James Ponsoldt
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Stand by Me (1986)
Directed by Rob Reiner
influenced Summering (2022), The Spectacular Now (2013)
Plot Themes
Right down to a stolen pistol shoved in a backpack, James Ponsoldt’s unhurried, sun-kissed coming-of-age drama plays as an all-female homage to Rob Reiner’s “Stand By Me” — a reference that won’t mean much to the pre-teen girls at whom it’s aimed, but may make some of their parents a little misty-eyed.
It’s this generation's female “Stand by Me,” right down to the discovery of a dead body, just not as poignant or memorable.
It amounts to a modern retelling of Stand By Me , with lower stakes, less ground to cover, and a wild lack of logic.
Of course, the obvious, hit-you-over-the-head answer is Rob Reiner's 1986 adaption of a Stephen King novella, The Body, called "Stand By Me." But, that one sentence is the only direct similarity to the 80s classic.
Stand By Me and The Goonies have always been two personal favorites.
Say Anything... (1989)
Directed by Cameron Crowe
influenced The Spectacular Now (2013)
Plot Characters Themes
There are also moments that will recall, for many viewers, its most obvious influence, Say Anything — though it’s worth noting that the film is so engrossing, those parallels didn’t even occur to this viewer until well after it was over (which is saying something, since a second viewing confirms it follows the earlier picture nearly beat for beat).
Sutter recalls John Cusack in "Say Anything," and the character brings some of that teenager's gifts — of gab and a stealthy sincerity — to bear on a lovely new friendship.
That said, The Spectacular Now is one of the rare truly soulful and authentic teen movies, like last year’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower or the classic one from 24 years ago that this one most reminded me of: Say Anything.
If this film (adapted by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber from a novel by Tim Tharp) has an antecedent in the teen-movie universe, it’s Cameron Crowe’s 1989 classic Say Anything .
The teen movie “The Spectacular Now” begins like “Say Anything” but soon turns into “Drink Anything.”
Thankfully, it turns out that Sutter getting his obliviousness to how uncharming his screwed-up-edness is stripped away is going to be the point of this, perhaps the most down-to-gritty-earth teen movie since Say Anything… and a helluva lot more stark than that film ever got.
“The Circle” is a cautionary Big Brother cyber thriller touching on themes explored in “The Net” (1995), “The Truman Show” (1998), “EDtv” (1999) and “Minority Report” (2002), with just a hint of “The Firm” (1993) and “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1956 and 1978), not to mention the “Gryzzl” storyline on the TV series “Parks and Recreation.”
The Circle is so bereft of inspiration that Ponsoldt tries stirring up a little cyber anxiety by tapping composer Danny Elfman to do a twitchy, sub-Social Network score—and that’s when he’s not cribbing ideas from far better societal X-rays like Network and The Truman Show.
Nevertheless, The Circle owes a debt to both Peter Weir’s The Truman Show and Ron Howard’s EDtv in the way it offers up the possibility of watching the life of a subject 24/7.
A passing resemblance to The Truman Show is the best thing the second half of The Circle has going for it.
It's so The Truman Show, there's even a scene in which Mae churns through a storm in a kayak as omnipresent Circle cameras broadcast her jailbreak attempt to the world.
Mae is recruited by Bailey and his partner (Patton Oswalt, as the compleat weasel) to become a company advocate, and before long she has embraced the cult of “transparency,” volunteering to wear a micro-camera 24/7 and turn her life into a YouTube-style reality series: “Big Brother” meets “The Truman Show.”
I headed into The Spectacular Now expecting to see a movie like Sixteen Candles and was stunned when I got a prequel to Days of Wine and Roses instead.
It propelled “The Way We Were” and “Sixteen Candles,” and fueled millions of “Twilight” obsessions.
The Spectacular Now has been touted as a throwback to the teen romances of the 1980s, like the John Hughes/Molly Ringwald team-ups of Sixteen Candles and Pretty In Pink, or, better still, Cameron Crowe’s Say Anything… The comparison doesn’t hold up entirely: The film’s unvarnished look is more 1970s than 1980s, and director James Ponsoldt and his screenwriters, Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, mostly steer clear of retrograde Hughes stereotypes.
Almost Famous (2000)
Directed by Cameron Crowe
influenced The End of the Tour (2015)
Plot Themes Visuals
Actually, The End of the Tour is a sequel to Almost Famous because it is about another Rolling Stone writer getting embedded with a celebrity.
(To some extent, the film plays like a literary cousin to Almost Famous , demonstrating the journalistic perils of getting too close to your interview subjects.)
The two writers profiled in this Almost Famous for the literary set are frequently seen in cars, crossing wintry landscapes while talking.
Like Almost Famous, Ponsoldt’s film gets at something deep and true about the journalist/subject dynamic and the phony intimacy and tiny betrayals implicit in it.
There is truth to Lester Bangs’ advice in Almost Famous, ‘you cannot make friends with the rock stars’, but The End of the Tour echoes Bangs’ other line more, ‘the only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool.’
The way the writing pushes against cliches is reminiscent of ’80s films like “Lucas” and “Gregory’s Girl.”
John Hughes made a bunch of them, too, with stuff like The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles and, to a certain extent, Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
Days of Wine and Roses (1963)
Directed by Blake Edwards
influenced The Spectacular Now (2013)
Themes
I headed into The Spectacular Now expecting to see a movie like Sixteen Candles and was stunned when I got a prequel to Days of Wine and Roses instead.
Both movies could be considered versions of Days of Wine and Roses for millennials.
The spare but expressive frames and winter light are by Swedish cinematographer Jakob Ihre, who shot Joachim Trier’s exquisite first features, “Reprise” and “Oslo August 31st.”
Over the course of five days, Lipsky will be invited to stay at Wallace's home (in a room dwarfed by towering stacks of books), attend one of Wallace's writing classes at Illinois State, and accompany him to Minneapolis, the last stop of a book tour where they are shepherded around by Patty (Joan Cusack) and meet up with Dave's ex Betsy (Mickey Sumner, "Frances Ha") and book industry fan Julie (Mamie Gummer, TV's 'Extant').
Mostly a two-hander, there’s some great feminine relief from male ego in Joan Cusack (a scene stealer as usual), Mamie Gummer , Mickey Sumner from “Frances Ha,” and Anna Chlumsky ( Ron Livingston shows up briefly as well).
Both have had smaller parts in other high-school comedies (Feldstein in Lady Bird and Dever in The Spectacular Now).
Desde el relajo gamberro de Superbad (2008) hasta la definición existencialista de Las ventajas de ser invisible ( The Perks of Being a Wallflower , 2012) y The Spectacular Now (2013), el ocaso de la preparatoria en las eras millenial y Z han gozado del dominio de voces masculinas como vehículo de expiación de la adolescencia.
It propelled “The Way We Were” and “Sixteen Candles,” and fueled millions of “Twilight” obsessions.
The Spectacular Now could have easily followed a Pretty In Pink trajectory from this point-Aimee as the girl who falls in love with the popular boy who, by some silly imposed rule, should never even noticed an extremely pretty classmate outside of his social clique-but it cleverly doesn't.
“She’s All That.” “Pretty in Pink.” “16 Candles.”
Anchored by a funny and especially credible performance by newcomer Miles Teller, Ponsoldt's follow up to his alcoholism portrait "Smashed" has all the hallmarks of a bittersweet teen drama with flashes of realistic comedy on par with "Say Anything" and "The Breakfast Club."
As a warning about the bad things that can happen when we grow lazy about our liberties, “The Circle” is unfortunately up against “The Handmaid’s Tale” — a much more topical nightmare for our uneasy age.
Chandler, best known for playing the world’s greatest father on Friday Night Lights, plays the anti-Coach Taylor here, and it hurts to watch.
A darker-than-usual turn for Chandler, the "Friday Night Lights" perfect father figure dives deep to make the most of the disappointments he delivers.
Rounding out the cast is Kyle Chandler (Coach Taylor from Friday Night Lights) as Sutter’s father.
They arrive on a Friday afternoon and dad (Friday Night Lights’ Kyle Chandler) appears – a twitchy, seedily handsome guy – and takes Sutter to visit his buddies at the local bar.
Sutter is one of the year's memorable screen characters, as vibrant and compelling as Hannah Bailey, the real-life heroine of the 2008 high school documentary "American Teen."
Complicating the issue is Evan's borderline-stalker crush on Connor's sister, Zoe (Kaitlyn Dever, who has been playing high school-age roles since 2013's "The Spectacular Now").
The King of Staten Island (2020)
Directed by Judd Apatow
influenced by The Spectacular Now (2013)
Plot
It’s a story we’ve seen before (Miles Teller in 2013’s The Spectacular Now comes to mind) that could easily go awry, but Davidson’s sympathetic performance keeps your attention as we come to realize that sometimes growing up is just hard.
But it is fluff, especially when compared to the great run of story-strong teen films we’ve had this decade, including Eighth Grade, Lady Bird, Paper Towns, The Fault in Our Stars, The Duff, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, The Diary of a Teenage Girl and The Spectacular Now (to name a few).