Any Given Sunday

Rating:
Summary: What's The Problem With The Nudity?
Review: Oliver Stone is a controversial director famous, if for nothing else, for taking his audience right to the core of whatever his subject matter may be. So what's all the complaints with the male nudity? What did you expect Stone to do when he took his cameras into the lockerroom? I'm sure if he did a study of Cheerleaders, no-one would bat an eyelid. GET OVER IT!!!! RIGHT OVER IT!!!I love this film. It's fast & furious as it should be & Jamie Foxx is outstanding; more than holding his own in his big scenes with Pacino. A badly miscast Cameron Diaz is easy to forgive when the editing & cinematography is this electrifying..A KNOCKOUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rating:
Summary: 2nd worst movie ever made
Review: If you're wondering, the worst movie ever perpetrated on the human species was "It Happened In Athens", a 1962 peace of drivel starring Jane Mansfield. "Any Given Sunday", dollar for dollar, however, should really take first place, everything else equal. Until this production, there had never been a movie with more cliches than actual words of dialogue. Having covered the NFL for more than two decades, I can assure you and Oliver Stone that Al Pacino's conflicted coach would not have had that "need a dozen fewer prunes at lunch" look if he were indeed leading a team into the playoffs. His next stop, after the heartless, greedy owner got through with him, would have been to another team offering more money.
Jamie Foxx, with his primadonna quarterback antics, might look compelling on celluloid, but in a real NFL locker room, he would have wound up with a large foreign object stuffed in his "gem protector". Mr. Stone placed himself on-screen in the announcing booth and was shown actually rooting for Big Al's squad. This might play in high school, but it's unrealistic and unprofessional in the big-time.
Finally, grunting and groaning actually does occur during a game. But the linemen don't lose two quarts of bodily fluid on every pass-blocking episode, and, quite frankly, nobody ever needs to see Gatorade residue that up close again Oliver Stone shot these sequences so tightly that we lost perspective. Even the television networks, known to hype and grind anything remotely interesting into the dust, understand that slo-motion is best used sparingly. Three or four instances of this cinema technique would have been sufficient. But to turn a fast-paced sport into a gladiator movie with valium-induced choreography helped made this film only slightly preferable to a visit to the dentist. I saw it for free, and still want to get back at the guy who treated!


Rating:
Summary: Oliver Stone + Football: Add water and mix.
Review: I think this may actually be my favorite Oliver Stone movie. Other movies he's done have greater scattered moments throughout, but I always wind up feeling that his pounding/bigger-than-life/quick-cut/Oliver Stone-y way of making movies is so ham-fisted that he ends up diminishing the impact of what he's trying to say. In "JFK" or "Nixon" or "Natural Born Killers," every single moment is so HUGE and POWERFUL and SIGNIFICANT that, after a while, it becomes ridiculous.

"Any Given Sunday," however, is a football movie. The constant POUNDING and EPIC MUSIC and SLOW MOTION and INTENSITY actually makes sense, here. He's not talking about things that require subtlety. He's talking about football.

Not a "brilliant" movie, it's true, but certainly a good one. Lots of great performances, pounding rain, grunting, growling, smashing into each other... with a fair bit of thematic content tossed in as well.

Good stuff.

Rating:
Summary: Very Good
Review: At first, I didn't know what to think. "Oliver Stone doing a football movie?" It's been so long since he did anything that WASN'T affiliated to a political line that I don't know if he did one. Stone had to base the togetherness of the football team characters with something in his own past, and I'm betting the time he spent in the military helped: the military teaches a large amount of togetherness and teamwork I never knew until I entered into it myself.

The movie applies the Stone Technique, meaning hyperactive, music video camerawork and plot grit. This movie would appear the most honest in comment about the American NFL sport and the people who play it. This film actually has a plot, and it's carried out in detail. This film is actually about something. The characters are as large as Roman titans, and very sexy. If you like pro football, you probably already saw this movie, as all of my Army buddies that like football have. Myself, I really don't watch sports, but I thought this was a good movie and worth the money. As I said, I don't know of a more honest football film. This is definitely not a kids movie! It follows a general line of past football films, but the Stone Treatment of the issue makes each player on the football field a titan, like Spartacus or Maximus from "Gladiator". This film is the Mount Everest of "teamwork movies".

The camerawork is really good. Watching the movie, you'd think you're looking at "Sports Illustrated" magazine photos in motion. I also enjoyed the montages, reminding me of John Frankenheimer's "Grand Prix" Cinerama spectacle.

The cast is superb! Jamie Foxx obliterates this role, as he did in his supporting role for "Ali", and one can see where he's going as an actor leading up to his recent roles in "Collateral" and "Ray", the Ray Charles movie; Oscar quality. Al Pacino is another phenomenon in this movie, and he has one of the best climactic speeches I've seen in some time. Dennis Quaid is good as a Dan Marino-type famous and aged quarterback, and James Woods and Cameron Diaz are really good. I didn't expect Diaz to do as good a job. Even LL Cool J was good. Stone, of course, plays a cameo role as a sportscaster.

Rating:
Summary: technically great, and a subtle plot
Review: "Any Given Sunday, you can win or you can lose - but can you lose like a man?" - Oliver Stone didnt exactly win with this one, but in my mind, its a solid movie. most of the complaints against this movie are that it is too long (partially true) and that it has NO plot (totally untrue).

the movie is about team-play, ambition, ego-struggles and competition in general. Oliver Stone has penned a brilliant script and woven a tight and subtle story here for the discerning audience. the viewer will have to carefully observe the subtle interplay between various people to really appreciate what is going on in their minds and how each person changes as the movie progresses. this is what the whole plot is about and since its not exactly very obvious, the movie is lost on many.

however, the acting is still brilliant (even cameron diaz). the editing is just top-rate, the quick cuts and sharp angles to capture the excitement on the field is just terrific, but it might be a bit of an eye-sore for people who prefer the safe soft, long & slow shots. another outstanding highlight is the music, very very apt and and adding to the mood in each scene.

On the whole, a top class movie.


Rating:
Summary: TOO MUCH OF SO MUCH
Review: The thesis, football as a symbol of the decline of a bygone age of honor and teamwork, is compelling enough to carry a film. Any Given Sunday kicks off with throbbing action and razor-sharp editing to achieve this goal.

But why make a point once when you can make it forty seven times? It only takes three hours, plus you can toss in liberal drones of waffling yet verbose dialogue. Why, we may even shoot the plays from so up, close and personal that the audience cannot for the life of it figure out the dozen time warps between scoreboards.

Jamie Foxx and LL Cool J do the occasional serious turn, Dennis Quaid grimaces like only he can (in natural agony, an emotion the audience effortlessly echoes) and Cameron Diaz bursts a windpipe to be the shrieking pseudo-toughguy. Pacino follows a similar routine to deliver the famous speech towards the tail-end, by when most of us are comfortably asleep.

Perhaps a tolerable watch for diehard fans of the game, but the only football that gets bobbed about in this blur of color is the audience.

Rating:
Summary: Big, Bold, Baaad Entertainment
Review: It's too easy to take pot shots at Oliver Stone, his filmmaking style, his excessive use of . . . well, pretty much everything. Criticisms of Stone's cliché's pretty much have become the realm of cliché themselves.

I've read a number of reviews by "sports fans" who hate this movie because they are "sports fans." I'm not buying it. I'm a sports fan (a fairly rabid one at that) and I loved this film, warts and all. Complaints of perceived non-linear storytelling don't matter to me in this type of movie. It's ALL about the Crash Boom! Anyone who's played professional sports (most of all NFL) will tell you the game today does closely resemble a video war game. From the initial drafting to the big business, high expectations, marketing frenzy and ownership/management chaos to player conceits, familial expectations, and tribulations both marital and extra marital, Stone's movie doesn't flinch. Climb on board, and you find yourself on an unrelenting, entertaining, frustrating, and ultimately exhilarating roller coaster ride that you'll disembark from with a wink and a smile.

I'm not always (or often) a fan of Oliver Stone - but here, his chaotic, frenzied style, slamming camera angles, use of loud, percussive music and rap feel like life itself: fast, dangerous, sometimes predictable but often off kilter. His style serves a vision of the All American game as few others before him have. He here captures the feeling of the "business" of football with ferocious artistic integrity and vision, if not necessarily with the accuracy some fan's may wish. Frankly, I don't care for accuracy either historical or technical in film, my only demand is "entertain me."

Any Given Sunday entertains and that's what I expect most from a movie.