Alexander
We went to see it Thanksgiving, and it was... not terrible. I really, really, REALLY wanted to like it, and I would have except that either the movie theater's screen kept going blurry at the dramatic moments or Oliver Stone was on crack when he filmed it. Seriously. Most overused technique in one movie ever.
My fiance thought it was historically accurate up to the end, when it sort of fell apart (apparently they did make it to the ocean in real life and boated back), and had some nice dramatic moments that mixed mythology with reality very well.
I'm also not sure how anyone who didn't already know what was going on would have had a clue -- I knew the gist and still got confused occasionally. And, seriously, if you're going to introduce a bunch of characters who all dress similarly and have similar hairstyles and somewhat similar names, it might be a good idea to, I don't know, give us more than one frickin' mention of their names? Geez.
And there was at least one supposed to be sad scene that was unintentionally funny. I felt terrible about giggling, too, since I'm usually the one weeping during sad scenes.
Honestly, the most disappointing thing was the lack of "guy on guy action" as one reviewer put it -- from the reviews, I thought I'd get at least one sex scene, and all we got was a briefly nude Rosario Dawson and a lot of moping around and passionate declarations from the guys. In total, we get a brief glimpse of Alexander kissing a Persian slave boy, and he makes weepy eyes at Hephaiston several times, and that's IT for the guys, yet for some reason I want to watch Rosario's giant fake boobs bounce around in a near rape scene? Yeah. Squicky.
Not to mention you briefly see Colin's, ahem, family jewels, a sight I personally could have lived forever without seeing, thank you very much. Especially since it was so utterly gratuitous -- I think the movie was saying he was too depressed to put clothes on at that point or something.
And last -- I loathe character assassination. Troy did it to Agamemnon and Menelaus (not to mention killing them both off way early), and this movie does it to Philip. It's pretty obvious that the director was trying to portray the way the child Alexander perceived his father -- first as nasty and brutish compared to his beloved mother, then growing into a gradual appreciation for him as a strong, fair-minded general persecuted by a nutter wife -- but the movie fails to do this properly, leaving us wondering what the characters know that we don't get to see.
And what kind of biopic skips over the subject's first encounter with the thing that makes him or her great? Yes, this movie completely skips over Alexander's first battle. Right. Done now.
So it was an okay movie with a large tragic flaw (appropriately enough). Go see it if you love Alexander or that era, and try not to wince too badly or laugh during what's supposed to be the saddest scene in the movie (and by all rights should have been, had Stone not butchered it).
My fiance thought it was historically accurate up to the end, when it sort of fell apart (apparently they did make it to the ocean in real life and boated back), and had some nice dramatic moments that mixed mythology with reality very well.
I'm also not sure how anyone who didn't already know what was going on would have had a clue -- I knew the gist and still got confused occasionally. And, seriously, if you're going to introduce a bunch of characters who all dress similarly and have similar hairstyles and somewhat similar names, it might be a good idea to, I don't know, give us more than one frickin' mention of their names? Geez.
And there was at least one supposed to be sad scene that was unintentionally funny. I felt terrible about giggling, too, since I'm usually the one weeping during sad scenes.
Honestly, the most disappointing thing was the lack of "guy on guy action" as one reviewer put it -- from the reviews, I thought I'd get at least one sex scene, and all we got was a briefly nude Rosario Dawson and a lot of moping around and passionate declarations from the guys. In total, we get a brief glimpse of Alexander kissing a Persian slave boy, and he makes weepy eyes at Hephaiston several times, and that's IT for the guys, yet for some reason I want to watch Rosario's giant fake boobs bounce around in a near rape scene? Yeah. Squicky.
Not to mention you briefly see Colin's, ahem, family jewels, a sight I personally could have lived forever without seeing, thank you very much. Especially since it was so utterly gratuitous -- I think the movie was saying he was too depressed to put clothes on at that point or something.
And last -- I loathe character assassination. Troy did it to Agamemnon and Menelaus (not to mention killing them both off way early), and this movie does it to Philip. It's pretty obvious that the director was trying to portray the way the child Alexander perceived his father -- first as nasty and brutish compared to his beloved mother, then growing into a gradual appreciation for him as a strong, fair-minded general persecuted by a nutter wife -- but the movie fails to do this properly, leaving us wondering what the characters know that we don't get to see.
And what kind of biopic skips over the subject's first encounter with the thing that makes him or her great? Yes, this movie completely skips over Alexander's first battle. Right. Done now.
So it was an okay movie with a large tragic flaw (appropriately enough). Go see it if you love Alexander or that era, and try not to wince too badly or laugh during what's supposed to be the saddest scene in the movie (and by all rights should have been, had Stone not butchered it).