Marc Webb
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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."
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
And it's reminiscent of another auspicious debut: Spike Jonze's helming of the intricately structured "Being John Malkovich."
Two for the Road (1967)
Directed by Stanley Donen
influenced (500) Days of Summer (2009)
Plot Visuals
For a lot of casual filmgoers in their teens and 20s -- the ones yet to encounter a Charlie Kaufman script such as "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" or who haven't seen the bittersweet 1967 "Two for the Road," written by Frederic Raphael, or have yet to dive into a Milan Kundera novel -- the structural mind games played by the romantic comedy "(500) Days of Summer" may throw them, happily, for a loop.
Come to think of it, as with that overrated gimmick flick Memento, the only reason this movie doesn't play out in a forward-linear fashion is that it's all so structurally obvious that there would be no point (Two for the Road, it ain't).
…functions reasonably well as an ankle-deep melodrama until its third act, when characters are thrown into the gears of the plot machine, not unlike Steve Buscemi being fed into the wood chipper at the end of "Fargo."
Tim Burton’s “Batman” reclaimed the hero from serials and camp TV in 1989; it would be 16 years before Christopher Nolan rethought the Dark Knight for “Batman Begins,” in 2005.
“The Amazing Spider-Man” isn’t as dramatically revisionist as Christopher Nolan’s “Batman Begins,” but it’s as good as Raimi’s first “Spider-Man” film and darker, while still being tongue-in-cheek.
Sometimes dull and mostly uninspired, it’s much less a satisfying reboot like “Batman Begins’’ than a pointless rehash in the mode of “Superman Returns.’’
Marc Webb’s attempt to bring a Batman Begins approach to the Marvel Comics character is a clunker.
As much as “The Amazing Spider-Man” tries to mirror Christopher Nolan’s “Batman Begins” by veering away from the comics and trying to base every aspect of Spider-Man and the Lizard’s origins in reality, it’s far too obvious Webb just doesn’t have the skills that come with experience that Nolan had by the time he tackled Batman, and this doesn’t work nearly as well.
Granted, “The Amazing Spider-Man” isn't exactly the radical reboot that Christopher Nolan's “Batman Begins” proved to be, but it’s not that kind of film.
Images of this boy's life and that girl's existence provide a smart riff on the split-screen moments Doris Day and Rock Hudson shared in the fluffy romance "Pillow Talk.
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
Directed by Woody Allen
influenced (500) Days of Summer (2009)
Visuals
An understated architectural tour of Los Angeles recalls Sam Waterston's Big Apple presentation in Hannah and Her Sisters.
It’s note of romantic pining bears echoes of Say Anything but it’s treatment of the therapeutic powers of love in an otherwise miserable, doubt-fraught existence was far more richly examined in Greg Mottola’s Adventureland .
The end result is a consistently engaging and uncommonly genuine romcom that's as breezy as it is poignant, with the film's note-perfect conclusion cementing its place as a natural successor to such above average predecessors as Say Anything... and Before Sunrise.
I thought of Frank Capra’s movies like A Hole In The Head while watching this, or even something like The Parent Trap or Paper Moon.
Garfield, so good in The Social Network and onstage in Death of a Salesman, puts his own stamp on Peter and his drive to solve the mystery of his parents' death.
It so happens that Andrew Garfield, the new Spider-Man, played Biff to Hoffman’s Willy in Mike Nichols’ Death of a Salesman this spring and got great notices.