Ted Demme
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Filmography
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Connections, in both directions
You could say it’s like “Blow,” on well, blow.
Taking structural cues from stuff like Goodfellas and Blow, Liman has fun within the sub-sub-genre of crazy Americans doing crazy American things for a lot of money.
His tale is a reminiscent of George Jung, the drug dealing kingpin whose misadventures were chronicled in Ted Demme’s Blow (released back in 2001).
(It’s funny to remember that Cruise almost starred as Henry Hill in the 1990 classic.) We’ve seen this sort of sarcastic structure applied to less successful criminal history lessons like “Blow,” “Lord of War” and last year’s abysmal “War Dogs,” but none of those films had this one’s bratty, propulsive energy.
Its colorful style recalls the flamboyant amorality of GoodFellas and Blow, and it’s often funnier and more succinct than either.
As a high-wire criminal balancing act in the vein of Goodfellas or Blow , American Made is adequate (nowhere near the former; more enjoyable than the latter).
Can't match the best prison movies like "Cool Hand Luke" or "The Shawshank Redeption" but has element of both.
The movie plays off any number of scenes familiar from a host of chain-gang movies, the most obvious a fight scene that closely mimics the Paul Newman-George Kennedy beating from Cool Hand Luke, with Murphy as Newman.
Once they land in ��Camp 8,�� the story takes on echoes of Cool Hand Luke and Stalag 17, as the two men make their place among a colorful assortment of inmates and officers.
It takes a good 30 minutes to pick up the kind of momentum needed to drive a depressing character like Largeman through the finish line, but once Portman pops up as the cheerful love interest (reminiscent of her earlier work in “Beautiful Girls”), the film glides to its conclusion.
Braff has made no secret of the fact that he was influenced by such films as Harold & Maude and The Graduate (the use of Simon and Garfunkel on the soundtrack is a bit of a giveaway), but presumably, he also watched David Gordon Green’s movies and one would guess he’s seen Beautiful Girls (which also starred Natalie Portman) way too many more times than can be considered healthy.
Depending on your view, Shaun of the Dead is either a zombie flick masking as a comedy, or a comedy masking as a zombie flick, or Beautiful Girls masking as a zombie comedy.
As director, Braff elicits the most charismatic Natalie Portman performance since "Beautiful Girls" and, visually makes the most of many sight-gags, including the inherent lunacy of working as a knight at Medieval Times.
Portman, freed from George Lucas' shackles and back in Beautiful Girls territory (but blessedly minus that earlier film's creepy pedophiliac vibe), simply glows in a role that could easily have crossed over into lethal levels of life-affirming perkiness.
Andrew gets a jolt out of sub-Springsteen territory when he meets Sam (Natalie Portman, in her most playful role since the similarly toned Beautiful Girls), a local girl ably coping with epilepsy.
Featuring Johnny Depp in the lead role and a solid supporting cast including Ray Liotta, Jordi Malla and Paul Reubens, the film is likely to remind some viewers of "Goodfellas," director Martin Scorsese's film about real-life mobster Henry Hill.
"Blow" is not a very imaginative movie, especially since it's basically a knockoff from Martin Scorsese's far superior "GoodFellas" of 1990.
Where P.T. Anderson's "Boogie Nights" felt like the "Goodfellas" of porn and Scorsese's own "Casino" handled the gambling industry, "Blow" is caught between imitation of its predecessors and finding a style of its own.
Also, director Demme's use of Jung's relentless narration, punctuated with rock songs of the times, seems patterned too closely to "GoodFellas."
Playing like a peppy minor-league version of GoodFellas or John Boorman's great underworld biopic, The General, the movie touts a statistic that commands even more attention than Depp: If you were an American using cocaine in the late '70s or early '80s, there's an 85% chance that Jung was at least peripherally involved in the transaction.
Borrowing the narrative structure and the contagious kinetic energy of Scorsese's "Goodfellas," Demme creates a dizzyingly seductive criminal whirlpool of money and drugs that sucks the audience in right along with Jung, who is played with cool but insatiable zeal by Johnny Depp in another of his engrossingly chameleonic performance.
To be fair, comparisons between this film and any other cinematic "epic" look at period decadence - such as "Goodfellas," "Scarface" or "Boogie Nights" - are inevitable since most all of them employ similar cinematic and storytelling techniques.
Hell, by now every rapper has his or her mandatory copy of Brian De Palma's "Scarface" on DVD.
You walk away from "Blow" feeling that the crime film-as-cultural autopsy has been done to death-"Scarface," "Goodfellas" and "Boogie Nights," to name just a few movies to which "Blow" is in debt.
The first two-thirds of the film fuse together the high-impact operatics of director Brian DePalma's "Scarface" and the in-your-face style of "GoodFellas"; the connection to the Martin Scorsese classic is underscored by the casting of Ray Liotta as Jung's worn-down father.
Even such an accomplished prison film as The Shawshank Redemption fell for this sentimental view of life behind bars (I much prefer the balls-to-the-walls spit and snarl of HBO's Oz), and now there is Life, which tries to turn the subject into a comedy vehicle for Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence.
Let's just say the movie, which has some passing similarities with "The Shawshank Redemption," spans two lifetime sentences.
It starts off as a wacky period piece set in the Prohibition era of 1932 (with echoes of Eddie's '89 bomb Harlem Nights), but then it turns into The Shawshank Redemption.
Dragging its feet between I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (released the same year that Life finds its "murderers" caught up in the criminal injustice system) and the camaraderie and bleakness of The Shawshank Redemption, Life instead is a sailboat stranded in a windless sea, a comedy slant on The Bridge on the River Kwai sinking without the bridge or the river.
While most are dramatic -- think of Paul Newman in "Cool Hand Luke" and Clint Eastwood in "Escape From Alcatraz" -- some of have been funny -- such as "Stir Crazy" (Gene Wilder, Richard Pryor) and "The Longest Yard" (Burt Reynolds) -- while others are nothing short of outstanding -- such as "Papillon" (Steve McQueen) and the incomparable "The Shawshank Redemption" (Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman).
In something like 1994's "The Shawshank Redemption," this idea worked because the subject matter was treated with a realism and intelligence.
Boogie Nights (1997)
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
influenced Blow (2001)
Themes Characters Visuals Plot
To be fair, comparisons between this film and any other cinematic "epic" look at period decadence - such as "Goodfellas," "Scarface" or "Boogie Nights" - are inevitable since most all of them employ similar cinematic and storytelling techniques.
Ethan Suplee is endearing as the overlarge Tuna, reminding me of Philip Seymour Hoffman's character in "Boogie Nights," and is missed when he disappears from the story all too soon.
Demme makes the drug business accessable to the viewer; the mistake that Boogie Nights (a similar film in tone and setting) made was making its focus distant and obscure.
Where P.T. Anderson's "Boogie Nights" felt like the "Goodfellas" of porn and Scorsese's own "Casino" handled the gambling industry, "Blow" is caught between imitation of its predecessors and finding a style of its own.
Much of the film is reminiscent in style and execution to 1997's brilliant "Boogie Nights" and 1998's misguided "54," both of which involved drugs but did not have them as the centerpiece of the action.
Wait a minute here -- we're encouraged to bask in this one moron's success story in much the same way Paul Thomas Anderson strained to get us to love Marky Mark in Boogie Nights, through a series of plot mechanizations that are as thin as they are obvious.
"Life" is a questionable title that doesn't chill one to the bone so much as remind of the mediocre 1999 prison dramedy starring Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence.
Once they land in ��Camp 8,�� the story takes on echoes of Cool Hand Luke and Stalag 17, as the two men make their place among a colorful assortment of inmates and officers.
I certainly wouldn't hold up 'Stir Crazy' as a comedy masterpiece, but there are scenes in it I remember after 18 years -- Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder's famous "We bad" entrance; Wilder spending a stretch in the hole, then being disappointed upon getting let out ("I was just beginning to find myself"); a bald, fearsome, gargantuan convict starting to sing in a soft, high, lovely voice.
While most are dramatic -- think of Paul Newman in "Cool Hand Luke" and Clint Eastwood in "Escape From Alcatraz" -- some of have been funny -- such as "Stir Crazy" (Gene Wilder, Richard Pryor) and "The Longest Yard" (Burt Reynolds) -- while others are nothing short of outstanding -- such as "Papillon" (Steve McQueen) and the incomparable "The Shawshank Redemption" (Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman).
It’s been a long time since Oliver Stone has made a movie that isn’t directly tied into politics–you can make an argument either way on this one–and his adaptation of Don Winslow’s novel “Savages” has elements that will remind you of those great older movies and even the late Ted Demme’s “Blow,” but also offers something firmly planted in the modern day.
Stone has always been a cinematic preacher, and in Don Winslow’s novel — sort of a “Blow” set in the west coast marijuana trade — he found a great vehicle to sermonize about the violence and greed that have taken over the once-benign Baby Boomer narcotic of choice.
Much of the film is reminiscent in style and execution to 1997's brilliant "Boogie Nights" and 1998's misguided "54," both of which involved drugs but did not have them as the centerpiece of the action.
Portman's performance is a revelation from this actress who was a 13-year-old charmer in " Beautiful Girls " (1996).
Her first two major roles in The Professional and Beautiful Girls showcased a little girl well beyond her years in maturity.
For a gritty film about the drug trade to succeed in this post- "Traffic" world, it will need what "Traffic" lacked: heart and humanity.
It's "Traffic" via "The People vs. Larry Flynt."
"Blow" had the bad luck to arrive soon after Steven Soderbergh's "Traffic," which gave such a vital, original look at similar material that it makes the ordinary "Blow" pale by comparison.
April 7, 2001 -- The problem of drugs in the U.S. has been tackled in three ambitious, well-acted movies in recent months, "Requiem for a Dream," "Traffic," and now, "Blow."
"Blow" is the third motion picture about drugs in the last seven months (with the other two being the superior "Requiem for a Dream" and "Traffic"), but manages to differentiate itself enough to not feel routine or tedious.
While most are dramatic -- think of Paul Newman in "Cool Hand Luke" and Clint Eastwood in "Escape From Alcatraz" -- some of have been funny -- such as "Stir Crazy" (Gene Wilder, Richard Pryor) and "The Longest Yard" (Burt Reynolds) -- while others are nothing short of outstanding -- such as "Papillon" (Steve McQueen) and the incomparable "The Shawshank Redemption" (Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman).
Considering Will and Abby’s fondness for 1990s cinema ( Pulp Fiction , Beautiful Girls and The Professional are all directly referenced), one can assume their romance and marriage takes place during that decade.
Dragging its feet between I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (released the same year that Life finds its "murderers" caught up in the criminal injustice system) and the camaraderie and bleakness of The Shawshank Redemption, Life instead is a sailboat stranded in a windless sea, a comedy slant on The Bridge on the River Kwai sinking without the bridge or the river.
As such, they end up playing something of the imprisoned, African American version of "The Odd Couple" that appropriately later turns into "Grumpy Old Men" as their characters get older.
The 40 Year-Old Virgin (2005)
Directed by Judd Apatow
influenced by Beautiful Girls (1996)
Characters
It was nearly ten years ago since we had characters as perfectly realized as Andy, David, Cal and Jay when 1996 brought us both Beautiful Girls and Swingers.
Working from a script by screenwriters Nick Cassavetes ("Unhook the Stars," director of "She's So Lovely") and David McKenna ("Get Carter," "American History X") -- who've adapted Bruce Porter's novel of the same name - Demme weaves an engaging tale of Jung's life from his early pot dealing days in California through the many riches and trials and tribulations of the coke business.