Nixon (1995)

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I had a film professor once who said that, when he was programming his viewing selections for a course, he wanted to show movies that had some problems. Problems promote discussion and shed light on the filmmaking process; often we were asked to consider how a screenwriter had gotten around a problem or theorize on how existing flaws might have been fixed. This professor was emphatically not a fan of Oliver Stone, but I remember thinking that discussion on just one of Stone’s films could spark enough discussion to last a whole semester. His wildly ambitious Richard Nixon biopic is as good an example of this as any, seeing as how Stone delves headfirst into the dense politics of the time, often not caring whether or not his audience knows who these people are, and not waiting for them to catch up. Plus, he has an actor who looks and sounds nothing like his famous subject, and a runtime over three hours to boot. Unsurprisingly, the film was a box-office dud, but I think it stands as Stone’s greatest achievement nonetheless for all its problems. As a biopic, the film is unusual for its structure and tone, darting back and forth in time and mostly focusing on events in Nixon’s life for their political significance instead of their significance to him as an individual. Even events such as the deaths of his brothers are relayed in these terms, attempting to link those personal tragedies to the choices Nixon made as a political figure. Furthermore, the tone of the film is often that of a classical tragedy; Stone is unafraid of straightforward dramatic gestures, giving Nixon a feel of a modern Shakespeare tragedy more than a nuts-and-bolts biopic. This is a very difficult film, and not without its flaws (beyond those that I’ve mentioned here) but I find it immensely rewarding. Even more than his other films, it sets Stone apart as a highly unique and vital filmmaker. 10/10

Network (1976)

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Paddy Chayefsky’s scathing satire of TV news, directed by Sidney Lumet, is not just a favorite film of mine, but the one that I find most emphatically lays bare the state of our current national discourse. Certainly the need for dumb entertainment wasn’t new in the mid-1970s, and as Faye Dunaway’s character makes all too clear in the movie, it’s not exactly like the network news was an intellectual bastion before she and her ilk showed up to the scene. Still, it’s hard to deny that mass media news was utterly corrupted at some point and remains so to this day, and the film has a clear-eyed view of how it all works and, just as importantly, it shows how audiences just don’t care and even prefer it that way. It’s a very dire state of affairs, and the film doesn’t flinch from it, although it’s also tremendously funny and features some terrific performances. Chayefsky’s scripted some of the wittiest, most piercing dialogue I’ve ever seen in film, and Faye Dunaway, Peter Finch, and Robert Duvall are all top-notch. When Lumet was at the top of his game, he could deliver a film that combined crisp, commercial filmmaking with a stout social conscience, in a way that seems radical seen today in the context of the hyper-dumb commercial filmmaking that currently prevails in mainstream Hollywood. There’s not really anyone like him working today, and weren’t many even then, and this is one of his best and most enduring efforts. 10/10