"Alexander" versus "The Aviator."

Oliver Stone's movie "Alexander" is getting such abysmal reviews that it can't all be chalked up to red-state homophobism. But if the movie weren't so horribly long and boring, it might be a laugh to see the Angelina Jolie performance. NYT meanie Manohla Dargis writes:

Mad of eye and teased of hair, Olympias, played with nose-flaring gusto by Angelina Jolie, was the mother of all monstrous mothers, a literal snake charmer whose love for her only son had the stench of incestuous passion and the tedium of the perpetual nag....

As the young marauder kills and enslaves peoples from Egypt to India, Mr. Stone repeatedly returns us to Olympias, snakes coiling around her body and chastising her absent son in a bewildering accent, part Yiddishe Mama, part Natasha of "Rocky and Bullwinkle" fame: "You don't write, you don't call, why don't you settle down with a nice Macedonian girl?" or words to that effect. Rarely since Joan Crawford rampaged through the B-movie sunset of her career has a female performer achieved such camp distinction.

Meanwhile, Roger Friedman of Fox News says Martin Scorsese's "The Aviator" "will not only be nominated for the Academy Award, but ... will win [it] without too much trouble." In a world where Oliver Stone has won an Oscar and Martin Scorsese has not, one last chance has come to restore justice and fairness, so that one day, we may hear that Martin Scorsese has won a Best Director Oscar.

UPDATE: Larry Ribstein points to one of the many older films that depict gay relationships. (Here's a great documentary on the subject of gay characters in films.) Ribstein writes:

The important point is Stone's reticence compared to a more than 30 year old film. Does this suggest, not that the public is not ready yet for gay relationships, but that a once-ready public is not so ready anymore?

First, as I've said before, I don't think Stone is displaying any reticence. He's just using current political issues to promote his movie and excuse its horrible badness. Second, he may show the relationship less graphically than this older film, but that doesn't say much at all about the culture then and now. He's crafting a hugely expensive Hollywood film that must bring in far, far greater crowds than an art film. Stone would like you to think people have gotten especially repressive and intolerant lately, but I am not buying it. Gay marriage is controversial, but it wasn't even mentioned thirty years ago. I'm quite sure that if it were, it would not have found a ready public. In fact, people are much more accepting of gay relationships now than they were then.