George Clooney
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Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
influenced The Monuments Men (2014)
Visuals Themes Music Plot
Had these two iconic works really been the object of the film’s quest, The Monuments Men might have played with the single-minded authority of Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, another obvious influence (right down to the final scene, a brazen theft of Spielberg’s visual uplift).
Clooney and his cast mates (Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Cate Blanchett, Bob Balaban, Hugh Bonneville and Jean Dujardin) make a fine-looking international ensemble, even if sometimes the movie’s star power, combined with overly familiar war-movie scenes, sometimes feels like Oceans 11 plus Saving Private Ryan divided by Raiders of the Lost Ark.
What might have been a "Raiders of the Lost Ark" period romp through or "Inglourious Basterds"-style re-imagining of World War II-era themes is instead a nostalgic but lethargic ode to conventional star-driven and old-fashioned storytelling.
Likewise, with composer Alexandre Desplat’s arrangements seeming to echo John Williams’ iconic score from Raiders of the Lost Ark early on, it’s easy to suspect that we’re in for a rousing adventure though war-ravaged Europe.
In this case, “old” encompasses propaganda films from the ’40s, all-star flicks such as “The Great Escape” from the ’60s and Steven Spielberg’s retro “Raiders of the Lost Ark” from 1981.
I don’t think so, because I was sorta hoping for something like Raiders of the Lost Ark meets Ocean’s Eleven, and this certainly does not qualify.
Broadcast News (1987)
Directed by James L. Brooks
influenced Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005)
Themes
Essentially an homage to crusading newscaster pioneer Edward R. Murrow, the film pines for a yesteryear when truth seeking and candor triumphantly ruled the television air waves—themes more subtly and humorously explored in Paddy Chevsky's Network and James L. Brooks' Broadcast News.
Without venturing onto a tundra of spoilers, “The Midnight Sky” recalls the human connection concerns of Denis Villeneuve’s “Arrival,” or Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar,” as well as the various versions of the survival thriller “I Am Legend.”
Sci-fi fanboys will no doubt find The Midnight Sky too solemn, and its echoes of movies like Interstellar , The Martian and Ad Astra don't always play in its favor.
And who could forget Matt Damon in 2015’s The Martian and Matthew McConaughey in 2014’s Interstellar ?
But the film often feels less like its own distinct narrative than a sort of greatest-hits amalgam of movies like The Martian , Gravity, Interstellar, Ad Astra , and all the others that came before; one more long-haul tale of lonely astronauts and contrails in the cosmos.
It’s much, much closer to Interstellar for me.
The story itself teeters between being overly derivative and disarmingly earnest, with earlier efforts like Interstellar , the aforementioned Gravity , The Martian , 2001: A Space Odyssey , and Moon all touched on as the film progresses.
This tale of political compromise is something that we've all pretty much seen before, starting with Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, speeding through my high school classroom screenings of The Candidate, and lasting all the way up through the remake of All the King's Men.
Sci-fi fanboys will no doubt find The Midnight Sky too solemn, and its echoes of movies like Interstellar , The Martian and Ad Astra don't always play in its favor.
And who could forget Matt Damon in 2015’s The Martian and Matthew McConaughey in 2014’s Interstellar ?
But the film often feels less like its own distinct narrative than a sort of greatest-hits amalgam of movies like The Martian , Gravity, Interstellar, Ad Astra , and all the others that came before; one more long-haul tale of lonely astronauts and contrails in the cosmos.
In scenes set in 2049 that recycle bits of “The Martian” and “Gravity,” astronauts aboard the Aether race to return to Earth after a long voyage to find a habitable planet named K23.
Essentially, it’s a middle ground between the pulse-pounding intensity of Gravity and the “sciencing the shit out of things” fun of The Martian .
You know what you’re in for in the opening minutes, where Clooney, playing a man named Augustine, is all alone, like Matt Damon in “The Martian” or the boyhood Ebenezer Scrooge left behind for the holidays at boarding school.
The Suburbicon of Suburbicon is one of those Norman Rockwell facsimiles of small-town America, just a hair left of Pleasantville on the unreality spectrum.
"Suburbicon" is a grotesque Frankenstein's monster stitched together from parts of "Pleasantville," "Fargo," "Far From Heaven" and "The Informant!," which are all great films, but this meaningless pastiche has no idea what it actually wants to say.
From canonical classics like Mike Nichols ’s The Graduate and Sam Mendes’s American Beauty to genre-bending comedies like Peter Weir’s The Truman Show and Gary Ross’s Pleasantville , the suburban satire is nothing short of a cinematic staple.
The first few minutes of this film had me thinking it was a remake of the brilliant 1998 comedy, Pleasantville .
Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
influenced The Monuments Men (2014)
Themes Plot
What might have been a "Raiders of the Lost Ark" period romp through or "Inglourious Basterds"-style re-imagining of World War II-era themes is instead a nostalgic but lethargic ode to conventional star-driven and old-fashioned storytelling.
Based on the 2009 book by Robert M. Edsel, the real-life story of the Monuments Men is practically tailor-made for the big screen; a unique slant on the typical WWII film that, at least on paper, appeared to be equal parts “Ocean’s Eleven” and “Inglourious Basterds.”
In Inglourious Basterds , his version of The Dirty Dozen , Quentin Tarantino fantasized that the Jews rose to kill Hitler.
But the crazy-guys-at-war genre has recently been blown over the top by Quentin Tarantino, in “Inglourious Basterds,” and parodied by Ben Stiller, in “Tropic Thunder.”
All that’s missing for a true Ocean’s Eleven reunion is Brad Pitt, but he probably got his fill of WWII hijinks back with Inglourious Basterds, which The Monuments Men plays like a more stately, watered-down version of (even going so far as to include Cate Blanchett as a French resistance member who could pass for Mélanie Laurent’s bookish older sister).
Despite a passing reference to John Wayne — and what feels like a hopeful invocation of Wayne’s later work with Howard Hawks — the characters are less “El Dorado” types and more like Cutie (Mr. Damon), Goofy (Mr. Murray), Starchy (Mr. Balaban), Boozy (Hugh Bonneville as Donald Jeffries), Frenchy (Jean Dujardin as Jean Claude Clermont) and Jewish Guy (Dimitri Leonidas as Sam Epstein).
Think of Aaron Sorkin’s “The American President” (and the years of “The West Wing” that followed, on TV).
Finch (2021)
Directed by Miguel Sapochnik
influenced by The Midnight Sky (2020)
Plot Themes Characters
As long as we’re making comparisons to other things, Finch is also reminiscent of last year’s The Midnight Sky , in which a dying George Clooney treks across a frozen expanse on a mission of triage, trying to rescue at least one small thing (or, a few people) as humanity enters its final stage of collapse.
In many ways, Finch , due for cinema release last October but which has now largely bypassed the multiplex and found a home on Apple TV+, is a companion piece to last year’s moody George Clooney vehicle The Midnight Sky which told a similar understated story of one ailing man finding a reason to stay alive in his last days in a world no longer fit for purpose.
Sapochnik has delved into bleak futures before, with his 2010 brutal forced-organ-donation capitalist satire Repo Men, but Finch is much closer to last year’s The Midnight Sky, in which George Clooney stared at his own incoming invisible apocalypse.
Compare Finch to George Clooney's disastrously patronizing The Midnight Sky , another post-apocalyptic take on a father and his fake kid that fails almost immediately because Clooney is good at being Clooney but not as good at being Tom Hanks.
Like George Clooney in last year’s The Midnight Sky , this provides the veteran actor with a chance to really stretch his legs and demonstrate he still has plenty to offer Hollywood as a leading man, while delivering a performance that has nuance and depth.
Adapted from a screenplay by Carey Van Dyke and Shane Van Dyke, grandsons of Dick Van Dyke, the film inevitably prompts comparisons to The Stepford Wives , with a hint of George Clooney’s paranoid black comedy Suburbicon (2017).
But its mostly the work of Sam Rockwell ( Galaxy Quest , The Green Mile ) that makes this movie so fascinating.
Rockwell has established himself as a memorable character actor, with nifty turns as a condemned killer in "The Green Mile" and a skittish crewman in the parody "Galaxy Quest."
An actor who rarely tests himself (“Galaxy Quest,” “The Green Mile”), Rockwell swallows all of his go-for-joke traits, and becomes Chuck Barris in a way that’s artistic and impressive.
Chuck Barris (Sam Rockwell, "The Green Mile") is known for introducing such shows as "The Newlywed Game," 'based on the belief that marrieds would sell each other out for a major appliance,' to American television.
Typically a supporting player in films like "Galaxy Quest" and "The Green Mile", here Mr. Rockwell creates a complete vision of Barris without resorting to imitation or caricature.
Without venturing onto a tundra of spoilers, “The Midnight Sky” recalls the human connection concerns of Denis Villeneuve’s “Arrival,” or Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar,” as well as the various versions of the survival thriller “I Am Legend.”
She roars through this political drama, as glamorously cynical as his 2011 directorial effort The Ides of March, and plays a morally conflicted Washington lobbyist similar to the guilty corporate fixer he rode to an Oscar nomination in Michael Clayton.
Amidst adaptations, remakes, prequels and sequels, political thrillers (“Argo,” “The Ides of March“) are hard to come by these days.
Half of the film sees him channelling both Iñárritu and DiCaprio, as he drops himself into a kind of polar spin on The Revenant (scripted by the writer of the actual Revenant , Mark L. Smith).
His previous work on The Revenant is a clue about the vibe here.
Returning to the screen for the first time in four years, Clooney and a committed ensemble cast lead a film that so desperately wants to be the sci-fi version of The Revenant , they hired the same screenwriter, Mark L. Smith.
In "The Midnight Sky," astutely adapted by "The Revenant" screenwriter Mark L. Smith from "Good Morning, Midnight," the 2016 novel by Lily Brooks-Dalton, Clooney plays Augustine, an astronomer who sacrificed his personal life to get lost in the stars.
And yet as moving as it can be, largely due to Clooney’s melancholy stoic resolve, Mark L. Smith’s (“The Revenant”) adaptation of Lily Brooks-Dalton’s novel ‘Good Morning, Midnight’ always feels like something we have experienced before.
The adaptation by Mark L. Smith (“The Revenant”) features frustrating lapses in credibility.
Arriving just before Christmas in a similar release slot to Bird Box , The Midnight Sky will be looking to be a similar draw for Netflix viewers this year.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Directed by Michel Gondry
influenced by Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002)
Charlie Kaufman, the phenom screenwriter whose bizarre meta-films (Being John Malkovich and Adaptation) have attracted more attention than his less self-conscious stories (Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Human Nature, the latter also directed by Michel Gondry), now tries combine the two, in a way.
Since then, in "Human Nature," "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" and most of all "Adaptation," he's taken audiences on roundabout pleasure trips, finding inspiration in the dark mazes of the mind.
Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, who devised the story with Pierre Bismuth and director Michel Gondry, usually specializes in being too hip for the room -- or the mainstream room, anyway (see Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, or Confessions of a Dangerous Mind).
Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman ("Being John Malkovich," "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" and "Adaptation)") puts rubber face Jim Carrey back in the arthouse with his aggravated timeline pastiche of a romantic comedy in which all memory of a person can be removed with a computer program.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is the latest film from the twisted mind of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, the man behind Being John Malkovich, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Adaptation.
Charlie Kaufman's screenplay titles?Being John Malkovich, Human Nature, Adaptation, Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind, and the new Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind?each have either a metaphysical or an anthropological ring, either of which amounts to a detached sense of looking in from the outside.
That story point echoes the premise of “Ad Astra,” except in this case there’s a weird fuzziness to it: After “the event,” the people on Earth really do need a place to go — but the Aether began its voyage long before.
Before delving into Anomalisa (a created word used by the main character), realize that Kaufman has written only a smattering of theatrical motion pictures: Being John Malkovich; Synecdoche, New York; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; Confessions of a Dangerous Mind; Human Nature; and this new one.
“Adaptation,” “Being John Malkovich” and even “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind” are there, too.
The dreamy, heartbreaking fantasy of having it all and realizing it is just a mirage is just as pungent as it was in Kaufman’s Oscar winning “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” “Adaptation,” “Being John Malkovich” and even “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind” are there, too.
Like Michel Gondry , with whom he collaborated on 2004’s brilliant Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind , Kaufman’s work is best when mediated by the input of others; from director Spike Jonze, with whom he worked on Being John Malkovich (1999) and Adaptation (2002), to George Clooney, who directed 2002’s underrated Confessions of a Dangerous Mind .
Antes de su debut como director con Synecdoche, New York (2008), sus guiones, entre los que se encuentran Being John Malkovich (1999), Adaptation (2002), Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002) y Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), tenían su sello personal volviéndose muy común hablar de “una película de Charlie Kaufman” de la manera autoral que generalmente está reservada sólo para los directores.
The people of Suburbicon are less intrigued after a home invasion sees Gardner Lodge (Matt Damon, The Great Wall), his sister-in-law Margaret (Julianne Moore, Kingsman: The Golden Circle) and son Nicky (Noah Jupe, TV’s Houdini and Doyle) have their lives fundamentally changed.