Oliver Stone ruins everything.

You may or may not know this about me, but I loathe Oliver Stone's film work. No, I mean really loathe it. I have this theory that Stone started strong, delivering a one-two punch by bursting onto the scene with two good films, and then people started saying, "That Oliver Stone, man, he's brilliant!" And he got this reputation that has stuck, no matter how many times he has insulted us (at a rate of 24 frames per second) since that time. The Doors? Ridiculous! Natural Born Killers? I literally fell asleep in the movie theater. That film was so terrible I slipped into a coma, as that was my only escape. I could have been kidnapped! Any Given Sunday? That movie will make you hate football and everyone who plays it. Alexander? I was humiliated for everyone involved! Do you know what it takes to be humiliated for Colin Farrell? Do you?

And the length! The average human bladder is no match for the average Oliver Stone film. Don't even get me started on the historical subject films. I had a history professor who sat on a board of advisors to Hollywood directors on historical matters. Stone's response to their advice? "I don't care about historical accuracy. I want to tell my own story." Well fine, but then tell your own story, not a story about real people whose lives you twist in an effort to willfully deceive your audience. Or is original material too difficult for you to come up with, you talentless hack!

Serenity now!

Okay, so, that happened. And with this point of view, you'd hardly expect me to pay money to see W. in a movie theater, but that's exactly what I did Wednesday night. "But Allison, have you gone mad? It's an Oliver Stone film about the life a president that Hollywood largely despises! How can you expect a fair portrayal? Also, it's Oliver Stone!"

I know, I know. But I think it will get several Oscar nominations and I do love to be Oscar ready. I have endured much pain in my quest for Oscar-readiness. (Read: I sat through The Squid and the Whale and paid for the privilege of doing so.)

So, the film. It was... not great. But it wasn't hideous either, although that may be because I knew it was an Oliver Stone film and I lowered my expectations accordingly. It was quite short for a Stone film: just over two hours. That, coupled with its extremely abrupt ending, makes me think he cut it short in order to rush it to theaters so he could premiere it while the subject was still in office. Whatever, it saved my bladder. Richard Dreyfuss played Dick Cheney, so that fact alone will keep Melis out of the theater, and Ioan Gruffudd managed to be a very unattractive Tony Blair, despite that fact that both Gruffudd and Blair are quite handsome, so, nice work there, hair and make-up people. I have no idea what Thandie Newton was doing. She protrayed Condoleeza Rice as a botoxed android who spoke the way an alien might speak if it were guessing what our language sounded like just from reading printed material. I know from other films that she is a capable actress, so I choose to blame Stone for her excruciating performance.

However, Josh Brolin did a really good job in the title role. No, like, really good. I think he'll be nominated for Best Actor. He won't win. That statuette is obviously going home with Sean Penn for his role in Milk, for many reasons, including subject matter, timing of the release (a very fresh-in-Oscar-voters' memories early December), and just the fact that he's Sean Penn and he has created an aura of assumed brilliance that seems to blind moviegoers even if he's not particularly brilliant in a given role. (Hello, The Thin Red Line.) Unfortunately, he has zero sense of humor (Spicoli was a fluke) and will almost certainly give a droning clunker of a speech, but you could just use that time for a much-needed bathroom break, because the Oscars are even longer than an Oliver Stone film. But back to Josh Brolin. He'll get a nomination and he'll deserve one, too, because he managed to rise above Oliver Stone's direction and deliver a fair performance in spite of him.

And when he told his step-mother, Barbra Streisand, about taking the role, she apparently freaked out. Brolin said, "She was furious and would not talk to me. I kind of liked that one." Hee!

I knew I liked him.