Oliver Stone
234 connections found
Filmography
Natural Born Killers 1994 
Platoon 1986 
Wall Street 1987 
Alexander 2004 
Any Given Sunday 1999 
JFK 1991 
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps 2010 
Savages 2012 
Born on the Fourth of July 1989 
The Doors 1991 
Talk Radio 1988 
Snowden 2016 
The Hand 1981 
Nixon 1995 
World Trade Center 2006 
Salvador 1986 
South of the Border 2009 
U Turn 1997 
W. 2008 
Heaven & Earth 1993 View:
Connections, in both directions
The Bride! (2026)
Directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal
influenced by Natural Born Killers (1994)
Visuals Themes Plot Characters
It's the Moulin Rouge! of monster movies. Or maybe it's the Natural Born Killers of monster movies. Or maybe it's both.
…the doomed nihilistic romanticism of NATURAL BORN KILLERS…
Drawing freely from a vast store of vintage and unofficial Frankenstein narratives—as well as from old Hollywood gangster pictures, Busby Berkeley musicals, and honeymoon-killer classics like Bonnie and Clyde and Natural Born Killers…
…the anarchic, media-saturated nihilism of Natural Born Killers.
Ida’s call to arms for oppressed women, set against the background of her and Frank’s crime spree, plays out like a less caustic version of Natural Born Killers.
Mickey and Mallory from "Natural Born Killers" would be a more money-making analogy, but this journey through post-Depression America doesn't have the same sardonic zing.
To paraphrase "Tropic Thunder", he "goes full psycho".
The inspiration for Speedman can’t be traced to one source (except for direct visual quotes of Willem Dafoe in Platoon and Brando’s Kurtz), and it’s a funny composite.
"Tropic Thunder" is both a parody of a big-budget action movie (Willem Dafoe's Christ-on-the-cross death spasm in "Platoon" is referenced not once, but twice) and a real one, too.
Tropic Thunder is the name of the film within the film—a cliché-driven Vietnam picture with echoes of everything from Apocalypse Now and Platoon to the Rambo series embedded like arrows in its derivative hide.
Here, borrowing tropes and images from movies such as Platoon and Apocalypse Now, Stiller’s subject is war movies and overblown action films – but also so much more.
The cast's awful experiences call to mind Apocalypse Now, but the film they are making (also called Tropic Thunder) looks more like a combination of Platoonand Rambo II: war is hell, but, if you discharge enough ordnance, it can make you a stronger human being.
It even features a moment where the top brokers of the firm spout lines from “Wall Street” while watching the movie in a group, and it sums up the movie very well.
Populated by 25-year-old, overnight millionaires who wear their testosterone on the sleeves of their tailored Armani suits, this is an imposing, vigorous and pulsating picture that could have been mighty and portentous if writer-director Ben Younger hadn't cribbed half the script from "Wall Street" and "Glengarry Glen Ross."
Okay, so it might sound like sort of a generic blend of "The Firm", "Wall Street" and "Glengarry Glenn Ross" (dialogue from these last two is actually quoted by the characters!), but it's made into such a tight, tense picture that it's hard not to be completely caught up in it.
Not only drawing its basic theme and plot structure from Wall Street, Boiler Room also draws its best dialogue during a scene in which a number of young stock brokers sitting in one of their sparely decorated mansions, compete with each other to quote lines from Wall Street, whose antagonist, Gordon Gecko, is obviously regarded as an idol within the group.
A few scenes later, Seth is hanging out with Greg and his other superiors at the brokerage firm of JT Marlin--including Ben Affleck as the firm's recruiter and Vin Diesel as top salesman Chris--and just when the "greed is good" vibe can't seem any more reminiscent of Oliver Stone's Wall Street, Younger has the characters actually watch Wall Street and recite Michael Douglas' lines right along with him.
"Boiler Room" is not so much a rip-off of "Wall Street" and "Glengarry Glen Ross" as it is more like the birthchild of those films.
Vogt-Roberts is on record calling this film a parable of the United States military getting swallowed by the jungles of Vietnam, just in case you didn’t notice all the homages to classic Vietnam movies, particularly Oliver Stone ’s “ Platoon ” and Francis Coppola ’s “ Apocalypse Now ” (the IMAX poster for “Kong: Skull Island” is even modeled on Bob Peak’s 1979 poster for Coppola’s film).
There are Platoon and Apocalypse Now references everywhere, and the film wholeheartedly embraces several of the Vietnam clichés so thoroughly sent up in Tropic Thunder almost 10 years ago, starting with era-specific musical cues.
The film does attempt intellectualism through its cultural references and anti-war message (not to mention its cinematographic and thematic homages to Platoon and Apocalypse Now), but it’s all lipstick on a monkey.
As the team explores the island, “Kong: Skull Island” consciously apes (sorry) the iconography of Vietnam War movies like “Apocalypse Now” and “Platoon.”
In this case, young Edward (Gordon-Levitt replicating the real Snowden’s affectless, robotic voice), distinguishes himself as the star pupil of Corbin O’Brian (Rhys Ifans, shadowy and sinister), a composite CIA figure who shares a similar surname with O’Brien, the Thought Policeman of George Orwell’s “1984.”
And thanks to cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle who gives the proceedings a competent, but overtly obvious visual nod to 1984.
And a great, if slightly over-the-top scene in which - in a direct nod to "1984" - an interrogating O'Brien appears on a huge video screen.
Snowden is an immediate success at his work, receiving encouragement from both company man O’Brian (whose surname recalls the sinister “O’Brien” in George Orwell’s 1984) and the eccentric Hank Forrester (played hammily by Nicholas Cage; the character may be based on William Binney), who has a thing for old code machines and apparently no duties other than dusting them.
That name is probably a wink in the direction of Orwell's 1984, where the main antagonist was O'Brien.
Já mais tarde, quando Snowden conversa com seu mentor, que questiona suas atitudes, Stone retrata o superior (Ifans) como uma presença gigantesca em uma tela que domina a sala, evocando a imagem icônica do Big Brother de 1984 (e tampouco é coincidência que este personagem – fictício – se chame O’Brien, completando a referência ao remeter ao agente da Polícia do Pensamento do livro de Orwell).
"Sightseers" is part travelogue and part killing spree, and Tina and Chris rightfully take their place with other murderous couples on the run, from Annie and Barton in "Gun Crazy" (1950) to Kit and Holly in " Badlands " (1973) to Mickey and Mallory in " Natural Born Killers " (1994).
From They Live By Night and Gun Crazy to Bonnie & Clyde and Badlands to Natural Born Killers and Thelma & Louise, the doomed-couple road movie has a longstanding tradition in cinema.
It’s not necessarily going to be a movie for everyone, but if you appreciate the gonzo-esque qualities of films like Natural Born Killers and Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, Sightseers has exactly what you’re looking for.
Basically, think Natural Born Killers, Badlands, and Bonnie and Clyde, only rather than the perpetrators being lovers-on-the-run, robbers fighting the system, or just pure psychopaths killing for the hell of it, Tina and Chris are instead just average schlubs, only killing because it makes their holiday that much more convenient.
Expert modulation of disparate tones within the same scene ensures that while this is yet another road-movie about a murderously amorous couple - a tradition that includes Leonard Kastle's The Honeymoon Killers, Tony Scott's Natural Born Killers and even Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde - Wheatley and company's new variation has a wit, brio and panache entirely its own.
Despite their murderous ways, Chris and Tina are always presented with real affection (as are their holiday plans) and their oddball romance (very Natural Born Killers with a low-key British suburban twist) tender as they face the ‘trials’ of their relationship.
Dog Eat Dog (2016)
Directed by Paul Schrader
influenced by Natural Born Killers (1994)
Visuals Themes
Naturally, all of this is shot through a pungent fuchsia filter and riddled with so many pop-up graphics that it almost feels like a direct homage to “Natural Born Killers” or any of the other queasy, hyper-active crime stories that blew through the mid-’90s like a heatwave.
The opening sequence has the mad, hallucinogenic look of a bonus scene from "Natural Born Killers."
The scene is played for sicko laughs, with some of the garish instability of that Rodney Dangerfield sequence in Natural Born Killers and a similar, scattergun approach to social satire.
From the opening scene, which is reminiscent of Natural Born Killers in its delirious violence, this is a film that hurtles forward with a manic, unflagging energy and a complete disregard for the rules of storytelling or good taste.
Had the experiment worked, “ Dog Eat Dog ” might have been the next “Natural Born Killers” — a cracked-out postmodern romp whose delinquent antiheroes see themselves as the stars of the ultimate bandits-on-the-run movie.
Sometimes it looks like outtakes from a “Natural Born Killers” ripoff that never happened.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
Directed by George Roy Hill
influenced Savages (2012)
Themes
Kitsch, Johnson and Lively are all young, beautiful actors, but they have the combined screen presence of a cactus: During a dinner scene, when Ophelia name-checks Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, your mind drifts for a moment, wondering what Savages might have been like if Paul Newman, Robert Redford and Katharine Ross in these roles.
But in a film that overtly references “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” it’s only natural for the filmmaker to be thinking of other Newman/Redford pictures and how they conclude.
In the novel, Winslow had the gall to blatantly compare their seemingly ill-fated threesome to “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” (as did Stephen King in a generous pull quote) and the movie makes the same brash connection.
And also by disastrously name-dropping Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid , because those people were also glamorous, gorgeous law-breakers - that they were played by better actors and given better things to say in a more entertaining plot is something we are presumably meant to ignore.
And, in what many will recognize as a very Old Bohemian trope (the girl of the trio does indeed bring up " Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid "), they share the affections of O, a beautiful, poor little rich girl ( Blake Lively ).
This story itself was more journalistically told in Laura Poitras ’ Academy Award-winning documentary “Citizenfour,” a fact that Stone seems to acknowledge, making Poitras a key character and leaving a clear trail for viewers to find her work.
Of course Snowden’s story is by now pretty familiar from news reportage and from Laura Poitras’ Oscar-winning documentary, Citizenfour.
Audiences who are already familiar with Citizenfour , Laura Poitras’s exemplary documentary on the same subject, will be struck by the fact that, in dramatising Snowden’s story, Stone seems to have leached out much of the drama.
What Oliver Stone's muddled biopic does best is remind you to revisit Citizenfour.
Anyone who has watched “Citizenfour,” which earned the Oscar for Best Documentary for 2014, will recognize the meeting that Stone recreates.
A much-loved actor who shall remain nameless gets a choice cameo wherein he Explains Much that recalls his even choicer cameo wherein he Explains Even More in Oliver Stone’s “JFK” (1991).
And the 86-year-old Donald Sutherland shows up for about two minutes to reprise his JFK role, 30 years later, as the guy who explains the whole conspiracy and then exits the movie.
Fragmented-family problems ensue, along with the gravity problems, plus tidal waves; moon chunks hurling into mountains and skyscrapers; and, because the plot depends on a massive government conspiracy to hide the truth, a brief cameo from Donald Sutherland in “JFK” mode.
(Remember the character Sutherland played in that excellent scene in Oliver Stone’s 1991 drama “JFK”?
I suspect that Emmerich wanted the scene to play with the furious momentum of the actor’s famous sequence in JFK (1992), where Sutherland expounds on the many factors that led to Kennedy’s assassination.
At one point, Donald Sutherland shows up at an unlikely location, blurts out some helpful information about a government coverup faster than you can say "JFK" and disappears almost as quickly.
The Big Short (2015)
Directed by Adam McKay
influenced by Wall Street (1987), Natural Born Killers (1994), JFK (1991)
Themes
From Wall Street (1987) to Margin Call (2011), from American Psycho (2000) to, of course, Wolf of Wall Street (2013), filmmakers' answers to that question have ranged all over the map.
Like thematic predecessors such as Wall Street, The Big Short is all about greed and making money.
The great American tradition of filling one’s pockets with other people’s money has inspired milestones from “Glengarry Glen Ross” to “Ocean’s Eleven,” “Wall Street” and “The Wolf of Wall Street.”
Unlike the slick suits and killer sheen of Oliver Stone’s Wall Street , this is a world of chaos and disorder filled with misfits who understand numbers more than people; from Christian Bale’s Michael Burry, a socially awkward heavy-metal enthusiast who dreams up the credit default swaps that enable him to “short” the housing market, to Steve Carell’s bereaved and fractured Mark Baum (a character inspired by the real-life Steve Eisman) who balances moral outrage and repressed self-loathing as he swims with sharks in the cesspool of the financial market.
Since his baptism of fire on such teeming Oliver Stone hornets’ nests as JFK and Natural Born Killers, Corwin has worked selectively, adding two Terrence Malick epics to his resumé, and he cuts The Big Short with his usual instinct for allusive, propulsive storytelling, moving us along at a clip yet not too fast to process everything.
También, el director se apoya en el notable y frenético trabajo de edición de Hank Corwin (Natural Born Killers, 1994; The Tree of Life, 2011) y en la fotografía de Barry Ackroyd (The Hurt Locker, 2008; Captain Phillips, 2013) para proponer un constante tránsito que va desde los centros de negocios hasta las salas de juntas, pasando por las agitadas calles de Manhattan, las desoladas regiones de Florida y los centros nocturnos de Las Vegas, con la intención de informarle al espectador sobre las causas subyacentes de la inestabilidad económica, pero haciéndolo con irreverencia y frescura, sin recurrir al complejo academicismo o al pedestal solemne del análisis económico.
The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
Directed by Martin Scorsese
influenced by Wall Street (1987), Any Given Sunday (1999)
Themes Characters Visuals
The film doesn't exactly advance the social and financial discussions of Oliver Stone's "Wall Street" or its many copycats that detach success from emotions.
Michael Douglas often tells the story of how young stockbrokers would approach him and say that his Wall Street corporate raider Gordon Gekko inspired them to go into finance.
For example, while the Gordon Gekko character didn't abandon his "greed is good" mantra in "Wall Street," his young protégé (played by Charlie Sheen) clearly did.
But this isn’t Oliver Stone’s preachy, good-man-falls-far opera “Wall Street.”
The orgiastic display makes Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street” look downright minimalist.
Like Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street,” which gets a shout-out (as does “Freaks”), Scorsese exposes an American institution as a den of thieves.
It’s understanding of the league and league business is questionable, putting it in same category as Draft Day or Any Given Sunday, both movies that strain credulity in this regard.
…it’s a muddled mix of “Any Given Sunday” and “Rosemary’s Baby.”
With this setup, it seemed like HIM could be a more sinister, twisted version of Any Given Sunday peeling back deeper levels on the sacrifices professional football players make to become the very best.
Like many “unauthorized” films that feature American pro football, Him is obliged to omit any trademarks connected to the real-world NFL (see also: North Dallas Forty, The Last Boy Scout, Any Given Sunday).
Margin Call (2011)
Directed by J.C. Chandor
influenced by Wall Street (1987), Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010)
Themes Plot
Margin Call (Lionsgate) accomplishes something that Oliver Stone failed to show in his “Wall Street” sequel: it explains how and why the market crash happened, not just in terms of economics but in the culture of Wall Street and the justifications that individuals tell themselves in order to follow the company line.
First-time director Chandor has convinced some interviewers that the film is somehow sympathetic to big business because -- unlike, say, “Wall Street’’ -- it doesn’t end with its protagonists in handcuffs (or by showing the consequences of the crash, as if we all needed to be reminded).
Director J.C. Chandor – whose father was in finance for 40 years – brings some of the same clear-eyed approach to this that Oliver Stone, another stock-market brat, brought to “Wall Street.”
With its cool, deliberate pacing and muted sense of impending doom, "Margin Call" isn't like the showy financial drama "Boiler Room" or Oliver Stone's "Wall Street" movies.
It's been two years since the stock market crashed creating massive layoffs, house repossessions, inflation and other turmoil, but other than a number of well-executed documentaries and Oliver Stone's "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps," the subject matter hasn't been covered in a way that mainstream audiences can fully understand what happened.
"Margin Call" is what we might have hoped Oliver Stone might have achieved with his wishy-washy "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps," which was inconsistent with its characters and themes and copped out with a huggy-huggy ending.
God Bless America (2012)
Directed by Bobcat Goldthwait
influenced by Natural Born Killers (1994)
Plot Themes Characters
The movie jokingly references Bonnie and Clyde , but a more natural touchstone might be Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers , with a passing nod to Joe vs. the Volcano .
In some ways, "God Bless America" is faintly reminiscent of Michael Douglas' 1993 film "Falling Down" -- with a little "Natural Born Killers" thrown in, since Frank, by accident more than anything, ends up with a bloodthirsty teenage accomplice named Roxy (ebullient newcomer Tara Lynne Barr) riding shotgun with him on his road trip from hell.
Genetically akin to “Falling Down” and “Natural Born Killers,” with a twist out of “The Professional,” “God Bless America” is what’s known in Yiddish as a geschrei or in French a (ital) cri de couer: (ital) an impassioned outburst, a shout to the heavens, a cry from the heart.
Natural Born Killers‘ Mickey and Mallory killed for kicks.
And while Wonder Woman 1984 ’s message is partially a warning about greed—a suitable theme for a movie set in the Wall Street decade—it also argues that the masses don’t know what’s best for them, and if you give the people what they want, the world will descend into chaos.
Sin embargo, el potencial de este concepto se acaba desperdiciando, salvo en el uso obvio de la filosofía de Gordon Gekko de que "la codicia es algo bueno" - a quien se le escape la referencia, recomiendo el descubrimiento de Wall Street, película de 1987 realizada por Oliver Stone - y el marco geopolítico superficial de la Guerra Fría que parece más interesado en comentar las ansiedades y preocupaciones de la realidad actual que en socavar el contexto de la época.
"Dunkirk" is one of the great war pictures of our time, deserving of being in the same conversation as Oliver Stone's "Platoon," Terrence Malick's " The Thin Red Line ," and the 22-minute D-Day sequence from Steven Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan."
Go ahead and put “Dunkirk” in the same class as “Apocalypse Now,” “Platoon,” “Saving Private Ryan,” and “Braveheart.”
Just look at "Apocalypse Now," "Platoon" and "Saving Private Ryan" for just a few examples of that.
“Dunkirk” instantly enters the pantheon of great modern war films, like “Platoon” and “Saving Private Ryan.”
But viewers will also recognize echoes of original noirs, including Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice and even David O. Selznick's lust-in-the-dust Western Duel in the Sun.
Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)
Directed by Bryan Singer
influenced by The Doors (1991)
Themes Plot Characters
And how does it compare to other rock biopics like ‘The Doors,’ ‘The Buddy Holly Story,’ and ‘Last Days’?
But if it doesn’t have the family drama of “Walk the Line” or the psychodrama of “The Doors,” “Bohemian Rhapsody” does deliver what any music biopic must: convincing characters and some kick-butt simulated concert experiences.
The last time I saw it done this well was Oliver Stone's "The Doors" in 1991, starring Val Kilmer as the doomed and drugged-out rock-star icon Jim Morrison.
Missing here is the raw biography of films like “The Doors, “The Rose,” or “Ray,” where the audience gets to know the artist as a flesh and blood, flawed or passionate human expressing him or herself through their craft.
It is on occasion, closer to Spinal Tap than Oliver Stone’s The Doors; a film that comes dangerously close to being entirely constituted from moments that have been retrospectively remade as symbolic or iconic.
The rest of his bandmates are also strong, with Brian May (Gwilym Lee), Roger Taylor (Ben Hardy), and John Deacon (Joe Mazzello) all well-repped, producing a group chemistry vastly better than most such arrangements (for the genre's nadir in this regard, try re-watching Oliver Stone's The Doors , beyond Val Kilmer's performance and see where that lands you).
The Thin Red Line (1998)
Directed by Terrence Malick
influenced by Platoon (1986)
Themes Visuals Characters
About as blatantly antiwar as they come, this film has much more in common with the disillusionment-filled "Platoon" (Oliver Stone) and "Apocalypse Now" (Francis Ford Coppola) than Steven Spielberg's equally disturbing, but strongly patriotic "Saving Private Ryan."
(Movies like Platoon are too small and insignificant in comparison.)
One can see some subtle borrowings from such war classics as Apocalypse Now and Platoon, but nothing so blatant as to be construed as copying those films' styles.
Malick's version— which unavoidably references the great, flawed Vietnam visions of Apocalypse Now and (especially) Platoon— is, however, anachronistic in a different way.
As Platoon did with its sergeants, Line embodies its philosophical positions in two soldiers: Welsh and the goodhearted, nature-loving Private Witt (Jim Caviezel).
Along with Oliver Stone's "Platoon," "The Thin Red Line" is easily the best war film I have seen and, just in the way that Malick takes WWII and then is able to transform everything into a more meaningful tapestry about human nature, is an amazing triumph that proves what a master Terrence Malick is at his craft.