Jeff Nichols
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Starman (1984)
Directed by John Carpenter
influenced Midnight Special (2016)
Themes Plot Music Visuals
Thematically, Arkansas-born writer-director Jeff Nichols’ fourth feature draws capably from the models of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “E.T.” and “Starman,” as well as Nichols’ own affinity for spare widescreen compositions akin to Clint Eastwood movies of that filmmaking era.
Nichols taps into movie history, with touches of “Sugarland Express,” “Close Encounters,””E.T.” and most pointedly, “Starman,” for this pursuit picture.
It shares a fair bit of uncanny road-movie DNA with John Carpenter’s Starman, as well as the quiet mystery seen in M. Night Shyamalan’s early films.
There's an explicit nod, in particular, to John Carpenter's Starman, echoed even in the enveloping mood of David Wingo's driving electronic score.
It's also, in its own way, a wonderful melding of two different, but influential popular '70s filmmakers, drawing its blue-collar heroes and "Starman" otherworldliness from John Carpenter, its government agents and questing characters from "Close Encounters" and "E.T."
Echoes of Spielberg ("E.T.," "The Sugarland Express," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind") and John Carpenter ("Starman") can be heard in the film, but Nichols is his own plain-spoken artist.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
influenced Midnight Special (2016), Take Shelter (2011)
Visuals Characters Themes
Echoes of Spielberg ("E.T.," "The Sugarland Express," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind") and John Carpenter ("Starman") can be heard in the film, but Nichols is his own plain-spoken artist.
He wants to be Roy (or at least Claude Lacombe) in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Nichols is obviously aiming for Spielberg, not just E.T. but Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Mixing the paranormal premise of “Firestarter” with the conspiracy-fueled paranoia of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” the film has a cornucopia of good ideas and many shivery scenes, but never adds up to a completely convincing story.
Thematically, Arkansas-born writer-director Jeff Nichols’ fourth feature draws capably from the models of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “E.T.” and “Starman,” as well as Nichols’ own affinity for spare widescreen compositions akin to Clint Eastwood movies of that filmmaking era.
Until then, however, “Midnight Special” is, despite its sometimes glacial pace, a tense, chilling ride that that also manages to be challenging and thought-provoking, with echoes of “E.T.” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” turned on their head.
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
influenced Midnight Special (2016), Mud (2013)
Plot Visuals Themes
When 8-year-old Alton (Jaeden Lieberher), the boy everyone is after, is pursued by government agents, it recalls E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, with the kid serving as a mixture of Elliott and E.T.
Other sci-fi films are nodded to here as well, including "E.T." and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," and, in fact, seeing Nichols as someone like Steven Spielberg but with a darker palette is not a bad reference point.
The film has been compared to Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Starman, with a dash of E.T. thrown in as well, but unlike a lot of sci-fi movies, we’re not given a set of rules at the start to then serve as our guide into the narrative.
Combine “Close Encounter of the Third Kind,” with “E.T.” and a mix of the television series, “Fringe,” and you have the plot for Jeff Nichol’s film, “Midnight Special.”
Thematically, Arkansas-born writer-director Jeff Nichols’ fourth feature draws capably from the models of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “E.T.” and “Starman,” as well as Nichols’ own affinity for spare widescreen compositions akin to Clint Eastwood movies of that filmmaking era.
It’s especially reminiscent of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the scarier, government-experimentation bits of ET.
The young heroes in “Mud” recall the sentiment of the teenage rebels in Rob Reiner’s “Stand by Me” – they are at that stage of adolescence in which their future will forever be shaped by the experiences of that moment, and the adults around them dictate it with situations of impending emotional gravity.
The teenagers' thrill and adventure in secretly aiding Mud gives the film a Huckleberry Finn-ish flavour that blends with something akin to Rob Reiner's 1986 classic Stand By Me and Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter .
It's a stirring ode to innocence that evokes classics like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Stand By Me.
Their adventure brings to mind Stand By Me with a touch of Mark Twain, and Nichols' lingering shots of the natural world are comparable with the work of film-maker Terrence Malick.
This is a junior adventure story echoing Huckleberry Finn and Stand by Me, a tale which is in no hurry to unfold, but beautifully done, exquisitely performed, and filled with terror and wonder.
But Mud has a rare big-screen beauty, and its old-fashioned storytelling recalls A River Runs Through It , Night of the Hunter , Stand By Me , and Huckleberry Finn .
And it’s at least as solid a tribute to Steven Spielberg as J.J. Abrams’ uneven simulacrum Super 8, which reached for the same childlike combination of awe and uncertainty and had the advantage of the participation of Spielberg himself as a producer.
Other filmmakers, like J.J. Abrams with his muddled Super 8, have tried to evoke a Spielberg vibe and wound up ripping him off.
It will be unfashionable to think so, I’m sure, but that homage fabulist J.J. Abrams did this routine better in Super 8. Midnight Special is a pretty good film; its best moments thrum with mystery.
The influences of J.J. Abrams and Steven Spielberg are palpably felt in Midnight Special, particularly when Nichols harnesses the aura of the fantastic young Lieberher in the same manner as his predecessors did with their preteen leads in, respectively, Super 8 and E.T. Nichols lets his story develop naturally, with the themes of faith, family, and mankind’s place in the universe emerging fluidly amidst the backdrop of rural America.
As the story triangulates itself towards a climactic encounter in which the extent of Alton's true unearthliness is revealed perhaps a little too literally, echoes of Spielberg's Close Encounters or JJ Abrams's Super 8 start to jingle distantly.
J. J. Abrams’ Super 8 was an unreserved Amblin tribute, while Rian Johnson’s Looper riffed on early Cameron and Verhoeven.
Blue Ruin (2014)
Directed by Jeremy Saulnier
influenced by Shotgun Stories (2007), Mud (2013), Take Shelter (2011)
Themes Visuals Plot
Blue Ruin has a grubby, low-life mood that—especially with its theme of unresolved inter-family tensions—reminded me of Jeff Nichols’s debut Shotgun Stories .
“Blue Ruin” joins “Shotgun Stories” and “Joe” as vivid reminders that however homogenized American culture seems, there are still pockets that are distinct, with people who live by their own rules and their own bloody code.
Set among the beaches and backwoods of the South, "Blue Ruin" has an eye for local color and dog-eared realism that may remind you of the recent "Mud," or the lesser known (and even superior "Shotgun Stories").
Blue Ruin is all about escalation, and while its sensibility is Coen, its plot is very much like Shotgun Stories (which is still my favorite film directed by Jeff Nichols ), twisting about in the absurdity of a feud.
(In this sense, Blue Ruin brought to mind Jeff Nichols’ Shotgun Stories .)
In temperament, Blue Ruin calls to mind Nichols’ Shotgun Stories, which also examined how a personal feud escalates into bloodshed.
The Peanut Butter Falcon (2019)
Directed by Tyler Nilson
influenced by Mud (2013)
Visuals Themes Plot
The story is accompanied by gorgeous cinematography that evokes fellow South-set indies like Mud or Beasts of the Southern Wild in the way it finds strange magic and beauty in abandoned, overgrown places.
Inspired by Huckleberry Finn, Southern Gothic fiction, and reminiscent of boys-on-the-run films by David Gordon Green (especially Undertow) and Jeff Nichols (especially Mud), Falcon is an adventure story where innocence and sin, play and danger often intersect.
As long as these two are just shooting the breeze, The Peanut Butter Falcon has an easygoing charm that recalls Mud.
At times, “The Peanut Butter Falcon” might remind viewers of a pair of 2012 films “Mud” and “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” which also followed humble characters in coastal environments.
“The Peanut Butter Falcon” is an unassuming winner of a summer odyssey, a low-cost and bittersweet “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” with hints of “Rain Man” and “Mud” about it.
Like “Mud” or “Undertow,” the swamps and humid fields are shot by cinematographer Nigel Buck of HBO’s “True Detective” with a gritty sharpness.
It's a child-on-the-way-to-becoming-an-adult story that recalls such classics as "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "Shane" (including a nod to the boy's cries of "Sha-a-a-ne"), and I do not throw around those titles loosely.
Echoing The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , but also evoking the predatory menace of The Night of the Hunter and other books and films ( To Kill a Mockingbird comes to mind) where children become immersed in an adult and dangerous world, Mud finds Matthew McConaughey at the top of his game.
Originality is pretty much a no-show, as I kept clicking off movies in my head like “Shane,” “Stand by Me,” “Sling Blade,” “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “The Beasts of the Southern Wild,” “A Perfect World” … Even the outstanding work by Matthew McConaughey, playing a scraggly good ol’ boy with love on his mind and the law on his tail, seemed much too familiar.
"Mud" runs deep with undercurrents from American movies and literature: " Tom Sawyer ," "Huckleberry Finn," " The Night of the Hunter ," " To Kill a Mockingbird ," "Moby Dick," " Cool Hand Luke ," the films of Nichols' fellow Austin-resident Terrence Malick (" Badlands ," " Days of Heaven ," " The Tree of Life ").
Families can talk about the similarities between Mud and other stories about kids who befriend enigmatic older characters, like Huckleberry Finn or To Kill a Mockingbird .
Like Carol White , the central, unglued character of Todd Haynes s Safe (1995) who is allergic to the 20th century, blue-collar worker Curtis is haunted by one of the looming terrors of the 21st: financial ruin.
The drama of Take Shelter resembles Todd Haynes' Safe in its real-world fear and paranoia, but it's warmer, more poignant and more suspenseful than that 1995 psychodrama.
This film bothers me in the same way the Todd Haynes film "Safe" bothers me, or the way Lodge Kerrigan's work bothers me.
The obvious comparison to Take Shelter is Todd Haynes’s Safe, in which a woman (Julianne Moore) is slowly dying from modern life.
There’s a sort of familial relationship between “Mud” and David Gordon Green’s sadly underappreciated “Undertow,” though Nichols’ film is far less dark and forbidding—in fact, despite the seriousness of many of its themes, there’s an overall sense of lightness to it.
There's a whole lot of early David Gordon Green in the film's slow-moving, minor-key exploration of place: Nichols and cinematographer Adam Stone do a better job than any filmmakers have since at least Green's own Undertow in using the sticky, sunblasted and plant-filled landscapes of the American South as a visual expression of character, and the absolutely gorgeous exterior cinematography crafts a romantic overlay for battered, impoverished settings that exactly matches Ellis's own half-awareness of the shortcomings of the adult worldview he's trying to adopt.
And while the film doesn't have the lighthearted swashbuckling tone of some of those kid favorites – indeed the ultimate effect cleaves much closer to the Ozarks noir of Winter's Bone or David Gordon Green's sublime Undertow – it still had a similar odor as the adventure section of the library.
After the impressive Take Shelter, writer-director Jeff Nichols takes on the sort of swampy southern gothic that David Gordon Green handled so masterfully in Undertow (2004).
Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983)
Directed by John Landis
influenced Midnight Special (2016)
Music Visuals
Creedence Clearwater Revival’s cover of “Midnight Special” was featured in Twilight Zone: The Movie back in 1983.
But in a story that unfolds almost entirely on the road, there's a playful connection also to the 1969 Creedence Clearwater Revival cover, a Southern rock classic, which was used in the prologue and epilogue of 1983's Twilight Zone: The Movie, both featuring late-night driving scenes.
The scene is reminiscent of the opening of 1983's Twilight Zone: The Movie, where Albert Brooks is driving through the desert at night with Dan Aykroyd as his passenger.
The film shares its title with the 1969 Creedence Clearwater Revival song that featured prominently in Twilight Zone: The Movie, the underrated 1983 portmanteau movie that counted Spielberg among its four directors.
The teenagers' thrill and adventure in secretly aiding Mud gives the film a Huckleberry Finn-ish flavour that blends with something akin to Rob Reiner's 1986 classic Stand By Me and Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter .
Its closest relatives are Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter and Elia Kazan's Wild River , but shot through with the “gritty” vision of cruddy home life and bayou listlessness of Lance Hammer's Ballast .
One part "The Night of the Hunter," two parts "Huckleberry Finn," "Mud" may be born of the same rustic sensibility that fueled everyone from Andrew Wyeth to Terrence Malick, but Nichols expresses this outlook in a decidedly personal way.
Echoing The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , but also evoking the predatory menace of The Night of the Hunter and other books and films ( To Kill a Mockingbird comes to mind) where children become immersed in an adult and dangerous world, Mud finds Matthew McConaughey at the top of his game.
"Mud" runs deep with undercurrents from American movies and literature: " Tom Sawyer ," "Huckleberry Finn," " The Night of the Hunter ," " To Kill a Mockingbird ," "Moby Dick," " Cool Hand Luke ," the films of Nichols' fellow Austin-resident Terrence Malick (" Badlands ," " Days of Heaven ," " The Tree of Life ").
For such an American film, there are also clear echoes of British classics such as Great Expectations and Whistle Down the Wind .
Mud clearly sets out from frame one to run along well-worn tracks – it’s like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn meets Whistle down the Wind (1961).
Mud is something of an update of the 1961 British film Whistle Down the Wind (directed by Bryan Forbes from a 1959 novel by Mary Hayley Bell) where three children mistake a hidden fugitive for Jesus Christ.
Flight of the Navigator (1986)
Directed by Randal Kleiser
influenced Midnight Special (2016)
Themes Plot
Or that he’s waxing nostalgic more generally — quoting the 1980s sci-fi he grew up on, like Joe Dante’s Explorers , Randal Kleiser’s Flight of the Navigator and Nick Castle’s The Last Starfighter .
The central story of a motley crew rescuing a supernatural outcast from the grasps of government forces recalls movies like “E.T.,” “Firestarter” and “Flight of the Navigator.”
If you, too, were a child during that era of Amblin and Flight of the Navigator and Cocoon, Nichols will simply make you feel like an adult who was happily raised on that stuff.
“Midnight Special” recalls the M. Night Shyamalan of “Sixth Sense” and “Unbreakable,” which is to say back when he was good and seemed interested in the idea that the people who understand the most about the world are often dismissed as crazy.
Midnight Special‘s spiritual predecessor is the M. Night Shyamalan film Unbreakable, where Bruce Willis discovers he can’t be hurt and Samuel L. Jackson is the polar opposite of that.
As a reference, Mud will fit quite nicely into your movie collection alongside Billy Bob Thornton ’s One False Move and Sling Blade, and equally well next to adaptations of Tennessee Williams or Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain), including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
American icon Sam Shepard , another Malick veteran, appears as a houseboat hermit sporting Billy Bob Thornton 's haircut from " Sling Blade ."
Originality is pretty much a no-show, as I kept clicking off movies in my head like “Shane,” “Stand by Me,” “Sling Blade,” “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “The Beasts of the Southern Wild,” “A Perfect World” … Even the outstanding work by Matthew McConaughey, playing a scraggly good ol’ boy with love on his mind and the law on his tail, seemed much too familiar.
Nothing, of course, turns out as it should or as we quite expect, and there is a sudden, spectacularly handled outburst of violence worthy of Sam Peckinpah, whose first important movie, Ride the High Country , dealt with similar themes of coming of age, moral growth, ethical tutelage and a climactic confrontation between men of honour and representatives of brute force.
The film revs across the screen with the kinetic vibe that made “Vanishing Point” a drive-in hit of the 1970s.
It would be irresponsible to divulge much more about Nichols' boldly envisioned new movie, which follows 2012's Mud (Matthew McConaughey as an escaped con, Tye Sheridan as the boy he befriends) and which calls to mind titles as divergent as the '70s road pic Vanishing Point, certain iconic Steven Spielberg efforts (no, not Jaws), and the just-out 10 Cloverfield Lane.
It’s not only him who looms over Midnight Special; there are also strong echoes of Disney’s Witch Mountain adventures – Escape to Witch Mountain (1975) and Return from Witch Mountain (1978) – as well as John Carpenter’s bewitching Starman (1984).
If it sounds something like a high-falootin’ version of Escape to Witch Mountain, it sort of is but as with most Nichols films, an overview of the plot doesn’t do justice to the experience of the movie even in a more traditional adventure thriller.
It’s not only him who looms over Midnight Special; there are also strong echoes of Disney’s Witch Mountain adventures – Escape to Witch Mountain (1975) and Return from Witch Mountain (1978) – as well as John Carpenter’s bewitching Starman (1984).