David Michôd
48 connections found
View:
Connections, in both directions
The Godfather (1972)
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
influenced Animal Kingdom (2010)
Themes Characters
Like a claustrophobic "The Godfather" or an unvarnished "GoodFellas," "Animal Kingdom," the gritty debut film by writer-director David Michôd, is about family, loyalty and vengeance.
There’s a familiarity about this material, pitching itself as it does against the themes of The Godfather and Heat, but writer-director David Michôd proves specific indeed about this particular intersection of criminality and domesticity.
Played with great energy by Sullivan Stapleton, cocaine-loving Craig is reminiscent of James Caan's Sonny in The Godfather – handsome, impulsive, doomed.
Any movie about a crime family is destined to echo previous entries in the genre, from The Godfather to The Sopranos.
Speaking as a sucker for nicely staged, extremely medieval sequences of repulsive, scarring, horrible war, The King brought to mind everything from Braveheart to Lord of the Rings — and Game of Thrones , especially in one harrowing, suffocating scene.
Both movies trade in the same sort of muscular, woodsmoke-and-chainmail melodrama, though the more recent one roots its pedigree not in Braveheart -adjacent history but in Shakespeare: specifically Henry IV and V .
That’s where the movie is different from, say, “Braveheart.”
It’s not helped that most of his performance is incredibly one-note, never rising above a gravelly octave until the battle heavy third act (with the customary Braveheart speech – as you do).
In the most glaring instance, Chalamet gets to do a rousing pre-battle speech that will surely warm the hearts of many a Brexiteer–think Viggo in Return of The King or Gibson in Braveheart .
Pero la impronta del cineasta es casi inexistente, efectista en el mejor de los casos, como pasaba con aquella El rey proscrito que aspiraba inútilmente a la épica de Braveheart.
There are markers of comparison along the way?Natasha Braier's (2014's " The Rover ") intoxicating cinematography and saturated color scheme remind of Terrence Malick by way of Dario Argento's 1977 masterpiece " Suspiria ," while the portrayal of Hollywood's soul-devouring politics is not unlike 2014's " Starry Eyes "?but these are superficial at best once the trailblazing Refn has his way with the material.
Secuencia tras secuencia, Refn y la cinefotógrafa argentina, Natasha Braier (La teta asustada, 2009; The Rover, 2014), encierran a los personajes en una especie de penumbra habitada por los sonidos electrónicos, ensordecedores y sublimes de Cliff Martinez, y las luces de neón.
But cinematographer Natasha Braier's ("The Rover") camera pulls back to reveal amateur photographer Dean (Karl Glusman, "Stonewall") snapping away.
Natasha Braier, who most recently shot The Rover , favours locked off shots and frames-within-frames, but it all amounts to very little in terms of a consistent aesthetic; what stands out are singular, disparate shots.
Animal Kingdom also shares a trans-Pacific vibe with Michel Mann's 1981 Thief, another study of criminal mentality from the inside.
Chimes at Midnight (1965)
Directed by Orson Welles
influenced The King (2019)
Plot Themes Characters
In one of several nods to Orson Welles’s Chimes at Midnight (aka Falstaff), Falstaff becomes the moral center of the movie and the fictional figure stringing together bits of history and scraps of storylines from Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part I and II and Henry V. (This film’s Battle of Agincourt at times resembles Welles’s Battle of Shrewsbury.)
For fellow members of the Shakespeare on Film Fan Club, it complements Orson Welles’ 1965 film Chimes at Midnight and its take on the Henry plays.
There will never be a greater movie Falstaff than Orson Welles, the star and brightly burning center of his own 1965 Chimes at Midnight.
Also sidestepping a poorly attempted replication of the ultimate version of his character (Orson Welles in “Chimes at Midnight,” that is) Edgerton as a larger-than-life, irritable yet subtle Falstaff wisely reminds Hal the reality of his situation: “A king has no friends.
“The King” tells a version of their story that falls somewhere between “Henry V,” most recently filmed to great and glorious effect by Kenneth Branagh, and Orson Welles’ 1960s compression of the “Henriad” plays about Hal and Falstaff, “Chimes at Midnight.”
The Henry plays have been adapted to the screen before, including Welles’s dazzling “Chimes at Midnight” (he plays Falstaff) and Gus Van Sant’s liberal appropriation (or bowdlerization) for “My Own Private Idaho.”
Netflix Robert Pattinson channels Monty Python and the Holy Grail as the French dauphin in The King.
In this film it seems the actor has finally realised his limitations and based his performance on a careful study of Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975).
Only God Forgives (2013)
Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn
influenced by Animal Kingdom (2010)
Characters
Scott Thomas has never had a role quite like this to sink her teeth into before, and the typically even-keeled star relishes the opportunity to play such an arch matriarch (though she’s no match for Jacki Weaver’s cunningly manipulative mama bear in “Animal Kingdom”).
Easily one of the nastiest matriarchs in cinema history, Crystal is as ruthless as Jacki Weaver's Mama Smurf in Animal Kingdom , and as imperious as Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest , but way nastier than either.
What’s more, once the initial jolt has worn off, Crystal isn’t nearly as interesting as, say, Jacki Weaver’s character in “ Animal Kingdom ,” a criminal den-mother of fascinating contradictions.
In a mad turn of casting against type, Scott Thomas electrifies, trash talking with a broad American accent in the kind of mean matriarch role that delivered Jacki Weaver an Oscar nomination for "Animal Kingdom."
Living up to the hype surrounding his role in The King, Timothée Chalamet gives a star-making turn as a youthful, tormented Henry V—transforming from a louche booze artist with father issues into a heroic warrior who despises war.
The King arrives on screen 30 years after Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V. Branagh’s film addresses the tenor of the Margaret Thatcher era by presenting a grungy, harsh reality, but it manages to build to peaks of regal heroism anyway.
Likewise, forget expecting anything akin to Kenneth Branagh's airless, but much lauded 1989 re-enactment of Henry V .
The King is the muddiest and bloodiest take yet on Henry V.
Honour is at the centre of this take on Henry IV Parts I & II and Henry V with (Ronan's Little Women and Lady Bird co-star) Timothée Chalamet playing the wastrel Prince Henry, who grudgingly ascends to the throne and then has to figure out whether his most dangerous enemies are across the Channel or much closer to home.
They punch metal and eat dirt until The King‘s body count outpaces Hamlet’s.
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991)
Directed by Kevin Reynolds
influenced The King (2019)
Characters
Pattinson is having the most fun and like a French (ridiculously) accented Alan Rickman in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves , he seems to exist in another film altogether.
Robert Pattinson, playing the foppish Dauphin, struts into The King like he’s just walked off the set of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves .
It was only two years ago that David Michôd’s historical war film The King arrived at the Venice Film Festival to bless us all with the unhinged madness of Robert Pattinson’s performance as the Dauphin of France.
But Ben Affleck, despite having a smaller role, is a devious surprise, echoing Robert Pattinson’s French prince in The King.
This casting choice felt especially stale so soon after seeing the brilliant new David Copperfield starring Dev Patel, which told a historical English story with a diverse cast.
Paul Thomas Anderson followed up his breakout hit "Boogie Nights" with 1999’s MAGNOLIA, a 3+-hour ensemble film featuring a treatise on coincidence and frogs falling from the sky.
How does this film compare to other Shakespeare-inspired works with a modern-day spin, such as Romeo + Juliet or 10 Things I Hate About You ?
Flouting the nobility-of-war theme of the History Plays, and the iconic dimension that made Laurence Olivier’s 1944 Henry V a rallying post for the British war effort in World War Two, Michôd’s film is a determinedly solemn and violent affair, which makes a sober political point at the end – but not before it has treated us to two hours of bleakly realistic historical reconstruction and some lugubrious drama.
If this doesn’t sound like the Henry V you remember from the movies, it’s because Sir Laurence Olivier’s version of Henry V cemented a different version of the character in the popular consciousness.
In Laurence Olivier’s 1944 film of “Henry V,” the St. Crispin’s Day speech is directed at a country fighting Hitler.
It’s a classic boy-to-man arc, and while Chalamet must surely soon get sick of playing boys who suffer beautifully and then become men (as he did in 2017’s Call Me By Your Name and 2018’s Beautiful Boy ), he commits himself to the role with admirable zeal.
I rhapsodized over his performance in Beautiful Boy , ending with the question, “How’s his iambic pentameter?
Chalamet is a talented young actor, and it’s impressive how quickly his stock has risen based on his performances in Beautiful Boy, Lady Bird and Call Me By Your Name.
And he telegraphs Henry's misery beautifully, as will come as no surprise to fans of his from Call Me By Your Name or Lady Bird or Beautiful Boy .
When Pattinson appears on screen, doing an awful French accent that he may have learnt from watching John Malkovich's turn as Pascal Sauvage in Johnny English , things take a turn for the worse.
It’s as if they weren’t paying attention when fellow Australian Baz Luhrmann taught the world his greatest lesson: It’s hard to improve on the Bard, but if you’ve somehow managed to score Venice Beach, pre-“Titanic” Leonardo DiCaprio, and the rights to Radiohead’s “Talk Show Host,” then you should milk them for everything they’re worth.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The King is one of those aristocrats-bloviating-in-firelit-castles movies ( The Lion in Winter , things Kenneth Branagh directed in the ’90s, miscellaneous Elizabeth s, etc.) mixed with a classic, gory battle epic.
David Michôd’s The King seeks to fill the gap in a dying genre, a genre that has been waiting to be restored to glory since the days of Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven .