5. Oliver Stone
The Good:Salvador, Platoon, Wall Street, Talk Radio, Born on the Fourth of July, JFKThe Bad:The Hand, Heaven & Earth, Natural Born Killers, Nixon, U Turn, Any Given Sunday, Alexander, World Trade Centre We will always be in debt to Oliver Stone, because the man wrote
Scarface, and anybody who writes
Scarface is okay in my book. Forever. Still, despite his standing as an acclaimed and popular American director, Stone wields a filmography filled mostly with duds and misfires. That might come down to the politically-heavy nature of his movies in general, bound to divide critics and audiences alike, but really it's because he's pretty hit and miss. Of course, movies like
Salvador (underrated classic) and
Platoon confirm him as a director of great talent, but looking at his most recent ventures, he either got lucky back then or he's lost his touch. That's to say, Stone's canon looked to be, at one time, incredibly strong, but his bungled attempts to capture the lives of both George W. Bush and those who lost their lives on 9/11 proved oddly ill-judged. Alas, working through his flicks, you'll find it's uneven territory.