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Any Given Sunday (Special Edition Director's Cut) - Oliver Stone Collection

Any Given Sunday (Special Edition Director's Cut) - Oliver Stone Collection

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: God rested Sunday, why couldn't Stone?
Review: Terrible, terrible, terrible! This movie is such a twisted, unfocused, mangled look at professional football. What was the point of this movie? What was the plot? What lesson were we to learn? If the lesson was to feel sorry for spoiled, millionaire coke addicts, I failed miserably to learn it. If the lesson was to become ever more confused as the movie progressed with muddled, pointless conversations about the apparently blatant connections between profit, politics, ambition, and racism in professional sports, then this movie hit the nail on the head.

Pacino doesn't fit the role at all, and his cast here is an insult to his brilliant talent dislpayed in "The Godfather" and "Donnie Brasco". Jamie Foxx plays Willie Beamin, a third string quarterback who, after two successful games, suddenly has his own MTV video and is an instant celebrity/superathlete. Guess what, lots of athletes have two great games, and are not immediately elevated to such status. It takes seasons of success to gain this. LL Cool J and Cameron Diaz are as horribly miscast as Pacino is. Dennis Quaid plays a much-too-over-the-hill quarterback, simply unbelievable.

The only, and I mean only, applaudable role goes to James Woods, who seems to save his professionable credibility in any film no matter how rotten, even in "The Specialist".

Oliver Stone's films just keep getting more deluded as time goes on. I don't know which is more deplorable...his attempt in "Natural Born Killers" to justify mass murder, or his attempt in this filthy fumble to justify the notion that overpaid steroid freaks are somehow "victims" of media pressure.

On any given Sunday, smear your body with peanut butter while smashing your teeth in with a ballphine hammer for more meaningful entertainment (and less pain) than watching this terrible, terrible movie.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Eye poppin excitement
Review: Al Pacino and Cameron Diaz are great and so is Jamie Foxx. The football player losing his eye in slow motion is one that will stick in you'r mind. It is symbolic of the America's occupation with the well being of the stars while the lineman are the anomonous pawns who grit it out in the trenches.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Glossy fun...but not as meaningful as it pretends to be
Review: Director Oliver Stone always has people who "represent" a point of view first, and are characters second. (Classic example...Tom Berenger & Willem Dafoe in PLATOON). However, usually his filmmaking is strong enough to make us believe the people anyway. This is a lightweight Stone, and his female characters in particular are unconvincing. Cameron Diaz is horribly miscast...she gets to cuss and act mean, but to what purpose other than to be the character that represents "young, money-hungry, tradition-despising business people of today." Lauren Holly...what the heck was that character?!?! And Pacino, who can be good, is allowed to indulge in all his mannerisms, but to no purpose. I kept expecting a line like "I try to get out of football...but they always pull me back."

I enjoyed some of the more minor characters a bit more...some of the young football players were really well done. And Dennis Quaid is properly seedy, kinda the "anti-Rookie." James Wood was wasted, though.

The scenes of football are noisy and violent, but shot in such close-up that you don't get much sense of the game itself. It's just not a great sports movie and it's not a great "statement" movie. It's just an average (and overlong) diversion.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: A disappointing football film given that it is Oliver Stone
Review: I am not surprised that the NFL passed on getting behind "Any Given Sunday," because everybody in the Commissioner's office must be cringing at virtually every scene of the antics of these football players off camera. "North Dallas Forty" is still the best football movie made to date, but I have to admit I am somewhat surprised that this film was not more impressive. I would have thought that Oliver Stone filming football plays would be awesome. But while he does try to give us a sense of how FAST the games in the NFL are played I found myself cringing every time there was a slow motion shot of a pass hanging forever in the air. The drama of a pass play is seeing it develop, but if all you see is the ball you have no idea of who the ball is being thrown to, how well he is covered, or anything that makes the play exciting. Stone pulls this gambit several times and it never works once. The touchdown routines after the scores are choreographed better. And do not even get me started about the bit with the eye...

Off the playing field every character has their own cliché. The whole subplot with Cameron Diaz as the team owner is painful (but no one is wasted more in this film than Ann-Margaret as her mom) and Lawrence Taylor's performance as a toned down version of himself nicknamed the "Shark" is negated by the melodramatic waiting question of what will happen if he is hit wrong. Dennis Quaid tries to bring some poignancy to the final days of a once great quarterback, but unfortunately he has Lauren Holly as a psychotic wife. The Dallas Knights have the ugliest football uniforms in the history of the known universe, but, hey, isn't that Johnny U. roaming the sidelines as their coach? That sure is Jim Brown preaching the gospel of defense to his troops. Then again, I liked Willie Beamon's game ritual (and the way it becomes taken as a sure sign of good things to come); Jamie Fox, ironically enough, ends up being one of the most realistic characters in the film. Still, when the best scene in the film is coach Al Pacino's pep talk before the big game or the punch line that caps off the end credits, that is not really a great selling point for a football movie. But at least that scene makes up for all the scenery chewing and maudlin reflections Pacino has to do throughout the rest of the movie.

Oh, and did I mention that the clips from "Ben-Hur" keep going out of sequence? Apparently Charlton Heston did not point that out when he did his cameo as the Commissioner. But like most of the problems in this film, Oliver Stone covers it by distracting us with music or simply pumping the volume up on the soundtrack. "Any Given Sunday" is disappointing because you look at the talent on both sides of the camera and you really expected just so much more.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Walking The Line
Review: There is a thin line between 'great movie' and 'terrible waste of money', and Any Given Sunday manages to walk right on that line. I could use just about any adjective in the english vocabulary to describe this film, good or bad, and it would probably fit. It seems like for everything that's good in this film, there's also something that's bad, so it cancels itself out. For those who've seen the film, what was the deal with the Ann Margaret character? Was she drunk, or dilusional, or what? On the other hand, Steamin' Willie Beamen (played perfectly by Jamie Foxx) is one of the better characters ever in a sports flick. Without Willie Beamen, this film is probably a dud, which is a shame, because it should have been so much better. Pacino over-acts quite a bit (he's been doing that a lot lately), but it's balanced out by great supporting performances and a stellar soundtrack. Anyway, being a huge football fan, I liked the movie, but I can't say that it was any better than average. I can't shake the feeling that this movie would have been better if I had more input. Being that I'm basically an average joe, that's definitely not a good sign for a Hollywood production.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: it could have been shorter and still have been good
Review: This is almost 3 hours long, and is packed to the gills with big-name stars with massive talent. It is almost TOO MUCH on the senses as Stone portrays the world of the football stadium as full of love, hate and politics as any Roman emporer's coliseum. Cameron Diaz is a stand-out as Christina, the pretty girl who becomes manager through Daddy's connections and is fiercely determined to prove she is top dog in the men's worlds of sports and business. Jamie Foxx is great as the cocky, perhaps-too-self-assured rookie player who has made it to the big-time. And Al Pacino is well, Al Pacino --- he can't give a bad performance so you know he is worth watching!

I particularly like the scene where Charlton Heston as the Commissioner is speaking to Jamie Foxx as a new player about the blood and guts of football, all the while Heston's 1959 movie "Ben-Hur" is playing on his VCR. It is the famous chariot race, and you can make the analogy of Heston's lecture on football to the gladiators of that day. It is interesting to see the cuts between Heston in 1959 and 1999, without the actor acknowledging that is himself on screen, once playing a character with the same bravado as the one to whom he is speaking at present. That sticks in my mind as one of the cleverest and most ingenious bit of film-making that I have seen in ages.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Lots of Action
Review: This movie was awesome in my opinion. It had tons of action and it should go down as one of the best football films ever created but i am going to admitt that it could be turned into a better film but i am not a director so what the heck would i know. I give it five and you should deffinently buy this into hard hitting and contact movies

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A hard hitting action movie
Review: Yes, action movie. Sure, the movie is set in the world of pro football, but it comes off as more of an action flick than a sports show. It's very hard hitting with a very loud pulse. Loud, thumping music fills your ears throughout, and the story is full of hard-hitting (pun intended) characters. A very in your face type of movie.

I love the idea of a football movie taking the role of more of an action movie, as opposed to a football movie. I think everyone needs a bit of pure action fun every once in a while, and that's what this movie provides.

Of course, that doesn't mean you don't gain some slight care for what happens to the characters as they battle on and off the field. The aging quarterback trying to hold on to his career and family. The young quarterback fighting for his newly gained position and with his newly gained fame. The aging linebacker fighting through injury for that one last paycheck to set his family for life. The coach, on the downside of his career, fighting tooth and nail with a demanding owner.

What it all boils down to is a very fun movie that I find myself watching time and time again.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Waste of Talent
Review: This film had a few interesting moments, but in the end it was nothing but a raunchy, loud, sensory assault. After the first half of the movie, I'd had enough. It was unwatchable after that.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Too much all at once
Review: 'Any Given Sunday' is a difficult movie to watch. It has lightning-fast editing and much of the dialogue is drowned out by rock, pop, and rap music. Oliver Stone is a talented director, and their are scence which are good, but the story is a complete mess. Also, I think most people would find Cameron Diaz as the owner of a football team a little implausable.


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