W.

Oliver Stone's oddball biopic of President George W. Bush was released while he was still in office, and nobody cared. I'm not sure if that says more about Stone's strangely tame satire directed with a gently comic tone (there's none of the operatic excesses of "Nixon" here) or about the 43rd president himself, a footnote in his own time. Stone reaches into the soul of Bush (played with good ol' boy affability by Josh Brolin) and finds a sincere idiot blinded by delusions of adequacy and motivated by a need to prove his worth to his father. Stone's psychological profile is as facile as they come, but there are minor pleasures in the film, notably Thandie Newton's creepily exaggerated parody of Condoleezza Rice, which feels warped in from another, more interesting movie. Features commentary by director Stone, and Sean Stone's 17-minute featurette "Dangerous Dynasty: The Bush Presidency," which is a far more critical portrait of Bush II than Stone's film.