Sydney Pollack
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Filmography
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Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
Directed by Joe Russo
influenced by Three Days of the Condor (1975)
Plot Visuals
The presence of Robert Redford as an ambiguous high-level spook reminds us of the plot’s borrowings from the conspiracy thriller Three Days of the Condor, while a brief shot of the Watergate complex references Redford’s All the President’s Men.
Notable for having induced Robert Redford to take a (significant) role in the sort of blockbuster franchise that he has studiously avoided throughout his illustrious career, the film actually uses an important aspect of the veteran star's iconography as stylistic inspiration, that being the ethos surrounding Sydney Pollack's 1975 Redford-starring espionage thriller Three Days of the Condor.
The movie's other inspiration are '70s conspiracy thrillers like All the President's Men and Three Days of the Condor, which the Russo brothers honor by wisely and miraculously casting Robert Redford, who starred in both films.
Too quickly to generate proper suspense (yet causing plenty of giddy disbelief), The Winter Soldier nods to ’70s classics Three Days of the Condor and The Parallax View.
In a plot borrowed directly from the 1975 Redford thriller Three Days of the Condor , Rogers goes underground, trusting no-one except his new friend Wilson (Anthony Mackie) and his colleague Natasha (Scarlett Johansson), the ex-KGB assassin and major babe.
Sporting a love for movies on his sleeve, Affleck's film gives nods to the smart, entertaining and engaging thrillers from the '70s -- "All the President's Men," "Three Days of the Condor," et al. -- and playfully with B-movie science-fiction pictures of the era without ever trying to lean too hard into any specific homage.
It is his cleanest, most engrossing work to date and not only duplicates the look of the late 1970s but also recalls the movies from that era - such as Alan J. Pakula's All the President's Men and Sydney Pollack's Three Days of the Condor - with its grainy aesthetic and official subterfuge.
The Bourne Identity (2002)
Directed by Doug Liman
influenced by Three Days of the Condor (1975)
Plot Themes
The story has echoes of "Total Recall," "Three Days of the Condor" and "Enemy of the State," among others.
…such films as The Amateur, or Three Days of the Condor.
In that regard, this film's minimalist script is a strength and a throwback to classic thrillers such as "Three Days of the Condor" or "The French Connection."
After all - as Dustin Hoffman did so memorably with Tootsie - there's still a point to be made about the roles available to women in film and television, right?
Alas, "Jack and Jill" is more " Norbit " than "Tootsie" or "Mrs.
When it is funny, it's because it is done in a convincing way (think Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie), or in a way where the joke is that the supporting characters don't realize how unrealistic it looks (think Some Like It Hot).
It’s generally funniest when a male actor plays a man disguising himself as a woman for an important plot purpose à la Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in Some Like it Hot, Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie and Robin Williams in Mrs. Doubtfire.
This is a major reason the in-no-way-funny Tootsie and Some Like it Hot are remembered as classics.
Picture "Tootsie" if everyone in the cast had a head injury.
The Long Walk (2025)
Directed by Francis Lawrence
influenced by They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969)
Themes Plot
“They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” for Gen Z — texts that traffic in the extreme outcomes of American capitalism…
The high concept suggests the gruelling dance marathons of the Depression that provided the inspiration for Sydney Pollack’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?
…closest in misanthropic spirit to Sydney Pollack’s shocking 1969 “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?,” with cinematographer Jo Willems applying a similar dustbowl aesthetic…
It’s like They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? on steroids.
If Stand By Me suggests lost innocence, then a truer cinematic companion is Sydney Pollack’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969). Both films fixate on endurance and the spectacle of despair.
There is also a final act of vengeance that takes place on a snowy mountaintop — and it seems a bit reductive, as if “Jeremiah Johnson” had merged with “Walking Tall.” “Wind River” isn’t, in the end, as enthralling a movie as “Hell or High Water” or “Sicario” (and it probably won’t come close to matching either one of them commercially), yet it’s skillful and compelling enough to prove that Taylor Sheridan , as a director, has the goods.
Cory is almost, but not quite, a fully dimensional character; he comes off as the spiritual descendant of the mountain man in “Jeremiah Johnson” who told Robert Redford to keep his nose in the wind, and his eyes along the skyline.
The 39 Steps (1935)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
influenced Three Days of the Condor (1975)
Themes Plot
Not that "Condor" is a "great" film by any means, but it is a competent, well-made one, patterned to some extent on the one-man-against-the-world theme found in some of Hitchcock's best films ("The 39 Steps," "North By Northwest").
Writers Lorenzo Semple, Jr. and David Rayfiel fill it with too much gloss and pilfer much from Hitchcock's "The 39 Steps," but when left to their own devices there's some intelligence evident in the clever dialogue and in the way they present the mundane details about a spook's life in such a cheeky way.
The Revenant (2015)
Directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu
influenced by Jeremiah Johnson (1972)
Themes Visuals
Watching this irresistibly pretty movie star pantomime panic, I was reminded of Robert Redford as the titular hero of the 1972 film Jeremiah Johnson , another prestigious nineteenth-century survivalist drama of literary pedigree, and one that also had a difficult, although ultimately neatly controlled production.
Based on a true story, it’s a masterpiece of suffering; it’s Robert Redford’s “Jeremiah Johnson” on steroids—a massive, muck-crawling, muddy-bearded, raw-meat-strewn, morose mess of hypothermic hatchet-versus-knife-fighting, flintlock-swinging, ursine destruction, and wheezing-grunting-snarling madness—wherein Leonardo DiCaprio’s Hugh Glass displays for our “entertainment” the Hobbesian creed to perfection.
It's Jeremiah Johnson meets Apocalypse Now.
Iñárritu famously went for realism here, putting his cast and crew through all kinds of misery, but the end result is simply spectacular, something like the gorgeous naturalism of Malick's "The New World" crossed with "Jeremiah Johnson."
One recalls the line from that "Tootsie" about how far a camera on a New York set should be pulled back so that Dustin Hoffman's Dorothy might look attractive; "how do you feel about Cleveland" came the reply.
Some Like It Hot, Tootsie and La Cage Aux Folles are but three triumphant comic examples of cinematic cross-dressing, but it's an undeniable fact that male-to-female gambits always seem to work better than female-to-male.
The cross-dressing antics can't compete with anything in "Tootsie," "Mrs.
Think of "The Parallax View," "Three Days of the Condor," "JFK," "The Day of the Jackal," "North By Northwest," and "The Fugitive"; this film shamelessly borrows from the best, and while it isn't as good as any of these I mentioned, it does move along at a commendable pace and with at least a modicum of excitement, thanks to its director, Antoine Fuqua ("Training Day," "Tears of the Sun"), and its star.
As much as Fuqua and his fellow filmmakers might like to think of Shooter as being in the vein of '70s thrillers like Three Days of the Condor and Parallax View, the film is really a throwback to the not terribly complicated action movies of the '80s where bad guys in suits were methodically taken down by a rugged anti-hero with firepower galore.
Shooter - Take a little of Rambo, The Fugitive, Sniper and Three Days of the Condor, dumb them down, add a flagrant left-wing agenda, and you have Shooter, an atrocious, boring, hopelessly generic action-thriller.
Despite its obvious aspirations to be the kind of paranoid political thriller that "The Parallax View" and "Three Days of the Condor" were in the mid-'70s, "Shooter" is at its best - which is very good indeed - when it's a rootin' tootin' shootin' party.
Adapting Washington Post film critic Stephen Hunter’s novel “Point of Impact,” the first entry in a trilogy featuring military sniper Bob Lee Swagger, scenarist Jonathan Lemkin stirs in recognizable ingredients from “The Parallax View,” “The Day of the Jackal,” “Seven Days in May” and “Three Days of the Condor,” feeding on and encouraging suspicion of nefarious deeds and dastardly motives among men in high places.
The screenwriter, Jonathan Lemkin, has acknowledged a debt not only to Hunter but to “Three Days of the Condor” and “The Parallax View,” seventies thrillers that drew on fears of shadowy government conspiracies.
Animal House provides the setting — a college campus dominated by a fraternity of morons — and Tootsie the emotional payoff — self-centered males see themselves through women’s eyes and don’t like it.
"Sorority Boys" shamelessly rips off "Tootsie," "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" and every other movie where the men dress in drag.
That was done for just the shock or comedy value (such as Flip Wilson and Milton Berle in their TV shows) or because a certain situation in the script required that of them (as occurred in TV's "Bosom Buddies" and in movies such as "Some Like It Hot," "Tootsie," "Mrs.
Michael Clayton (2007)
Directed by Tony Gilroy
influenced by Three Days of the Condor (1975), Absence of Malice (1981)
Plot Themes
But he otherwise gives the movie a frantic energy, a breathless pace, a dense atmosphere of corruption, plenty of snappy dialogue, and an ensemble of morally compromised supporting characters wonderfully played by Wilkinson, Tilda Swinton and Sydney Pollack (director of the iconic '70s paranoid thriller, "Three Days of the Condor.")
It's something of John Grisham meets "Three Days of the Condor," although, as the director points out in his commentary, the movie never goes near a courtroom.
In the tradition of such classics as "All the President's Men," "Klute" and "Three Days of the Condor," it's a film that dares not to patronize or pander to its audience, but rather to assume viewers possess the intelligence to connect its twisty trail of dots.
In fact, its proper place would seem to be with the paranoia thrillers of the 1970s, a sweaty sub-genre that houses such classics as All the President's Men, The Parallax View and Three Days of the Condor.
It’s a character study in the tradition of, say, “Harry and Tonto” or “A Woman Under the Influence,” but it also wants to be a paranoid thriller along the lines of “The Parallax View” or “Three Days of the Condor.”
These movies stand as on par with Redford’s The Candidate, Three Days Of The Condor and All The President’s Men in their absolute belief that something is rotten in the state of the union.
It nods to classic suspense flicks - "The Manchurian Candidate," "The Spy Who Came In From the Cold," "Three Days of the Condor" - without seeming dated.
At the start, you may be reminded of such Ford administration classics as “Three Days of the Condor” — a thriller that contains almost nothing like an action scene.
A dash of Bourne Identity series here, a pinch of Die Another Day, From Russia With Love and Mission: Impossible III there, a little Manchurian Candidate for flavor, and a hint of Three Days of the Condor and voila... you've got Salt.
There's a great gush of blood reminiscent of a similar pictorial element in Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining," and a sudden blossoming of Spanish guitar music that seems to derive from the taxi sequence in Martin Scorsese's "After Hours."
In Volver, Mr. Almodóvar has taken great pains to turn her into a voluptuous firebrand, big as the screen can hold, with a makeover inspired by the extended eyeliner of Claudia Cardinale, the tumble-down hair and plumped-up cleavage of a young Sophia Loren, and Dustin Hoffman’s padded derriere in Tootsie.
Syriana (2005)
Directed by Stephen Gaghan
influenced by Three Days of the Condor (1975)
Characters Themes
Clooney plays an updated role of the CIA agents and investigators that Robert Redford and Warren Beatty had played in the conspiracy films of the 1970s, such as “Three Days of the Condor” and “The Parallax View.”
As important now as "Three Days of the Condor" or "The Manchurian Candidate" were in their time, "Syriana" does for the oil industry what "Traffic" did for the drug trade.
She imbues Tully with a fresh (albeit one-dimensional) buoyancy that reminded me of the hippie-go-lucky attitude of the young Jessica Lange in King Kong and Tootsie.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)
Directed by Tim Burton
influenced by Tootsie (1982)
Characters
With a pageboy haircut, pale skin and a voice that recalls Dustin Hoffman as "Tootsie", Mr. Depp's Wonka exudes none of the gravity required for the role.
The race to nail the assassin could have been lifted from The Day of the Jackal.
From Cary Grant in "North By Northwest" and Harrison Ford in "The Fugitive," to John Travolta in "Blow Out," and Robert Redford headlining "Three Days of the Condor," watching these actors portraying men pushed to their limits has always thrilled moviegoers.
This amalgam of The Conversation, Three Days Of The Condor, and The Net talks a lot of techno-babble and pulls out a terrific array of toys, but despite Scotts slick veneer the splashy action pieces never translate into the kind of roller coaster excitement it should and instead spotlights the horrible inconsistencies: why does Brill help Dean?