Edward Norton
5 connections found
Filmography
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Connections, in both directions
At its worst, you’ll be scratching your head as if you were trying to follow the plot fragments in The Big Sleep.
The 50s setting seems more conducive to a noirish, private-eye mystery that apes the convoluted storytelling of Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep .
Without moral ambiguity, as seen in similar-minded mysteries like “The Big Sleep” or “The Sweet Smell of Success,” all suspense is thrown out the window.
The plot never crackles the way it does in, say, L.A. Confidential, another movie that overtly lifted from Chinatown.
In that sense, Motherless Brooklyn is similar to 1997’s magnificent throwback L.A. Confidential.
Under the Silver Lake (2018)
Directed by David Robert Mitchell
influenced Motherless Brooklyn (2019)
Plot
Motherless Brooklyn superficially evokes paranoid, sprawling conspiratorial narratives like Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice and David Robert Mitchell’s Under the Silver Lake.
Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020)
Directed by Cathy Yan
influenced by Motherless Brooklyn (2019)
Characters
Robbie feels tailor-made for the role of Harley Quinn, and while the accent might take some getting used to — it feels unwise at first, much like Edward Norton’s Tourette’s-laden performance in Motherless Brooklyn (2019), but as with that film it quickly evens out as the film becomes the focus — she perfectly embodies the character’s poppy energy and dangerous uncertainty.
The final insurmountable problem is that writers Stuart Blumberg ("Keeping the Faith") and David Wagner and Brent Goldberg (the team that brought you "National Lampoon's Van Wilder") really come up short when things get serious, resorting to cliches and a whole lot of hooey about "moral fiber."
Initially penned by the crass team behind "Van Wilder" and "My Baby's Mama," but given more polish and panache by screenwriter Stuart Blumberg ( "Keeping the Faith" ), "The Girl Next Door" does follow a fairly predictable path as Matthew loses his inhibitions and, eventually, his virginity.
Story creators Stuart Blumberg and David T. Wagner ("Van Wilder, Saving Ryan's Privates") have, with screenwriter Brent Goldberg ("Keeping the Faith"), reached back twenty years to 1983's "Risky Business" and updated it for the Internet age.