Jason Reitman
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Connections, in both directions
Oh, and while the romance here is mostly quiet, there's a kitchen scene that may do for peach pies what "Ghost" did for pottery wheels.
Inevitably, this major set piece is reminiscent of the famous pottery scene in " Ghost ," not just in its staging but in its comparative lack of passion.
You may come out talking about the pie-making scene — like the pottery sequence in “Ghost,” except not — but it probably won’t be for the right reasons.
He's a master chef - I suppose the peach pie baking scene is intended to mimic the clay molding in Ghost - and a whiz at fixing broken things.
(On the latter point, there's even a pie-making sequence that stirs memories of Ghost's pottery-spinning segment.)
The film’s centerpiece is a pie-making scene that reminded me of the pottery scene in Ghost.
The Goonies (1985)
Directed by Richard Donner
influenced Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)
Themes Visuals
Though the focus is on his dad’s runaway horror-comedy-action hit, the younger director’s sequel is really a swooning ode to a whole decade’s worth of Hollywood multiplex touchstones, from The Goonies to Gremlins and a host of Spielbergisms; even the throwback drive-in diner is something you would have found in a movie made when Reagan-era filmmakers were still obsessed with Eisenhower-era youth culture.
With the shift to the grasslands and mountains of Oklahoma, the color palette is much warmer in tone than the first two films and the small town feel gives it a The Goonies (1985) vibe.
Sweeping aside any reference other sequels, reboots and spin-offs, “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” not only resurrects the mythology and bric-a-brac of the original but resituates it all in a supposedly contemporary America that’s actually more reflective of the world of “ET” or “The Goonies,” at one point even tossing in a rambunctious “Gremlins”-like sequence, redone in “Ghostbusters” mode, for good measure.
While the film feels like a love letter to films like Gremlins and The Goonies , the story arc of understanding your family’s legacy is an essential theme explored throughout the film.
As Logan Kim was stealing scenes, it struck me that the movie worked more as a tribute to The Goonies than to Ghostbusters.
Truth be told, the kid-friendly Afterlife has more in common with E.T. and The Goonies than the shits-and-giggles, comedy/horror mashup Jason’s dad and his Second City pals came up with so long ago.
Ghostbusters (1984)
Directed by Ivan Reitman
influenced Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021), Saturday Night (2024), Thank You for Smoking (2005), Up in the Air (2009), Juno (2007), Tully (2018)
Themes Plot
A swerve into franchise material would feel weirder if he wasn’t the son of Ivan Reitman, who directed the first two Ghostbusters movies and produced this one; the family theme permeates the entire film, which follows a single mom named Callie (played by Carrie Coon), who is the estranged daughter of one of the original Ghostbusters, Egon Spengler (the late Harold Ramis).
I thought about that photo a lot during Ghostbusters: Afterlife , which is an homage to and continuation of the 1984 Ghostbusters that painstakingly mines that movie for props, lines, and characters while giving no indication of being aware of what it was like to actually watch.
Jason Reitman pays tribute to his father’s iconic 1984 film, and its subsequent sequel, with Ghostbusters: Afterlife , a loving and fond continuation of the Ghostbusters legacy.
The film’s main appeal is not what it appropriates from other Ghostbusters pictures, but that it’s a nostalgic nod to the Spielbergian family adventures of the same period.
And yet with its focus on teenage heirs to that legacy, the movie simultaneously feels as much like the Disney Channel version of "Ghostbusters" as a long-delayed sequel.
And it's clear from the very beginning of Saturday Night that co-writers Jason Reitman (who also directed) and Gil Kenan (who wrote the last two Ghostbusters movies) were going for the vibe, while peppering in what really happened on the night the first episode of Saturday Night Live aired, as well as other things that happened during that historic first season.
And the band Beulah Belle's open-chord guitar cover of the theme from "You Only Live Twice" is a clue to what's really going on.
“You Only Live Twice,” the James Bond/Nancy Sinatra hit, is not only well performed (by an unknown singer), but has a purposeful meaning for its inclusion.
Ignore one “Knocked Up” sequence, try not to notice how much of what we see is handled in cute montages, smile at the sensitive pop tunes (a cover of the Bond theme “You Only Live Twice” is key), try to recall one exchange as funny as this one between the affluent brother and his sister.
Clooney and the absolutely first-class Farmiga project the kind of understated sexual chemistry and easy intellectual rapport reminiscent of Nick and Nora in " The Thin Man ," Cary Grant and Irene Dunne in " The Awful Truth ."
That "Election" reference leads to another observation, and that is the many parallels between "Up in the Air" and "Election's" writer/director Alexander Payne's "About Schmidt."
A scenario reminiscent of Alexander Payne's About Schmidt, it's as glib and false as Bingham's spiel to stunned, newly canned ex-employees.
So he set his aim higher, wanting to make a film with the kind of complex, seriocomic humanity he admired in Billy Wilder, Hal Ashby, James L. Brooks, and the contemporary director he most reveres, Alexander Payne ( Sideways , About Schmidt , Election ).
Rolfe Kent (ah, the Alexander Payne connection!—for his scores on Sideways, About Schmidt, Election, and Citizen Ruth) does a masterfully complimentary score, with additional songs picked by music supervisor Randall Poster including Crosby, Stills & Nash and Charles Atlas.
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.
American Beauty (1999)
Directed by Sam Mendes
influenced Men, Women & Children (2014)
Themes Characters
It’s clear he’s using “American Beauty” as the model (as is its distributor, who are treating it like awards bait).
If Best Picture Oscar winners “American Beauty’’ and “Crash’’ had a millennial baby, it would probably look a lot like Jason Reitman’s “Men, Women & Children,’’ a darkly comic, sexually charged drama about suburban ennui in the age of iPhones and iPads.
Jason Reitman's latest Oscar bait reaches for the zeitgeist like no Hollywood movie since American Beauty (1999), and you have to give him credit for thinking big even though he drives the theme into your skull with a ball-peen hammer.
Hannah is the movie’s equivalent to Mena Suvari’s cheerleader in “American Beauty” — the All-American teen sexpot who’s less knowing than she seems — and her squad-mate Allison (Elena Kampouris) is a secret starver who trolls pro-ana websites (Google it, mom) and throws herself at a callous football bro (Will Peltz).
Actually, she’s just a remake of the Mena Suvari character from American Beauty.
All of the above doesn’t even do justice to how much topicality the film crams into those stories, or the juxtaposition of the whole thing with Carl Sagan’s “Pale Blue Dot” as the Voyager 1 made its way into the recesses of space, or Emma Thompson’s American Beauty-esque omniscient narration over it all.
The film also contains the funniest Juno spoof yet.
I actually stopped documenting the movie's deluge of references after about 30 minutes, but here's a shortlist of some of the stuff that the Friedberg and Seltzer send up: 10,000 B.C., American Gladiators, Amy Winehouse, Facebook, Flava Flav, My Super Sweet 16, Dr. Phil, No Country For Old Men, Superbad/ McLovin, Angelina Jolie in Wanted, WWE Divas, Juno, High School Musical, Kanye West, the Jonas Brothers, the "Souljah Boy" dance, Justin Timberlake, Hannah Montana, Hancock, Sex and the City, Jumper, Step Up 2: The Streets, Twister (notice - the first actual disaster movie of the bunch), Hellboy, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and Cloverfield.
The title of this wannabe spoof is completely random, as only a vague notion of Cloverfield's plot is used to hold together irrelevant, never-funny references to everything from Juno to American Gladiators.
Here we have references to Juno (2007), Enchanted (2007), High School Musical (2006) etc., with requisite appearances by Iron Man, Batman, Hellboy, the Hulk, Beowulf, Alvin and the Chipmunks and, of course, tabloid-trash divas like Amy Winehouse and Jessica Simpson for good measure.
The year's worth of films that are less than fondly recalled over the course of eighty eye-scraping minutes: 10,000 B.C., Alvin and the Chipmunks, Beowulf, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, The Dark Knight, Enchanted, Get Smart, Hancock, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, The Incredible Hulk, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Iron Man, Jumper, Juno, Kung Fu Panda, The Love Guru, Never Back Down, Night at the Museum, No Country for Old Men, Sex and the City, Speed Racer, Step Up, Superbad, Wanted and You Don't Mess with the Zohan.
Rushed into production with no better drape for its threadbare gags than Cloverfieldunless you count such proud upholders of the Irwin Allen tradition as Juno, Enchanted, and High School Musicalthis carpet-fouling mongrel of a movie no more deserves release than do anthrax spores.
The choice to have some omniscient presence narrate everything (and in the upper-class accents of Emma Thompson, no less) is a terrible one; it's the same device Todd Field tried in "Little Children" and it distances us from people we need to feel.
Director Jason Reitman hews very closely to Kultgen's (far superior) 2011 book, with the filmmaker, at the outset, effectively capturing the source material's specific tone and atmosphere (ie it's often quite reminiscent of Tom Perrotta's body of work, Little Children especially).
An ensemble piece sardonically narrated in the third-person by Emma Thompson (think Little Children by way of Thompson's own Stranger Than Fiction), Jason Reitman's Men, Women & Children paints a glum picture of the Internet's hold over the American middle-class.
It’s narration that says “classy,” that says — with a wink, of course — “Americans are fools,” that says, “Hey, fussy voice-over worked for Todd Field’s vaguely similar Little Children.”
It’s Thank You for Smoking and Wag the Dog with all the satire stripped out and just the crass reality remaining.
The film, directed by John Madden – best known for “Shakespeare in Love” and “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” – moves in gyrations done before and more genuinely in “Michael Clayton” and “Thank You for Smoking,” but does bring a unique lens to the D.C. universe, especially the means of capturing votes and identifying target blocs.
As an indictment of the lobbying business, the film lacks the satirical wit of Jason Reitman’s “Thank You for Smoking.”
We don’t see a lot of cinematic representation of the lobbying world; when it’s played for drama like it is here (as opposed to the satire of something like 2006’s excellent “Thank You for Smoking”), there’s a lot of potential.
The last notable film that comes to mind that centered on a modern political lobbyist was Jason Reitman's amusing Thank You for Smoking (2005) but, given its concentration on women trying to hold their own with the big boys, a more direct parallel is provided by this year's Equity, a solid, if not entirely realized, look at women fighting to make their mark in investment banking.
Director Jason Reitman ( Thank You for Smoking ) keeps things brisk, occasionally employing cutesy visual flourishes that mostly work; it reminded me a bit of Heathers (1989), and if it doesn't get too much Oscar hype, it could be a future cult favorite.
Look to something like Heathers for how to write absurdist dialogue--that film along with Clerks the chief antecedents for Juno, which isn't as good as either because it wears its hipster cred like a chip on its shoulder.
Margin Call (2011)
Directed by J.C. Chandor
influenced by Up in the Air (2009)
Themes Plot Characters
One of those being fired is Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci), a risk analyst with a permanently clenched jaw who is the midst of working on something big when he is unceremoniously handed his walking paper (the cool, clinical manner in which he is let go plays like a particularly unsettling distillation of Up in the Air).
Jason Reitmans Up in the Air handled the subject of corporate downsizing with a biting satiric edge, and more recently, John Wells The Company Men focused more directly on the human consequences of the financial meltdown.
In depicting the cruel machinery of mass job termination, "Margin Call" brings to mind such recent portraits of the newly unemployed as "Up in the Air" and "The Company Men," while its portrait of corporate malfeasance and corrupt securities trading nods in the ripped-from-the-headlines direction of "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps."
If there’s a downside to “Margin Call,” it’s some of the overlap it shares with superior films like “Up in the Air” and “The Company Men,” both of which did a better job of illustrating the sad state of our faltering economy.
After the first of many time-lapse shots of the New York skyline, 80 percent of the risk-management team at the anonymous 107-year-old company (whose tree logo resembles CIGNAs) are axed, their termination announced by the same HR cyborgs familiar from Up in the Air and The Company Men .
But though we’re still down and out, at least we’re filthy rich in films: from features such as John Wells’ The Company Men, Oliver Stone’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps and Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air to documentaries such as Charles Ferguson’s Inside Job, Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story and Alex Gibney’s Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.
Cody, who came to prominence by writing a memoir of her year working as a stripper, recalls that she read the script Daniel Clowes and Terry Zwigoff wrote for "Ghost World," and that film's strengths are evident here.
Her Juno could be a distant cousin of Enid and Rebecca, the gothic-minded teenage girlfriends in 2001's "Ghost World."
Her hero, the smart, too-cool-for-any-room Juno McGuff (named after Zeus' wife, natch) talks like no one in the movies -- her closest cousin may be Enid from Ghost World, but the barrage of ambiguously ironic jargon Juno unleashes would make even Enid's head spin.
Like a cross between Rory Gilmore and one of the Ghost World teens, Juno has a ready supply of snappy, pop culture–riffing cynicism (she’d call it pragmatism).
Page�s Juno is in the mold of Enid from Ghost World, a whip-smart teen who has all the answers even though she hasn�t experienced many of the questions yet.
Ghost World 's Enid outclasses Juno with her ruthless lack of sentiment.
Gerwig doesn’t try to capture the quirky zeitgeist and lingo a la Diablo Cody’s Juno – though comparisons will abound.
Surely Gerwig’s autobiography isn’t the point, but the fact that she expresses it with authenticity makes the film likable — and distinguishes it from the young-adult formula of Juno and The Edge of Seventeen .
Ronan is terrific, reminding us of Ellen Page’s star-making turn in “Juno.”
Beautiful yet still relatable enough to be the girl next door, clever without sounding like a cartoon character (paging Juno…), there is a special something about Ronan that makes you root for her to succeed as she tumbles headlong into growing up.
Not since Juno have we had a teenage heroine so comfortable in her own skin, so bursting with energy.
Screenwriter Diablo Cody and director Jason Reitman (their third collaboration, following Juno and Young Adult) revisit Mary Poppins by way of bleary-eyed Middle America, substituting the idea that life gets better – or love means sacrifice – for a childish fantasy involving the healing powers of a 20-something, Greta Gerwig-type free spirit.
She’s a sort-of hipster Mary Poppins in a crop-top.
Davis has to be Tully’s version of Mary Poppins, an nearly magical entity that attempts to fix the family she’s caring for.
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.
Tully is Mary Poppins for the modern age, an unflinchingly realistic examination on the struggles of being a mother, and what giving a life can do to yourself, both physically and mentally.
Ellen Page’s performance reminded me of Jason Schwartzman’s debut in “Rushmore.”
The pacing and soundtrack are wholly indebted to Wes Anderson's Rushmore.
Not that the movie is heavy lifting; it trades in the sort of stylized quirk probably inaugurated by Wes Anderson and Rushmore, it�s loaded � borderline overloaded � with twee little acoustic songs with clever lyrics, and its style and content will mark it among cynics as Napoleon Dynamite meets Knocked Up.
On the scale of movies like Rushmore that have a lot of heart and genuine energy to it and self-conscious, hollow tripe like Garden State, Juno falls somewhere in between.
Clooney and the absolutely first-class Farmiga project the kind of understated sexual chemistry and easy intellectual rapport reminiscent of Nick and Nora in " The Thin Man ," Cary Grant and Irene Dunne in " The Awful Truth ."
Actually, I can recall only one American movie in which a pregnant teenager gets an abortion, and that was Amy Heckerling’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), with Jennifer Jason Leigh as the unwilling mother.
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.