Errol Morris
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The Theory of Everything (2014)
Directed by James Marsh
influenced by A Brief History of Time (1991)
Plot
Striving to pay equal tribute to Hawking’s first wife, Jane (on whose memoir the film is based), and her tireless devotion to him until their 25-year marriage ended in 1995, director James Marsh similarly attempts to find intimate, personal applications for Hawking’s grand cosmic inquiries, tracing the story of how the author of “A Brief History of Time” came to defy time itself.
If I want a more complicated explanation of the universe, then I can refer to Hawking’s book, “A Brief History of Time.”
This isn't A Brief History of Time (1991) or Stephen Hawking's Grand Design (2012).
The thing is, Errol Morris already made A Brief History of Time , and there's simply not much about the life and work of Stephen Hawking that the 80-minute documentary left on the table.
Interstellar (2014)
Directed by Christopher Nolan
influenced by A Brief History of Time (1991)
Themes
Morris’s 80-minute 1991 documentary — which shares a title with Hawking’s most famous book, A Brief History of Time — dares to find a visual equivalent for Hawking’s ideas, to connect that thinking to Hawking’s life.
The presiding influence, however, is clearly the work of documentarian Erroll Morris, in particular his disturbing 1988 classic, "The Thin Blue Line."
Eager impersonations of well-known sycophants fill the frame, from an overeager Carell (likable but hardly convincing; see Errol Morris’ “The Unknown Known” for context) to a straight-faced Tyler Perry as Colin Powell (fleeting and random).
Cheney would never follow Rumsfeld’s lead in sitting down for a 33-hour interview with leading documentarian, Errol Morris, In Morris’s film, The Unknown Known (2013), Rumsfeld comes across as a fantasist who takes no responsibility for his actions, and has no regrets.
Carell is almost giddily ruthless as Rumsfeld, the only character in “Vice” with fewer scruples than Dick himself (though one should really go back to Errol Morris’s “The Unknown Known” and watch the real Rumsfeld obscure the truth).
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
Directed by Alfonso Cuarón
influenced by A Brief History of Time (1991)
The humor, too, is correspondingly more sophisticated, measured in the cleverness of Cuarón's little touches: the students' faces painted in their house colors as they cheer on a quidditch match, the wizard in The Leaky Cauldron reading A Brief History of Time, the magical notes passed surreptitiously in class, even the Monty Python…
The new science-fiction/horror thriller "Event Horizon" has a title that instead suggests a quotient of Stephen Hawking -- whose bestselling introduction to quantum physics, "A Brief History of Time," is where the public is most likely to have encountered this term.
Zero Dark Thirty (2012)
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow
influenced by Standard Operating Procedure (2008)
Themes
If you seek a hard-facts approach to torture, some great documentaries are out there, including Taxi to the Dark Side and Standard Operating Procedure.
The tone resembles the ripped-from-the-headlines hysteria of Errol Morris’ 2010 documentary Tabloid, but instead of the newspapers spreading gossip of dubious provenance, it’s the people of Carthage, a jolly little beehive buzzing with theories, denials, and unsubstantiated rumors.