Anna Boden
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One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
Directed by Miloš Forman
influenced It's Kind of a Funny Story (2010)
Themes Plot Characters
The obvious touchstone for “It’s Kind of a Funny Story” is “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” Milos Forman’s classic film based on Ken Kesey’s breakthrough novel.
Running the gamut from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" to "Girl, Interrupted," psych ward movies have long captured the imagination of the world's filmmakers.
And yet just a few hours after that conversation, I found myself seriously debating getting up and walking out of "It's Kind Of A Funny Story," an agonizingly phony piece of work that struggles to be a sort of "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" for teenagers, but which ends up regurgitating platitudes in place of any genuine insight or emotion.
This contrivance means that Craig gets to befriend messed-up grown ups like Bobby (Zack Galiflanakis, in a mellower take on One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest's Randle McMurphy) and share a room with a muttering Egyptian man named Muqtada (Bernard White) while at the same time falling for the teenaged cutter Noelle (Emma Roberts) down the hall.
A sweet-natured One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest for the teen set, It's Kind of a Funny Story is based on a young-adult novel, so clichés can be expected.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest meets the coming-of-age movie in It’s Kind of a Funny Story, the third feature from the Brooklyn-based indie writing-directing duo of Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden following their acclaimed Half Nelson and Sugar .
Queen of Earth (2015)
Directed by Alex Ross Perry
influenced by It's Kind of a Funny Story (2010)
Themes
"Queen of Earth" feels like it's trying to fit in the same mold as films such as "It's Kind of a Funny Story," "The Beaver," or "Melancholia," but it is a film that is stripped entirely of enjoyment.
The directors are Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, tackling their first franchise affair after a solid career making small, smart, powerful dramas (“Half Nelson” in 2006, “Sugar” in 2008, a terrific gambling flick no one saw called “Mississippi Grind” in 2015).
The movie was directed and co-written by the team of Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck (“Half Nelson,” “Sugar,” “Mississippi Grind”), and I’m not sure if there has ever been a case of filmmakers this indie commandeering the pop-art canvas of a Marvel movie.
While Boden and Fleck do go big with Captain Marvel ’s action, they also dig deep into scaled-down moments — something the filmmaking duo had done in their past works ( Mississippi Grind and Half Nelson , namely).
Instead, the married co-directors (who collaborated on such solid indies as Half Nelson and Mississippi Grind) and their army of co-writers (five are officially given “story by” credits) have engineered a brutally by-the-numbers origin story with a patina of social importance.
Working from a story with five credited names (usually never a good thing), indie directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck (Half Nelson, Mississippi Grind) plunk audiences right in the middle of the action.
The movie is directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, who until now have worked in the realm of quiet, sensitive indie films like Half Nelson, Sugar, and 2015’s fantastically grotty gambling drama, Mississippi Grind.
The jettisoning between the highest of highs and lowest of lows is familiar if you’ve seen any addiction movie, like Mississippi Grind or Requiem for a Dream, but it’s surprising how well Sandler pulls this off, how much hope and desperation he imbues into a character who could have easily been a caricature.
X-Men: First Class (2011)
Directed by Matthew Vaughn
influenced by It's Kind of a Funny Story (2010)
In a fast-moving montage, Charles and Erik round up Angel Salvadore (Zoë Kravitz, "It's Kind of a Funny Story"), a stripper with wings; Sean Cassidy (Caleb Landry Jones, "The Last Exorcism"), a rejected kid able to emit high pitched sound waves; cab driver Armando Muñoz (Edi Gathegi, "Twilight's" Laurent), an immigrant with a talent for self preservation and Alex Summers (Lucas Till, "Battle: Los Angeles"), a young prison inmate who can radiate missile-like energy.