World Trade Center.

"A celebration of authority, God and President Bush, World Trade Center doesn't feel like an Oliver Stone movie," writes Anthony Kaufman at Alternet. "If conservatives were worried that Stone, the director of anti-establishment touchstones Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July and JFK, would turn this 9/11 movie into a platform for personal politics, he has proved them resoundingly wrong. Instead, Stone delivers the Bush base a jingoistic, All-American all-you-can-eat buffet on a silver platter."

But for AO Scott, writing in the New York Times, "feeling transcends politics, and the film's astonishingly faithful re-creation of the emotional reality of the day produces a curious kind of nostalgia." Higher up in the review: "[T]he point of the movie is not so much to construct a visual replica as to immerse you, once again, in shock, terror, rage and sorrow. And also in the solidarity and concern - the love - that were part of 9/11."

"The key to converting disaster into entertainment is uplift," writes J Hoberman in the Voice. "You may not be convinced by the suggestions of divine intervention - Stone doesn't seem to have been - but then World Trade Center obeys a more crucial show business commandment. By focusing on two of the 20 people pulled alive from the pile that crushed some 2,700, the movie employs the Schindler's List strategy: Spectators can invest their emotions in the handful of individuals miraculously chosen to survive the disaster rather than the overwhelming anonymous multitude who perished."

Updated through 8/16, and do note the must-read by Jonathan Rosenbaum.

It's a point critics are zooming in on, but they aren't always agreeing. "When Stone's movie is at its best, it simply ignores the temptation to say everything about 9/11, instead keeping its focus tightly trained on the two domestic dramas at its center," writes Dana Stevens in Slate. "It's when Stone tries to get all world-historical on us that the movie stumbles." But writing in New York, David Edelstein is "disturbed" to see a "sudden shift in the movie's scale... A true story of courage and survival, yes. But viewing the destruction of the World Trade Center - in a film called World Trade Center - through this kind of prism represents a distinctly Hollywood brand of tunnel vision."

"Dealing with the event directly is impossible; it's like staring at the sun," insists Salon's Stephanie Zacharek, still infuriated by United 93 and not at all convinced that this one's necessary, either.

"It is a disaster movie and a feel-good inspirational movie - both based on true stories - and that is why I am of two minds about it." Jim Emerson explains at RogerEbert.com.

Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times: "The problem is not so much that World Trade Center is an attempt to make a feel-good movie about a ghastly situation, it's that the result feels forced, manufactured and largely - but not entirely - unconvincing."

Ryan Stewart at Cinematical: "The screenplay for World Trade Center was obviously a maudlin affair, saved by Stone's natural directing talents, so there's a question as to why he wanted to save it."

The film has drawn "9/11 Truth seekers" out into the open, a phenomenon Ed Halter explores in a cover story for the Voice:

In the half-decade since 2001, as a loose congeries of varied political fringe groups and conspiracy hounds melded with a newly radicalized crop of Bush-burnt Americans to form a growing network of like-minded skeptics, the movement has fostered a robust filmmaking subculture of its own.... And the audience is out there - more than you might think. An oft quoted May 2006 Zogby poll found that 42 percent of Americans believed that "there has been a cover-up" about 9/11 on the part of the government and the 9/11 Commission.

For Movie City News, Ray Pride talks with Stone: "People say, why don't you do an Iraq story? Well, it would be a dramatist's answer to say, let me see what's happening and what will happen through time. And see if it is a Trojan War like Vietnam was, or not." The Oregonian's Shawn Levy also has a long talk with Stone.

In the Independent, David Usborne recounts the ways marketers on this one have shown their savvy - conservatives have been won over - and the ways they've been caught by surprise.

Somewhat related: Dexter Filkins's rave review in the NYT of Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (first chapter).

Updates, 8/10: Paul Cullum has a long conversation with Stone for the LA Weekly's cover package; Ella Taylor turns in the excellent review: "Stone may be the bluntest instrument in Hollywood's arsenal, but watching his new film about the collapse of the Twin Towers, I found myself nostalgic for his chutzpah.... World Trade Center is just another ritual rehearsal, and, like all endlessly repeated images of apocalypse - and I include the vastly superior, terrifyingly realistic United 93 - however respectfully brought off, it threatens to return as pornography."

"[O]ne of the most plodding disaster flicks ever made," declares Stephen Beachy in the San Francisco Bay Guardian. "Turning historical events into heartwarming allegories is a problem generally, because it creates meaning at the expense of complexity; it's also a problem specifically, because America didn't actually pass through hell on Sept. 11 but settled in and began vigorously exporting hell." Cheryl Eddy isn't quite as hard on the film: "By focusing so intently on just the McLoughlins and the Jimenos... the film leaves the door open for countless Sept 11-related movies to come. It's just a question of whether future filmmakers will hew to Greengrass's example and go raw or create movies like Stone's World Trade Center: a bit overcooked."

"It's as if doing a 9/11 project gave [Stone] license for cheap moments," remarks the Keith Phipps at the AV Club.

"It's mawkish, corny and brutally effective. I liked it more than I feel comfortable admitting," confesses Sean Burns in the Philadelphia Weekly.

Peter Keough in the Boston Phoenix: "In his quest to make an apolitical movie, Stone played right into the hands of the people he once despised." More, plus Paul Babin's Oliver Stone file.

"The movie's first 30 minutes are so tautly, expressively shaped that they remind you what a terrific craftsman Stone is," writes Godfrey Cheshire in the Independent Weekly. "And then, quite literally, the roof caves in."

Well, Armond White likes it. After bashing United 93, he offers the ultimate Armond White accolade: "As film fiction, World Trade Center offers an interpretation of history. So it must operate just as Spielberg's War of the Worlds did - turning real-life experience into symbol and metaphor. This is the proof of Stone's intelligence and artistry." Also in the New York Press, Jennifer Merin talks with Stone.

Annie Wagner in the Stranger: "Oliver Stone's movie (written by Andrea Berloff) is exactly what everyone was terrified United 93 was going to be. It's crass, lazy - and worse - it represents a distinctly evangelical form of pro-American fervor."

"Whatever the filmmakers' reasons, they missed one of the more remarkable aspects of this rescue story," writes Rebecca Liss, who first told Jimeno and McLaughlin's story in a piece she produced for 60 Minutes II in October 2001. Also in Slate, Steve Coll, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, discusses The Looming Tower with author Lawrence Wright.

Filmbrain: "Though I'm willing to admit to a heightened subjectivity when it comes to any film about September 11, Stone's film is little more than an overly sentimental cliché-laden bit of Hollywood manipulation. Waking up this morning to hear about a planned attack of US-bound airplanes only strengthens my belief that World Trade Center is exactly the film we don't need right now."

Robert Keser at Bright Lights After Dark: "The 21st century's Pearl Harbor continues to ripple out circles of catastrophe, but instead of a grown-up inquiry into the harsh, dark post-9/11 reality, Stone has produced a celebration that buries the tragedy's meaning and disturbing legacy much as Hollywood initially employed digital trickery to erase the twin towers from the Manhattan skyline."

"I find it fascinating that the positive reviews and the negative reviews are saying essentially the same things," notes Jim Emerson at Scanners, adding that "it's not as easy as you'd think to distinguish the favorable notices from the unfavorable ones."

Slant's Nick Schager gives the film three out of four stars, praises Stone's "subtle artistry" and notes that WTC finds him "deftly balancing director-for-hire genre responsibilities with his own distinctive auteurist impulses."

"You'd have be a statue not to be moved by all of this," admits Christopher Kelly in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "But that doesn't make it any less manipulative or cheap."

For Cinematical's James Rocchi, it's "a silver-lined story of salvation that comes wrapped in a cloud of induced amnesia to block rational thought."

"On the whole, the movie works on the level it operates," decides Jim at Twitch.

Mike Russell: "Despite its rough and/or maudlin patches, it does honor the very real heroism and suffering of these rescue workers, building to a simple observation by McLoughlin at film's end: 'I saw a lot of good that day.' It's never too soon to point that out."

Updates, 8/11: Aaron Hillis for Premiere: "Underscored by the fragility of a plinking piano and well-timed flourishes to uplift, this heroic heartstring-tugger is still frequently and unexpectedly affecting, so much that it's able to hide its true face as a glorified movie-of-the-week."

"Why reprise this story without the hindsight of Afghanistan, Iraq, Madrid and London?" asks Desson Thomson. "One of the only allusions to the post-9/11 world is a Marine's passing comment that we should avenge ourselves - which feels oddly ironic, given our failure to capture Osama bin Laden." Also in the Washington Post: Ann Hornaday profiles Stone and Ellen McCarthy meets Maria Bello.

"I've always seen Stone as an authoritarian demagogue, and World Trade Center hasn't changed my mind," writes Jonathan Rosenbaum in a must-read review for the Chicago Reader. Not only does Rosenbaum swiftly and expertly dissect Stone's filmography, he quotes at length from a bone-chilling piece for the National Review by Kathryn Jean Lopez and notes that "the blinkered worldview [WTC] promotes only encourages the worst instincts of people like Kathryn Jean Lopez - insularity and xenophobia - even as they congratulate themselves for what they call Americans' essential generosity of spirit."

Meanwhile, fair warning from Alessandra Stanley in the NYT: "Over the next four weeks the only way to avoid seeing images of United Airlines Flight 175 plough into the south tower or office workers running through the streets of Manhattan coated in plaster, dust and blood is to turn off the television."

The San Francisco Chronicle's Mick LaSalle: "[N]othing [Stone] does can cover up the film's single but overarching weakness: The personal story he uses to portray the larger event is limited in scope and impact."

Updates, 8/12: "[L]et this liberal film critic state that I would happily applaud a good film about heroic action against Islamo-fascists," declares Sudhir Muralidhar in the American Prospect. But: "Oliver Stone has taken an inspiring, true story of heroic rescue and turned it into a plodding, unfocused film that aims to jerk tears but fails even to engage viewers."

At the WSWS, David Walsh explains why he believes the film is "artistically crude and politically dishonest."

Updates, 8/14: David Denby in the New Yorker: "Stone bulls his way into our emotions with his usual force but with greater clarity, sanity, and measure than in the past, and he is better at violent spectacle and at capturing the stages of dying than any other director. This square movie, at its best, is very powerful."

"What If 9/11 Never Happened?" John Heilemann offers a "counterhistory" in New York.

Eugene Hernandez: "While many have criticized the director for making a movie about September 11th with a happy ending, it was in fact rather refreshing to find a compelling story of survival amidst the tragedy and terror."

Chuck Tryon (who later adds an update agreeing with the Anthony Kaufman review that launches this entry): "I remain convinced that the best films 'about' September 11 are those films such as Spike Lee's 25th Hour and John Touhey's September 12th that deal with its aftermath, with our attempts to live in the world after the attacks instead of obsessively revisiting and reliving the events of that horrible day."

Andy Bowers introduces Slate's "Spoiler Special" in which "Dana Stevens and Bryan Curtis discuss what happened to Stone's politics, the intriguing character of the Marine who helped in the rescue, and much more."

"[Q]uintessential reassurance cinema," finds Robert Cashill. "World Trade Center is William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives, brought up to date by 60 years, and condensed to a single day."

"In our hearts, it was a Frank Capra type of movie." Patrick Kennelly recalls this quote from Stone and writes, "But unlike Capra's greatest work, it skims over most of the harder issues while teetering on the brink of fantastical wish-fulfillment. While World Trade Center may be the most rousing, value-driven patriotic film created post 9/11, it is one that is uniquely thin and dull, two of the last adjectives one would ever attach to a Stone film."

Updates, 8/16: Andrew Sarris: "World Trade Center is an unusually strenuous and taxing exercise in summer entertainment, and I would not recommend it at all were it not for the exquisite performances of the four principals, and the sincerity and conviction with which Mr. Stone has directed them." Also in the New York Observer, Mitchell L Moss: What makes World Trade Center such a powerful film is the way in which it captures both the beauty of New York before the attack, the horror of Ground Zero and the selflessness of rescue workers, who fought horrendous conditions and long odds to save those trapped in the rubble." And Charles Taylor reviews The Looming Tower.

Posted by dwhudson at August 9, 2006 3:32 PM