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Connections, in both directions
The movie Boiler Room, which dealt with very similar subject matter, was heavily influenced by this movie.)
Populated by 25-year-old, overnight millionaires who wear their testosterone on the sleeves of their tailored Armani suits, this is an imposing, vigorous and pulsating picture that could have been mighty and portentous if writer-director Ben Younger hadn't cribbed half the script from "Wall Street" and "Glengarry Glen Ross."
Before Greg launches into his "Always Be Closing" spiel (which Younger lifted from David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross), he says to Seth, "You've seen Glengarry Glen Ross, right?"
"Boiler Room" is not so much a rip-off of "Wall Street" and "Glengarry Glen Ross" as it is more like the birthchild of those films.
Ben Younger's debut film takes a different direction than the references it and its characters incessantly quote ("Wall Street" and "Glengarry Glen Ross").
Maybe not, but it's hard not to be taken in by the chutzpah and chops of Ben Younger, whose debut film Boiler Room is an MTV-generation retooling of Wall Street, Glengarry Glen Ross, and The Firm, with all but the last acknowledged in cinematic footnotes.
Death of a Salesman (1985)
Directed by Volker Schlöndorff
influenced Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)
Themes
Not so poignant as "Death of a Salesman," to which it's often compared, the drama really has more in common with Barry Levinson's "Tin Men."
The piece itself is a modern classic: Mamet's revisiting of the themes of Death of a Salesman with the added disillusionment of the 1980s and enough profanity to choke a motherfucker.
In her sheer black panty hose, the kind women haven't worn onscreen since her mother Melanie Griffith starred in Working Girl , she did look born to play the part.
The movie itself invites these comparisons, when it has Johnson’s character Anastasia Steele, the virginal heroine of the Fifty Shades franchise who is inducted into an education in sexual bondage at the hands of Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan), pay homage to Working Girl after winning a sudden promotion.
27. There’s a little homage to Johnson’s mom, Melanie Griffith, and her signature movie, Working Girl.
One of the more delightfully absurd flourishes finds Anastasia abruptly promoted to publishing executive and Johnson responds by reciting one of her mom Melanie Griffith’s monologues from Working Girl .
Director Jamie Foley’s soft-core erotica includes Anastasia and Christian at a masked ball, evoking Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut , cheapening it, too.
Even a masked ball – with guests who wear those masks with long pointy curved noses – that conjures thoughts of Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut is handled poorly by director James Foley.
(About that costume ball set piece: The last thing you should want to remind people of during a movie like this is Eyes Wide Shut .)
Director James Foley seems to be nodding toward Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut in the masked ball sequence.
The masked ball sequence tries oh-so-very-hard to mimic the intrigue of Eyes Wide Shut.
That's why his parents throw a benefit party for kids what were hurt by people, a masquerade ball that, disappointingly, is nothing like "Eyes Wide Shut" - all Christian and Ana do is sneak off for a missionary mattress-hop in his old bedroom, beneath his framed "Chronicles of Riddick" poster.
The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
Directed by Martin Scorsese
influenced by Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)
Dialogue Themes
These are reminiscent of Alec Baldwin's scathing monologue at the beginning of Glengarry Glen Ross but, instead of galvanizing an audience for ten minutes, DiCaprio does it for three hours.
Still, considering how familiar this milieu of fast-talking, hard-selling hucksters is from the likes of “Wall Street,” “American Psycho,” “Boiler Room” (which was also inspired by the Belfort case) and “Glengarry Glen Ross,” it’s surprising how lively Scorsese manages to keep things throughout.
Natural comparisons will fly to Oliver Stone’s Wall Street, which is accurate, but you can see subtle hints of films like Trading Places, Glengarry Glen Ross, and even American Psycho at times.
In the inadvertent one, the film pays bizarre homage to, of all things, the feminist touchstone film “An Unmarried Woman” by having Christian sitting at a piano and singing Paul McCartney’s “Maybe I’m Amazed” just as Jill Clayburgh did in the earlier film, effectively taking the single whitest scene in film history and somehow making it even whiter in the process.
The Big Kahuna (1999)
Directed by John Swanbeck
influenced by Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)
Themes Plot
The rest of the cast is extremely talented as well, Ed Harris "A Beautiful Mind" as Dave Moss, Alan Arkin of "Gattaca" as George Aaronow, Kevin Spacey of "The Big Kahuna," as John Williamson, Alec Baldwin of "Pearl Harbor" as Blake and Jonathan Pryce of "The Suicide Club") as James Lingk.
Based on the play Hospitality Suite, The Big Kahuna joins earlier Spacey projects such as Glengarry Glen Ross and Hurlyburly as a transfer from stage to screen.
Larry and Phil may look the heirs of Willy Loman, or like cousins of the venal, harried real estate salesmen in Glengarry Glen Ross , but Kahuna has prey on its mind beyond the dark side of the American Dream.
Think of "The Big Kahuna" as "Glengarry Glen Ross" meets "The Breakfast Club", and you get the idea.
Conceptually, "The Big Kahuna" tries to use the corporate sales industry as a metaphor for the human condition something that has already been done (and done much better) in David Mamet's "Glengarry Glen Ross."
In particular, to his treatment of the dog-eat-dog world of salesmen, "Glengarry Glen Ross".
Members of the production have compared it to Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, to David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross , and to a couple of John Huston classics: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and The Man Who Would Be King .
Gaghan’s functional direction always seems just short of a perceived “American Hustle” meets “Glengarry Glen Ross” goal: peppy but never exhilarating about its office scenes, honest about the harshness of its jungle sequence but hardly evocative, and regarding McConaughey’s natural showiness, less an ally than an enabler.
With reverberations of no less than The Treasure of Sierra Madre , Death of a Salesman and even Glengarry Glen Ross , the story has McConaughey at the center as the ever-energetic Kenny Wells, toiling for his dad’s respectable mining company in Reno.
A Most Violent Year (2014)
Directed by J.C. Chandor
influenced by Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)
Dialogue Visuals Themes
Gifted with a big, Oscar-bait scene in which Abel methodically explains to a trio of wide-eyed new recruits how to secure new customers—a rewrite of Alec Baldwin’s Glengarry Glen Ross monologue—Isaac finds just the right mix of superciliousness and a true believer’s sincerity— the same combination that buoys his entire performance.
If Chandor’s promising 2011 debut, “Margin Call,” could loosely be described as a Wall Street transposition of David Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen Ross,” “A Most Violent Year” seems to have been steeped overnight in a solution equal parts Sidney Lumet and Lumet’s consummate latter-day reinterpreter, James Gray.
See James Foley’s “Glengarry Glen Ross,” Mike Judge’s “Office Space,” or Jason Reitman’s “Up In The Air,” all three very different films but all using the mundane to startling effect.
But he does have one explosive scene, vaguely reminiscent of his character Blake, the intimidating sales manager in the classic "Glengarry Glen Ross" from 1992.
Even the underrated erotic drama Scorned starring Shannon Tweed offers more entertainment value and sexiness combined than any of the Fifty Shades films combined.
Margin Call (2011)
Directed by J.C. Chandor
influenced by Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)
Themes Dialogue Characters
This is not “Glengarry Glen Ross,” with venal salesman and savage banter.
This is not Glengarry Glen Ross, with venal salesman and savage banter.
I would guess that he has studied David Mamet’s work, digesting the dramatic value of repetition and silence in, say, “Glengarry Glen Ross,” along with the play’s stunned outrage and the characters’ strangely displaced, almost disembodied reactions as some appalling reality swings into view.
Chandor’s fast-paced, cut-throat dialogue is reminiscent of David Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen Ross,” as action is primarily confined to the office building.
It's an actors' showcase not unlike "Glengarry Glen Ross" where the mettle of a man is found in his ethics and ruthlessness, or lack thereof.
Within the artful fluctuations of heroism and villainy, Spacey stands out with a performance that evokes memories of "Glengarry Glen Ross."
And finally, it was the first American multiplex film to feature S&M (unless Secretary counts?)—and while it was never quite as grandly kinky as one might’ve hoped, let’s just say it was soft-core-porn adjacent.
The 2002 film " Secretary ," also about a dom-sub relationship involving a Mr. Grey, portrayed fear, desire, humor, simultaneously.
A subversive foray into kink à la Secretary ?
But if the first Shades felt like a slicker, glossier, but far less fun version of 2002's Secretary , then this feels closer to The Blacklist , with Johnson's Anastasia led in and out trouble by the dominant Red, sorry Grey.
It’s all wrong!”; regrettably, she doesn’t get up and leave for a much better kinky movie (like maybe Secretary or Belle de Jour ), where she can get what she obviously craves without her choice of master making our collective stomachs crawl.
The ingenious dialogue dominates, providing something akin to the early work of David Mamet (see 1987’s “House of Games” and “Glengarry Glen Ross”).
Part douchebag boyfriend and part Jack Lemmon in Glengarry Glen Ross , Rex has a persistence only matched by the dickishness written for him.
The Boy Next Door (2015)
Directed by Rob Cohen
influenced by Fear (1996), Fifty Shades Darker (2017)
Plot
Rob Cohen’s “The Boy Next Door” is an unintentionally funny resurrection of the “Fatal Attraction” template, but it actually bears a closer resemblance to “Fear,” James Foley’s 1996 pseudo-thriller in which Mark Wahlberg, then just beginning his big-screen career, played a handsome young man who became dangerously obsessed with a sweet high-school student played by none other than Reese Witherspoon, whose resume was also pretty thin at the time.
1987's "Fatal Attraction," 1996's "Fear," and a whole lineage of similarly plotted "...From Hell" thrillers welcome a new descendant with "The Boy Next Door," producer Jason Blum's latest micro-budget effort from genre-centric Blumhouse Productions.
Fatal Attraction, Single White Female, whatever that one with Mark Wahlberg was called (it was called Fear, I’m just trying to pretend like I don’t remember it); In recent years, though, the subgenre seems to have fallen out of favor, except on Lifetime probably.
With someone like Rob Cohen in charge ( The Boy Next Door , anyone?), all those flatlining dramatics and misplaced jokes would gel together.
Instead of Raymond Chandler or playwright Mamet (“Glengarry Glen Ross”), Beall’s dialogue is reminiscent of the witless cop banter on TV’s “Hawaii Five-O.”
Not so poignant as "Death of a Salesman," to which it's often compared, the drama really has more in common with Barry Levinson's "Tin Men."
In its own way, the film is a bittersweet drama, a sort of "Glengarry Glen Ross" without the vitriol.
In one crosscut sequence, he focuses on Anastasia as she remembers an earlier session with Christian, a clever dance between past and present (and a nod, perhaps, to the commuter-train sequence that earned Diane Lane an Oscar nomination for one of the genre’s classics, Unfaithful ).
The Big Short (2015)
Directed by Adam McKay
influenced by Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)
Dialogue Themes
I’ll admit that what I expected, or wanted, was something like “Glengarry Glen Ross,” in which there was lots of tough talk that revealed the toughness of the business.
Excellent too is Ryan Gosling as a fast talking trader whose spiel (with the assistance of Jenga blocks) on the trash value of those subprime bonds that were barley propping the housing market a scene of the year candidate of Glengarry Glen Ross proportions.
The great American tradition of filling one’s pockets with other people’s money has inspired milestones from “Glengarry Glen Ross” to “Ocean’s Eleven,” “Wall Street” and “The Wolf of Wall Street.”