Mike Nichols
152 connections found
Filmography
Working Girl 1988 
The Graduate 1967 
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? 1966 
Charlie Wilson's War 2007 
Postcards from the Edge 1990 
Biloxi Blues 1988 
Wolf 1994 
Primary Colors 1998 
Regarding Henry 1991 
Catch-22 1970 
The Birdcage 1996 
Closer 2004 
Silkwood 1983 
Carnal Knowledge 1971 
What Planet Are You From? 2000 
Heartburn 1986 
The Fortune 1975 
Wit 2001 View:
Connections, in both directions
A feature debut for the director, Mr. Webb, the film is an odd combination of self-referential, in the spirit of its lovers, and insistently referential in its wink-and-nod homages to such classics as “The Graduate” and “The Seventh Seal.”
The script, by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, references a lot of movies, from "The Seventh Seal" to "The Graduate," but the one it seems to be channeling the most effectively (and most unconsciously) is "Annie Hall."
Zach Braff’s Garden State may be the closest analog—both explicitly reference The Graduate, that touchstone of generational uncertainty—but (500) Days Of Summer is more thoughtful, and thus more maddening in its shortcomings.
The kickoff entry for the Philadelphia Film Festival / Cinefest '09, (500) Days uses that Miller quotation (loosely) and adds a bit more cultural heft to its helium-balloon romance by referencing the French new wave, The Graduate, and art deco architecture.
For a movie about heartfelt connections, its characters have no depth or substance; for one about love, it has no chemistry or spontaneity; the action takes place in Los Angeles, though we see almost none of it; and a reference to “The Graduate” does the film no favors.
Near the end of Tom and Summer's 500 days together, they go to a matinee of The Graduate, and as they watch the final scene (Dustin Hoffman and Katharine Ross in the back of the bus, staring numbly ahead), Summer weeps miserably, while Tom appears transported by the romance of it all.
Bee Movie (2007)
Directed by Simon J. Smith
influenced by The Graduate (1967)
Plot Themes Characters
Great scene: A sly parody of the swimming pool scene from "The Graduate."
They're remaking The Graduate with bees?
At its core, the story is a play on The Graduate, with just-graduated Barry pressured by his suspiciously Jewish-seeming parents (Kathy Bates and Barry Levinson) to choose a job and settle into a hive existence; there's even a pool scene patterned on the Mike Nichols classic.
Resisting his drone-ish destiny as a drone (his post-college floating in the pool under his parents’ (Kathy Bates and Barry Levinson) anxious gazes recalls The Graduate), Barry discusses options with his best friend Adam (Matthew Broderick) (who, by the way, embraces his own destiny, signing up for an assembly line sort of job rather than imagine beyond the norm).
Seinfeld voices Barry B. Benson, a new college grad (in accelerated bee time, it takes three days to earn a degree) who is still pondering his future, like Dustin Hoffman’s Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate.
In this regard, the film parodies "The Graduate," and that's also a cute bit, but, of course, it will go right over the head of any youngster.
Garden State (2004)
Directed by Zach Braff
influenced by The Graduate (1967)
Themes Music Visuals Plot Characters
Impressive writing-directing debut from TV's Zach Braff, a small, contemplative updating of "The Graduate", shows a good ear for thoughtful, observational humor and a gift for understated angst.
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.
The upstart director intuitively uses this particular brand of cinematic shorthand with a skill and economy that matches similar such visual flourishes from directors like Mike Nichols ("The Graduate") or Richard Linklater ("Waking Life").
The fact that the above synopsis applies equally well to 2004's Garden State and 1967's The Graduate forces us to ask just what relationship exists between the films.
While it appears to aspire to a sort of Harold & Maude balance, instead of mellifluous, Garden State really just feels like a car crash--the misbegotten child of The Graduate and The Exorcist .
"Garden State" inspires obvious comparisons with " The Graduate ," not least in the similarity of the two heroes; both Benjamin and Andrew are passive, puzzled and quizzical in the face of incoming exhortations.
It's a sweet, knowing, bracingly deadpan coming-of-age story that proudly wears its influences on its sleeve – Wes Anderson's Rushmore, Harold and Maude, and Mike Nichols' The Graduate spring immediately to mind – and it's set in a grim and gritty Swansea, replete with concrete council flats and muddy, muddled dreams that'd do Morrissey and Marr proud in their existential despair.
A better descriptionin terms of comparisonswould be that its like a Wes Anderson movie as if it was directed by Richard Lester in the 1960s with nods to Mike Nichols The Graduate (1967) and Hal Ashbys Harold and Maude (1971).
Lifting from Wes Anderson , Noah Baumbach , Danny Boyle , Whit Stillman and older avatars such as Richard Lester (let's not even start on its tributes to tributes to Truffaut 's " The 400 Blows "), it's so relentless in its piling on of snappy effects -- perfectly frozen freeze-frames, "quirky" mismatches of narration and image, and more, more, more -- that it kind of plays like " The Graduate " going through steroid psychosis.
"A Hard Day's Night" is one of the influences below the surface here, along with American love stories from "The Graduate" to "Garden State."
Whatever flaws the film may have, it’s certainly unlike anything else in theaters right now and yet will likely remind certain viewers of beloved films like “The Graduate,” “Harold and Maude,” and “Rushmore.”
A deadpan adolescent romance in the vein of The Graduate , Rushmore , or Harold and Maude , this wistful little movie can feel thrillingly new one moment and familiar as an old sweater the next.
To be sure, The Graduate is better known to current audiences for its influence on Wes Anderson (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums), most obviously in his continual use of water imagery and expert incorporation of pop rock songs.
I was impressed by Anderson's filmmaking and the cast, but the film never quite overwhelmed me like some of my favorite coming-of-age comedies ("Say Anything", "The Graduate", "Ferris Bueller's Day Off", etc.).
Told through the fish-eye lens of a teen-ager's obsessive, self-aggrandizing vision, "Rushmore" -- which often resembles a contemporized, bizarro version of "The Graduate" -- will also appeal to anyone who can find its nerdy hero enchanting, despite his grating eccentricities.
For me, the experience was much like seeing Mike Nichols' "The Graduate" and George Lucas' "American Graffiti" before the hype machines kicked in.
(Anderson’s nostalgic and lyrical employments of this music often recall the more extended uses of Simon and Garfunkel in The Graduate, a quintessential pop expression of the 60s.)
A quirky, sometimes hilarious and often touching comic fable, ‘Rushmore” is at times reminiscent of both ‘The Graduate” and ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”
Then there’s the standard makeover theme you’ll remember from Working Girl, Miss Congeniality, or another Kohn-Silverstein project, Never Been Kissed.
The film takes a cue from “Working Girl,” “The Devil Wears Prada” and other Manhattan-set corporate fables.
As she inspires others around her, the movie winds up hitting a rousing home run that recalls the classic Melanie Griffith comedy “Working Girl” and even feels akin to being a “Rocky” for women.
The script acknowledges its roots in the comic subgenre of bodily transformation (at one point, Renee watches "Big"), and its executive-suite drama plays like a thinner, blander version of "Working Girl," "The Devil Wears Prada" and other satires of Manhattan upward mobility.
It's more like a reversed "The Graduate" done by a less talented Wasp Woody Allen.
Too much has happened in the arena of sexual politics since " The Graduate ," and I kept thinking that since Oscar was 15 and his stepmother and her friend were about 40, this plot would have been unthinkable if the genders had been reversed.
The story, slyly reminiscent of predecessors including "The Graduate", makes its own mark not only because 15-year old Oscar isn't one, but through a style of effervescent charm, a lighthearted script crafted by screenwriters Niels Mueller and Heather McGowan and tightly directed (78 minutes!) by Gary Winnick for laughs stemming from human foibles -- a comedy of errors in modern terms.
Maybe that's because it has the pedigree of an instant classic such as "The Graduate" and the resounding reminiscence of Wes Anderson's 1998 charmer "Rushmore".
Zingers are plentiful, especially when it comes to the May-December relationship, with catty references to "The Graduate" and 40-15 tennis scores.
Scenarios like this one end up being the latest scandal about town, rather than being prime material for a comedy— The Graduate and Rushmore have explored this area.
The King of Staten Island (2020)
Directed by Judd Apatow
influenced by Working Girl (1988), The Graduate (1967)
Characters Themes
It’s lovely that Kelsey gets the requisite ferry scene, briefly linking “The King of Staten Island” to a cinematic tradition that includes Martin Scorsese’s “Who’s That Knocking at My Door” and Mike Nichols’ “Working Girl.”
Just as Freak and Geeks was also a betrayal of American working-class roots, these bridge-and-tunnel adult tough guys and blunt, gum-smacking women (“we’re the only place New Jersey looks down on”) recall the outrageous white stereotypes of big-haired Staten Island skanks in Mike Nichols’s phony Working Girl .
He lives with his mother Margie (Marisa Tomei) and refuses to commit to the local girl he’s sleeping with (Bel Powley, channeling “Working Girl”-style Staten Island swagger).
To extend the comparison, The Graduate focuses on a child of privilege who comes home from university to a malaise of comfortable inaction.
Fifty Shades Darker (2017)
Directed by James Foley
influenced by Working Girl (1988), The Graduate (1967)
Dialogue Characters
In her sheer black panty hose, the kind women haven't worn onscreen since her mother Melanie Griffith starred in Working Girl , she did look born to play the part.
The movie itself invites these comparisons, when it has Johnson’s character Anastasia Steele, the virginal heroine of the Fifty Shades franchise who is inducted into an education in sexual bondage at the hands of Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan), pay homage to Working Girl after winning a sudden promotion.
27. There’s a little homage to Johnson’s mom, Melanie Griffith, and her signature movie, Working Girl.
One of the more delightfully absurd flourishes finds Anastasia abruptly promoted to publishing executive and Johnson responds by reciting one of her mom Melanie Griffith’s monologues from Working Girl .
Equally threatening is Kim Basinger’s Elena, part Mrs Robinson from The Graduate and part Clytemnestra.
A virtuoso black comedy about the Bosnian conflict circa 1993, writer-director Danis Tanovic's Oscar-winning film displays something of the wit of Joseph Heller's "Catch-22", while also echoing that book's frankness about the absurdities of war.
Bosnian writer-director Danis Tanovic, a prize-winning documentarian who filmed the war in Sarajevo, has created an anti-war movie that will remind Americans of the ironic absurdities seen in "Catch-22," the 1970 Mike Nichols film based on Joseph Heller's satiric novel.
(CNN) -- "No Man's Land," Danis Tanovic's absurdist chamber piece about the Bosnian war, is two parts Samuel Beckett to one part "Catch-22."
“It reminded me of The Graduate ,” he says.
The film has been compared with coming-of-age tale, The Graduate , for the reason that it portrays a man with no future and no idea what to do with his life.
This story has a lot more in common with The Graduate than it does with The Matrix.
It’s a coming-of-age stratagem that fits perfectly within Fincher’s previous films and taps into films like "Taxi Driver," "The Graduate," and "A Clockwork Orange."
Ecranizare a romanului omonim semnat de scriitorul american Chuck Palahniuk si publicat in anul 1996, Fight Club a fost comparat in istoria cinematografie cu Rebel Without a Cause (1955) si The Graduate (1967).
In fact, it is literally derivative, since it is a remake of a French film by director Francis Veber, whose other films Williams remade as "The Birdcage" and "Father's Day."
French writer/director Francis Veber has long been the go-to guy for Hollywood remakes like "The Man with One Red Shoe" and "The Birdcage."
The remake rights were immediately snapped up by Hollywood back in the late 1990s, which isn’t a surprise since practically every comedy that Veber makes is eventually remade across the pond, usually not very well (to name a few: 1982’s The Toy, 1985’s The Man With One Red Shoe, 1989’s Three Fugitives, 1996’s The Birdcage, and 1997’s Father’s Day).
Much like Francis Veber's " La Cage Aux Folles ," similarly Americanized as " The Birdcage ," the story here contains plenty of familiar farce elements -- overheard conversations, poorly thought-out schemes, inadvisable impersonations and the right thing ultimately being done only after multiple efforts to do the wrong thing have failed spectacularly.
Veber, a kind of Gallic Neil Simon, worked on the script of the original La Cage aux Folles later Americanized as The Birdcage, with Robin Williams and Nathan Lane.
But the idea has been borrowed, in greatly dumbed-down form, from “The Dinner Game,” a far funnier 1998 French movie by the prolific Francis Veber, whose works have long been adapted by Hollywood with results ranging from hilarious (“The Birdcage”) to painfully unfunny (“The Toy”).
Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)
Directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson
influenced by Working Girl (1988), The Graduate (1967)
Plot Visuals Themes
It’s almost eerie how much she reminds you of her mother, Melanie Griffith, especially given the similarities between “Fifty Shades” and “Working Girl,” which was also about a mousy woman learning to assert herself in the company of a stinking-rich suitor.
What’s nice about the negotiation scene is how much Johnson evokes Griffith creating her own angles in Working Girl, in which Griffith’s screwball-dingbat delivery belied great reserves of self-confidence.
When the screenplay reveals that Christian was abused as a teenager by an older woman – references to Mike Nichols’ “The Graduate” abound – an interesting pop-psychological framework comes into focus.
The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
Directed by David Frankel
influenced by Working Girl (1988)
Characters Plot Themes
It’s a great role for Hathaway, reminiscent of memorable breakouts like Julia Roberts in “Pretty Woman” and Melanie Griffith in “Working Girl.”
“The Devil Wears Prada” might not be much more that a clever riff on “All About Eve,” but thanks to Streep it’s sharp and witty enough to play on a double bill with that 1950 classic and not completely fold in its presence; it’s probably the best Hollywood working-girl comedy since, well, Mike Nichols’ “Working Girl” (1988).
Yet without a single tolerable protagonist or amusingly malicious one-liner – as well as a hypocritical desire to celebrate the hideous Miranda while supposedly condemning her – The Devil Wears Prada primarily makes one pine for any comparable ‘50s working-girl comedy (or, for that matter, 1988’s Working Girl ).
Think of Sigourney Weaver's scheming Katherine Parker in Working Girl: She's such a fiend that no matter what you think of Melanie Griffith's Tess, you root for her.
A blond graduate of Brown in the book, young go-getter Andrea Sachs is now a lanky brunette from Northwestern when luck (mostly good) shoves her into the feng shui/white-on-white corner office of Runway editor Miranda Priestly, here silver-haired and played by Meryl Streep as a cross between Cruella de Vil and the whipcracking sadist essayed by Sigourney Weaver in Working Girl .
Two decades ago we had the story of Working Girl , in which an overworked, underappreciated underling got the respect she deserved as she took down a scheming, nasty boss.
Cowriter (with 'God of Carnage' playwright Yasmina Reza)/director Roman Polanski brings the much ballyhooed European and Broadway play to the screen in a stagebound adaptation with a terrific cast who try their best to sell contrived material obviously indebted to "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"
There are far too few reasons for the four to stay in that apartment, and, worse, the final act lacks the killing blow of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,’’ a work whose DNA is inextricably wound around Reza’s dramatic structure.
Alan’s cellphone, along with Penny Longstreet’s beloved art books, are among the totems destroyed by the god of carnage in this tightly structured comedy of manners, which is roughly one part “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and one part Luis Buñuel’s “Exterminating Angel.”
Anxious to offset her husband's rudeness, Nancy does herself no favors by overdosing on warm beverages, and before anyone can say "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?," Michael breaks out the scotch, momentarily relieving the tension and lubricating them all for the next round.
Though it's not on the same lofty level, Polanski positions his two-couples-in-a-room tale as a descendant of Mike Nichols' "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"
Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)
Directed by Woody Allen
influenced by Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
Dialogue
Their early encounters ought to suggest so; she and Juan Carlos possess all the spit and vigor of some of the more legendary movie relationships (some of the dialogue mirrors the tone of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”), and Maria is hardly quiet about her initial disdain for this strange new woman in her former husband’s life.
"Erin Brockovich" is " Silkwood " ( Meryl Streep fighting nuclear wastes) crossed with " A Civil Action " ( John Travolta against pollution) plus Julia Roberts in a plunging neckline.
If the movie had tried to turn this into A Civil Action or Silkwood, it would have been doomed.
Sure, there's a little Civil Action here, some Silkwood, even some Pretty Woman.
The result is a portrayal of a real-life working-class hero on a par with Norma Rae, which won Sally Field an Oscar, and Silkwood, which earned Meryl Streep an Oscar nomination.
Erin Brockovich Erin Brockovich is one of those lone justice crowd pleasers, like "Norma Rae" or "Silkwood," in which a workaday woman dares to fight the system…
In movies from Silkwood to The Insider to A Civil Action, we've learned to recognize the basic outline, the key plot developments, the scares, and the triumphs.
And while we knew this woman of 1,000 voices could also sing – Streep handled vocal duties in A Prairie Home Companion and Postcards from the Edge with skill – turns out she's got a primo set of pipes and a fearless style of from-the-heart dancing that shows she can handle the heavy lifting required to carry a musical lead.
Saving Private Ryan has earned comparisons to Oliver Stone's Platoon for its revelations of torn flesh and combat, but the whole film seems somehow closer in overall tone to Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket, a chilly study of Vietnam War absurdity, or even Joseph Heller's Catch-22.
Harold and Maude (1971)
Directed by Hal Ashby
influenced by The Graduate (1967)
Visuals Themes Music
Building on the innovations of the landmark releases The Graduate (1967) and Easy Rider (1969), Harold and Maude explores outsider mentalities through fragmented cutting, using those music montages to embellish its themes and create a feeling of emotional suspension.
Hal Ashby’s film, also sort of a sweeter, gentler, less satirical companion to The Graduate, which preceded it by three years, follows Harold (Bud Cort), a morose young man given to faking suicide scenes, driving a modified hearse, and quietly crashing funerals as his distracted mother (Vivian Pickles) looks on with a combination of concern, distaste, and disinterest.
Mainstream audiences also steered clear, suggesting that the trail for artful, left-of-center Hollywood films blazed by The Graduate (1967) and Easy Rider (1969) was already starting to shut down long before Spielberg’s little shark movie launched the summer blockbuster craze four years later.
The pair fall into a romantic relationship that shouts in the face of societal mores as Cat Stevens's uplifting score does for the movie what Simon and Garfunkel did for "The Graduate."
The film’s suite of songs, by Cat Stevens (now known as Yusuf) is exquisite, possibly the best collection of pop songs by the same artist in a movie besides Simon & Garfunkel’s songs for The Graduate .
Like The Graduate , the script for Harold and Maude has the idea of a doomed generation but shows every generation is damned.