Jeannot Szwarc
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Connections, in both directions
Black's homages are also a nice touch: Gosling amusingly channels Lou Costello in panic-stricken mode at one point, and there's a glimpse of a billboard promoting Airport '77 and an early teaser ad for 1978's Jaws 2 (I'm guessing Universal Pictures paid Warner Bros. a hefty sum for those plugs, since Warner is behind The Nice Guys while Universal has both the Airport and Jaws franchises arriving on Blu-ray next month).
Our heroes, Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe) and Holland March (Ryan Gosling), pass a billboard for “Jaws 2,” which didn’t come out until the summer of 1978.
The movie is a straight-up noir, another of Black’s love-hate letters to Los Angeles, this one set in 1977, when the city was choking in smog and billboards for crummy sequels like Jaws 2 and Airport 1977 dotted Sunset Boulevard.
The real setting is a slightly anachronistic Los Angeles limbo where billboards for Airport ’77 and Jaws 2 tower over an intersection and worries about pollution, gas shortages, and killer bees are in the air.
Billboards trumpet the hottest movies: Jaws 2 , Airport 77 .
There, Christopher Reeve’s Superman stands side by side with Helen Slater’s Supergirl , while Nicolas Cage’s aborted take on the Man Of Steel is able to fight giant spiders in space while a dozen other characters and actors whiz by in a…um…flash.
Et quant à réactiver la nostalgie, autant faire appel à des effets numériques pour convoquer à la fête Helen Slater (la Supergirl des années 80) et même le regretté Christopher Reeve.
The possible answer to the dilemma of the missing Avengers is the film’s biggest joke, and I mean that literally since the dialogue will reference such fan favorites as “Back to the Future,” “Star Trek,” “X-Men,” “Terminator,” “Time After Time” “Somewhere in Time,” “About Time” (but not “Timecrimes” and “La Jetee,” the two coolest movies of that type ever made).
Before long, the surviving characters are ricocheting through the recent past, cheekily referencing movies like “Back to the Future” and “Somewhere in Time,” and reviving the classic would-you-kill-Hitler debate for the Thanos era.
In some of these realms, writer-director Jaco Van Dormael's film is a fancifully high-concept weepie that, at its best, occasionally recalls the sweeping and heart-wrenching melodrama of Somewhere in Time and The Fountain .
The old and stubbornly held Hollywood belief that a superhero movie starring a woman would flop was bolstered by some painful evidence: the critical and financial failures of Supergirl (1984), Tank Girl (1995), Catwoman (2004), and Elektra (2005).
The Age of Adaline (2015)
Directed by Lee Toland Krieger
influenced by Somewhere in Time (1980)
Visuals Themes
A less lofty, though no less charitable comparison might be made with the time-travel romance Somewhere in Time, while Adaline’s sturdy cross-cutting evokes Stanley Donen’s relationship puzzle Two for the Road; there’s even a scene here, surely no coincidence, set around 1967, with Lively driving a black convertible and meeting cute with a young man stranded on the English countryside.
Hollywood long ago ceded “love that stands the test of time” to the realm of science fiction and fantasy, so “The Age of Adaline” falls neatly into a genre that includes “The Time Traveler’s Wife,” “About Time,” and even “Somewhere in Time.”
"About Time" will never stand up as solid time-travel science-fiction any more than the cult romance "Somewhere in Time" did in 1980.
Even the title of the new effort from the creator of “Love, Actually” is a sad cliché, but the whole plot treads the same territory as “Somewhere in Time,” “The Lake House” and “The Time Traveler’s Wife,” and its mixture of whimsy and mawkishness is familiar, too.
I looked at Jurassic World as the Jaws 2 of the series.
In 1984, while the likes of Indiana Jones, the Ghostbusters and Gremlins were dominating the box office, one of the few superhero pictures of any note was the ill-fated “Supergirl.”
But movies like1980’s Somewhere in Time and The Final Countdown, two of the best, had plausible bases for the time travel.
Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
influenced by Somewhere in Time (1980)
Themes
As a sucker for time-travel romance (I’ve considered joining the dewy-eyed souls who make yearly pilgrimages to the lake where Christopher Reeve went loop-de-loop for Jane Seymour in Somewhere in Time ), I’m over the moon about this movie, which smooths out the psychological dissonances in Audrey Niffenegger’s fine novel but is still an emotional workout.
No one ever needs to watch Jaws 2 or Speed 2: Cruise Control for example.
Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025)
Directed by James Cameron
influenced by Somewhere in Time (1980)
Visuals
Think Christopher Reeve seeing that shiny brown penny in “Somewhere in Time.”
The Time Traveler's Wife (2009)
Directed by Robert Schwentke
influenced by Somewhere in Time (1980)
Themes
The same sort of temporal dislocation used in "The Lake House," "Somewhere in Time" and half the episodes of "Star Trek" is wielded more poetically in "The Time Traveler's Wife," from the novel by Audrey Niffenegger.
1978’s Jaws 2 is a mediocre rehash; Jaws 3D and Jaws: The Revenge are astonishingly bad.
Throw in healthy dollops of "Somewhere in Time" and Dante's "Inferno," and the concoction you'll get is something approximating "What Dreams May Come."
While it would seem that Chris' time in what turns out to be his own personal Heaven would allow us to reconnect with him, director Vincent Ward ("Map of the Human Heart") -- working from the screenplay by Ron Bass ("Rainman," "My Best Friend's Wedding") that's based on the novel by Richard Matheson ("Somewhere In Time," "The Legend of Hell House") -- instead focuses on the visual wonders of Chris' new world.
(Matheson also wrote the screenplays for The Incredible Shrinking Man and Somewhere in Time.)