John Schlesinger
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Connections, in both directions
Anyone old enough to remember Michael Keaton, Matthew Modine, and Melanie Griffith in John Schlesinger’s yuppie horror effort Pacific Heights will catch a similar vibe in what Edgerton is after.
The television spots and trailers sell the film as a stalker thriller akin to films such as Pacific Heights and Fatal Attraction.
In staging that setup, Edgerton -- who makes his writing and directing debut behind the camera while also appearing in front of it -- harkens back to the domestic intruder thrillers of the 1980s and '90s -- such as "Pacific Heights," "Fatal Attraction" and so on -- where a seemingly good-natured and friendly enough person turns into a living nightmare for those he or she bugs, stalks and ultimately terrorizes.
The Gift recalls the stalked, terrorized or targeted yuppies of Fatal Attraction and Pacific Heights.
At face value, Edgerton’s film about a suspicious oddball intruding upon a married couple’s carefully manicured life sounds akin to serviceable stalker schlock like “Pacific Heights,” “Unlawful Entry” or “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.”
This is no basic Hollywood thriller like, say, John Schlesinger’s Pacific Heights (1990).
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.
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015)
Directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon
influenced by Midnight Cowboy (1969)
They’ve known each other since kindergarten and have channeled a mutual love of film into a series of amateur parodies of various classics (i.e., “2:48pm Cowboy” instead of “Midnight Cowboy”).
I adore the moment where Greg–the main character, who makes terrible homages to classics like Midnight Cowboy, A Clockwork Orange and Breathless (and many, many more of my favorite movies)–is in his room directly above where his parents are fighting about his grades and how he won’t be admitted into college the following year.
This deep affection soon progresses to home-made films with a twist on their favorites: Breathless becomes Breath Less , Peeping Tom now Pooping Tom , Midnight Cowboy is 2:48 Cowboy , etc. It’s the sort of addition that could be insufferably quirky in a bad Michel Gondry movie (you know the one), but here it’s lovingly executed and feels impeccably in tandem with the characters’ awkward personalities.
She’s particularly fond of a takeoff on Rashomon he calls “Monorash” and an outrageous take on Midnight Cowboy titled “2:48 P.M. Cowboy.”
The film uses cinema as a cultural shorthand, flattering people for getting inside jokes about Midnight Cowboy, Apocalpyse Now, Fitzcarraldo, and the like.
It might still be called Gotham, but the reference isn't even thinly veiled: This is early '70s New York during a garbage strike, as depressing, foul and pitiless as anything from Midnight Cowboy or The French Connection.
Many of the Americanist classics, from John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy to William Friedkin’s Cruising owe some degree of fidelity to Wolfe’s brand of nihilistic lonerism.
Y si bien la película regala en esos momentos trozos de intensidad, violencia y oscuridad que nos llevan desde la frustración criminal de El rey de la comedia (EUA, 1982) hasta la expresión de las sombras de Arthur en el entorno citadino en que lo conocemos (este Nueva York atemporal, casi del futuro, casi fantasmal es muy Taxi Driver y muy Contacto en Francia, muy Midnight Cowboy y adorablemente decadente), pasando todo por personajes indispensables para recorrer la psicología americana después de la Segunda Guerra y después de la debacle militar, política, económica y moral de Vietnam: los de Psicosis (EUA, 1960) y Taxi Driver (EUA, 1976).
The Duke’s G-rated “True Grit” — which won its star an Oscar even as the X-rated “Midnight Cowboy” was crowned Best Picture — was the last shotgun blast of the old Hollywood as it expired with a defiant roar at the hippies, the druggies and the ironists.
Siegel's screenplay is reminiscent of everything from early 60's teleplays like Rod Serling's "Requiem for a Heavyweight" to the urban angst of 1969's "Midnight Cowboy," and yet its symbolic paralleling of its subject to Christ, its cynical gaze at the modern marketplace and its extreme violence modernize it.
"War Dogs" is vaguely reminiscent of another buddy film involving international dealings, "The Falcon and the Snowman" from 1985.
Like a gorgeous melody that drifts almost imperceptibly off key before descending into screaming discord, so Last Night in Soho slips seamlessly between harmony and dissonance, with nods to Julie Christie in Darling mutating into evocations of Jessica Harper in Suspiria .
Wright has asked all Venice audiences to keep specific plot details a secret, and that’s a good idea so we will leave it at that for the most part except to note a mysterioius stranger played by another 60’s icon Terence Stamp sends ominous signals, and Eloise, who by now has dyed her hair blonde for a Julie Christie “Darling” style look which is really cool, especially since I just coincidentally watched Darling again three weeks ago and have an Eloise-like obsession with the 60’s as well.
Si bien a colación de la película se han repetido hasta la saciedad los nombres de Argento, Bava y Nicolas Roeg (algo de culpa tiene Wright en esto último, aunque ahora se queje), también es verdad que las vidas paralelas de Thomasin McKenzie y Anya Taylor-Joy (ambas formidables en dos papeles aparentemente opuestos) serían muy distintas si en ellas no terciaran influencias menos evidentes, como cierta escuela de thriller psicológico made in UK ( Repulsión , sí, pero también Luz que agoniza ), los momentos más noir de la Ealing o el Free Cinema y sus derivados, como la Darling de John Schlesinger.
There's more: read for me a scene where Forrest and his crippled Vietnam captain Lt. Dan (Gary Sinise) walk through a late-sixties Manhattan to the strains of Harry Nilsson's "Everybody's Talkin'," the iconic theme song from fellow Best Picture-winner Midnight Cowboy (1969).
Under the Silver Lake (2018)
Directed by David Robert Mitchell
influenced by The Day of the Locust (1975)
Themes
La lectura que hace Robert Mitchell de Los Ángeles es absolutamente cinematográfica: una mezcla de lo que se recuerda en el noir de Chandler interpretado por Billy Wilder (Double Indemnity, 1944) y Howard Hawks (The Big Sleep, 1946); mucho del Hitchcock de los años cincuenta (Rear Window, 1954 y Vertigo, 1958) mediado por la ciudad de David Lynch en el neo-noir de Mulholland Drive (2001); algo de Pynchon interpretado por Paul Thomas Anderson en Inherent Vice (2014); otra pizca más del humor negro de los hermanos Coen en Barton Fink (1991) con mucho de The Big Lebowski (1998); y, finalmente, la locura indecente de Hollywood representada por los dos extremos incoherentes de The Day of the Locust (1975) y Map to the Stars (2014).
It's so stupid, often intentionally so, that it's downright brilliant, as when the stricken Chev barrels across a bridge atop a stolen LAPD motorcycle wearing nothing but some hospital johnnies and a smile while Nilsson's Midnight Cowboy theme, "Everybody's Talkin'," counterpoints the whole absurd (and absurdly entertaining) affair.
The King of Comedy (1982)
Directed by Martin Scorsese
influenced by Billy Liar (1963), Midnight Cowboy (1969)
Visuals
This look is used throughout the film in order to depict Ruperts elaborate fantasy sequences, which are akin to John Schlesingers ( Billy Liar , Midnight Cowboy ) characters' aptly depicted, never tangential fantasy musings.
This look is used throughout the film in order to depict Ruperts elaborate fantasy sequences, which are akin to John Schlesingers ( Billy Liar , Midnight Cowboy ) characters' aptly depicted, never tangential fantasy musings.
"Oldboy" contains a tooth-pulling scene that makes Laurence Olivier's Nazi dentist in " Marathon Man " look like a healer.
It should be noted that Oldboy contains scenes of intense violence, including one dental workout that puts Marathon Man to shame.
What keeps "Hercules" from becoming trite (for adults anyway) are the inspired currenty jabs co-writers and directors John Musker and Ron Clements take at everything from "Midnight Cowboy" to Disney's own overbearing marketing.
One scene elicits memories of “ Dog Day Afternoon ,” while others recall “ Midnight Cowboy ,” “ Mean Streets ” and “ Panic in Needle Park .”
Think Death Wish, Taxi Driver, The Warriors, Midnight Cowboy, Serpico, The French Connection.
It’s mental and physical torture of the kind applied by Laurence Olivier as the Nazi dentist in Marathon Man when he asks Dustin Hoffman, “Is it safe?”
This literally ain’t the half of it, but it should give you some idea of the bravado of Aronofsky’s maximalist approach that his film can refer so directly to schlockbusters and old classics alike, often in the same shaky breath: There’s “The Innocents,” Poe‘s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “Repulsion,” “Rosemary’s Baby” and “Rebecca” scattered throughout, but there’s also a good helping of “Pacific Heights” and “The Skeleton Key.”
The whole temperature of a film can be heavily influenced, even determined, by the heat a particular actress provides, so one can only wonder what Nymphomaniac would have been like had von Trier sought and found an equivalent of, say, Julie Christie in Billy Liar, Eva Green in The Dreamers or Jennifer Lawrence in almost anything.
William Devane plays an underwritten upper-rung syndicate crook much like the one he played in Marathon Man, where he was in cahoots with Laurence Olivier?s torturous Nazi dentist.
The result is a Jewish “Death Wish,” to borrow Pauline Kael’s description of “Marathon Man,” amped up to epoch-changing proportions, made by a gentile writer-director with an unlimited appetite for celluloid, right down to its highly flammable properties.