Bob Rafelson
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Nomadland (2021)
Directed by Chloé Zhao
influenced by Five Easy Pieces (1970)
Characters Themes Plot
Zhao’s flair for the open road recalls Dennis Hopper’s “Easy Rider” (1969), while her magic-hour skies rival Terrence Malick’s “Days of Heaven” (1978), offering Fern as a successor to Jack Nicholson in “Five Easy Pieces” (1970) and Harry Dean Stanton in “Paris, Texas” (1984), a masterpiece so profound that it’s hard to put into words.
The same applies to Jack Nicholson, as Bobby Dupea, at the bitter end of “Five Easy Pieces” (1970), abandoning his girlfriend at the gas pumps, beside the Red Rooster Café, and hitching a ride on a logging truck—no wallet, no plans, not even a jacket, although, as the trucker says, where they’re headed will be colder than hell.
Like Jack Nicholson’s Bobby Dupea in “Five Easy Pieces” (1970), she’s a loner and a leaver by nature, if not as cruel about it.
As a practically invasive character study, McDormand’s acting chops win out (following her somewhat random movement through life, like a modernized “Five Easy Pieces”); but as a complete picture, it’s largely lacking, even with a hint of a love story creeping up toward the finale.
It turns out that the film had less in common with “Grapes of Wrath” than it does with road movies like “Easy Rider” or “Five Easy Pieces”.
As “The Holdovers” morphs from miserablist odd-couple comedy to bittersweet road movie, it aims to remind you, sometimes with a hard nudge, of Hal Ashby classics like “Harold and Maude” and “The Last Detail”; an argument with a waitress automatically nods to Bob Rafelson's “Five Easy Pieces.”
U Turn (1997)
Directed by Oliver Stone
influenced by The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981)
Plot Themes
Controversial director Oliver Stone is back and supposedly returning to his roots with a smallish, lower-budget, darkly comic rural melodrama (which combines elements of "Red Rock West," "Double Indemnity," "The Postman Always Rings Twice" and a number of other film noir thrillers).
But viewers will also recognize echoes of original noirs, including Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice and even David O. Selznick's lust-in-the-dust Western Duel in the Sun.
The director Jean-Marc Vallée, previously best known to British audiences for the pallid, Julian Fellowes-scripted costume drama The Young Victoria (2009), brings a grittiness and morbid humour to the storytelling here that, early on, evokes memories of Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces.
There are very few films in this day and age that both harkens back to the tradition of “Five Easy Pieces” exploring characters with no real future or anything to look forward to, and searching for one, while exploring the incredulously distressing and often futile machinations in the artistic experience of an author.
I was hanging in there with Tom until the “Porpoise Song” from the Monkees’ 1968 film “Head” began to chime in the theater, bringing me back to the reality that “Vanilla Sky” is nothing more than a overwrought attempt to say that dreams can turn into a nightmare at the blink of an eye.
But Demolition plays like a failed iteration of a 1970s angry-misfit movie (think Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces), not like the real thing.
Manchester by the Sea (2016)
Directed by Kenneth Lonergan
influenced by Five Easy Pieces (1970)
Characters
Think Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces or, hey, Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting.
A weirdly effective cross between The Girl on the Train , the genre classic Black Widow (1987), and any number of quick-fire Saturday Night Live-inspired comedies, A Simple Favor sets its own path, pace and style and sticks to it all the way.
Even the fact that the movie borrows heavily from Good Will Hunting, Five Easy Pieces, family tragedies, custody-battle courtroom dramas, other Fox Searchlight feel-good flicks and every third egghead-vs.-jus’…
For some viewers, “The Boy Next Door” will serve as a sort of sequel to another of Lopez’s damsel-in-distress flicks, 2002’s “Enough” (the two films are unrelated), while also conjuring up everything from “Fatal Attraction,” “Obsessed” and “No Good Deed.”
Inherent Vice (2014)
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
influenced by Five Easy Pieces (1970)
Characters
Think Susan Anspach in “ Five Easy Pieces” or Katharine Ross in “The Graduate.”
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013)
Directed by Ben Stiller
influenced by Five Easy Pieces (1970)
Themes
In the ‘60s, films like Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces suggested that the road and the journey from point A to point B could be far more rewarding than any answer at the end of the trail.
It has more links with films like Five Easy Pieces and Easy Rider and Midnight Cowboy, than with the slick arcade games that are the box-office winners of the 1980s.
High Water ’s a crime thriller, a road movie, and ostensibly a simple story about a couple of Texan bank robbers and the rustic cops on their trail, but to say that’s all there is to it would be like arguing that Five Easy Pieces is about a man taking a road trip with his girlfriend.
Per “Five Easy Pieces,” Margo has lived a life of privilege and good fortune, but seeks something so much more fulfilling.
Penn's film poses a little bit of everything in the grand tradition of films like "Five Easy Pieces," and "Harry and Tonto," in which our main character is simply another pariah in a life they simply can't belong to.
The screenplay, which is heavy on stagey interpersonal conflict, was penned by former Esquire film critic Jacob Brackman, who has also worked as a song lyricist and coproduced Terence Malick’s Days of Heaven (1978).
Theresa Russell shows up as the sexy, stinking rich mother of one of the girls (and perhaps as a reference to her memorable villainess in Black Widow).