Dominic Sena
19 connections found
View:
Connections, in both directions
The Seventh Seal (1957)
Directed by Ingmar Bergman
influenced Season of the Witch (2011)
Themes Visuals
I am about out of astonishments for you, but buckle your seat belt for this one: The director, Dominic Sena , was inspired by Ingmar Berg man's “ The Seventh Seal ” (1957), that classic tale of a knight who returns from the Crusades and encounters Death on the road.
The Eastern European locations are sumptuous and the costumes authentic, but the dialogue is anachronistic and the climax mindless — though the lame film homages (The Seventh Seal!
Directed by Dominic Sera as a kind of giddy homage to Ingmar Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal” — that is, if Bergman worked for Marvel Comics — “Witch opens with three terrified women accused of witchcraft.
A plague has ravaged everything and every place—at which point we realize that we’ve been watching the prequel for The Seventh Seal (1957).
It's The Seventh Seal meets Get Him to the Greek meets Lord of the Rings as if filtered through Uwe Boll's hack-tastic brain, only a guy named Dominic Sena (Swordfish, Gone in 60 Seconds) made it.
To that end, Bruckheimer and Sena would have done well to study the great car chase movies; Peter Yates' Bullitt (1968), William Friedkin's The French Connection (1971) and Jade (1995), Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), John Frankenheimer's Ronin (1998), and Disney's Herbie the Love Bug movies, to get the concept of clarity, or maybe become inspired and develop a few original ideas of their own.
The audience I caught this with seemed to enjoy the proceedings well enough -- which just makes me wonder if any of them had ever seen The French Connection 2 or Bullitt before.
We don’t really see as many serial killer movies coming out of Hollywood as we used to. Back in the 1990s they were a dime a dozen, headlined by Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and David Fincher’s Seven (1995) but including the likes of Copycat (1995), American Psycho (2000), Natural Born Killers (1994), Kalifornia (1993), and many others.
Apart from the Addams Family feel, find nods to Hammer horror (a cameo by Christopher Lee included), typically glib period source music ("Knights in White Satin," "Season of the Witch"), and a climax that evokes Death Becomes Her.
Meanwhile, 15-year-old Carolyn Stoddard (Chloë Grace Moretz), the sulkiest resident of spooky Collinwood mansion, favors Bowie and T. Rex, and dances languidly to Donovan -- "Season of the Witch," of course.
The final ten minutes are ultimately the only section that could have probably used another pass from screenwriters Bragi Schut (2011's " Season of the Witch ") and Maria Melnik, but by then the picture will have already won over most viewers.
Director Adam Robitel (“Insidious: The Last Key”) and writer Bragi Schut (“Season of the Witch”) honor the harmless nerdiness of the escape-the-room fad — seriously, it’s the best corporate team-building field trip ever — by steering clear of “Saw”-style gore in this predictable thriller about six strangers invited to compete for $10,000 at a super-high-end, fully “immersive” puzzle experience, only to find that yes, Hermione, this is going to be exactly like wizard's chess.
Adam Robitel directed 2018’s limp Insidious: The Last Key and co-writer Bragi Schut co-wrote 2011’s Season of the Witch, the one with Nicolas Cage in the Nickelback-singer haircut.
Clearly, the makers of “Escape Room,” including producer Neal H. Moritz of the “Fast and Furious” series, director Adam Robitel of the found-footage thriller “The Taking of Deborah Logan” and co-writer Bragi F. Schut of the Nicolas Cage film “Season of the Witch,” were looking to start a low-to-mid budget franchise a la the not-so-dearly-departed “Final Destination” films.
The inventive script by Bragi Schut (“Season of the Witch”) and Maria Melnik (story by Schut) brings together six strangers who were mysteriously invited, via a small puzzle box, to experience a Chicago escape room.
Bad Times at the El Royale (2018)
Directed by Drew Goddard
influenced by Kalifornia (1993)
Characters
Now Hemsworth has one of my favorite a-star-goes-dark roles: the dangerous beefcake (see also: Brad Pitt in Kalifornia).
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Directed by Terry Jones
influenced Season of the Witch (2011)
Visuals
The doughty pair of knights played by Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman in "Season of the Witch" -- a movie that appears to have been shot entirely on leftover sets from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" -- regard the infidel hordes before them, and snicker.
Really, at its worst, the whole thing’s a little bit like “ Monty Python and the Holy Grail” — minus the jokes.
In order to make Season of the Witch director Dominic Sena and writer Bragi F. Schut must have used a time machine-- not to return to the Middle Ages when the movie is set, but to a time before parodies of Crusades movies like Monty Python and the Holy Grail, movies that make the likes of Season of the Witch seem utterly ridiculous.
At times, it looks like Monty Python and the Holy Grail , only the Knights Who Say "Ni!" are nowhere to be found.
While the movie is not a comedy—not intentionally, anyway—it does bear a striking resemblance to Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Gone in 60 Seconds (1974)
Directed by H.B. Halicki
influenced Gone in Sixty Seconds (2000)
Themes Visuals
Depending on how you take your action, "Gone in 60 Seconds," is either a triumph of ultra-slick silliness (read: a popcorn thrill ride that belongs in the JBAAD theme park along with "Top Gun," "Crimson Tide," "Bad Boys," "The Rock," "Con Air" and "Armageddon") or a head-scratching attempt to jack wallets with the finesse these characters use on cars.
“Gone In 60 Seconds” was directed by Dominic Sena (“Kalifornia”) but in the end, he’s little more than a puppet to producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who worked out through the years his own recipe for a guarenteed summer blockbuster.
Dominic Sena's "Gone in 60 Seconds," based on a cult 1974 film of the same name (famous for a showstopping 40-minute car chase sequence), is the latest brain(less)child of producer Jerry Bruckheimer (1997's "Con Air," 1998's "Armageddon")--someone who knows how to make a movie fast-paced, and how to orchestrate overblown action setpieces--and it should have been the film to reinforce the idea of letting go of your inhibitions and driving fast every now and again.
There's not one scrap of art in Gone in 60 Seconds, but there's no flab either; in its pedal-to-the-metal professionalism, it's almost a lowbrow version of Ronin.
Gone in 60 Seconds is a check-your-brain-at-the-door, dig into some popcorn, sit back and enjoy summer explosion movie, brought to you by the same folks who did Con Air.
There is supposed to be dumb fun here: Writers Rhett Rheese and Paul Wernick are basically pumping steroids into 2001’s Swordfish, ripping off a bigger check for destruction to the order of folks with skills, wealth or both who use anonymity to right wrongs.
Season of the Witch (2011): Swords, chainmail, a monastery, the plague and Nicolas Cage — what more do you need in a film?
The recent James Bond film “Skyfall” was visually spectacular and dramatically effective (as that formula goes), but its depiction of the Internet was standard-issue paranoia, thematically indistinguishable from that found in the circa-2000 wave of silly hacker movies like “Swordfish,” “Antitrust” and “Enemy of the State”: It’s a magical device or plot shortcut, used by bad guys to penetrate the free world’s intelligence agencies and blow stuff up.
Other performances are workmanlike, with Tom Skerritt (2003's " Tears of the Sun ") showing a nice, comfortable chemistry with Carrie as base-stationed doctor John Fury; Columbus Short (2007's " Stomp the Yard ") making the most out of little as nice-guy pilot Delfy, and Gabriel Macht (2008's " The Spirit ") as stiff as a board as investigator Robert Pryce.
“The Last Witch Hunter,” not to be confused with Cage’s 2011 effort “Season of the Witch,” is clearly meant to be the beginning of another franchise for Diesel, the man who leads the “family” in the hit “Fast & Furious” series.
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998)
Directed by Guy Ritchie
influenced Gone in Sixty Seconds (2000), Swordfish (2001)
Memphis enlists his old reformed car-thief friends played by actors who are, in the normal course of things, way too good for this nonsense: Angelina Jolie, Robert Duvall, Chi McBride and Vinnie Jones, the memorable thug from Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.
Yet Jackson turns out a clever performance, despite some corny scenes, as does Don Cheadle (Traffic) and ex-soccer player Vinnie Jones (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels).
Vinnie Jones, the Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels soccer player-turned-actor, says very little (as usual), letting his demeanor do all the talking.
Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)
Directed by Tommy Wirkola
influenced by Season of the Witch (2011)
Surely this kind of witchery is tailor-made for Nicolas Cage, he of Season of the Witch, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and Ghost Rider.
Battleship does have a few funny moments (mostly unintentional) and it is definitely as pro-military as you can get, but why - with all the ridiculousness going on - doesn't anyone actually say, "You sunk my battleship!?" Director Peter Berg, working off a script by Jon and Erich Hoeber ( Whiteout , Red ), incorporates a battle scene reminiscent of the board game, but fails to include the classic line.
The "Whiteout" and "RED" screenwriting team of Erich & Jon Hoeber take on the Hasbro game and, along with "Friday Night Lights" director Peter Berg churn out something dumber than a box of rocks.
“Battleship,” which has an estimated $209 million budget and is written by the brotherly duo Jon Hoeber and Erich Hoeber (also the co-writers of Bruce Willis’ “Red” and Kate Beckinsale’s “Whiteout”), makes the crackerjack move of bridging the American and Japanese naval warfare divide in a way that makes you feel like you’ve just learned the secret of the American defeat by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor.
Berg and his writers Erich & Jon Hoeber ( "Whiteout" ) give us a first act designed to establish a bond with our boy-man hero, his heroes and his girl.
Digging deep into the ’80s playbook of maverick military heroes, co-writers Erich Hoeber and Jon Hoeber (RED, Whiteout) center their story on Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch, the erstwhile John Carter), who we first meet as a long-haired, 26-year-old slacker with no ambition and no future until his stern, but loving older brother Stone (Alexander Skarsgård), a Naval Commander, gets him to enlist.
No red and white pegs factor into the fight, but writers Erich and Jon Hoeber (the bad “Red” and worse “Whiteout”) find an enjoyable way to work in the board game's strategy of playing defense in the dark.
In his latest film, the actor displays only the briefest flashes of the deep commitment to chaos he brings to his best work, as in his recent turns in the delightfully wacked-out "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans" or even the watchable junk of "Ghost Rider."
Plus it has Nicolas "Ghost Rider" Cage.It's hard to describe how a movie like this could succeed, but somehow it does.
Nicolas Cage is a man of mercurial taste, an actor whose career choices careen from the astute ( Leaving Las Vegas , Raising Arizona ) to the astounding (Ghost Rider, The Sorcerer's Apprentice).
It's an entertaining, even touching film, but the fictional Jamie's underhanded sales practices are used for laughs over outrage and his chief rival, Eli Lilly's Prozac king Trey (Gabriel Macht, "The Spirit," "Whiteout"), is equally romantic rival as business.
Since she's been kicking hiney and taking no prisoners for a decade now (starting with "Gone in Sixty Seconds"), Jolie's ongoing action successes seem to provide evidence of an evolving cultural story.