David Koepp
64 connections found
View:
Connections, in both directions
Breezing into screwball-romance terrain charted by such otherworldly standards as "Blithe Spirit," "Topper" and "Ghost," writer-director David Koepp seems liberated by the chance to put repartee front and center.
The British comic plays Bertram Pincus, a misanthropic dentist in New York City who develops an ability to see dead people; to be specific, the dead are noodgy, solid-looking ghosts of the type that populated the Cary Grant movie Topper.
The premise of a ghost—or multiple ghosts—that only one person can see dates back to at least Topper (1937), to which Ghost Town owes a significant debt.
While growing up in days of yore, I loved the Topper movies.
At its essence, Ghost Town is Topper multiplied, with Gervais' misanthropic dentist Bertram Pincus seeing dead people all over Manhattan following a botched medical procedure (some of the film's funniest scenes involve the brilliant Kristin Wiig as a purposefully inarticulate surgeon and Michael-Leon Wooley as her in-house legal counsel).
Again, Koepp has delivered something of a throwback, but his inspirations are marvelous: "Ghost Town" offers an update of the supernatural farce found in "Topper," "Here Comes Mr. Jordan" and other comedies from Hollywood's so-called golden age, when the term "adult" meant "sophisticated."
The Shining (1980)
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
influenced You Should Have Left (2020)
Plot Visuals Themes
The notion of an already damaged man being further tormented by strange happenings in a mysterious locale is intended to remind you of The Shining, and that’s probably why the protagonist’ occupation was changed from “screenwriter trying to write a sequel to his previous success” to “retired banker.”
Set almost exclusively inside a spooky Welsh mansion rented by a rich banker with a troubled past (Kevin Bacon) and his younger-by-decades actress wife (Amanda Seyfried), Koepp’s adaptation of Daniel Kehlmann’s early-aughts novella is composed of many tiny pieces of other, better genre efforts: a dash of Robert Zemeckis’s What Lies Beneath, a helping of Mark Z. Danielewski’s cult novel House of Leaves, more than a bit of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining and even a healthy dose of Koepp’s own 1999 Kevin Bacon vehicle, Stir of Echoes.
To be fair, inconsistent geography is a trick that The Shining employed to great subconscious effect, but it’s the unsettling feeling it silently provided, not someone explaining the architectural inconsistencies outright, that made it work.
Certainly not as busy or special effects-laden as the likes of The Amityville Horror or Poltergeist and their various sequels and reboots, this one written and directed by veteran David Koepp is more cerebral and likely to be compared to The Shining more than anything else.
You Should Have Left often feels like a watered-down version of The Shining, but Koepp still manages to maintain interest in its mind-bending story.
The reunion of writer/director David Koepp and his "Stir of Echoes" star Kevin Bacon is an adaptation of a German novella by Daniel Kehlmann that plays up connections to “The Shining” and shades them mid century modern.
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997)
Directed by Jay Roach
influenced Mortdecai (2015)
Characters Themes
But for a certain sort of Anglophile, one who recognizes the attempted homage to ’60s comedies, the late comics Terry-Thomas and Dudley Moore and other inspirations for Mike Myers’ “Austin Powers” pictures, it’s something less than awful.
As goofball English aristocrat, puckish bon vivant and underhanded art dealer Charlie Mortdecai, Depp channels such British funnymen as Peter Sellers and Terry-Thomas (replete with the latter's gap teeth), as well as Mike Myers in the "Austin Powers" series, while still putting his own irrepressible spin on the whole madcap charade.
But there’s no room at the modern multiplex for an homage to kooky classic comedy unless we’re snickering at the very idea, as in the Austin Powers films.
Mortdecai would have been a funny movie if it were released right after Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery in 1997.
If director David Koepp's (2012's " Premium Rush ") goal was to mount the next "Austin Powers," he has been sorely led astray by Eric Aronson's (2001's " On the Line ") dismally bad screenplay, which seems to think Mortdecai's facial hair and Johanna's gag reflex every time she tries to kiss him are the height of hilarity.
"Ghost Town" plays a bit like a blend between the Bill Murray comedy "Groundhog Day" (1993) and the Patrick Swayze tear-jerker "Ghost" (1990).
In the third act, the movie all but announces it's going to copy "Groundhog Day," then does so.
Koepp’s Ghost Town, however, is more than simply a regurgitation; while it clearly pays homage to a variety of antecedents—everything from early classics like It’s a Wonderful Life and A Guy Named Joe to more recent favorites like Ghost and Groundhog Day—its view on human relationships is surprisingly direct, even edgy for a studio comedy.
Maybe M. Night Shyamalan is due some cash, because "Ghost Town" is essentially "The Sixth Sense" with the hilarious British misanthrope from the original version of "The Office" and "Extras," whose catchphrase would be "I see dead people, and I wish I could serve them all with restraining orders."
Gagging on elements of Ghost and The Sixth Sense, the film finds Pincus dogged at every step by spirits with unfinished business on Earth.
His directorial efforts, The Trigger Effect and Secret Window had their share of attributes but neither stood a candle to his underrated Stir of Echoes, which was the ghost story everyone should have seen in 1999 instead of The Sixth Sense.
It also owes a bit to a much more recent—and more serious-minded—work, M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense (1999).
Pincus maintains a tightly controlled world of solitude, until he goes in for a routine colonoscopy only to emerge with a parodied version of "The Sixth Sense."
During the opening minutes of the film—an occasionally effective mash-up of Ghost, The Sixth Sense, and The Frighteners—Gervais is nearly mute as Bertram Pincus, D.D.S. , a dentist who enjoys his work because it allows him the peace and quiet that comes with sticking cotton balls into his patients' mouths.
Breezing into screwball-romance terrain charted by such otherworldly standards as "Blithe Spirit," "Topper" and "Ghost," writer-director David Koepp seems liberated by the chance to put repartee front and center.
The living pass through the dead in an amusing way reminiscent of 1990's "Ghost" and each time it happens, the mortals sneeze.
"Ghost Town" plays a bit like a blend between the Bill Murray comedy "Groundhog Day" (1993) and the Patrick Swayze tear-jerker "Ghost" (1990).
Derailed by a romantic subplot, Ghost Town fails to make use of the dead as proper comedic fodder.
"The Dark Half," his novel published that same year, explores the same themes again, so it would take a real King novice (or movie novice for that matter) to find any thrills in this thriller.
It's a movie that aspires only to entertain with easy apprehension, and harbors no delusions that it's anything more than second-rate horror cobbled together from familiar bits of other King stories (notably "The Dark Half" and "Misery") -- in short, a corny goosepimpler for genre gourmets who wish more drive-in flicks were made with a crafty cinematic élan.
There are no real surprises here; King had already mined the psyche of an unhinged writer with more depth in his novel The Dark Half, which was made into a very good film by horror master George A. Romero (Night of the Living Dead) in 1993.
If the stranger isn't distracting enough, Rainey still pines for his ex-wife, who's found some normalcy with her new beau (Timothy Hutton, who starred in 1993's underrated King adaptation, "The Dark Half").
I've seen four movie adaptations of Stephen King books that have writers as heroes -- The Shining (1980), Misery (1990), The Dark Half (1993), and now Secret Window -- and I know of a few others.
Throughout his extensive career, Stephen King has habitually attempted (in novels such as The Dark Half and Misery) to confront the relationship between the artist and his work, and that thematic preoccupation once again comes into play in David Koepp’s Secret Window.
Weird religious iconography, wide-brimmed Amish hats, some sort of sinister cornfield à la Children of the Corn?
It's a movie that aspires only to entertain with easy apprehension, and harbors no delusions that it's anything more than second-rate horror cobbled together from familiar bits of other King stories (notably "The Dark Half" and "Misery") -- in short, a corny goosepimpler for genre gourmets who wish more drive-in flicks were made with a crafty cinematic élan.
Stephen King has explored some of the special challenges faced by writers in The Shining and Misery.
The premise is a minor twist on his Misery, wherein an author holed up in the woods gets taken hostage by a loony who's read one too many of his books.
There's much of value here despite the fact that some of it plays like a Stephen King's Greatest Hits collection (the Misery connection, for instance, and the play on the name "Shooter" that's very like the "redrum" business in The Shining).
The latter quality may come from King's own much-noted habit of plagiarizing himself — there are fairly obvious nods to Misery and The Shining here, as well as allusions to other works that fans will no doubt recognize.
I've seen four movie adaptations of Stephen King books that have writers as heroes -- The Shining (1980), Misery (1990), The Dark Half (1993), and now Secret Window -- and I know of a few others.
Koepp’s Ghost Town, however, is more than simply a regurgitation; while it clearly pays homage to a variety of antecedents—everything from early classics like It’s a Wonderful Life and A Guy Named Joe to more recent favorites like Ghost and Groundhog Day—its view on human relationships is surprisingly direct, even edgy for a studio comedy.
The concept of the film pays homage to the likes of Stir of Echoes and a horror short story written by W. W. Jacobs and originally published in 1902 called The Monkey’s Paw .
There are Stephen King novellas that inspire great movies like The Shawshank Redemption and then there are Stephen King novellas that inspire cinematic hash like Secret Window.
Adapted and directed by David Koepp, "Secret Window" belongs to the elite category of King adaptations, such as "The Shawshank Redemption" and "The Shining," with its first-rate cast and production elements.
Of all the film's classic predecessors, "Ghost Town" suffers most when balanced against Anthony Minghella's lovely debut film, "Truly, Madly, Deeply," which elicited deep, naked tremors of feeling from the setup of a woman letting go of her dead husband.
The third act itself is also reminiscent of other media like the novel House of Leaves and the 2009 horror-thriller Triangle , but these fan favorites handle their similarities better than this film can even consider attempting.
Best known for his script work on excellent movies such as Jurassic Park, Spider-Man, and Panic Room, I was hoping that this latest film of his, which he also directed, would be a return to form for him after the less than stellar Tom Cruise-lead The Mummy film back in 2017.
But veteran screenwriter and director David Koepp ( The Mummy , Mortdecai ) uses so many tired tropes of the Blumhouse genre — skittering shadows, warped lenses, sudden levitations — that he might as well be mining another movie he made with Bacon over 20 years ago, 1999’s Stir of Echoes .
Half a decade since his critical failure Mortdecai and only a few more years since his highly criticized The Mummy script, Koepp is handling double duty as director and writer here.
The words “Based on a novella by Stephen King” probably don’t inspire as much excitement as once they did, and with good reason: for every Misery, there’s a Dreamcatcher, a Hearts in Atlantis and a Tommyknockers.
Sure, his association with earlier films like “Maximum Overdrive” and “Christine” didn’t help the box office, but it gave the movies a decent buzz.
Breezing into screwball-romance terrain charted by such otherworldly standards as "Blithe Spirit," "Topper" and "Ghost," writer-director David Koepp seems liberated by the chance to put repartee front and center.
Souls, Just Like Heaven, and of course Blithe Spirit, the granddaddy of these ghostly rom-coms.
There are no real surprises here; King had already mined the psyche of an unhinged writer with more depth in his novel The Dark Half, which was made into a very good film by horror master George A. Romero (Night of the Living Dead) in 1993.
Koepp’s Ghost Town, however, is more than simply a regurgitation; while it clearly pays homage to a variety of antecedents—everything from early classics like It’s a Wonderful Life and A Guy Named Joe to more recent favorites like Ghost and Groundhog Day—its view on human relationships is surprisingly direct, even edgy for a studio comedy.