James McTeigue
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Joker is like James McTeigue’s V For Vendetta (2005), only with an unstable manchild rather than a literate revolutionary as the inspiration for civil unrest.
There are also elements lifted from “Death Wish,” “Network,” “V for Vendetta,” “The Empire Strikes Back,” “The Shining” and “The Purge.”
Joker doesn’t understand its representation of violence because it doesn’t know what to do with its politics, opting instead for a confused aestheticization of anarchy à la V for Vendetta, all incendiary chants and masked malcontents thronging the streets.
When wealthy Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen) calls Gotham’s impoverished masses “clowns”, his words echo around endless TV screens, providing a V for Vendetta -style mask to rioting protesters carrying “Kill the Rich” placards.
Envision a misguided remix of Taxi Driver (1976), V for Vendetta (comic), and Batman (1989).
There shouldn’t be a need to take on this maniacal character yet again, but Phillips’ film is exceedingly unique in its interpretation and cements its place alongside movies like 2006’s “V For Vendetta” and 2017’s “Logan” as auteur comic book cinema.
A scene in a park that results in Kate’s being identified as a murderer is clearly patterned after the famous U.N. shooting in “North by Northwest,” and the final rooftop confrontation between Jovovich and Brosnan bears echoes of the Mount Rushmore climax of that film as well, though structurally it’s actually more indebted to the Statue of Liberty conclusion of “Saboteur.”
Milla Jovovich plays a falsely accused Foreign Service Officer who works to thwart a terrorist plot as she runs from the authorities in “ Survivor ,” a sturdy wrong-woman thriller that feels grotesque in its citations of 9/11 and other intimations of real-world import, but also steals a few good moves from “North by Northwest” and “The Fugitive” for a solid middle section.
Screenwriter Philip Shelby makes nods to Hitchcock's chase films, notably North by Northwest and Frenzy, but can't find a way to ground Kate's story in the real world.
The similarity may have come easily to Moore, whose graphic novel “ From Hell ” was about the Ripper, and inspired a good 2001 movie by the Hughes brothers.
Writer/producers Andy and Larry Wachowski ("The Matrix" series) may have given the directing reins over to their "Matrix" first assistant James McTeigue, but their fingerprints are all over this adaptation of the 1980's Alan Moore ("From Hell," "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen") anti-Thatcherism graphic novel.
Alan Moore made quite a stink earlier this year by publicly disassociating himself from the cinematic adaptation of his 1982 graphic novel V for Vendetta, which he assumed – after unpleasant experiences with From Hell and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen – would be bastardized in its translation to the screen.
3 1/2 Stars (out of 4) Tweet You Can Count on 'V' By Jeffrey M. Anderson Legendary comic book writer Alan Moore (Watchmen, From Hell) recently denounced Andy and Larry Wachowski's screenplay adaptation of V for Vendetta, but that's just who he is.
Previous screen adaptations of the English writer's comics and characters had resulted in movies that ranged from bad ("Constantine," 2005) to worse ("From Hell," 2001) to worthless ("The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," 2003).
A darkly sumptuous, exceedingly enticing murder mystery, the film, directed by James McTeigue (2005's " V for Vendetta "), reminds of 2001's Jack the Ripper saga " From Hell ," or, what Guy Ritchie's overly silly, dull and inconsequential " Sherlock Holmes " movies should have been from the start.
Cusack tries to make Poe into some kind of off-kilter charmer, a word-spewing prototype for Hunter S. Thompson one moment, the original emo-moper the next, and beneath all that is a gleeful naiveté reminiscent of Johnny Depp's performance in Sleepy Hollow.
Taking the collected works of America’s original master of horror and drawing on their most gruesome murders as the inspiration for something resembling the love child of Saw and Sleepy Hollow might have seemed like a good idea to director James McTeigue.
What passes for detective work in this leaden whodunit falls light years short of " From Hell " or " Sleepy Hollow ," where the investigator digs deep enough into the case to find a familiar face gazing back at him, a killer who's the hero's psychic doppelganger.
I also quite like the films From Hell and Sleepy Hollow, and The Raven feels like it was sort of cut from similar cloth.
This seems like a familiar movie gambit (shades of Stephen King’s “Misery”), but it’s a conceptual idea with some depth.
Director James McTeigue ("V for Vendetta") has created a nicely crafted film with loads of atmosphere and grisly crime scenes, but screenwriters Ben Livingston and Hannah Shakespeare ("Loverboy") fail utterly with this insipid twist on Stephen King's "Misery."
Poe and Fields must ponder clues planted on yet more corpses in order to deduce where Emily has been hidden; in a "Misery"-style twist, the psychotic fan insists that Poe write up his detective work as an ongoing narrative, to be printed each day in the local paper run by editor Henry Maddox ("Pirates of the Caribbean" regular Kevin McNally, forever playing men with muttonchops).
Portman, who seems to have a knack for turning out decent performances in awkward films (remember those Star Wars prequels?)…
Her past roles have included Closer, Garden State and she’s forever popularized as Padmé in the Star Wars series.
Directed by newcomer James McTeigue from the Wachowskis’ adaptation of the Alan Moore graphic novel, V for Vendetta recaptures something of the bold, provocative blend of intriguing themes and ultraviolent action that made The Matrix the most discussed and debated action movie since Star Wars .
Without overthinking or digging too deep, viewers will be able to identify parallels with 1984, The Matrix , The Phantom of the Opera, Zorro, and even Star Wars .
It's a combination of "1984," "Zorro," "The Phantom of the Opera," "Beauty and the Beast," and "The Count of Monte Cristo," with only Doug Fairbanks, Errol Flynn, or Robert Donat missing from the title role.
The conclusion conjures up a race against time to save Emily, liberally borrowing elements from George Sluizer’s 1988 shocker “The Vanishing” to bring Poe to a place of disorientation that shadowed his actual death on Baltimore streets in 1849.
Following in the footsteps of offerings such as "Basic Instinct" and the TV show "Castle," our surly author (John Cusack, seemingly channeling Nic Cage at first) discovers that someone out there is playing copycat to murders and other elements of his popular works beginning with the double homicide in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" through the grisly means of death in "The Pit and the Pendulum" and more.
Seeing this, I was reminded of Julie Christies character sitting listlessly in front of her TV in another dystopian sci-fi movie, "Fahrenheit 451" (1966).
The chief influence clearly comes from Douglas Hickox's classic thriller Theatre of Blood (1973), in which the cinema's supreme exponent of Poe, Vincent Price, plays a sadistic old actor exacting revenge on the London theatre critics' circle by dispatching them one by one in gory death scenes from Shakespeare.
Or if you must, at least have as much fun with it as Theatre of Blood did.
We had murders based on Shakespeare plays in the great British horror Theatre of Blood .
The imagery evokes something like “V for Vendetta,” with headlines screaming things like “Twisted Sister Rages Against the Machine.”
The verse and short stories of “the divine Edgar” — as Humbert Humbert calls him in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita — have inspired more movies than the works of any writer but Shakespeare.
The England of V For Vendetta struck a resounding note when its adaptation hit cinemas in 2006…
Josh Brolin, as Dan Killian the producer, is a good enough actor that his villain is missing only a “V for Vendetta” mustache.
(The movie owes a secret debt to 1979's underrated "Time After Time," in which H.G. Wells tracks Jack the Ripper.)
Still, if the movies can give us H.G. Wells as a real time traveller (“Time After Time”) and Abraham Lincoln as a vampire slayer (“Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”), why not a Poe who is a lover, a virile man of action, an amateur sleuth who sacrifices all for art and love?
I read the book some time ago (it's not my favourite of Moore's books, but it is fantastic), and, having seen the film adaptations of "V for Vendetta" and "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen", and having laughed my way through Snyder's "300", I wasn't expecting much.
One lord of the genre is a glowering, hairy Englishman named Alan Moore, the coauthor of “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” and “V for Vendetta.”
Snyder’s film is an extraordinarily mature, risky project for Hollywood to role the dice on, especially given similarly-complex explorations of social collapse and vigilantism (such as the 2005 adaptation of Alan Moore’s V For Vendetta ) have failed to do blockbuster numbers.
As with previous adaptations of his work (“From Hell,” “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen ” and “V for Vendetta”), Moore, no friend to Hollywood, has distanced himself from this much-anticipated take on his notoriously unfilmable magnum opus.
Written by Alan Moore (who refused to be credited on the movie due to his dissatisfaction with adaptations of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and V for Vendetta) and illustrated by Dave Gibbons, “Watchmen” was hailed as revolutionary in the comic book world.
Many expectant moviegoers had been describing McTeigue’s Poe film as Se7en in 19th Century Baltimore but, sadly, The Raven lacks nearly all the aspects that made David Fincher’s serial killer film so captivating – i.e. jaw-dropping reveals, smart twists, and – despite loads of Poe stories to pull from – intriguing murder scenes are all in short supply.
As noir stylings go, The Raven aims for the realm of David Fincher’s Se7en and ends up at about a two.
That it also feels like yet another Se7en knockoff makes the paradox complete.
It's a mishmash of Se7en-style serial killings – based on Poe's own stories – and a ponderous, wandering storyline that attempts to cram as much of the writer's known escapades into a shopworn framework of historical fiction.
This can work nicely, as in "Se7en," but in "The Raven," it is all concoction, a device to link Edgar Allan Poe with modern serial-killer formulas and shovel in a great deal of special-effects violence.
I must confess I’m confused about exactly why “The Raven’’ ends with hardrocking “Se7en’’style credits.
Fans of the book won’t love the quickened pace onscreen but will appreciate the book’s pop culture references in set props – a V for Vendetta poster on Augustus’ bedroom wall, the Hectic Glow on Hazel’s.
Screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber have remained faithful to John Green’s New York Times best seller, so much so that the only thing its hard-core fans can really take issue with is the fact that Shailene Woodley did not shave her head to make cancer-stricken heroine Hazel Grace look like Natalie Portman in “V for Vendetta” as Mr. Green had limned.
He has a “V for Vendetta” film poster over his bed, but we won’t hold that against him.
Once you get past that, it's easy to enjoy how the Wachowskis have condensed this rich story into a tighter package, cleaning things up and taking out what might have been unnecessary or confusing about Moore's original series, while borrowing bits from Tim Burton's "Batman" or "The Phantom of the Opera" to help new viewers relate.
And yet, despite its brilliant appeal, there's just something strange about V himself that's hard to shake - a smiling Guy Fawkes' mask, a Frenchman's flair for cooking, an interest in Scarlet Carson roses, and an obsession with "The Count of Monte Cristo," etc. that only compound the feeling of unease.
Like "The Matrix" itself, "V for Vendetta" (created by David Lloyd and Alan Moore in 1981 as a critique of then-prime minister Margaret Thatcher's conservative government) serves up a dense-pack amalgam of literary references, from, inevitably, George Orwell's "1984" to Alexandre Dumas' "The Count of Monte Cristo."