4. World Trade Center
I have to give Oliver Stone credit; with World Trade Center, he made a film removed from his usual political muck-raking, instead attempting to craft merely a respectful account of the day - after all, how tasteless would a conspiracy theory drama about 9/11 have been? Though the film has some meritorious aspects - for one, it looks gorgeous - it is nevertheless woefully saccharine in its earnestness, and goes the silly route of introducing dream-like images that betray the drama of the day. The most cringe-inducing scene has Will (Michael Pena) telling John (Nicolas Cage) that, in his delirium, he saw Jesus holding a water bottle, walking towards him, complete with thoroughly inappropriate imagery of just that. It's cheesy, and even if this really
did happen to Will, did we need the visualisation? The mental imagery is enough; instead it just looks tacky and cheap.