Left Field Cinema

I thought that your comparative analysis between Greengrass's Flight 93 and Stone's World Trade Center was very good. I saw both films (as rentals, not in the theater) and, like many others, watched much of that day's unfolding news coverage live on TV. What makes Flight 93 the better film is how it illuminates what is often ignored in the 9/11 summaries. The World Trade Center destruction was the one we all saw and which was the most spectacular, but the demise of the plane and its passengers and crew in Pennsylvania happened blindly and silently from the world's point of view. It was simply another headline that added to the terrible headlines of the day. That Greengrass brought the otherwise hidden events to vivid life was as great a legacy of that film as his skill in moviemaking. I'd like to see such a film of the Madrid or London bombings to cast such skillful insights into the perpetrators and the victims.
Stone made the inferior film but at least he showed some restraint in not overdoing the tragedy of the actual planes hitting the towers or their actual collapse. He could have made it more overt and didn't; a surprise coming from Stone. Also, give Nicholas Cage some credit for some subtlety and nuance; again, something of a surprise.