And Jim Morrison. Oliver Stone's conventional, chronological biography bashes along at a breakneck pace, barely touching ground, barreling right into the middle of events, forgoing the surrounding context and grabbing at the harried TV director's daily lifesaver: the constant closeup. There may be some justification for this device in the understandable fascination with Val Kilmer's physical approximation to the Sixties rock-and-roller. But Kilmer could be a perfect match for him down to the last syllable and hair lock, and it still wouldn't answer the question of why we needed a film about the man. This particular film about him proves, if nothing else, that the conventional story formula of the self-destructive musician can be made to fit any old era and any old drinking-and/or-drug-taking musician, even one so "unconventional" as to do his drinking and drug-taking under the benediction of Dionysus. There is no very clear interpretive approach to this story; no irony, for instance, in the final sequence of shots that locates Morrison's resting place in the proximity of Chopin's, Bizet's, Rossini's: no one puts lighted candles and half-drunk liquor bottles on their headstones. Of course, the viewer is at all times free to impose on the story the standard line to do with a Man Torn Between True Artistry and Phony Celebrity, but he is nowhere compelled to do so, nowhere even nudged. Meg Ryan, Kathleen Quinlan, Kyle MacLachlan, Kevin Dillon. (1991) — Duncan Shepherd