You can watch the entire video below. Bat Country shirt by Harebrained ...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

Oliver Stone still knows how to get people rankled. The Platoon, Savages and Natural Born Killers director reportedly slammed the finale of AMC’s Breaking Bad while promoting his documentary series The Untold History of the United States.

Stone took issue with Breaking Bad as part of a larger critique of cinema violence having become less realistic and more cartoonish over the years. “There’s too much violence in our movies – and it’s all unreal to me,” he said. “I don’t know if you saw the denouement [of Breaking Bad], I happen to not watch the series very much, but I...

Oliver Stone and Britney Spears may not often be paired together, but the legendary director and pop superstar had issues with Breaking Bad's final episode. Stone, speaking during a press day for the Blu-ray release of his documentary series The Untold History of the United States, critiqued the episode's killing spree, in which Walter White sets off a machine gun in the trunk of his car that kills all of the members of the gang holding Jesse Pinkman hostage. Photos: What's Next for 'Breaking Bad's' Stars “Nobody could park his car right then and there and could have a

read more...

Vince Gilligan always referred to Breaking Bad as the evolution from “Mr. Chips to Scarface,” so it seems only natural that we’d want to know what the writer of 1983’s Scarface thought of it—particularly seeing as we cannot rest until every famous person’s thoughts on the Breaking Bad finale are properly cataloged, for our children’s children. Fortunately, that writer, Oliver Stone, has now volunteered his review, coincidentally at the same time that he’s trying to drum up publicity for the Blu-ray release of his The Untold History Of The United States: “I happen to ...

Oliver Stone is a man who knows his way around a provocative statement, if not one prone to much self-reflection. Promoting the upcoming Blu-ray release of his Showtime doc series "The Untold History of the United States," Stone shared some attention-grabbing opinions about violence in the media, specifically as it relates to the finale of "Breaking Bad" (which, if you haven't seen it yet, will be spoiled below). As reported by Forbes: There’s too much violence in our movies – and it’s all unreal to me. I don’t know if you saw the denouement [of Breaking Bad], I happen to not watch the series very much, but I happened to tune in and I saw the most ridiculous 15 minutes of a movie -- it would be laughed off the screen. Nobody could park his car right then and there and could have a machine gun that could go off perfectly and...

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[Warning: 'Breaking Bad' Spoilers Below]

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Oliver Stone is no stranger to controversy. In fact, you could say the director’s more than three decade career thrives on it. But the three-time Academy Award winner may have pushed things too far when he recently criticized the finale of AMC’s beloved hit show, Breaking Bad.

During a press day to promote the release of his documentary The Untold History of the United States, Stone sounded off on the “fantasy violence” featured in the finale and why he believes similar depictions of violence have “infected the American culture.” You heard it right. Oliver Stone is criticizing someone else for violent content.

Now, it’s very easy to dismiss Stone’s comments as a simple ...

Click to continue reading Oliver Stone Criticizes ‘Ridiculous’ ‘Breaking Bad’ Finale...

Oliver Stone did not share his thoughts on what it takes to "live fancy," but he and Britney Spears have both voiced their displeasure over the Breaking Bad finale. While promoting the Blu-ray release of his documentary series The Untold History of the United States, the director said he feels there's "too much violence in our movies," and Breaking Bad is a prime example. "I happen to not watch the series very much, but I happened to tune in and I saw the most ridiculous 15 minutes of a movie – it would be laughed off the screen." (Brace yourself for spoilers.) He elaborated, per Forbes: Nobody could park his car right then and there and could have a machine gun that could go off perfectly and kill all of the bad guys! It would be a joke ... It’s only in the movies that you find this kind of...

[Spoiler Warning!] Not every Breaking Bad-watcher had glowing praise for last week’s historic, ratings-grabbing finale. Oliver Stone jumped on the Bad wagon just in time to see Walter White’s saga conclude in its fifth season. “I happen to not watch the series very much, but I happened to tune in and I saw the most ridiculous 15 minutes of a movie — it would be laughed off the screen,” he said while promoting his Showtime docu series The Untold History of the United States. Then the director went off in detail on the episode’s violent culmination. Said Natural Born Killers and Savages helmer Stone, playing pop culture critic on the show’s bullet-ridden “fantasy violence”: “Nobody could park his car right then and there and could have a machine gun that could go off perfectly and kill all of the bad guys! It would be a joke. It’s...

Oliver Stone, like Steven Spielberg, Michael Mann, Martin Scorsese and Frank Darabont in relatively recent times, is making a foray into television with The Untold History of the United States. Long praised/derided for looking into Us history and offering his own perspective on JFK’s assassination, Nixon’s presidency, Dubya and of course the Vietnam War, Stone is taking a fascinating look at what he considers to be under-reported events (or at least events that are under-reported from a particular perspective).

His take on Us history is polarising to say the least. Whilst most people consider JFK to be more of a stylistic triumph than a debate-clinching argument, there is a compelling power to his best films that if nothing else provide plenty of food for thought and discussion, even if you disagree with his conclusions or political stand-point.

Historical dramas may be what he is best known for,...

Includes world premieres of five Spanish productions and Oliver Stone’s documentary series The Untold History of the United States.Scroll down for full line-up

The Zabaltegi section at the 61st edition of the San Sebastian Festival (Sept 20-28) has been announced.

Along with the world premiere of five Spanish productions, other titles have also been programmed from countries such as Poland, South Korea and Kazakhstan, plus a 3D animated film and two documentaries to have competed at the Sundance Festival.

In addition, documentary series The Untold History of the United States, directed by Oliver Stone, will be presented in Spain for the first time as well as the new 206-minute epic Alexander: The Ultimate Cut, shot by the director in 2004.

Two Basque shorts will premiered within the section: Hotzanak, For Your Own Safety, by Izibene Oñederra, and Zela Trovke (Cutting Grass), by Asier Altuna.

Lav Diaz from the Philippines will also see the world premiere...

Blu-ray and Digital Release Date: Oct. 15, 2013

Price: Blu-ray $49.99

Studio: Warner Home Video

Filmmaker Oliver Stone (Savages) looks at little-known 20th century events that shaped the history of America in the Showtime documentary series The Untold History of the United States.

For the TV show, Stone partnered with co-writers Matt Graham and Peter Kuznick, the American University Associate Professor of History and director of the Nuclear Studies Institute. The team drew on archival findings from around the world and declassified material to look at human events that went under-reported at their time. The Untold History looks at the period from the atomic bombing of Japan to the Cold War, the fall of Communism and today’s society.

The television series is told in 10 chapters, but the four Blu-ray discs also contain two unaired chapters and a companion documentary featuring Stone and author, philosopher, activist Tariq Ali, who worked with Stone on...

The always outspoken filmmaker Oliver Stone spoke up for Edward Snowden and against President Obama during an appearance Thursday at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Czech Republic. Stone, who was showing two episodes of his television series The Untold History of the United States at the event, hailed the Nsa leaker as a "hero" and declared it as "disgrace that Obama is more concerned with hunting down Snowden than reforming these George Bush-style eavesdropping techniques."...

Oliver Stone, no stranger to political candour and making waves with his beliefs, is in Karlovy Vary to introduce screenings of two episodes of The Untold History Of The United States and to receive a Crystal Globe for his contribution to world cinema. The ten-hour documentary series was co-written by Peter Kuznick (a professor of History and Director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University) and examines an unrevealed history of the Us during the 20th century. The festival also will screen Brian De Palma’s Scarface, for which Stone penned the screenplay, and a new director’s cut of Stone’s epic Alexander with Colin Farrell. He sounded off at a media gathering.

Oliver Stone at Karlovy Vary.

Q: What prompted you to turn your attention to The Untold History of the United States?

A: I did not make it because I’m an ideologist, but because I’m a storyteller.

Oliver Stone got so sick of always reading the sanitised version of Us history that he decided to write his own. He talks about the real reason America dropped the atom bomb, how Kennedy is a hero and why he can't stand Hillary Clinton

Oliver Stone has just agreed to take part in the Us version of Jamie's Dream School, the TV show that explored the interesting notion that famous people might educate kids better than teachers. "It was much criticised in Britain but I still think it's a good idea," says Stone over coffee and bagels in a Soho hotel. He'll be the American equivalent of Jamie's history teacher David Starkey. Only, you'd suspect, more radical.

Stone's TV history class might well be named Us Heresies 101. "We're going to take these texts from regular history and compare them to what we think happened." He will teach that the bombing...

Oliver Stone has sparked controversy by claiming that Hitler is an "easy scapegoat". The Wall Street 2 director made the comments while promoting his new documentary series, The Daily Telegraph reports. The Secret History Of America, which Stone claims will put historical figures such as Hitler and Stalin "in context", aims to discover hidden facts about the United States. In a trailer for the show, Stone says: "You cannot approach history unless you have empathy for the person you may hate." Meanwhile, at a press conference at the Television Critics Association he explained: "We can't judge people as only 'bad' or 'good'. Hitler is an easy scapegoat (more)...