Marc Webb
156 connections found
View:
Connections, in both directions
A feature debut for the director, Mr. Webb, the film is an odd combination of self-referential, in the spirit of its lovers, and insistently referential in its wink-and-nod homages to such classics as “The Graduate” and “The Seventh Seal.”
The script, by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, references a lot of movies, from "The Seventh Seal" to "The Graduate," but the one it seems to be channeling the most effectively (and most unconsciously) is "Annie Hall."
Zach Braff’s Garden State may be the closest analog—both explicitly reference The Graduate, that touchstone of generational uncertainty—but (500) Days Of Summer is more thoughtful, and thus more maddening in its shortcomings.
The kickoff entry for the Philadelphia Film Festival / Cinefest '09, (500) Days uses that Miller quotation (loosely) and adds a bit more cultural heft to its helium-balloon romance by referencing the French new wave, The Graduate, and art deco architecture.
For a movie about heartfelt connections, its characters have no depth or substance; for one about love, it has no chemistry or spontaneity; the action takes place in Los Angeles, though we see almost none of it; and a reference to “The Graduate” does the film no favors.
Near the end of Tom and Summer's 500 days together, they go to a matinee of The Graduate, and as they watch the final scene (Dustin Hoffman and Katharine Ross in the back of the bus, staring numbly ahead), Summer weeps miserably, while Tom appears transported by the romance of it all.
Annie Hall (1977)
Directed by Woody Allen
influenced (500) Days of Summer (2009)
Themes Plot Visuals
The script, by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, references a lot of movies, from "The Seventh Seal" to "The Graduate," but the one it seems to be channeling the most effectively (and most unconsciously) is "Annie Hall."
Speaking of neurotics, this latter-day Annie Hall substitutes downtown Los Angeles for New York (Tom's unfulfilled desire to be an architect provides an excuse to ogle landmarks), and a montage of Euro art house parodies indirectly nods to the film's strong Woody Allen influence.
Annie Hall keeps getting invoked in reviews, though the temporal flea-hopping feels closer to Franois Ozons 5x2, which dissected a relationship by recalling its stages in reverse order.
Then again, Tom’s grounding advice-dispensing kid sister seems mostly a reminder of how much we all love Bottle Rocket, while split-screens and personalized Bergman parodies are stray corridors off Annie Hall.
(500) Days of Summer , like Woody Allen's Annie Hall , dissects a romance that didn't work with a retrospective ache.
Where Annie Hall had the famous subtitled scene in which Woody Allen and Diane Keaton said one thing and thought another, (500) Days of Summer has a similarly clever split-screen segment, with half of the screen devoted to "Reality" and the other to "Expectation."
Batman Forever (1995)
Directed by Joel Schumacher
influenced The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014), The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)
Visuals Characters
Maybe Sony drew inspiration from Christopher Nolan’s reboot of “Batman,” with Nolan wading into waters made murky by Michael Keaton (“Tim Burton’s Batman”), Val Kilmer (“Batman Forever”), and George Clooney (“Batman & Robin”) and paddling off with Christian Bale in his own, darker direction.
Coming with his own nerdy-comic theme music, Max is uncomfortably reminiscent of Jim Carrey’s closeted Riddler in Batman Forever.
A less-than-worthy sequel to the 2012 picture, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is more reminiscent of Batman Forever (1995) and Batman & Robin (1997), which, in the franchise’s directorial wasteland between Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan, believed that the series could be extended simply by signing big stars to play new villains: Jim Carrey as the Riddler, Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze.
However, his character is painfully underdeveloped, borrowing elements of hero-worship-turned-revenge-seeker we saw in the Riddler in “Batman Forever” and Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce) in “Iron Man 3.”
Unfortunately, he’s even less interesting than the villain from the first movie, with an origin story that’s oddly reminiscent of The Riddler’s from “Batman Forever” and backed by a headache-inducing dubstep anthem.
Original Review: William Bibbiani calls The Amazing Spider-Man 2 "the Batman Forever of the Spider-Man movies."
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1938)
Directed by David Hand
influenced Snow White (2025)
Themes Music Plot
…the rearranging and lengthening of songs first written for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs…
…director Marc Webb’s listless remake smothers the magic associated with 1937’s Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs…
A “Whistle While You Work”-level effort has been put into sweeping every dated element of the original 1937 animated film out of sight…
For those upset the classic number “Someday My Prince Will Come” has been cut…
It’s been more ages since I saw the 1937 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which still reigned as the highest-grossing animated film (adjusted for inflation) of all time.
Walt Disney’s animated feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) was the company’s first, and remains a proper masterpiece of 20th century cinema.
Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)
Directed by Rupert Sanders
influenced Snow White (2025)
Visuals Plot
Charlize Theron, who played this role in 2012’s Snow White and the Huntsman (from which this film borrows imagery more than once)…
…there are at least two Snow White reimagined, live-action movies: Mirror Mirror and Snow White and the Huntsman, neither of which is produced by Disney.
…some of the ideas suggest that the plan was almost as much to remake 2012's Snow White and the Huntsman as to remake Disney's first feature…
…will make you long for Charlize Theron's more sinister take on the role from Snow White and the Huntsman, which was a far better update of this story than Disney's half-baked attempt…
Here is a movie that likely would have been made a lot sooner had Universal Pictures not so adroitly stolen Disney’s thunder during the beginning of the “live-action fairy tale” craze about 15 years ago with Snow White and the Huntsman.
In comparison, Snow White and the Huntsman now feels like a daring reinvention.
Like Gus Van Sant's Good Will Hunting and Jodie Foster's Little Man Tate, Marc Webb's Gifted reflects a thin, Hollywoodized vision of genius as an exceptional ability to solve complex calculus problems on a blackboard, usually while a stuffy professor looks on in stunned silence.
Yet the movie, like Jodie Foster’s similarly themed “Little Man Tate” (1991), doesn’t deepen or explore its central whiz kid’s experience.
You may or may not remember Jodie Foster’s 1991 film Little Man Tate having essentially the same plot.
But this contrived mashup of "Proof" (earth-shaking algorithms), "Kramer vs. Kramer" (nerve-wracking custody battles) and "Little Man Tate" really isn't much.
And as executed, the premise plays rather differently—more of a “ Kramer vs. Kramer ” meets “ Little Man Tate ” vibe.
The filmmakers seem well aware of the long tradition of movies about troubled but exceptional young minds, from “Little Man Tate” to “Good Will Hunting.”
A feature debut for the director, Mr. Webb, the film is an odd combination of self-referential, in the spirit of its lovers, and insistently referential in its wink-and-nod homages to such classics as “The Graduate” and “The Seventh Seal.”
The script, by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, references a lot of movies, from "The Seventh Seal" to "The Graduate," but the one it seems to be channeling the most effectively (and most unconsciously) is "Annie Hall."
(He’s less successful in a misguided parody of foreign-movie cliches: does anybody take “The Seventh Seal” as a touchstone anymore?) Deschanel doesn’t come off nearly as well, largely because Summer is rather a self-absorbed, hard character, and she plays it that way.
That puts it a long way from such soulless efforts as Dumbo, Pinocchio, or either of the recent Alice in Wonderland movies.
…not since Dumbo in 2019 has a nominal "Disney remake" changed so much of the source material…
This one joins Tim Burton’s Dumbo in being actively awful stuff.
That’s even less than Tim Burton’s Dumbo, which came in at $45 million in 2019.
It’s not the worst of the remakes (you’re safe DUMBO)…
I’ll take the light-hearted, colorful, romantic, cheery musical Snow White over Alice in Wonderland, Dumbo, and The Nutcracker and the Four Realms any day.
Batman & Robin (1997)
Directed by Joel Schumacher
influenced The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014), The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)
Visuals Themes
Maybe Sony drew inspiration from Christopher Nolan’s reboot of “Batman,” with Nolan wading into waters made murky by Michael Keaton (“Tim Burton’s Batman”), Val Kilmer (“Batman Forever”), and George Clooney (“Batman & Robin”) and paddling off with Christian Bale in his own, darker direction.
A less-than-worthy sequel to the 2012 picture, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is more reminiscent of Batman Forever (1995) and Batman & Robin (1997), which, in the franchise’s directorial wasteland between Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan, believed that the series could be extended simply by signing big stars to play new villains: Jim Carrey as the Riddler, Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze.
The love story between Peter and Gwen is just about perfect, but when combined with wildly over-the-top supporting characters, the film flows over into outright camp (remember “Batman & Robin”?).
4. There's also a weird layer of unintentional kitsch to the villains here—this is far more Batman & Robin than The Dark Knight.
In some ways, this is the Batman & Robin of the entire Spidey series.
…those looking for stronger songs from Pasek and Paul might benefit from rewatching The Greatest Showman…
…my personal favorite is Waiting on a Wish, which reminds me of songs from The Greatest Showman.
EGOT-winning duo Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (The Greatest Showman, La La Land, Dear Evan Hansen)…
The music, composed by Pasek and Paul (known for La La Land, The Greatest Showman, and that horrible "Speechless" song from Aladdin)…
…largely written by Oscar winners Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (La La Land, The Greatest Showman)…
…new music from Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, the writing duo who created Dear Evan Hansen and The Greatest Showman…
Call it a dumbed-down Good Will Hunting .
Instead, the second act finds the film briefly paying homage to Good Will Hunting as Mary taps away on a chalkboard thrice her height in a certain unnamed Boston-based university.
The filmmakers seem well aware of the long tradition of movies about troubled but exceptional young minds, from “Little Man Tate” to “Good Will Hunting.”
The secretly-brilliant blue collar beer-drinker needs a more compelling differentiation from someone like the lead in Good Will Hunting to stand on his own, but he mainly exists as a nexus for the various arms of the plot.
In this case, the genius is a gifted natural, kind of like Matt Damon in “Good Will Hunting,” only a lot younger.
It’s essentially Good Will Hunting meets Kramer Vs.
The showstopper “Waiting On A Wish” is the one new track that stands above all others, taking its place alongside modern yearning Disney classics like “Let It Go”…
…which has been a winner in more recent Disney animated films like Frozen and Moana…
…like the similar male rogues found in Disney’s TANGLED and FROZEN cartoon features.
…which has the tuneless banality of all such “Frozen”-inspired stuff despite Zegler’s strong rendition of it…
The Fly (1986)
Directed by David Cronenberg
influenced The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)
Themes Characters
Throughout the film there are very faint echoes of David Cronenberg’s 1970s and 1980s films, especially The Fly (1986), where the ability for humans to use science to bypass evolution is seen as a positive thing until hubris, obsession and possessiveness takes over and the monstrosities occur.
At first, bewildered Peter behaves like the Jeff Goldblum character in The Fly, then he settles down into a kind of Anthony Perkins in tights, forever ducking his head in the presence of Gwen and her police-captain father (Denis Leary).
Why does Peter Parker grow into a paragon of fortitude, clad in upmarket cycling gear, while Dr. Connors, or Jeff Goldblum’s fast-talking goof in “The Fly,” submits to dermatological outrages that no amount of cleanser mousse can soothe?
Garden State (2004)
Directed by Zach Braff
influenced (500) Days of Summer (2009), The Only Living Boy in New York (2017)
Themes Plot Music
Zach Braff’s Garden State may be the closest analog—both explicitly reference The Graduate, that touchstone of generational uncertainty—but (500) Days Of Summer is more thoughtful, and thus more maddening in its shortcomings.
It’s too soon to tell whether (500) Days of Summer will emerge as an Annie Hall or The Graduate for this generation — or at least supplant Garden State insofar as being the movie of choice for lovelorn folks trying to make some sense out of their lives.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel are both superb in their roles, and in its mixture of emotion and quirk, the movie has a nice Garden State-y feel to it.
(500) Days has pretensions to being the anti- Garden State —a movie where the quirky dream girl doesn’t so much save the hero as make him stumble and accidentally fall forward.
The conclusion does reclaim some of the film’s early spunk, and that springboard may be all film-festival audiences need to declare to their friends that they were among the first to see the next Garden State or Juno.
It’s a Shins-in-Garden State moment, all but breaking the fourth wall to invite the audience to feel an affinity (whether cultural or, less charitably, demographic) with the movie.
…though at times I felt as if I were watching a Tangled adaptation rather than Snow White…
…a less roguish version of Tangled’s Flynn Ryder…
…envisioned as a cross between skilled thief Flynn Ryder from Tangled and Robin Hood…
…a rowdy rascal who’s almost a sibling to Ryder from TANGLED…
…like the similar male rogues found in Disney’s TANGLED and FROZEN cartoon features.
Jonathan is reminiscent of the likable rogue Flynn from Disney’s “Tangled.” And, like Flynn and Rapunzel, Jonathan and Snow start out bantering and bickering before the rom-com realizations set in.
Since Glenn Close’s star turn as Cruella DeVille made 101 DALMATIONS a live action hit in 1996, the Disney company has been obsessed with turning all their animated classics into similar successes.
It perhaps started nearly thirty years ago with 101 DALMATIANS…
Unlike the live-action cartoon that was 1996’s 101 Dalmatians (why it took nearly twenty years to get Kenneth Branagh’s Cinderella after the bucketfuls of money Dalmatians made will forever be a mystery)…
But it lands solidly in the upper end of the spectrum, alongside movies like Mulan, Beauty and the Beast, and Cruella.
…spin-offs like the “backstories” of villains MALEFICENT and CRUELLA…
But it doesn’t stand alongside the handful worth actually seeing—Cruella, The Jungle Book, maybe Cinderella.
Like Angelina Jolie’s Maleficent and Emma Stone’s Cruella, Gadot embraces the Evil Queen’s narcissism and cruel nature.
That nice exchange — summoning memories of Humphrey Bogart telling Claude Rains in Casablanca that he came there for the waters and, on being reminded that they are in the desert, tersely replying, “I was misinformed” — also serves as a key to the Peter-Spidey duality in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. He’s a Marvel superhero given strength and air power because of the arachnid goop in his veins, like the pine tar on the neck of Yankees pitcher Michael Pineda.
The revolutionary plotline comprises redundant Robin Hood-esque tropes…
…envisioned as a cross between skilled thief Flynn Ryder from Tangled and Robin Hood…
…a Robin Hood like figure and NOT a Prince Charming…
Foreign Correspondent (1940)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
influenced The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)
Visuals
There’s a gorgeous homage to Hitchcock’s “Foreign Correspondent”: an aerial image of a blond head in the midst of a sea of black umbrellas.