The Doors

The Doors (1991) is Oliver Stone's biographical drama about the Los Angeles rock band and their front man Jim Morrison — watch online on iFILM. The film runs from the band's first rehearsals on a Venice Beach rooftop to Morrison's death in Paris at twenty-seven, six albums into a five-year career.

Val Kilmer doesn't just resemble Morrison — he sang every vocal himself, and surviving band members Ray Manzarek and John Densmore said they couldn't always tell the recordings apart. Meg Ryan plays Pamela Courson, Kyle MacLachlan is Manzarek, Frank Whaley takes the role of Robby Krieger. Stone shoots the concert sequences with visceral energy: the Miami show that got Morrison arrested, the studio sessions, the slow spiral. No clean mythology here.

Stone had seen The Doors perform as a young man and held onto the experience for two decades before making the film. At 140 minutes it is long, deliberately so — the excess is part of the argument. Stream The Doors (1991) online on iFILM.