Gore Verbinski
267 connections found
Filmography
The Ring 2002 
The Lone Ranger 2013 
Rango 2011 
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest 2006 
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End 2007 
A Cure for Wellness 2017 
The Weather Man 2005 
The Mexican 2001 
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl 2003 
MouseHunt 1997 
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die 2026 View:
Connections, in both directions
…especially as it dives into the past of the Man’s sidekicks like bite-sized Black Mirror episodes…
These flashback sequences effectively play like Black Mirror episodes…
At the same time, large stretches of “Don’t Die” feel like an overextended “Black Mirror” concept that never quite graduated beyond the brainstorming phase.
…bite-sized Black Mirror episodes…
Inevitably, the film will be compared to Black Mirror; much like Charlie Brooker’s anthology, the writing toes the line between sharp observations of modern life and the darkest black comedy.
While this part feels a bit like a less-inspired Black Mirror episode…
With its references to classic spaghetti westerns, Johnny Depp films, and “Chinatown,” most critics have reason to cheer.
The more you know about movies, the cleverer and funnier the movie is, especially when you realize that the central plot is Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974)—right down to a corrupt politico (Ned Beatty) who’s nothing more, nor less than John Huston’s Noah Cross in the form of a turtle.
The question before us: For whom is this blend of spaghetti Western and “Chinatown” meant?
It is not a coincidence that the mayor (voiced by Ned Beatty) sounds like the evil John Huston character from Chinatown as the film makes an obvious nod toward that film classic as well as the numerous western themes that show up.
Sadly, this irreverent western gallery of personified animals can't quite sustain its gonzo verve for feature length (it's all too easy to see through the plot to the lurking Chinatown revelation, although a third act cameo sets a high water mark of awesome, especially for fans of Deadwood), but it's still as genuinely idiosyncratic and effortlessly entertaining as the best of big-budget family features.
Johnny Depp gives voice to a chameleon who fibs his way into becoming sheriff of a desert outpost; the eccentric residents are plagued by a long drought and assorted predators, the most menacing of whom is a two-faced, water-hoarding mayor (Ned Beatty, channeling John Huston in Chinatown).
The Shining (1980)
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
influenced A Cure for Wellness (2017), The Ring (2002)
Visuals Themes
Director Gore Verbinski establishes a nice, moody setting, making a few quiet nods towards The Shining and concentrating on the overall theme rather than sudden jolts or roller-coaster thrills.
This Westernized, subtitle-free version comprises a pastiche of horror hooks, from pretty, petrified teens (lifted from any slasher epic or Don't Say a Word) to the standard creepy moppet (via The Shining and The Sixth Sense) to boob-tube bogeys (à la Videodrome and Poltergeist) to some good ol' family fun akin to that of V.C. Andrews (Flowers in the Attic).
There is the well from "The Amityville Horror," spooky telepathic kids from "The Shining" and deafening television snow from "Poltergeist," not to mention an apartment building homage to "Rear Window."
I wish that Verbinski had further explored the images supplied by the screenplay; he might have come up with something metaphysical in the mystery of the tape, resembling the patterns in Bergman's hotel in The Silence or Kubrick's in The Shining.
The visual cues are from Kubrick and Hitchcock — imagery suggesting “The Shining” and “A Clockwork Orange” and Hitch’s “Spellbound.”
Lockhart’s journey into darkness obviously mirrors Jonathan Harker’s own lurid adventure in Bram Stoker’s vampire tale, but the movie is also heavily influenced by Stanley Kubrick’s visions of sterile hallways and maddeningly kind servants with wicked smiles in The Shining.
The Terminator (1984)
Directed by James Cameron
influenced Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die (2026)
Themes Plot Characters
The stakes are sky high, with humanity’s fate hanging in the balance in a scenario that feels ripped straight out of “The Terminator.”
…it’s easy to feel like the robot apocalypse promised upon humanity by “The Matrix” and “The Terminator” is days away from our doorstep.
Movies warning about AI featuring a man from the future aren’t exactly groundbreaking; just look at The Terminator…
No shade to Arnold Schwarzenegger, but Sam Rockwell makes for a way more compelling figure from the future who is on a mission in the past than any versions of the Terminator.
…he’s doing a John Connor from The Terminator…
He’s not a stoic machine like The Terminator…
…a Groundhog Day/Edge of Tomorrow-style loop…
…until the stranger pulls the Groundhog Day trick of telling them everything he knows about them.
The film cleverly blends the reset mechanics of Groundhog Day with the fatalistic time-loop tension of 12 Monkeys…
…reminiscent of Groundhog Day…
Scenarist Matthew Robinson (“Dora and the Lost City of Gold”) also borrows elements of “Lost” and “Groundhog Day.”
…playing an exhausted and somewhat perturbed team leader caught in his own Groundhog Day time loop…
A standard carriage chase is into into a canyon run akin to Star Wars, with moles on bats attacking the carriage.
Besides the aforementioned Thompson ties, it fuses Dali surrealism, film noir (Beatty’s corrupt mayor is modeled on John Huston’s character in “Chinatown”), “Don Quixote” (for Alfred Molina’s quixotic armadillo) “Star Wars” and “Apocalypse Now” (for a batty canyon chase set to “Ride of the Valkyries”), Peckinpah’s “Ride the High Country” (for the dysfunctional family of mole varmints), and, most notably, Sergio Leone’s famously over-the-top Westerns.
This involves tough talk in saloons, face-downs on Main Street and a chase sequence between high canyon walls that's a nod in the direction of "Star Wars."
But Rango piles on the references to other movies like Tarantino on a bender, extending the tribute to many great films of other genres which are actually Westerns in a different guise, from Star Wars to Chinatown.
(Think Star Wars bar meets old Western saloons.)
The company certainly has a history in character creation from its inception, when George Lucas set it up for " Star Wars ."
Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
Directed by Sergio Leone
influenced The Lone Ranger (2013), Rango (2011)
Music Visuals Plot Themes
Westward expansion is the first of many tin-eared nods the director makes to Sergio Leone’s classic “Once Upon a Time in the West,” including recurring bits of Ennio Morricone’s iconic score.
Like Rango, The Lone Ranger substitutes pastiche for plot; the opening of Once Upon A Time In The West and the climax of Buster Keatons The General are both quoted extensively, and there are throwaway nods to everything from The Red Balloon to There Will Be Blood .
There are likable nods to Once Upon a Time in the West (in particular a railroad subplot and the oscillating dramatic score), Little Big Man, The Searchers, and The Bridge on the River Kwai.
Verbinski litters the film with references to old TV Western serials, John Ford’s Monument Valley, and especially Once Upon A Time In The West, which it quotes both in the score and in a subplot about the railroads bringing order to the Wild West.
The Lone Ranger turns out to be practically a comic remake of Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West.
The movie is deeply indebted to three great films set during or just after the Civil War: John Ford’s The Searchers (a man’s quest for his brother’s killer in Indian lands), Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (the coming of the transcontinental railroad) and Buster Keaton’s The General (the climactic train chase).
The Matrix (1999)
Directed by Lana Wachowski
influenced Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die (2026), A Cure for Wellness (2017)
Themes Plot
Movies like The Terminator or The Matrix served as nebulous critiques on our reliance on technology and escapism…
The film exaggerates how it is affecting human relationships and is more aligned with the “Terminator” and “The Matrix” franchises than a rigorous, textured depiction of how it has potential to bring people together…
Other sources of inspiration—from 12 Monkeys to The Matrix to Ghostbusters to Night of the Living Dead—don’t get mentioned by name, but their influence is too obvious to ignore.
Someone finally thought up a prequel to The Matrix…
…it’s easy to feel like the robot apocalypse promised upon humanity by “The Matrix” and “The Terminator” is days away from our doorstep.
…giddily sweded amalgamate of The Matrix, Twelve Monkeys and Terminator 2: Judgment Day…
Apocalypse Now (1979)
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
influenced Rango (2011), A Cure for Wellness (2017)
Characters
Like Colonel Kurtz in “Apocalypse Now,” Pembroke has renounced his previous loyalties.
There's hardly a big-sky stereotype he doesn't trick out with new tricks — wait till you catch the man-with-no-name corker he's come up with — but he and co-screenwriters John Logan and James Ward Byrkit are cribbing their plot points not just from classic Westerns but from the likes of Chinatown, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Apocalypse Now.
The film is a combo western parody and Chinatown homage, by way of a Hunter S. Thompson drug hallucination and Roald Dahl adventure, with hat tips to The Wizard of Oz, Apocalypse Now, 2001: A Space Odyssey and other film milestones.
That is just one of the film’s many, many cinematic allusions, some of which are breathtakingly obvious (such as a wonderfully absurd action sequence involving an army of giant bats that riffs on the “Flight of the Valkyries” aerial assault in Apocalypse Now) to the extremely subtle (Rango literally takes his name from a label that says “Hecho en Durango,” but savvy spaghetti western fans will note its similarity to the name of Franco Nero’s mythic antihero Django).
As for the narrative, it’s a film buff’s delight, expertly incorporating elements from, among others, Clint Eastwood’s Spaghetti Westerns, Cat Ballou, Apocalypse Now and, with its plot thread of the villain trying to control a town’s water rights(!), Chinatown.
An homage to "Apocalypse Now" with flying mice is impressive -- at least initially.
The Searchers (1956)
Directed by John Ford
influenced The Lone Ranger (2013), Rango (2011)
Themes Visuals
The movie's crazy-quilt of references includes " Dead Man ," " El Topo ," " Blazing Saddles ," " The Searchers ," "A Man Called Horse," the Man with No Name trilogy, Verbinski's own " Rango ," the cinematic contraptions of Sam Raimi and Tim Burton (check out Bonham-Carter's ivory leg-cannon!), and Keaton's train-crazy "The General."
As for “The Lone Ranger,” Verbinski and his credited writers (Justin Haythe of “Snitch” and “Revolutionary Road,” along with the “Pirates” duo of Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio) are trying to do the impossible, or at least the exceptionally difficult: Capture the spirit of an old-timey, square-bear western adventure serial aimed at kids, and also make a dark-hued revisionist western with echoes of “The Searchers,” “Ride the High Country” and “Unforgiven.”
There are likable nods to Once Upon a Time in the West (in particular a railroad subplot and the oscillating dramatic score), Little Big Man, The Searchers, and The Bridge on the River Kwai.
The movie is deeply indebted to three great films set during or just after the Civil War: John Ford’s The Searchers (a man’s quest for his brother’s killer in Indian lands), Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (the coming of the transcontinental railroad) and Buster Keaton’s The General (the climactic train chase).
Verbinski samples Sergio Leone, Sam Peckinpah, his own animated Rango, The Searchers, Barry Sonnenfeld's version of Wild Wild West, and Little Big Man (the framing device with Tonto and the little buckaroo).
Director Gore Verbinski’s film is at once a throwback to old-timey cowboy movies (“Western” sounds too grand a term for this, as it is best used for movies like “The Searchers”) and a big-budget exercise in overkill.
Still, it’s disappointing enough for anyone who enjoyed the 1998 Japanese classic Ringu or either of the American films it inspired, 2002’s The Ring and 2005’s The Ring Two.
A sudden influx of J-horror flooded genre festivals and indie theaters and a wave of early 2000s Americanizations followed, starting with the 2002 hit The Ring and continuing with films like The Grudge, Dark Water, and One Missed Call.
This franchise began in 2002 with a simple but effective premise, lifted from the Japanese film “The Ring": If you watch a video tape, then seven days later, you die.
Much more so than the (justly) forgotten The Ring Two , this belated second sequel is a faded copy of its predecessor, the generation loss evident in everything from its performances to its recycled scares.
2002's " The Ring ," directed by Gore Verbinski, was a uniquely atmospheric and altogether special ghost story, a rare American remake (it was based on the 1998 Japanese film "Ringu") which arguably improved upon the original.
Following the American films The Ring (2002) and The Ring Two (2005) and based on the original series of Japanese novels (by Koji Suzuki) and movies, Rings adds nothing to the franchise's mythology, with the possible exception of updating the old VHS tape to new, digital files that can be played on phones and desktops.
It draws on an entire library of westerns, most obviously “High Noon” and the Clint Eastwood-Sergio Leone spaghetti epics, but it also draws on “ Chinatown ” and many other movies featuring reptilian bad guys.
Rango is best enjoyed by those over 10 who have an idea of what "existential" means and can appreciate a surreal mashup of Chinatown, Gladiator, High Noon, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
The central mystery is a straight-ahead, surprise-free slog (a bit similar to Chinatown, minus the sex and the story twists, though with the murder intact); the characters are familiar tropes, and the tone and imagery come courtesy of countless Westerns, from Sergio Leone to High Noon.
With its fast draws, distinct settings, close-up shots and slower pacing, Verbinski pays perfect tribute to such classics as “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” “High Noon” and “Once Upon a Time in the West,” and even Hans Zimmer's score should conjure up memories of Ennio Morricone's finest work.
Individual sequences and images scattered throughout are intentionally reminiscent of famous pictures like High Noon and Sergio Leone's spaghetti Westerns.
The smart screenplay by John Logan pays homage to many classic Westerns, such as High Noon, while simultaneously poking fun at the genre.
Jungle Cruise (2021)
Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra
influenced by Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)
Plot
Worse, while the film’s rollicking adventure is often reminiscent of the Indiana Jones films and 1999’s The Mummy , its mythology is largely a rehash of 2003’s Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl , another movie based on a Disney theme park ride.
Disneyland added references to the “Pirates to the Caribbean” film franchise in 2006 after the 2003 film “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl” was successful enough to warrant a 2006 follow-up, “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.”
3 Stars (out of 4) Tweet Back Side of Water By Jeffrey M. Anderson Based on the great, pun-filled Disneyland ride, Jungle Cruise falls between the disappointment The Haunted Mansion and the fantastic hit Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (both 2003).
Of course, one can’t always expect to generate lightning in a bottle the way Disney was able to with 2003’s Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl .
There were few who expected Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl to be particularly good, let alone score Johnny Depp his first Oscar nomination and launch a wildly successful franchise that would ultimately net more than $4.5 billion at the worldwide box office.
Disneyland added references to the “Pirates to the Caribbean” film franchise in 2006 after the 2003 film “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl” was successful enough to warrant a 2006 follow-up, “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.”
Shutter Island (2010)
Directed by Martin Scorsese
influenced A Cure for Wellness (2017)
Visuals Themes Plot Characters
It is style for the sake of style with none of the integral tactility of something like Shutter Island, which this film clearly admires.
A thick, festering chunk of psychological horror that feels like a full-bodied Guillermo del Toro remake of “Shutter Island,” this woozy 146-minute nightmare does for workaholics what Val Lewton did for cat people, and it does so in ridiculous style.
But A Cure for Wellness soon veers away from Matrix-like concepts and starts to resemble Shutter Island, as Lockhart begins to uncover the lunacy at the institute’s center.
If you distill Cure down to its basic elements, though, it’d be safe to say it feels like if Hammer Films did their own version of Shutter Island, but really, that only accounts for about 30% of what Verbinski achieves here.
Like a cross between the characters Leonardo DiCaprio played in “Shutter Island” and “The Wolf of Wall Street,” he’s an unscrupulous and quite possibly unhinged young investment shark, dispatched to Switzerland to retrieve a senior partner who appears to have gone a bit crazy there.
A Cure For Wellness is what happens when you mix the noir-ish shades of Shutter Island with the Hammer Horror overtones of Crimson Peak, and mix in a dash of Bioshock for good measure.
The Sixth Sense (1999)
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
influenced The Ring (2002)
Characters Visuals Themes
Likewise, the young actor playing her son (David Dorfman) is extremely effective and though his preternatural ability to see things he really shouldn't be able to is perhaps too reminiscent of Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense, he is nonetheless a suitably creepy addition to the story.
This Westernized, subtitle-free version comprises a pastiche of horror hooks, from pretty, petrified teens (lifted from any slasher epic or Don't Say a Word) to the standard creepy moppet (via The Shining and The Sixth Sense) to boob-tube bogeys (à la Videodrome and Poltergeist) to some good ol' family fun akin to that of V.C. Andrews (Flowers in the Attic).
Verbinski didn't need to steal imagery from any other movie than the one he was remaking, but nonetheless references to films such as "The Sixth Sense" and "Psycho" serve only to distance the audience.
One is reminded of "The Sixth Sense" and "The Others," particularly in the sense that, like those films, "The Ring" always seems to have more on its mind than its surface-level ghost story.
It’s a slippery, murky, gray-green film, full of borrowings from “Twin Peaks,” “The Sixth Sense,” “Nightmare on Elm Street,” “Poltergeist” and who knows what-all else.
In her race against time to solve the mystery behind "The Ring" (and please don't expect me to specify what 'The Ring' actually is), Rachel enlists the help of not only her longtime friend and colleague Noah (Martin Henderson), but also her young son Aidan (David Dorfman), who, like the Hayley Joel Osment role in "The Sixth Sense" and the little girl in "Stir of Echoes," seems to have a gift for communicating with those in a different plane of existence, although he really doesn't want anyone to think so.
This is a movie all about the details jammed into every corner of the film: copious references to its genre (a creaking windmill out of Once Upon a Time in the West , a title uncommonly similar to the seminal Django ), only slightly less-copious references to cinema at large.
Los personajes, empezando por ese inseguro camaleón que se hace llamar Rango (en clara referencia a Django, un spaghetti western de Sergio Corbucci protagonizado por Franco Nero en 1966), están bien definidos y la anécdota muy bien sostenida (sobre todo en la primera mitad; en la segunda pierde algo de efecto, se estira un poco y cae en algunos excesos y complicaciones narrativas).
Underwater (2020)
Directed by William Eubank
influenced by A Cure for Wellness (2017), The Ring (2002), The Lone Ranger (2013)
The overwhelmingly murky visuals courtesy of cinematographer Bojan Bazelli ( 6 Underground , A Cure For Wellness ) combine with the effective sound design, giving the ocean depths a suitably otherworldly vibe, adding to the occasional musings on how humanity may have dug too deep and awoken something dangerous.
The cinematographer behind “A Cure for Wellness” and “The Ring” knows how to build tension with a combination of extreme close-ups that put us inside Norah’s helmet while never losing the geography of where these people are fighting against incredible odds.
The effects and production design work to create a believable world, and then Eubanks and cinematographer Bojan Bazelli ( A Cure for Wellness , 2016) enthusiastically tear it all down around their cast.
Cinematographer Bojan Bazelli has proven he can shoot beautifully macabre images with his work on Gore Verbinski films like The Ring and A Cure for Wellness .
Instead the immersive quality of “Underwater” is owed to cinematographer Bojan Bazelli, who has lent a baroque eye to genre films like “The Ring” and “A Cure for Wellness.”
At its best, “Underwater” is quite literally in its element: In the able hands of cinematographer Bojan Bazelli (whose flair for eerie aquatic imagery was also on display in “A Cure for Wellness”), the characters’ limited visibility and mobility become our sources of terror as well as theirs.
Lockhart tries to solve the mystery that’s contained by the Alpine castle and embraced by its docile residents, but it’s a lot of toing and froing, alleviated only occasionally by vivid scenes of horror: most notably, the extended death throes of a wounded elk and an episode in a dentist’s chair that rivals the one in Marathon Man.
So off he goes, ending up at the facility -- a centuries-old castle run by a doctor (Jason Isaacs) who has a Germanic accent and deploys the sort of dentistry we haven’t seen since Marathon Man.
When the upstart stockbroker tries to retreat down the mountain, a car accident finds him becoming the alpine fortress’ newest patient; incest, hardcore gaslighting, pornographically opulent set design, enough creepy nurses to make Lucile Hadzihalilovic blush, and the most agonizing display of dentistry since “Marathon Man” ensue.
By throwing in some Nazi overtones via blond haircuts and Marathon Man references, Verbinski firmly connects contemporary Californian wellness bullshit to the nastiest of European body-narratives.
Isaacs appears to be channeling a Nazi stereotype—something accentuated by a scene lifted from “Marathon Man,” yet another of the obvious influences here.
There are sequences involving eels that make eels seem even creepier than they did already, and a dentistry-as-torture scene that makes the one in “ Marathon Man ” look like a routine cleaning.
A cultural grab-bag that both parodies and homages the spaghetti Westerns of the '60s and '70s (much as Blazing Saddles was at once parody and homage to the classic Western of the '50s), Rango is the kind of film where hardly one image or line seems plugged in because some studio executive thought it would "sell"; instead, it feels like every last idea is there because director and co-scenarist Gore Verbinski and his team of animators and filmmakers had some urgent want that it should be there.
It's a comedy but, like Blazing Saddles (although without the R-rated edge), it exposes a deep, abiding love for and knowledge of the genre.
It's a real movie lover's movie, conceived as a Blazing Saddles-like comic commentary on genre that's as back-lot savvy as it is light in the saddle.
Ultimately I would say the film is one part Fox, one part Brazil, a dash of Chinatown, and Blazing Saddles in a crunchy animated shell.
This is an inspired comic Western, deserving comparison with " Blazing Saddles ," from which it borrows a lot of farts.
The plot echoes Bob Hope’s The Paleface and its remake with Don Knotts, The Shakiest Gun in the West, about a fast-talking coward becoming, in a case of mistaken identity, a western hero.