Curtis Hanson
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Connections, in both directions
(A similar approach to another time period, the 1950s, powered Curtis Hanson's L.A. Confidential, another superior color noir effort.)
One of the reasons "L.A. Confidential'' is so good, why is deserves to be mentioned with "Chinatown," is that it's not just plot and atmosphere.
Critics are already comparing “L.A. Confidential” to movies such as “Chinatown” and “Pulp Fiction.”
It helps that they're working with a gifted cinematographer (Dante Spinotti), a composer with deep roots in this genre (Jerry Goldsmith of "Chinatown") and a great script.
A big critical hit at the last Cannes Film Festival, it has been compared repeatedly to "Chinatown," Roman Polanski's classic 1974 L.A. noir (written by director Hanson's onetime mentor Robert Towne).
A lot of people have been comparing "L.A. Confidential" to "Chinatown," but, aside from the obvious noir detail and the setting (and the great, piano-driven music by "Chinatown" composer Jerry Goldsmith), the only thing the two movies really have in common is that absolutely nothing about the crime is what it initially seems to be.
The Gift (2015)
Directed by Joel Edgerton
influenced by The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992), Bad Influence (1990)
Themes Plot
The sins of the high-school cafeteria come home to roost in “The Gift,” a coolly unsettling thriller that begins as an unironic homage to late-’80s/early-’90s yuppies-in-peril dramas like “Fatal Attraction” and “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle,” before taking a turn toward the moral and existential minefield of Michael Haneke’s “Cache.”
"The Gift" is a tight little thriller that recalls the good old days of "Fatal Attraction" and "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle," back when suspicious packages appeared on the doorstep, no affair went unpunished, and the family dog was never safe.
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.”
To divulge much more might spoil a superior film in an overworked genre once heavily populated by the likes of "Fatal Attraction," "Pacific Heights," "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle" and other domestic thrillers.
Faster than you can say Fatal Attraction and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, the socially stunted Gordo starts showing up unannounced and staring into the wraparound windows of his old schoolmate’s pricey hillside home.
It winds up having more in common with “Rosemary’s Baby” than, say, “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle,” being a deeply empathetic look at a woman being slowly dehumanized and used by unseemly forces, in this case by men who aren’t always aware of the evil forces lurking inside them.
The Beatles' "A Hard Day's Night" remains out of reach, but "8 Mile" definitely matches well against semi-bio rocker vehicles from Elvis Presley's "Loving You" to Prince's "Purple Rain."
Think " Rocky " with rapping.
Sports movies, movies like "Remember the Titans" , "Any Given Sunday" , "Rocky", etc., conform to a strict formula in which the 1st half of the 1st act will tell you exactly how it will end, namely, your team will win, your player will overcome insurmountable odds and/or personal demons, competitors will be defeated.
Though in reality (and ironically) Eminem did not win his last battle, his story would seem like fine Hollywood fodder (comparisons to "Saturday Night Fever" and "Rocky" are anything but coincidental).
Extremely enjoyable film, with a winning performance from Eminem - essentially this is the Hip-Hop version of Rocky.
The "Rocky" clone script, by Scott Silver, immerses the action within Detroit's 8 Mile loop as white boy Bunny Rabbit, a fast minded and fast-talking rap star wannabe, goes against the local favorites at the weekly battle of the rappers hosted by Future (Phifer).
In the end, though, Rabbit is all alone – not just on stage, where he revs audience expectations for a Rocky-style triumph, but also in a surprisingly and satisfyingly ambiguous final scene.
Hanson even manages to slide in one arty reference to the great film director of the 1950s Douglas Sirk, by having Rabbit's mom glued to the TV watching "Imitation of Life."
The Universal release, co-written by its star, follows the "8 Mile" template of unvarnished self-examination, only played for laughs as well as pathos.
My colleague Juilan Lytle wrote that The King of Staten Island is Pete Davidson’s 8 Mile.
Imagine 8 Mile if B. Rabbit’s secret dream was to franchise a TGI Fridays and you have some idea of the cognitive dissonance.
Una película cuasi autobiográfica como esta no necesita incluir tal detalle - no hay una foto sonriente de Eminem y su madre al final de 8 Mile - pero la elección tiene peso aquí.
The King of Staten Island is constantly battling with whether it wants to be a light comedic romp about arrested development, a la every Adam Sandler film not called Punch Drunk Love or Uncut Gems, or a gritty autobiographical story of one troubled manboy’s rise above his demons a la 8 Mile .
It's the "SNL" star's story the same way "8 Mile" was Eminem's story; Em played a version of himself who was not really himself but okay, it was himself.
She resists, making an oblique reference to the horror film The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.
This story could have unfolded in many different ways; Marlo’s initial fear is that letting a stranger into her home at night will engender something akin to the trashy thriller The Hand that Rocks the Cradle.
On the surface, this is a cross between Mary Poppins and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, so from the very start there's a sense that there's something wrong about Tully.
What could have been a scary psychodrama (like The Hand That Rocks The Cradle ) or a saucy European comedy (where Tully winds up getting off with one or both parents) instead becomes all about the growing bond between the two women, as they watch crappy reality TV together, discuss Marlo’s non-existent sex life, bop to Cyndi Lauper’s greatest hits, visit a Manhattan club, thrash around to a metal band and truly open up to each other.
There's also something of The Big Sleep in director Curtis Hanson 's unfashionably pre-postmodern tour de force of early-'50s atmosphere, tight plotting, snappy dialogue, and sharply edited action—you know, all those quaint virtues from the old noirs.
This is one of those classic films like "The Big Sleep" where the murder mystery is so complicated it doesn't make much sense for most of the film, but you are happy to go along for the ride because of the style, flair, atmosphere, romance, acting and dialogue.
He has the molls, the cynicism and the corruption of a Bogart movie; in fact, "The Big Sleep" and "The Maltese Falcon" echo loudly throughout.
As much as "L.A. Confidential" invites comparison to "Chinatown" and "The Big Sleep," Hanson's movie doesn't reach that standard.
Curtis Hanson’s “8 Mile,” a not-really-but-kind-of biography of Eminem in which the rapper himself stars, is straightforward, rudimentary, old-fashioned moviemaking, cranking away in the service of a story we’ve seen over and over again, from “Rebel Without a Cause” to “Saturday Night Fever.”
Though in reality (and ironically) Eminem did not win his last battle, his story would seem like fine Hollywood fodder (comparisons to "Saturday Night Fever" and "Rocky" are anything but coincidental).
Set in 1995 Detroit, 8 Mile is more or less a whipped creamversion of Eminem's life story, inflated and decorated to fit in withmovies like Saturday Night Fever, Flashdance and PurpleRain.
While it’s not Best Picture material, “8 Mile” succeeds at what itout to do, to show parents and cynics what all the fuss is about (not for Eminem, but for the music as a whole) and to give dedicated hip-hop fans what “Saturday Night Fever” gave to disco fans 25 years ago.
And, not unlike John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, he's got to prove himself by winning the biggest contest in his miserable little burb.
Like the fighting in "Rocky" and the dancing in "Saturday Night Fever," the rap songs in "8 Mile" possess a redemptive power.
The Guest (2014)
Directed by Adam Wingard
influenced by The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992)
Characters
The film gleefully recalls a very specific strain of Hollywood junk, such wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing potboilers as Fear and The Hand That Rocks The Cradle.
David seems a version of Uncle Charlie in Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, Rebecca De Mornay’s nanny in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, or Matthew Goode in Stoker.
The Beatles' "A Hard Day's Night" remains out of reach, but "8 Mile" definitely matches well against semi-bio rocker vehicles from Elvis Presley's "Loving You" to Prince's "Purple Rain."
They chose to make "8 Mile," a movie that is for Eminem what "A Hard Day's Night" was for the Beatles: a movie that codifies a myth while turning it inside out and holding it up so we can see our reflection.
The film, based on the comic novel by Michael Chabon, is somewhat reminiscent of Nobody’s Fool (which starred Paul Newman), in that it shares a similar mood, snowy locale (New England) and cast of likeable characters.
Paul Newman did it, in The Hudsucker Proxy and Nobody’s Fool after all.
Gangster Squad (2013)
Directed by Ruben Fleischer
influenced by L.A. Confidential (1997)
Visuals Plot Themes
Better they should be looking for the heinous computer boffins who turned Gangster Squad from film noir homage into a lurid cartoon, something that seeks the drama of The Untouchables and L.A. Confidential but instead apes the empty theatrics of Dick Tracy.
Apart from the gore—and there's plenty—this is basically L.A. Confidential without the script: an upright police detective in 1949 (Josh Brolin) rounds up some like-minded renegades on the force (Ryan Gosling, Giovanni Ribisi, Michael Peña, Anthony Mackie, Robert Patrick) to wage war on real-life gangster Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn).
Gangster Squad is no L.A. Confidential, nor is it much of a history lesson, compressing some 15 years (part of which Cohen spent in jail) into a few months.
Working with cinematographer Dion Beebe, Fleischer dresses Gangster Squad in a film noir look, and saddles it with all the aspirations of, say, a Goodfellas or L.A. Confidential.
It's obvious, however, that Beall is mostly drawing on his experience with other movies, particularly the previous generation of revisionist period crime dramas, films like Brian De Palma's 1987 The Untouchables, which Gangster Squad's plot hews close to, and Curtis Hanson's 1997 L.A. Confidential.
Unforgettable (2017)
Directed by Denise Di Novi
influenced by The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992)
Characters Plot
Heigl does her damndest to try and cement a new erotic thriller icon, hovering somewhere between Rebecca De Mornay’s lethal caretaker in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle and Glenn Close’s jilted one night stand from Fatal Attraction.
After the nanny from hell ( The Hand That Rocks The Cradle ), the ex-boyfriend ( Sleeping With The Enemy ) and the mistress ( Fatal Attraction ), beware the ex-wife as Katherine Heigl plays a vengeful “psycho Barbie” divorcé who is determined to see off Geoff Stults’ current fiancé Rosario Dawson by any means necessary.
But Unforgettable scarcely aspires to that level, content to go through the same tired motions as the spate of second-rate, post- Attraction knockoffs from the early 1990s— Poison Ivy , The Crush , Mother’s Boys , and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle among them.
The Occupant (2020)
Directed by David Pastor
influenced by The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992)
Themes Characters
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: With its privileged-class post-capitalist theme and crazy-person-from-a-’90s-movie protagonist, The Occupant is Parasite crossed with The Hand That Rocks the Cradle .
As a greying villain, Gutiérrez’s Javier doesn’t provoke a fear factor of a Catherine Tramell ( Basic Instinct ), Bridget Gregory ( The Last Seduction ) or Peyton Mott ( The Hand That Rocks The Cradle ), meaning the thrills feel watered down.
Fatal Attraction (1987)
Directed by Adrian Lyne
influenced The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992)
Plot
Five years before adapting and directing the modern masterpiece L.A. Confidential, Curtis Hanson helmed this sizable box office hit that, like 1987's Fatal Attraction, used home invasion as a crafty commercial hook.
Don't be gulled by those who would compare "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle" to "Fatal Attraction," which features three strong characters who, in one way or another, are ready to answer for their actions.
"L.A. Confidential" even contains a parody of a 1950s television cop show, Jack Webb's "Dragnet," that's fresher than most of "Cop Land."
Among those disciplined are Sergeant Bud White (a beefy and brush-cut Russell Crowe in a crisp Jack Webb likeness), a brutish shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later type with a thing for wife beaters, and "Hollywood Jack" Vincennes (a suavely cynical Kevin Spacey, whose light touch gives L.A. much of its oomph), a "celebrity cop" who serves as technical adviser to a Dragnet-like TV show -- when he's not setting up dope and sex busts of movie stars for scandal-sheet editor Sid Hudgens (Danny DeVito doing gleeful smarm).
In a delicious game of domestic subterfuge that plays like a remake of Joseph Losey's "The Servant," Peyton undermines Claire's existence while seducing her with a smooth impersonation of the ideal mother's helper.
With his tattoos covered by a hooded sweatshirt and his piercings on hiatus because of the film's 1995 setting, the actor has something of the quality of an updated James Dean (the director suggested he watch "East of Eden," but apparently that never happened) and he carries the picture like it's second nature.
Unhinged (2020)
Directed by Derrick Borte
influenced by The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992)
Themes
“Unhinged” arrives in the same tradition as revenge/anger porn movies of the 1990s and early Aughts — “Falling Down,” “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle,” “Changing Lanes.”
The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (nanny from Hell), Unlawful Entry (cop from Hell), Pacific Heights (landlord from Hell), to name just three.