Kenneth Lonergan
58 connections found
View:
Connections, in both directions
The Way Back (2020)
Directed by Gavin O'Connor
influenced by Manchester by the Sea (2016)
Themes Plot
Con una mesura emocional que se equipara a la de Manchester by the Sea , el otro hermano Affleck demuestra que bajo el mando de un talentoso director como lo es Gavin O’Connor, éste es capaz de brindarnos una excelente y compleja interpretación.
In that way, this is closer to a “Manchester by the Sea” than a “Hoosiers.”
The Way Back wants to be Manchester by the Sea on the hardwood, but it’s more like Hoosiers with a hangover.
It plays out a little like a cross between Hoosiers and Manchester by the Sea.
The arc is heavy-handed and predictable, and we’ve seen it all before and with more nuance in richer films such as Casey Affleck’s Manchester by the Sea .
As it becomes more overtly melodramatic, the film becomes less emotionally effective, straining for massive moments as if Affleck had gotten jealous of kid brother Casey’s “Manchester By The Sea.”
Ordinary People (1980)
Directed by Robert Redford
influenced Manchester by the Sea (2016)
Themes Music
The various and venerable spirits of “The Sweet Hereafter,” “Ordinary People” and “In the Bedroom” may hover over this movie in wintry setting and theme, but “Manchester by the Sea” is very much its own singular, seething creation.
It isn’t a weepie, although its classical score tugs it close to such tastefully lachrymose classics as Robert Redford’s Ordinary People.
Blow the Man Down (2019)
Directed by Danielle Krudy
influenced by Manchester by the Sea (2016)
Plot Visuals
Its matriarchal society, where a group of three stands up to its shadiest, suggests New England’s history with witchcraft while its plot of how a death in a fishing community calls up old history while impacting its younger generation recalls “Manchester by the Sea.”
“Blow the Man Down,” directed by Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy (it’s their first feature), is a drama of murder, sex, and small-town secrets set in Easter Cove, a fishing village in Maine that brings to mind the windswept coastal town of “Manchester by the Sea” — in fact, the place is so tiny and barren and gnarled it makes Manchester by the Sea look like Rome.
Blow the Man Down is rich in atmosphere thanks to the attention to detail paid in creating the film’s very specific world; one sees not only the influence of the Coen brothers and their body of work but also shades of Kenneth Lonergan’s elegiac Manchester by the Sea .
Writer-directors Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy get the New England look and feel down so well that even the characters in "Manchester by the Sea" would be proud.
The Sweet Hereafter (1997)
Directed by Atom Egoyan
influenced Manchester by the Sea (2016)
Themes Visuals
The various and venerable spirits of “The Sweet Hereafter,” “Ordinary People” and “In the Bedroom” may hover over this movie in wintry setting and theme, but “Manchester by the Sea” is very much its own singular, seething creation.
Manchester By The Sea resembles Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter, but Lonergan’s film has even greater humanity, a sense of humor and a precise observational mode that understands that life, in all its randomness, franticness and beauty, must continue during the grieving process, even if most movies make it seem like responsibilities and desires sleep for grief and sorrow.
He has entwined a present-day narrative with flashback sequences somewhat in the manner of Atom Egoyan’s jigsaw stories like “The Sweet Hereafter,” but with fresh, well-defined characters and a story all his own.
Think Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces or, hey, Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting.
Punch-Drunk Love (2002)
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
influenced Manchester by the Sea (2016)
Characters
He reminds of the Adam Sandler character in Punch-Drunk Love.
Life Itself (2018)
Directed by Dan Fogelman
influenced by Margaret (2011), Manchester by the Sea (2016)
Themes Plot
But be warned, make sure you bring your Kleenex with you, because “Life Itself” makes “Manchester by the Sea” look like the second coming of “Airplane!”
(Bizarrely, the central theme is that of Lonergan’s follow-up, Manchester By The Sea : the inheritance of grief.)
But this story is just the first of several morbid twists in a multi-generational, multi-chapter saga of schmaltz, set into motion by a Manhattan bus accident, à la Kenneth Lonergan’s Margaret .
Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
Directed by Jonathan Dayton
influenced by You Can Count on Me (2000)
Themes
If anything, the recent film it most recalls is You Can Count on Me (2000), another small treasure about a fractured family that managed to be moving without troweling on the sap.
Patrick is quick to summon friends, just as quick to let the subject among them change to silly “Star Trek” debates — in “Saturday Night Light” thick Massachusetts working-class accents.
He also has to contend with being back home in the North Shore area of Massachusetts, where everyone is hilariously tetchy, whose denizens don’t wait more than a few hours after a funeral to argue heatedly about “Star Trek.”
“I can’t believe we’re having this conversation now,” says a girlfriend of Patrick’s, as news of his father’s death segues into a discussion of the merits of Star Trek .
The overarching, awful tone of “The Whale” shares as much DNA with Kenneth Lonergan’s “Manchester by the Sea” as anything else, in its depiction of an endless web of trauma and regret, blame coursing under old, festering scabs aching to be ripped open, right up until they are.
Forget France, we’re in old-school Gloucester for this spin, hanging on the working-class side of town the way Kenneth Lonergan’s award-winning “Manchester by the Sea” (2016) did.
Prepping for “CODA,” Heder sought guidance from the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association, a nonprofit for New England’s fishing industry, as well as Oscar winner Kenneth Lonergan, who captured the atmosphere in “Manchester by the Sea” (2016).
Gloucester and the Massachusetts north shore have been the setting for several memorable movies including 2000’s The Perfect Storm and 2016’s Manchester by the Sea.
CODA is not the most original of stories and the director, Sian Heder, a screenwriter for many years on Orange is the New Black , hits all the predictable emotional beats but the film is saved by the high quality of its performers and its sense of place (shades of Manchester by the Sea ).
Belier’s French dairy farm-backdrop becomes a tight-knit American coastal community, one we’re familiar with from dramas like The Perfect Storm , Blow the Man Down or Manchester By the Sea .
His latest, a quietly powerful examination of grief healed by a brothers' bond, is not only an emotional character-driven drama, but the best realization of Massachusetts on screen since "The Friends of Eddie Coyle."
He’s the son of writer-director Peter Hedges, no stranger to sensitively told tales of life among the emotionally crippled (“Pieces of April,” “Dan in Real Life”).
The death of his beloved older brother Joe ( Kyle Chandler , seen in many generous flashbacks) saddles him with the unexpected responsibility of raising Joe's only son Patrick ( Lucas Hedges , Redford from " Moonrise Kingdom ").
He’s all the kid has left, unless you count Patrick’s two girlfriends (Anna – daughter of Mikhail – Baryshnikov; and Hedge’s “Moonrise Kingdom” costar Kara Hayward), whom he hilariously tries to juggle between hockey practice and rehearsals with his aptly named garage band, Stentorian.
The highlight of the film is the performance from Hedges, a young actor who got his start in “ The Grand Budapest Hotel ” and “Moonrise Kingdom.”
Affleck has a terrific foil in the 19-year-old Hedges (“Moonrise Kingdom,” “Kill the Messenger”), playing Patrick as a ball of rowdy, tempestuous adolescent energy who nonetheless submits with surprising ease to his uncle’s instruction, as though recognizing his need for an authority figure in his father’s absence.
And Kara Hayward, best known as the female lead in Moonrise Kingdom, plays one of Patrick’s two girlfriends.
Patrick bounces between a pair of high school sweethearts: the affably pretentious Sylvie (Kara Hayward, whom you may recognize as the now-post-adolescent girl from Moonrise Kingdom) and the earthy chucklehead Sandy (Anna Baryshnikov—yes, she is the Baryshnikov’s daughter).
“Manchester by the Sea” plays the role in the writer and director Kenneth Lonergan’s career that “The Departed” plays in Martin Scorsese’s.
In 21st-century American cinema — from “Mystic River” to “Gone Baby Gone,” from “The Fighter” to “The Departed” — the Bay State is where the myths of post-ethnic -class white identity have been forged.
It’s a familiar rough, tough, hard-luck, working-class Massachusetts set-up, instantly recognizable to anyone who’s seen Mystic River, Black Mass, The Departed, The Fighter, or generally any film starring Matt Damon or Casey’s brother Ben.
The Edge of Seventeen (2016)
Directed by Kelly Fremon Craig
influenced by Margaret (2011)
Themes Characters
One of Kenneth Lonergan’s keenest insights about teenagers in his great 2011 film Margaret was that, bereft of the kind of broader view of life and people that comes with maturity, teens have a tendency to think of themselves as the stars of their own personal dramas, regardless of whether an event was truly as earth-shattering as they believed it was.
In Nadine (Hailee Steinfeld), we encounter the most abrasive, needy, solipsistic teen character since Anna Paquin’s lead in Kenneth Lonergan’s Margaret .
The basic premise—about an irresponsible man who suddenly finds himself saddled with the task of looking after a youngster—is one that’s been used innumerable times, in fare ranging from syrupy Hallmark Hall of Fame-style tearjerkers to lousy comedies like Adam Sandler’s “Big Daddy.”
The various and venerable spirits of “The Sweet Hereafter,” “Ordinary People” and “In the Bedroom” may hover over this movie in wintry setting and theme, but “Manchester by the Sea” is very much its own singular, seething creation.
At turns elegiac, absurdist, and gently satirical, Lonergan’s drama is a deeply affecting chamber piece that features an outstanding performance by Casey Affleck (Gone Baby Gone, Ocean's Eleven) as a Boston janitor and apartment building super who is forced by his brother’s death to return to his North Shore hometown.
Affleck’s range and his ability to convey so much without expressing much on the surface and saying even less is a testament to how far he’s come since these early bit-part days in Ocean’s Eleven and Chasing Amy.
It's not of the Tarantino "Pulp Fiction" variety where time has been contorted, but it's certainly an effective storytelling technique that draws the viewer further into the characters and proceedings as things unfold and are disclosed.