Not good, very very not good

Rating: Null/10 (6 December 2004)

I really wanted to like this movie. I'm a die-hard fan of everything medieval. I'm a card carrying member of the SCA (But the garb WASN'T period) and I've read many many books on this period.
After this movie was over (I think it lasted about 8 hours) I was so flummoxed, I could barely talk about it.
First the good...some of the scenes shot are among the most beautiful I've ever seen. I don't mean beautiful as in Asian movie scene that never exists in reality beautiful. I mean really beautiful. Remarkably composed, engaging, pulls you to that place kind of beautiful.
The acting is also pretty good. Angelina Jolie (who seemed to spend the whole movie in her bedroom playing with snakes and looking hotter than anyone human has a right to look) gives a very memorable performance. Anthony Hopkins (who in the movie looks about 200 years old) provides a voice-over that seems to last longer than Alexander's life. Farrell himself is unremarkable. He has some chops but isn't up to the action sequences. To his credit, I'm not sure anyone would be though, particularly the fight in India.
Thats where the good ends.
We can talk about the muddled plot line which was wierdly non linear. For some reason, yet to be determined Stone shows Philips assassination about an hour and a half after Anthony Hopkins tells you about it; it was to illustrate the dubious loyalty of a character that had maybe 3 more lines in the whole movie.
We can talk about the hard to hear dialogue. There's a lot of it, and not all of it is hard to hear. But the dialogue that is hard to hear is at least 2 movies' worth.
The lighting and set directions were competent but Stone seems to rely on extreme closeups (NOSTRIL HAIR!) to build character, shaky hand held stuff to relay chaotic battle scenes and annoying lighting to illuminate the story. He did this much better in Natural Born Killers (with a Woody Harrelson's face going in and out of focus while the word DEMON was lit on his chest).
The other thing that I found exhausting was that there was little plot development, which is endemic to biographies but there was no dramatic arc. It was like Stone spent so many years developing Alexander that he couldn't decide what to get rid of. Being the heavyweight in Hollywood that he is (rightfully so in the case of many of his movies) I guess he decided that he didn't have to get rid of anything.
The issue that seems to be the focus of so much media debate is that of Alexander's bisexuality. Its pretty unimportant to the movie that the love of Alexander's life seems to have been a male played by Jared Leto who is really really disturbing looking. They used an awful amount of eye liner on the man, really really badly and I cringed whenever he came on screen. That seems to be a theme for me with Jared. I haven't been able to look at him without cringing since Requiem for a Dream.
The gay themes aren't important. But then again, neither is the movie.