Gary Fleder
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It might, for example, be a self-generating cyborg spore that was planted in pop culture sometime around 1987 and is only now germinating, a laboratory hybrid of DNA fragments scraped off the edges of "Blade Runner," "Total Recall" and other less salubrious sources.
Director Gary Fleder (Don't Say a Word) has turned to legendary sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick (whose work also served as the template for Blade Runner and Total Recall) and accidentally delivered a documentary, of sorts.
Mouldering in a can for over a year (the film would smell pretty stale regardless past 1980), Impostor is the umpteenth adaptation of a Philip K. Dick story (whether directly or indirectly), a fable of identity that pales in comparison to an acknowledged classic like Blade Runner, an ambitious blockbuster like Total Recall , and an under-seen sleeper like Screamers.
Impostor is based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, the noted writer whose work inspired the classic sci-fi movies Blade Runner and Total Recall.
Impostor is based on an interesting story by cult sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick, whose works have contributed to at least three other movies: Blade Runner (1982), Total Recall (1990) and Screamers (1995).
The Little Things (2021)
Directed by John Lee Hancock
influenced by Kiss the Girls (1997)
Themes Plot
Think of the early to late-1990s/early-aughts heyday of such cop-saviour fantasies as Kiss the Girls, The Glimmer Man, The Watcher, Washington’s own The Bone Collector and Fallen, or Se7en (but without David Fincher’s nihilistic themes and uncompromising aesthetic).
And so the stalwart star officially surpasses Morgan Freeman — you know, Kiss the Girls and GOAT serial-killer thriller Seven — as the king of this broody genre.
Titles like Fallen , Kiss the Girls , The Bone Collector , Taking Lives , and Suspect Zero , just to name a few.
And it wasn’t just written in 1990, it still feels like it could’ve been made then, too — an unambiguous positive at a time when most straight-to-streaming fare is so cheap and glossy that it makes 20th century shlock like “Kiss the Girls” and “The Bone Collector” feel like Visconti movies by comparison.
The goal is to capture thrilling and pulpy mystery’s such as Kiss the Girls or other various Alex Cross cases.
The results have been uneven to say the least, and while Next is hardly in the same league as Blade Runner or Minority Report (2002), it’s certainly better than Impostor (2002) or Paycheck (2003), and less of a muddled drag than A Scanner Darkly (2006).
Fresh from last year's noble misfire of A Scanner Darkly, and with the memories of Payback and Impostor still scorching the psyche, comes possibly the most egregious befouling of Dick's work to date.
“Next,” based on Dick’s “The Golden Man,” is the latest adaptation, and while it’s no “Minority Report” or “Blade Runner,” at least it’s no “Impostor” or “Paycheck,” either.
Based on a novel by Philip K. Dick -- whose works have inspired films both good ( "Minority Report," "Total Recall") and bad ( "Impostor," "Paycheck" ) -- "Scanner" is set a few years in the future, in a heavily surveilled America where 20 percent of the citizens are addicted to a new illicit drug called Substance D. An organization called New Path is providing rehab for recovering D addicts, but their methods are mysterious and their treatment centers are not open to public scrutiny.
Most of these, such as Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982), Paul Verhoeven's Total Recall (1990), Gary Fleder's Impostor (2002) and John Woo's Paycheck (2003) were instantly underrated upon release, and A Scanner Darkly is likely to join them.
…from Kiss the Girls to The Bone Collector, before the Saw franchise replaced mystery and suspense with gristle and innards…
Kiss the Girls…
In a post-''12 Angry Men'' era of jury dramas, good doesn't necessarily triumph and audiences don't necessarily sit still for the conversations of actors locked in a room; but this effective bamboozle of a thriller maintains its own tricky balance of junk and hope.
Secondly, not since the 1957 film 12 Angry Men has a movie about serving on a jury also been so compelling.
You might expect that when Fleder gets the jury into deliberations and the crunch time comes for Cusack to work his con the movie might deliver some "12 Angry Men"-style fireworks.
The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Directed by Jonathan Demme
influenced Kiss the Girls (1997)
Plot Themes
Kiss the Girls, yet another imitation of The Silence of the Lambs and Seven, falls into the category of films that have potential but are completely botched.
Having seen "The Silence of the Lambs", "Se7en" and countless other thrillers, I expected more.
We can thank "The Silence of the Lambs" for the proliferation of such films ?
" Se7en " and " The Silence of the Lambs " are the unavoidable points of reference here, as serial killer Casanova kidnaps talented young beauties for his morbid collection.
The target of the John Grisham novel was the tobacco industry, but I'm certain that Grisham—who once called for the prosecution of Oliver Stone after a killing spree inspired by his grotesque Natural Born Killers (1994)—had no problems with the substitution of one unscrupulous death merchant for another.
The bayou backdrop sparks comparisons to similar Big Easy actioners such as Jean-Claude Van Damme's "Hard Target" (1993), though "Homefront" has more in common with Patrick Swayze's family-grudge thriller "Next of Kin" (1989).
But this one escapes, tearing off through the woods (in a scene right out of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre) and leaping into a river.
At its best, the film plays like Stallone comrade Arnold Schwarzenegger's Commando if Alyssa Milano hadn't been kidnapped--just a tree trunk and his daughter trying to enjoy simple country pleasures without any vendettas getting in the way.
That’s why the best pigskin flicks—including Peter Berg’s Friday Night Lights and Oliver Stone’s underrated Any Given Sunday—elevate it to something resembling gladiatorial combat.
“The Express” is a decent football movie, just about good enough to be the 40th best episode of “Friday Night Lights.”
It’s like an episode of “Friday Night Lights,” where the drama just so happens to be taking place on a football field.
Bad Times at the El Royale (2018)
Directed by Drew Goddard
influenced by Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead (1995)
Visuals
Movies like “Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead,” “Killing Zoe” and “Suicide Kings” all have similar gimmicky and flashy approaches to telling a story that rely more on conventions of pulp literature than conventional thriller scripts.
“It’s a bit like Appalachia: You can go from two kids in a fistfight to the emergency room real fast,” advises one concerned citizen in “ Homefront ,” a tale of backwoods retribution that resembles Roman Polanski’s “Carnage” transplanted to “Deliverance” country, where feuding parents prefer outright war to wars of words.
Try as she might, Jolie is miscast in the role and isn't able to pull it off, unlike Ashley Judd in "Kiss the Girls," who was the one saving grace.
One couldn't throw a rock without hitting an airport-novel adaptation like Kiss the Girls or The General's Daughter, with a moody detective investigating a salacious crime.
Fleder has said that he and his cinematographer, Aaron Schneider , studied the work of Gordon (Prince of Darkness) Willis, whose photography for "The Godfather'' and other pictures often uses a few overhead key lights on crucial elements, and leaves the rest in darkness.
Directed by Gary Fleder ( “Runaway Jury” ) and adapted by Charles Leavitt ( “Blood Diamond” ) from Robert Gallagher’s book, the film is awash in aphorisms and clichés.
But it does limit how far director Gary Fleder (Kiss the Girls) and screenwriter Charles Leavitt (Blood Diamond) can go, especially since most of the action occurs in the late 1950s, before the civil rights movement took hold in the U.S.
Despite being cruelly abridged, Ernie’s triumph-over-adversity story is inspiring and optimistic enough without the orchestra playing cheerleader and screenwriter Charles Leavitt (Blood Diamond) turning every spat into a speech and every other line into a pearl of wisdom.
The Express was written by Blood Diamond scribe Charles Leavitt (from Robert Gallagher's biography) and directed by Gary Fleder, whose most recent feature film was 2003's singularly preposterous The Runaway Jury.
Cross' vulnerability is his personal stake in the case; it leads to mistakes that prolong the suspense of a chase that ranges across the continent, with the help of good supporting players such as Jay O. Sanders (Daylight) and Bill Nunn (The Last Seduction).
The last time we saw Franco in this kind of pulpy programmer — last year’s Jason Statham vehicle “Homefront” — he was on methed-up, reptilian villain duty, and he’s having visibly less fun as the ostensible hero here.