Went to see "Alexander" tonight. I nominate it for the worst costume stinker since "Cleopatra". Save your ten bucks and wait for the DVD, better yet, save your money then too, and wait for it to play on the History Channel. Alexander with a deep Irish accent. Al's mom, the smirky Angelina Jolie doing this weird Russian accent thing, Anthony Hopkins with his proper English doing this monotone narration that would put a speed freak to sleep, and Val Kilmer as Al's Dad, ala California Surf accent. In one scene, as Alexander is making an impassioned Bono-style speech, this soldier jumps from the crowd and berates him in a deep Scottish brogue ala Fat Bastard - the crowd broke out in laughter and jeers. After that the laughter was out of control. Action scenes sucked, it was talk,talk, talk - a soap opera about Al being torn between his little Persian hotties and his boy toys. Weird meaningless snake imagery, snakes, and more snakes, which apparently Ms Jolie really has some kind of issue with. The stupidest movie I have ever seen in my life.

Hello,
Hollywood should stop making movies about all the historical Greek fags

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Nachi11744

Mmm... hairy persian men

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1985 CA 300D Turbo , 213K mi

Oliver Stone did seem to be on some really weird gay trip. From a historical point, it was a total misunderstanding of Greco-Roman military homosexuality, which was more like prison sex than the gay night life of Fire Island. Soldiers marched off from home for years at a time into uninhabited remote areas, and the more powerful soldiers would punk the weaker ones, or men would trade sexual favors for favored treatment, in other words, a prison scene where the dominant partner in the homosexual liason used the submissives as a substitute for women until they could get back home to mamma. Instead Stone gives us this whole Provincetown-in-Persia boy-toy thing with Al the Fag too wrapped up in the Gay Lifestyle to service the women, and with Al tormented by what seemed like hours of excuriatingly boring homosexual angst. What a turkey.

Kirk,
Let me get this straight...Are you surprised that an Oliver Stone movie distorted history to make a political point? I know you are too well read for that to be true. I do appreciate your review---I am not tempted to see it---thanks to your review, I know I won't weaken. ( Hey, we agree on something!)
Michael

He is not one of my favorite directors any way - the JFK thing was absurd. I think he had a lucky hit with "Platoon" an has been pretty much a joke ever since. This film is an actual joke. It was like "Springtime for Hitler" - the audience was laughing at stuff that was supposed to be serious. I really don't know if he was trying to make some political statement - he seemed to be expressing a lot of immature ideas on homosexuality that turned the whole subject into a cartoon. What most disappointed me was the knowledge that Mel Gibson could have taken the subject of Alexander's life and made a damn good movie out of it - Braveheart was everything this movie wasn't. I didn't read any reviews prior to going because I had read Stone supposedly spent 10 years making this thing, so I figured it must have some merit. It just plain sucked.

Yep, I agree with you. I saw Alexander last night, and it was one of the worst movies I have ever seen. The obsession with everything homosexual was repulsive. And the accents were hideous: Scottish, Irish, English....and Angelina Jolie'd accent.....hard to describe. Sort of a bizarre mix of a Russian or a Romanian / Gypsy speaking bad english.

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Paul S.

2001 E430, Bourdeaux Red, Oyster interior.
79,200 miles.

1973 280SE 4.5, 170,000 miles. 568 Signal Red, Black MB Tex. "The Red Baron".

Glad you guys shared your opinion. I was just about to go see it this weekend. Thanks.

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95 R129
04 Infiniti G35.5 BS
10 X204

What I found repulsive was that some of the gay stuff bordered on kiddie porn. Altho not doing it overtly enough to get arrested, it was obvious he was portraying the young children in the film as sexual objects - utterly despicable and repulsive. And then the other stuff with the Michael Jackson-style teenage thingfish who was always floating around was beyond bizarre. The interplay between Farrel and that character has to be some of the most ridiculous and low class psuedo-pornographic crap I've ever seen on wide-release film - it was a sick and twisted view of human sexuality that shows Stone has something seriously going wrong in his head. Who the heck in Hollywood thought that average people would have been intersted in hours of Colin Farrel looking wistfully at boy's asses? This thing should have been X rated.

I also just don't get the whole snake trip. It was utterly pointless and repulsive as well. And the knife fight with his new bride on their wedding bed was the most idiotic thing I have ever seen put to film. Stone is off his nut - you can only blame the director for this fiasco. He and Jolie should be barred from making movies ever again.

That;s why I am so pissed off. This was supposed to be the big "Thanksgiving Weekend" movie. Generally you figure you don't have much to lose, on a big budget film like that you figure even if the story is weak, that action scenes will be entertaining enough to make it worth while. But the action scenes sucked as much of the rest of the movie. The whole battle of Guagemala consisted mostly of Al riding on his horse going "Arggh!" combined with computer generated aerial shots that made the battle field look like ants swirling in dust. I felt seriously ripped off. Life would have been better if I had set my ten dollar bill on fire instead of giving it to them.

I saw Cleopatra when it came out. Once was enough. Being hetero, I appreciated the Elizabeth Taylor semi-nude scenes. But they were too brief to have a hope of helping that earth-shakingly bad movie.

Thanks for the warning, I will not bother seeing it.

This homosexuality thing is interesting though. Assuming the most generous proportionality in society, 10%, and half of them are women, how could Stone (and the producer) have possibly thought that playing-up a relationship that significantly appeals to less that 5% of the population would be a box office winner? Even if it had been done in perfectly good taste, its not gonna be a turn-on for the major movie-going segment--hetero young men.

Dumb marketing there.

It wasn't so much the homosexuality as the confused and twisted way it was handled. It was just not clear what Stone was trying to say. The Ancient Greeks practiced homosexuality, that is a historical fact, and it is well known the Alexander kept a butt buddie for those long marches. Like I said, I think Gibson could have handled the subject in a more coherant way that might explore some aspect of how men in brutalized societies and environments can be driven to that, handled directorily as something that could be disposed of in fifteen minutes or so. Why should that be the entire theme of a three hour film? I learned nothing of this great man's life or accomplishments. Instead we get this poorly done Gay Clockwork Orange version of the life probably the greatest man in history that was all utterly pointless. Stone turns Alexander the Great into one of the Village People. What an artistic acheivement. Cleopatra was a far better movie than this fiasco.

So, I heard there were a lot of gay things in this movie that guys didn't like. But, is it true that Rosario Dawson exposed her upper extremities in this movie? (Something the guys WOULD like)
-Joe

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'81 MB 300SD, '82 MB 300D Turbo (sold/RIP), '04 Lincoln Town Car Ultimate

Sooner or later every car falls apart, ours does it later!
-German Narrator in a MB Promotion Film about the then brand new W123.

It's even MORE GAY......


j/k :p

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1994 C 280 117.5k, White (Good as new)
1997 Toyota Camry 149k Miles (Not so pretty anymore)

1990 190e 2.6 95k (Sold-Should not have)
1981 240d Stick ??? Miles...sold

It wasn't so much that I didn't like "gay things that guys didn't like" - it was the way he made up some bizarre gay-themed fantasy of his own and then totally neglected the story of this important figure's life. It's like he hi-jacked the movie to work on his own problems.

Rosario got naked but it was in one of the worst scenes in the movie, this utterly bizarre wedding night scene that was some of the most ridiculous stuff put to film - a real "Springtime for Hitler" moment that had the crowd laughing, where Big Gay Al turns into Al the Rapist. Utterly stupid.

Of course my favorite moment is when the ever snake-wrapped Angelina Jolie spits in Al's face unexpectedly, and then says "Why do you hate me so?". Some guy in the audience yells out "Maybe its because you spit in his face!"