Alan Parker
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Stephen Holden, writing in the New York Times, panned the movie as a "flashy cinematic stunt" and compared it unfavorably to Alan Parker's 1976 kiddie-gangster musical Bugsy Malone.
Alan Parker's " Bugsy Malone " (1976) was a 1930s gangster movie cast with pre-teen kids (including Jodie Foster ).
One of the obvious antecedents for this film is Alan Parker's regrettable "Bugsy Malone," where children (and a 13-year-old Jodie Foster) played cops and robbers.
As a premise, it sounds cutesy-horrible, like an overlong episode of Jim Henson's Hammett Babies (or worse, a vaguely ped curio along the lines of 1976's Bugsy Malone), but the conviction and earnest wit involved carries it well past the conceptual experiment stage into a genuinely effective reinterpretation of classic noir.
In that way "The Skeleton Key", which capitalizes on the inherent creepiness of the Louisiana bayou in much the same way "Angel Heart" did, is a perfect addition to the Kruger canon.
Yet the spiritual tradition that invented them Afro-Caribbean voodoo rarely gets the spotlight, serving mostly as a genre backdrop for all-too-familiar stories about good-looking white people in over their heads (e.g., Angel Heart).
There hasn’t been a decent Deep South occult flick since Alan Parker put Mickey Rourke’s rumpled private dick through his satanic paces in 1987’s noirish Angel Heart.
Screenwriter Ehren Kruger's latest illiterate piece of crap (the degree to which his script for the legitimately effective The Ring was doctored is now the stuff of Hollywood legend) addresses these and other pressing plantation-era questions when he deposits snowflake buttercup Caroline (Kate Hudson) into the heart of bayou country, deep in Angel Heart Louisiana, where every phonograph spins a Dixie Cups platter and every cobwebbed attic has a secret hoodoo room.
"The Skeleton Key" doesn't necessarily manipulate this setting better than, say, "Angel Heart."
Screenwriter Ehren Kruger, who adapted the Japanese "Ringu" films into "The Ring" and "The Ring 2," is paying tribute here to the Southern Gothic tradition that inspired such moody thrillers as "Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte" and "Angel Heart."
Those who loved the novel will probably enjoy the film but anyone expecting a stirring, powerful drama in the vein of Alan Parker’s Mississippi Burning will be disappointed.
It's certainly not Mississippi Burning (1988); it's Mississippi on Low Heat.
But this film is a far cry from, say, “ Mississippi Burning ,” which made white FBI agents into civil rights heroes.
But not Davis, whose monologues – for example, recounting the death of Aibileen’s son – give the script a depth it otherwise lacks, Yet her contributions also seem oddly out of place, as if she just stepped in from the set of Mississippi Burning.
Unlike most "civil rights" films, from "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" to "Mississippi Burning," "The Help" doesn't function primarily as a security blanket for white viewers who want to feel good about themselves for not sharing the overtly racist attitudes of the white characters onscreen.
In fact, it's quintessential Polanski, in the vein of "Repulsion" and "Rosemary's Baby," though Alan Parker's "Angel Heart" may make the best analogy.
One's anticipatory mood may sour when one realizes that The Ninth Gate is essentially just a ponderous supernatural whodunit, without the freaky twists of an Angel Heart or a Sixth Sense.
Polanski delivers his story like it's Angel Heart mixed with an old Jules Dassin piece: Corso is not a completely heroic guy, but he's just decent enough to keep the audience compelled -- and once the twists start tightening and a bunch of side players get killers, I bet The Ninth Gate will have you semi-stuck to your couch, just waiting to see how it will all turn out.
However, it's also very reminiscent of the recurring flashback sequence in 1987's Angel Heart.
While The Number 23 will recall certain films in the minds of well-versed cinefilesBlue Velvet, Angel Heart, Memento, The Salton Sea and Carrey's own Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, to name a fewthere's a vibrancy and a robust vibe to it that let it stand alone as something almost singular in the genre.
His riffs on duality, obsession and other such psychoses didn't so much make me think of his ideas as of far superior films such as Angel Heart and Fight Club.
"Hysteria" is a cousin to Alan Parker's "The Road to Wellville," where a British director took on the American story of Dr. Kellogg's obsession with colonic cleanliness.
Sing Street (2016)
Directed by John Carney
influenced by The Commitments (1991), Angela's Ashes (1999)
Plot
If anything, it’s even better than The Commitments because it doesn’t go in for the slick manipulation associated with that film’s director, Alan Parker.
Sing Street has drawn plenty of comparison to Alan Parker’s 1991 feature The Commitments, about a different group of working-class Dubliners who form a band.
All it takes is one sequence that feels pulled together from everything from The Blues Brothers to The Commitments (the spirit of the latter hovering over this more innocent film like a funny, drunk uncle) and presto, Conor’s got his band.
Because of this setting, it’s been compared to Alan Parker’s The Commitments , but it’s nowhere near as gritty.
The story plays like a charming junior version of “The Commitments,” following the group as dreams come true, wishes are fulfilled and they actually become a good, unknown band.
Sing Street flaunts its influences rather proudly: There’s a touch of Rushmore, a sprinkle of Freaks and Geeks, a large dose of Almost Famous, and, inevitably, a bit of The Commitments, Alan Parker’s 1991 film about another budding Irish band.
(If I’ve learned anything from Whiplash and the 1980 Fame, it’s that Performing Arts Schools in New York City are lit like the Corleone family living room.)
Granted, any blue-eyed soul is immediately reminiscent of “The Commitments,” one of my favorite movies, and I settled in for what I anticipated to be a movie as delicious as that one.
Sometimes Branagh gets carried away with the sentiment, a little too on-the-nose with Van Morrison hear, a musical wake that seems more like a scene from “The Commitments.”
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
Directed by Alfonso Cuarón
influenced by Angela's Ashes (1999), Angel Heart (1987), Midnight Express (1978)
Visuals
Seresin's point of reference comes from his grim perspective on "Angela's Ashes."
Cuaron makes us view the familiar with fresh eyes as he and new-to-the-series cinematographer Michael Seresin (best known for work on Alan Parker films such as "Angela's Ashes") abandon the verging-on-Disneyland colorfulness of the first two movies for more muted tones and film grain you practically can scrape your hand on.
Eschewing the shiny, happy sheen that characterised Columbus's two escapades, Cuaron and the cinemato- grapher Michael Seresin (Alan Parker's long-time collaborator who, significantly, shot the eerie horror film Angel Heart) conspire to paint it black, turning a rougher, grainier eye to the material, evoking arts darker than the simple pursuit of box-office big bucks.
The look of the film is muted and somber (it was shot by "Midnight Express" cinematographer Michael Seresin).
This, in truth, is as it should be, given that Jan Kaczmarek's themes are maudlin and awful, genuine sins of cheap portentousness and fabricated poignance, and the lighting by Peter Biziou, who at least gave the corrupt Mississippi Burning a high-contrast chromatic urgency, bathes Unfaithful in such arid greys and blues that the film hardly seems to be happening.
Cinematographer Peter Biziou ("Mississippi Burning") and editor Anne V. Coates ("Lawrence of Arabia") serve Lyne's film well.
If that sounds way too familiar, it’s because writer Duane Adler has barely waited five years to recycle his screenplay for Save the Last Dance, already an ersatz knockoff of Fame (1980).
The Devil All the Time (2020)
Directed by Antonio Campos
influenced by Angel Heart (1987)
Characters
One exception to the film’s status quo would be Robert Pattinson’s Preston Teagardin, a replacement reverend for the Russells’ church who comes up from the South but maybe actually from another planet or Alan Parker’s Angel Heart.
If audiences are looking for something like that, they should go stream Mississippi Burning or American History X.
“Mississippi Burning” was one of the few films to get the dread factor right, with all those Klansmen names of Stuckey, Bailey, Townley, and Swilley and kicking off the acting careers of the likes of Michael Rooker, Stephen Tobolowsky, and Pruitt Taylor Vince as exceptionally creepy racists.
Considering how closely Butler resembles Antonio Banderas in this movie, I can't understand why the producers of this film didn't go for the much more charismatic Banderas, especially since he proved he could sing in the last film adaptation of an Andrew Lloyd Webber play, Evita.
Speaking of Madonna, the "Phantom" filmmakers could have taken some cues from director Alan Parker's rousing screen adaptation of "Evita."
Madonna's lead performance in Evita , the last film made from a Webber show, wasn't necessarily any better, but at least she makes sense from a metanarrative and marketing perspective.
He was absolutely stunning in Alan Parker�s Evita adaptation, done with style, grace and God forbid, a few chances.
To be fair, Alan Parker ("The Commitments," "Evita") reportedly tried to bring the musical to the screen back in the late 1980s, but those plans fell through.
To be fair, Alan Parker ("The Commitments," "Evita") reportedly tried to bring the musical to the screen back in the late 1980s, but those plans fell through.
Pineapple Express (2008)
Directed by David Gordon Green
influenced by Midnight Express (1978)
Themes
Even the title � referring to a particularly potent blend of marijuana � is bifurcated: the first word suggesting relaxation and tropical fruit, the second evoking the paranoid busted-for-possession drama Midnight Express.
Khondji has been one of the world’s greatest directors of photography for decades, but he’s only garnered a single Oscar nomination in that time (for 1996’s Evita ).
Whannell’s too smart of a genre fan to allow for that, and as he blends inspirations as diverse as Street Hawk, Angel Heart, and Her the end result is a movie that — like its own characters — builds something new and exciting from pre-existing parts.