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Born on the Fourth of July (1989) More at IMDbPro »

Oliver Stone 6 Feature Collection (dvd):

Amazon.com video review: While this monumental retrospective of Oliver Stone's directorial career doesn't include Salvador or Platoon--Stone's early, acknowledged masterpieces of history and remembrance--it certainly sheds some light on the more controversial arc of his work ever since.

Beginning with 1987's Wall Street, Stone's barbed tragedy about corporate raiders and blinding greed during the Reagan years, this cinematic six-pack represents a curious odyssey of generational touchstones, outright obsessions, and feverish experimentation. 1994's Natural Born Killers, for instance, is an explosive critique of inflamed media in a society of hapless onlookers. A wildly ambitious farce about two lovers who defy TV-manufactured perceptions by becoming notorious murderers, Killers pushes the limits of screen violence, visual literacy, and the mixed-media technique (juggling film stocks, incorporating video, etc.) that Stone introduced in JFK. If the result is somewhat cold and forced, it's also brazen.

Most significant is the way this collection underscores Stone's drive to fuse historical drama with lingering emotions about the past. Stone, a Vietnam War vet, revisits that haunting debacle here in the masterful Born on the Fourth of July. Yet some of his most famous efforts still draw heaps of scorn for narrative hubris and factual recklessness. (Does anyone really believe John F. Kennedy was assassinated during a Lyndon Johnson coup d'état?) But time, as this collection proves, is on Stone's side. Eventually, JFK and The Doors will be seen not as a failed objective history, but as the experience of a tumultuous era in the imagination of a man who lived through it all and can't shake it off.

The collection concludes with the unexpectedly entertaining football saga Any Given Sunday. After this came Stone's humanitarian relief drama, Beyond Borders (not included), which found the director on familiar footing. As Stone's legacy continues to grow, there is a remarkable career here to revisit with these six films. --Tom Keogh

Oliver Stone 10 Feature Collection (dvd):

Amazon.com video review: While this monumental retrospective of Oliver Stone's directorial career doesn't include Salvador or Platoon--Stone's early, acknowledged masterpieces of history and remembrance--it certainly sheds light on the more controversial arc of his work ever since.

Beginning with 1987's Wall Street, Stone's barbed tragedy about corporate raiders and blinding greed during the Reagan years, this cinematic 10-pack represents a curious odyssey of generational touchstones, outright obsessions, and feverish experimentation. The minor, 1988 Talk Radio, for instance, introduced Stone's then-evolving critique of inflamed media in a society of hapless onlookers. But it was 1994's Natural Born Killers that exploded the theme in a wildly ambitious farce concerning two lovers who defy manufactured perceptions by becoming notorious murderers. Killers pushes the limits of screen violence, visual literacy, and the mixed-media technique (juggling film stocks, incorporating video, etc.) that Stone introduced in JFK. If the result is cold and forced, it's also brazen.

Most significant is the way this collection underscores Stone's drive to fuse historical drama with lingering emotions about the past. Stone, a Vietnam War veteran, revisits that haunting debacle here in the masterful Born on the Fourth of July and the moving Heaven & Earth. Yet some of his most famous efforts still draw heaps of scorn for narrative hubris and factual recklessness. (Does anyone really believe John F. Kennedy was assassinated during a Lyndon Johnson coup d'état?) But time is on Stone's side. Eventually, JFK, The Doors, and Nixon will be seen not as a failed objective history, but as the experience of a tumultuous era in the imagination of a man who lived through it all and can't shake it off.

The collection concludes with the flawed contemporary noir U Turn and the unexpectedly entertaining football saga Any Given Sunday. Stone bided his time following this extraordinary body of work, until the humanitarian relief drama Beyond Borders (not included) found the director on familiar footing. As Stone's legacy continues to grow, there is a remarkable career here to revisit with these 10 films. --Tom Keogh

Born on the Fourth of July (dvd):

Amazon.com Essentials: The second film in Oliver Stone's Vietnam trilogy moves from the brutality of war in Platoon to its equally traumatic aftermath. Based on the memoir of combat veteran Ron Kovic, the film stars Tom Cruise as Kovic, whose gunshot wound in Vietnam left him paralyzed from the chest down. He is deeply embittered by neglect in a veteran's hospital and by the shattering of his patriotic idealism because of the horror and futility of the Vietnam conflict. While painfully and awkwardly adjusting to his disability and a changing definition of masculinity, Kovic joins the burgeoning movement of antiwar protest, culminating in a climactic appearance at the 1976 Democratic national convention. A powerfully intimate portrait that unfolds on an epic scale, Born on the Fourth of July is arguably Stone's best film (if you can forgive its often strident tone), and Cruise's Oscar-nominated role is uncompromising in its depiction of one man's personal anguish and political awakening. --Jeff Shannon

Born on the Fourth of July (vhs):

Amazon.com Essentials: The second film in Oliver Stone's Vietnam trilogy moves from the brutality of war in Platoon to its equally traumatic aftermath. Based on the memoir of combat veteran Ron Kovic, the film stars Tom Cruise as Kovic, whose gunshot wound in Vietnam left him paralyzed from the chest down. He is deeply embittered by neglect in a veteran's hospital and by the shattering of his patriotic idealism because of the horror and futility of the Vietnam conflict. While painfully and awkwardly adjusting to his disability and a changing definition of masculinity, Kovic joins the burgeoning movement of antiwar protest, culminating in a climactic appearance at the 1976 Democratic national convention. A powerfully intimate portrait that unfolds on an epic scale, Born on the Fourth of July is arguably Stone's best film (if you can forgive its often strident tone), and Cruise's Oscar-nominated role is uncompromising in its depiction of one man's personal anguish and political awakening. --Jeff Shannon