Neil LaBute
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LaBute has commented that the inspiration for “House of Darkness” was the “three weird sisters” episode of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” played like a fable (it begins with the caption “Once Upon a Time” and ends with another, more ironic, reading “And They All Lived Happily Ever After”), and Hap Jackson can be seen as a horny modern version of Jonathan Harker, looking to cash in on what he sees as a chance for some steamy pleasure with a voluptuous woman and finding their roles switched when she’s suddenly tripled.
Hap, however, doesn’t seem to be familiar with Bram Stoker’s Dracula , so he doesn’t realize what fate awaits him at the end of the movie.
The setup is a not-so-subtle reworking of the three sisters sequence from Bram Stoker's Dracula.
Visits with the family â?? Tony Danza has a great time as Jon’s dad â?? evoke “Saturday Night Fever,” while Barbara’s increasing efforts to help Jon improve himself ultimately echo the one-sided endgame of Neil LaBute’s “The Shape of Things.”
Secret Things (2002)
Directed by Jean-Claude Brisseau
influenced by In the Company of Men (1997)
Themes
If the film is erotic on the surface, its undercurrent is as hard and cynical as " In the Company of Men ."
Some reviews have compared the film to Neil LaBute's In the Company of Men or Kubrick's still-misunderstood Eyes Wide Shut, both of which suggested reasonable conclusions to their sexual experiments.
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014)
Directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu
influenced by In the Company of Men (1997)
Music
Birdman’s best moments involve the frenetic intensity of staging a major production, and it is here that Iñárritu’s roving camera has the most impact, snaking through the tiny corridors of the aging theater, following various characters as they cross paths, interact, fight, try and fail to connect, all of which is propelled by jazz drummer Antonio Sanchez’s nerve-rattling percussion score, which sets up the interpersonal conflicts by hammering away at our nerves (I was reminded of the excellent use of a similar kind of score in Neil LaBute’s caustic 1997 directorial debut In the Company of Men).
George is played by Aaron Eckhart , who was so dominant in " In the Company of Men ," but here, wearing a twerpy John Ritter beard that he doesn't seem comfortable with, he's a shallow cipher.
George is played by Aaron Eckhart, best remembered as the bigger of the two bastards in Neil Labute's fabulous black comedy In The Company of Men.
Co-stars Albert Finney (Simpatico) and Aaron Eckhart (In the Company of Men) do themselves proud too.
A romantic sub-plot between Erin and her biker boyfriend George (Aaron Eckhart, In the Company of Men) doesn't distract from the story but rather focuses our attention on the other gender conflicts running through the film.
Between pursuing the case and having her kids baby-sat by the Harley Davidson biker next-door (Aaron Eckhart of "In the Company of Men"), she runs herself ragged while discovering the many stories of individuals in the ailing town of Hinkley, Calif.
Erin, it seems, was not a lawyer and didn't look like one, but bossed and manipulated a poor lawyer played charmingly by Albert Finney ("Miller's Crossing") into giving her a job at his firm where she just happened to spend her time when she wasn't emasculating her biker boyfriend played by Aaron Eckhart ("In the Company of Men") or bossing and manipulating him into taking care of her three kids so she could go uncover just how shitty the bad people at PG&E were and how they let hundreds of people get gross and sickly before ending up in court because Erin bossed and manipulated them into being there.
More direct and emotionally genuine jabs at institutionalized sexism would be Neil LaBute’s “In the Company of Men” (1997) and Kitty Green’s fictional take on all things Harvey Weinstein, “The Assistant” (2020).
Neil Maskell as Jay reminds me a little of Matt Malloy in " In the Company of Men ," and in Michael Smiley as Gal, there are aspects of Peter Stormare .
Potty mouths, potty jokes, and dotty performances are the chief selling points of Death at a Funeral, Neil LaBute's alternately sidesplitting and poop-splattered remake of the 2007 Frank Oz movie about everything that can go wrong at a patriarch's last rites.
The original Death at a Funeral , the 2007 British farce directed by Frank Oz, opened to mixed reviews (critics loved it or hated it) that foretold the film’s fate at the box office.
An unnecessary remake of the 2007 British comedy directed by Frank Oz, "Death at a Funeral" opens well enough as the heaping ensemble is introduced.
Part of the problem with this Death at a Funeral lies with the fact that it begs to be compared with the 2007 film.
Closer (2004)
Directed by Mike Nichols
influenced by In the Company of Men (1997), Your Friends & Neighbors (1998)
Themes
A Martian watching Closer (or In the Company of Men or Your Friends & Neighbors) would conclude that human reproduction is a distasteful duty.
Again, we have a much cleverer precedent for this with Neil LaBute's masterful In the Company of Men (1997).
A Martian watching Closer (or In the Company of Men or Your Friends & Neighbors) would conclude that human reproduction is a distasteful duty.
Midsommar shares a few similarities with the Nicolas Cage version of The Wicker Man.
Some years ago, The Wicker Man was remade with Nicolas Cage screaming, “Not the bees!,” but Midsommar is the true heir to Robin Hardy’s 1974 horror classic, a pastoral idyll with ancient pagan blood sacrifices lurking underneath to clutch at our civilized hearts.
In any event, “Midsommar” isn’t quite different enough: its premise, deriving from the idea that pagan elements in traditional fertility rites can have dire consequences, hearkens back to “The Wicker Man,” both Robin Hardy’s 1973 cult classic and Neil LaBute’s misguided 2006 remake.
Like its predecessor, there’s next to nothing new to see here, unless you’re unfamiliar with Robin Hardy’s 1973 classic The Wicker Man (or its inferior 2006 Hollywood remake starring Nicolas Cage, famous for begetting a plethora of memes).
On the other hand, he seems aware of previous movies in which outsiders are threatening by an insular community’s rituals, such as “Two Thousand Maniacs!” (1964) and “The Wicker Man” (1973, remade 2006).
Boiler Room (2000)
Directed by Ben Younger
influenced by In the Company of Men (1997)
Themes Dialogue
There's also a little of Neil LaBute's In the Company of Men in the way Boiler Room depicts the relationships between the men - a false sense of camaraderie overlying deeper feelings of greed and self-centeredness.
If it ever lags, Ben Affleck arrives for what amounts to a cameo, delivering a rip-roaring speech that consists of foul language and offensive observations a la "In the Company of Men" before whipping out of the room, out of the scene and out of the film.
The school looks depressingly ordinary, from the naked walls to the staff (Matt Malloy, best known for playing Aaron Eckhart's buddy in "In The Company of Men", is the only known actor in this movie.)…
The Core (2003)
Directed by Jon Amiel
influenced by In the Company of Men (1997), Your Friends & Neighbors (1998), Possession (2002)
He was the epitome of evil male chauvinism in Your Friends & Neighbors and In the Company of Men.
He was the epitome of evil male chauvinism in Your Friends & Neighbors and In the Company of Men.
Most of the fun here comes from the tart chatter between the heroes, including a humble geophysicist (Aaron Eckhart, who looks like he hasn't combed his hair since "Possession"), a snotty science superstar (Stanley Tucci) and the tough female astronaut (Hilary Swank) who longs for her own command.
When 32 pacemaker wearers drop dead in Boston and misguided pigeons wreck havoc in London's Tralfalgar Square Geophysicist Dr. Josh Keyes (Aaron Eckhart, "Possession") forms a theory that a problem with the earth's electromagnetic field, formed by the rotation of the earth's core, is causing the peculiar events.
It helps that in his most successful roles he wasn't asked to do much more than drop a one-liner every now and then (Nurse Betty being the most prominent example of this).
The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022)
Directed by Tom Gormican
influenced by The Wicker Man (2006)
At its height, I was watching his notoriously unhinged 2006 remake of The Wicker Man on a near-monthly basis, with my in-jokes progressing beyond merely quoting it (“Not the bees!”; “How’d it get burned!”) to referencing obscure bits of set dressing in it.
The story works on many levels, as the kind of buddy story Javi wants to write, as the kind of action story they conclude they can get financing for, and above all as a knowing comedy with many references to Cage’s wide-ranging oeuvre, from “Cross 2” to “Guarding Tess,” “The Wicker Man” to “Con Air,” “Face-Off,” and “The Rock,” and to over-arching issues of the way movies tell stories and the way movies get made.
But Cage, lampooning himself in a museum dedicated to his memorabilia, making fun of his performance in "The Wicker Man" ("not the bees!") and embracing his own kooky legend, is all joy.
But The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent sees Cage playing to the cheap seats, throwing a bone at every Cage superfan who’s bought an embroidered pillow with his face on it or quoted lines from The Wicker Man back at him on the street.
The Art of Self-Defense (2019)
Directed by Riley Stearns
influenced by In the Company of Men (1997)
Themes
That is a period where films like In the Company of Men and even Fight Club question traditional ideas of masculinity, so The Art of Self Defense continues in that tradition.
The suburban-insecurity theme also stirs memories of David Fincher's Panic Room, Jonathan Kaplan's Unlawful Entry and even Neil Labute's Lakeview Terrace; the barely concealed bloodlust of the bourgeoisie recalls The Last House on the Left; while the idea of state-sanctioned, carefully contained mayhem was executed on a grander scale in The Hunger Games and Rollerball.
And while those films have tended to urge audience identification with the male victim -- Michael Douglas's can't-keep-it-in-his-pants white guy from Fatal Attraction, or the deer-in-the-headlights victim of Linda Fiorentino from The Last Seduction -- In The Company of Men forces identification with the male victimizer(s).
Conceptually, Primer evokes similarly minimalist science-fiction efforts such as La Jetée and Pi, but it also channels super-independent films becoming of the past decade: most notably, In the Company of Men, with which it shares a diminutive production budget and anonymous corporate setting.
Winner of the grand prize at last year’s Sundance Film Festival, Primer mixes the straight, middle-American white male angst of Neil Labute’s In the Company of Men with the sci-fi trappings of Darren Aronofsky’s Pi.
Marsden has been on a real comedic roll as of late, and though his performance in “ Sex Drive ” was certainly memorable, he makes “Death at a Funeral” worth watching for him alone.