Robert Schwentke
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The Hunger Games (2012)
Directed by Gary Ross
influenced Allegiant (2016), Insurgent (2015)
Plot Themes
This series has tried its hardest to escape the shadow of the “The Hunger Games,” but between the originally unclear source material in the form of Veronica Roth’s increasingly disappointing novels and the changes made for each film, this story isn’t particularly direct or engaging.
The stories are so similar to "The Hunger Games" that author Suzanne Collins should sue Roth for grand theft.
As such, it shares common themes with Big Sister The Hunger Games and Big Brother The Maze Runner .
The first installment based on Veronica Roth's dystopian young-adult book series, "Divergent," came off as a pale imitation of "The Hunger Games," heavy in exposition and short on action.
It's not quite a blockbuster like, say, "The Hunger Games" or "Twilight", but it isn't a disaster either.
While many readers have enjoyed the book trilogy as much as The Hunger Games , the same isn't true of the film adaptations.
Ghost (1990)
Directed by Jerry Zucker
influenced R.I.P.D. (2013), The Time Traveler's Wife (2009)
Plot
Novel in a comic book, certainly, but here's it's just empty window dressing for a concept, style, and presentation that feels like the unholy combination of Dead Heat (1988), Ghost (1990), Ghostbusters (1984), and (dear lord) Cowboys and Aliens.
The convoluted but never interesting story, written by David Dobkins, Phil Hay and Matt Manfred, combines element of “Ghostbusters,” “Men in Black” and “Ghost.”
But it seems unwise to turn Ghost into another movie that trashes a city (Boston) and in which the odd-couple cops try to stop the backstabbing Tony Goldwyn character from Ghost — played by Kevin Bacon here, using his Mystic River accent — from assembling a device that opens a portal that will send what appears to be a gushing cyclone of billions of undead monsters to Earth.
A little “Ghost,” a lot of “Men in Black,” “R.I.P.D.” has Mary-Louise Parker as the Proctor of the Afterlife, the station chief who pairs up partners and gives these guys their marching orders.
An unholy mash-up of “Men in Black,” “Ghost” and the short-lived CW series “Reaper,” Robert Schwentke’s “R.I.P.D.” is yet another comic-book adaptation that should have stayed on the page.
The team head back to Earth, where Nick watches with unease as (shades of Ghost) his girlfriend (Stephanie Szostak) is comforted by his ex-partner and Roy exposes various "deados" by eating Indian food (huh?) in front of them.
Men in Black (1997)
Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld
influenced R.I.P.D. (2013)
Themes Characters Visuals
And as faintly amusing and reminiscent of Tommy Lee Jones’ “Men in Black” as turn this might be, there’s no way these two smart guys didn’t see this was piffle on the page.
Instead of getting Will Smith playing a rookie alien investigator and Tommy Lee Jones playing the crusty, cranky veteran with whom he is partnered in the "Men in Black" films, it's Ryan Reynolds paired with a crusty, cranky Jeff Bridges .
Wait, when did Jeff Bridges and Ryan Reynolds take over the Men in Black franchise from Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith?
It’s not difficult to see why: for all the crash-bang-wallop effects (some of which look a lot less convincing than even Men In Black’s 1997-era visuals) and attempts at buddy comedy, Red director Robert Schwentke’s latest lacks a real spark, content to blithely tick boxes en route to the usual big finale like a zombie shuffling ever onwards.
I would compare it to Paul W.S. Anderson’s Resident Evil films, but with classier actors and better special effects.
Despite its overtures toward thought-provoking sci-fi, The Divergent Series, as Insurgent is prefaced in the advertisements, is actually more akin to Screen Gems franchises like Resident Evil or Underworld, only not as stylish.
This flick also recalls the likewise forgettable "Red Eye" and "Flightplan"—just add popcorn for a mini-film fest of rentable, plane-related entertainment that's not as smart or scary as you hope.
It's risible nonsense, blessed with plot holes that make the fractures in the fuselage seem insignificant, and not a patch on Wes Craven's Red Eye (or indeed Robert Schwentke's Flightplan ), which did these upmarket airborne B-movie thrills with far more wit and panache.
Try 2005's " Flightplan ," 2005's " Red Eye ," or even 2006's " Snakes on a Plane ," and treat this disappointing entry as the afterthought it finally becomes.
Echoing the premise of 2005’s Flightplan and countless Agatha Christie whodunits, Non-Stop is nothing less than exhilarating in the execution of its first two acts.
But the script, credited to tyro scribes John W. Richardson, Chris Roach and Ryan Engle, also bears more than a glancing resemblance to 2005’s “Flightplan,” in which Jodie Foster’s grieving widow becomes convinced that someone has kidnapped her young daughter in the middle of a transatlantic jumbo-jet flight.
In terms of danger-on-a-plane scenarios it’s superior to “Flightplan” and “Turbulence” but not as goofily entertaining as “Red Eye,” “Air Force One” or even “Con Air.”
Freeman is kind of on autopilot in an underwritten role and Malkovich seems to be channeling Jason Miller in The Ninth Configuration (1979), but there are certainly worse people and performances to channel.
The hip vibe and quirky characters seem less inspired by Sylvester Stallone than by Steven Soderbergh in his "Out of Sight" phase; the one-liners zing right along with the bullets in a playful pas de deux of mayhem, misdirection and mordant humor.
Novel in a comic book, certainly, but here's it's just empty window dressing for a concept, style, and presentation that feels like the unholy combination of Dead Heat (1988), Ghost (1990), Ghostbusters (1984), and (dear lord) Cowboys and Aliens.
The Wolverine (2013)
Directed by James Mangold
influenced Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins (2021)
Themes
In sending a hero beloved by ‘80s fanboys into the world of Yakuza and samurai lore, it calls to mind the comics that inspired James Mangold’s The Wolverine ; though this film is a good deal sillier than that one, its nods toward pulpy grit and its enjoyable fight sequences will be welcomed by viewers who couldn’t tell a Storm Shadow from a Copperhead or Zartan (and who would need Wikipedia even to come up with those characters’ names).
“Red” reminded me a bit of “Sneakers,” a 1992 caper with Robert Redford about a bunch of washed-up, written-off spooks who get together for a new job.
Based on the DC comic book of the same name, Red actually plays like a wink to Danny Glover’s classic line from the Lethal Weapon series: “I’m too old for this shit.”
Not since the Lethal Weapon series has an action film been this accessible.
Schwentke aims for a John Woo-esque celebration of clever staging and stylish action, but we’re miles from “Hard Boiled” or “A Better Tomorrow” as sequences frequently have a falsely anarchic, been-there-done-that staleness about them (one in which Frank slides out of a spinning car, firing bullets without missing a beat is a brief exception).
And then “Fractured” becomes a riff on “The Lady Vanishes” (or “Flightplan” for modern audiences), in which we have to decide if Ray is crazy or if everyone at the hospital is conspiring to make him so.
Whereas a film like “Flightplan” merely elevated Alfred Hitchcock’s locomotive mystery onto an airplane, “Fractured” sews the story into the knotted fabric of the American healthcare system, a curious wrinkle that helps to endow some (very) familiar beats with a fresh palette of anxieties.
Unfolding like Jodie Foster’s “Flightplan” (but in a hospital) Ray enlists law enforcement to investigate the shady hospital who insists Ray came in for a head related injury following a car accident (don’t they always?)
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)
Directed by David Fincher
influenced The Time Traveler's Wife (2009)
Plot Themes
If 2008's " The Curious Case of Benjamin Button " was stripped of its depth, lyricism, emotional power and existential complexity, it might end up looking a lot like "The Time Traveler's Wife."
Like Twilight and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, it presents a couple struck by sighs but stymied by science.
The story was adapted by Bruce Joel Rubin, who also wrote "Ghost," and the parallels to that film (as well as the recent "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button") are easy to spot.
It's worth noting that the script was written by Bruce Joel Rubin (the screenwriter responsible for the similarly themed 1990 film "Ghost"), and that Brad Pitt executive produced the movie whose narrative mechanics are too close to "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" for comfort.
Screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin explored similar otherworldly scenarios in "Ghost" and "Jacob's Ladder."
Based upon Audrey Niffenegger's acclaimed bestseller, this 500-page tome has proven too unwieldy for screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin, who was more surefooted with Patrick Swayze's Ghost and the brilliant temporal nightmare Jacob's Ladder.
He's aided enormously by Bruce Joel Rubin's screenplay - the author of "Ghost" and "Jacob's Ladder" is a natural for this material - and by a director, Robert Schwentke, who knows when to put the camera on Bana's face and leave it there.
With a screenplay by Bruce Joel Rubin, a veteran scribe with a special expertise in the spiritual and paranormal (see Ghost, see Jacob's Ladder), and directed by the German-gone-Hollywood Robert Schwentke, The Time Traveler's Wife is astounding for the plodding, leaden approach it takes to this wild, woolly idea.
Adapted by Bruce Joel Rubin from Audrey Niffenegger’s novel, The Time Traveler’s Wife offers the screenwriter the sort of metaphysical material—often romantic—at which he has excelled in pictures like Ghost, My Life, and Jacob’s Ladder.
You might have to go as far back 75 years to Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps, where gentleman antagonists Robert Donat and Sir Godfrey Tearle discussed luncheon details at the point of a gun.
We love Space Cowboys , an entertaining and rambunctious film directed by Clint Eastwood about a group of aging Air Force pilots who are recruited by NASA for a special mission.
“Space Cowboys” and “The Expendables” are two such examples of “old timers” showing they still have what it takes.
Red wants to fit into the same mold that cast Space Cowboys as kind of a geezer adventure where those past their prime are suddenly thrust back into action in a world that has left them for dead.
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.
It's clear almost immediately that screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin - best known for penning unapologetically sentimental flicks like 1990's Ghost and 1993's My Life - is primarily interested in exploring the more overtly maudlin elements within the source material, which ensures that the film will probably be received best by those viewers with a high tolerance for syrupy love stories (ie this is more The Notebook than Timecop).
Schwentke aims for a John Woo-esque celebration of clever staging and stylish action, but we’re miles from “Hard Boiled” or “A Better Tomorrow” as sequences frequently have a falsely anarchic, been-there-done-that staleness about them (one in which Frank slides out of a spinning car, firing bullets without missing a beat is a brief exception).