Rachel Talalay
17 connections found
View:
Connections, in both directions
Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020)
Directed by Cathy Yan
influenced by Tank Girl (1995)
Visuals
Like some surreal mashup of Mike Hodges’ Flash Gordon , Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy , Johnnie To’s The Heroic Trio and Rachel Talalay’s Tank Girl , much of the motion picture moves at such a brazen, unapologetically fevered pace I found it difficult to catch my breath.
She can't and viewers can't either from the madcap dullness of "Birds of Prey," which is reminiscent of 1995's "Tank Girl," another throw-everything-at-the-screen-and-see-what-sticks comic blunder.
Like an updated take on “Tank Girl,” full of painterly color and cartoonish exploits and weirdness seemingly for the sake of weirdness, “Birds of Prey” surrounds itself with eccentric visual flourishes, hoping to generate style for a gathering of personas who have divergent missions and personalities.
Which brings to mind an AARP version of the poster of Lori Petty in Tank Girl combined with the prominent facial feature of a morose elephant.
In themes and even some imagery, this material may remind a few viewers not only of Inception, but of the should-have-been-forgotten Lawnmower Man movies and the Ghost in the Machine anime and animated features.
Nevertheless far smarter and more sophisticated than the sort of Lawnmower Man/Ghost in the Machine mashup the film’s marketing suggests, Pfister’s directorial debut is all polish and respectability without any of his mentor’s effortless crowd-pleasing.
The old and stubbornly held Hollywood belief that a superhero movie starring a woman would flop was bolstered by some painful evidence: the critical and financial failures of Supergirl (1984), Tank Girl (1995), Catwoman (2004), and Elektra (2005).
Failures like Catwoman , Tank Girl and Elektra wouldn’t hurt so much if female superheroes were as prolific as Batman, Superman and Spider-Man, but now they’re back on track.
It could have been “Alien3” or “Princess Mononoke” or “Tank Girl” — hell, it could have been “Batman Returns.”
Even in some melodic score choices, I hear a little of Brian May's composition from Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991).
Set in 2016, when gang culture will apparently start taking its fashion cues from Tank Girl, Chappie transports audiences to a Johannesburg not much different from the one they visited in District 9. (Blomkamp even introduces the world in the same way, with a mockumentary framing device that he again abandons almost immediately.)
Performers of the caliber of Octavia Spencer (doing better dystopia in last year’s Snowpiercer ), Naomi Watts (this is step-up dystopia from Tank Girl ) and Daniel Dae Kim (about as logical as whatever kind of ‘topia Lost was) show up and do their thing, and then exit stage right.
His latest is "Paprika," a handsomely animated science-fiction thriller, which may bring to mind the 1995 cyberpunk anime film "Ghost in the Machine."
Labyrinth (1986)
Directed by Jim Henson
influenced A Babysitter's Guide to Monster Hunting (2020)
Characters
Channeling David Bowie’s charismatic energy from Labyrinth , the former Harry Potter star has a blast playing into the character’s boisterous persona with unhinged glee.
It also borrows here and there from the sensibilities of “Tank Girl,”…
That truth has been reflected across popular culture to various degrees of success, but has particularly begun to drive the world of action movies, from off-the-wall cult classics like Kill Bill and Tank Girl to newer blockbusters like Black Widow and Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) .
By default, she’s defined by her look, her cropped blonde hair and figure-hugging work clothes conveying a 1990s-style faux edginess that suggests she could be out to challenge Margot Robbie for the lead in the Tank Girl remake.
What We Do in the Shadows (2014)
Directed by Jemaine Clement
influenced A Babysitter's Guide to Monster Hunting (2020)
Characters
He’s relishing every minute of his dirtied, more Vaudevillian villainous take that reminds of Deacon in What We Do In The Shadows .
Leprechaun (1993)
Directed by Mark Jones
influenced by Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991)
Plot
I cannot guess at where this movie came from and I do not want to try, but the shape of it may have been something along the lines of: in 1991, New Line's A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise was apparently out to pasture for good - this was anyway the implication of the title Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare - and if you were kind of dumb, it might seem like this had opened of a slot in the horror movie firmament, as opposed to demonstrating that audiences had lost interest (But then again, who am I to say what's dumb?
Previous comic-book adaptations, from the misbegotten Tank Girl to Dick Tracy, have attempted, with varying degrees of success, to capture the essentially static lightning of the printed pulp page and splash it across the screen, but no one has ever succeeded with anything approximating the sheer energetic brilliance of what Lee has managed here.
Fittingly, given the peculiar imperatives of the vampire aesthetic demanded by Twilight, Hardwicke started out in production design working on Tombstone, Tank Girl, Three Kings and Vanilla Sky.
Monster House (2006)
Directed by Gil Kenan
influenced A Babysitter's Guide to Monster Hunting (2020)
Plot
It’s “Adventures in Babysitting” meets “Monster House” with “Harry Potter” touches, “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” as its plot-hook and a hint of “Beetlejuice” in its villain.