There's a not so fine line between a film being "da bomb" and a film being a "bomb." Alexander is on the wrong side of that line.

Costing $150 million, Alexander grossed just $22 million in its five-day opening weekend. That puts the Macedonian in sixth place, sandwiched between an ocean-dwelling cartoon known as SpongeBob and a plump, lovelorn girl named Bridget Jones. It's not just the unwashed masses who reject Alexander, but movie critics who normally fawn over anything with Oliver Stone's name attached.

I haven't seen Alexander, so I can't comment on the substance of the movie. One of my brothers, who takes a greater interest in film, describes it as soft-core gay pornography. He told of theater-goers laughing at the on-screen spectacle and openly mocking the movie. Some were so angry that they stormed out of the moviehouse.

Should we be surprised by either the anecdotal or the box-office rejection of Alexander? People don't trust Oliver Stone to do history. Sure, injecting homosexual themes into an action-epic risks alienating your core audience, but is that really the reason, as some are suggesting, that filmgoers are going to other films?

Audiences have been familiar with Stone's work over the past quarter century. They've seen the conspiracy-minded silliness of JFK and Nixon, and so have studio executives. While the former reject such nonsense, the latter embrace it. Hollywood moguls prefer the over-the-top political message of Stone's movies--Salvador, Wall Street, Talk Radio, JFK--to profits. Why else would a major studio entrust Oliver Stone with $150 million to make a movie about any historical topic?

I had the misfortune to see Alexander. Yeah, as we all by now know there is a homosexual theme to the character of Alexander, but what detracts from the movie the lame dialogue, stupid visual effects, and terrible acting.

I somehow think that homosexuality is an irrelevant criticism for this movie. Most mainstream Hollywood movies are utter crap.

How can anyone take a wimp like Colin Farrell seriously in that role?

Colin Farrell?? Not sure how this guy got catapulted into superstardom, but he s$$ks and nobody talks about him with the same reverance as they do of a Brad Pitt or a Tom Cruise.

Apparently, Hollywood thinks that if they think he good, we do (or will) as well.

I borrowed 'Apocalype Now', Redux, from my local library last week and watched it three times.

Has to be one of the best films ever made.

What's Apocalypse Now got to do with Oliver Stone or Alexander?!

Bad movie: Good movie.

Not to mention, that these posts can often stay within a general topic but occasionally wander on thoughts within that topic.

Don't be so ^nal Dave.

Redux really improved Apocalypse Now in my opinion. The film really needed that scene with the French plantation in it to ground the story and give it a real point.

But Apocalypse Now is so ridiculously superior to Stone's Platoon, that film is really terrible. Some consider it his best film but how can anyone stand the miserable voicover in that movie? It is so distracting. Stone repeatedly would use voiceover to tell us what the Charlie Sheen's character is thinking and feeling . . . something that SHOULD have been simply illustrated and made clear by the acting and dialogue itself. I assume casting Charlie Sheen in the film was a reference to Apocalypse Now starring his father but it only served to highlight just how underachieving and bad a director Stone is.

I thoroughly agree. I thought the French Plantation scenes lended credibility to what the film was trying to portray about the whole Viet Nam experience. The principal in that scene discussing the follies of the French government with regards to mistakes made in that country and the lessons not learned by the Americans fed into exactly the reasons why Willard was sent in to assassinate Kurtz who was taking his own control of what he knew it would take to win the war.

Some of the gratuitous soft $ex scenes were unnecessary, but Redux is the ONLY version of that movie that really makes sense.

In fact, I got both versions from my local bibliotheca. Watched the original first and then the Redux. Both, of course, were good but no contest that the latter was best.

I’m sorry, but Stone tries too hard and most of his offerings pale by comparison.

Thus, have not desire to see Alexander. Except to catch Lara Croft in a toga.

Even Lara Croft in a Toga couldnt get me to see that lame of a movie. Apocalypse is a good movie, but they should have got another actor for the Martin Sheen role. Hippies, draft-dodgers, and protesters of war do not belong behind the camera playing in war movies.