Running on Empty (1988)
Directed by Sidney Lumet
The Popes are a family who haven't been able to use their real identity for years. In the late sixties, the parents set a weapons lab afire in an effort to hinder the government's Vietnam war campaign. Ever since then, the Popes have been on the run with the authorities never far behind. Their survival is threatened when their eldest son falls in love with a girl, and announces his wish to live his life on his own terms.
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What critics compared Running on Empty to
For instance, I'd love to know more about what it's like to live underground, although "Running on Empty" already did that pretty well.
It’s “The Fugitive” meets “Running on Empty” meets “Absence of Malice.”
So far, so very “Running on Empty,” the 1988 movie about a fugitive family of radicals.
The story, such as it is, mirrors (in a way) Sidney Lumet’s “Running on Empty,” a 1988 film that seemed to muddle its politics in a story of teen romance.
It was Sidney Lumet’s similarly-themed 1988 film that was called “Running on Empty,” but it’s Redford’s that superior picture’s title actually reflects.
Evoking the rich, authentic vibes of something like Sidney Lumet’s “Running on Empty,” the family escapes following a ridged routine, hopping into an SUV, leaving their belongings, and that once happy life behind.
As her parents, the craggy ex-hippies personified by Debra Winger and Richard Jenkins, who shuffle about like anti-capitalist zombies, aren’t as strikingly defined, but the family dynamic is reminiscent of something like Running on Empty (1988), embodying the pronounced consequences of parents living outside the realm of the law, and how their choices eventually warp their children.
All of this is extremely intriguing, calling to mind films like " The Mosquito Coast ," or " Running on Empty ," which had similar cloistered family atmospheres, and charismatic controlling (albeit well-meaning) fathers.
In the tradition of “The Mosquito Coast” and “Running on Empty” (and going back further, “Swiss Family Robinson”), “Captain Fantastic” is all about a family that has gone off the grid in a big way and is now living off the land, isolated from the modern world and all its evil entrapment.
And in plot and approach, Captain Fantastic is a lot like Running on Empty, the 1988 tearjerker about a couple of fugitive revolutionaries who question whether they’ve let down their kids by forcing them into a life they never chose.
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The film’s Pacific Northwest milieu and scenes from the edge already recall Gus Van Sant, and Plummer somewhat spookily evokes one of Van Sant’s early muses, River Phoenix, particularly the late actor’s circa– Running on Empty era of boyish vulnerability and haunted adolescence.
(Think a deaf spin on Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace and Sidney Lumet’s Running on Empty , passed through a John Hughes filter, or tossed into a blender with recent Netflix teen movies like The Half of It .)
Her mother, Naomi Foner, wrote one of the best screenplays of the 1980s, "Running on Empty."
The directorial debut of screenwriter Naomi Foner (Running on Empty) is a soap-opera starter kit with lead characters who are more spoiled than sympathetic, and it rings false in its portrayal of sisterhood and coming-of-age angst.
She wrote director Sidney Lumet’s 1988 movie “Running on Empty,” which earned her an Oscar nomination and co-star River Phoenix his only acting nomination, and she’s the mother of Maggie and Jake Gyllenhaal.
Very Good Girls can’t even blame rampant film-industry sexism, as it was written and directed by Naomi Foner, making her directorial debut after many years as a screenwriter (Running On Empty, Losing Isaiah, Bee Season).
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Director Sidney Lumet's (12 Angry Men) film repertoire is filled with notable efforts, but he hasn't produced a good one since Running on Empty nearly two decades ago.
A tense anti-caper written by Kelly Masterson that's part thriller and part Greek tragedy, "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" shares many traits with such Lumet classics as "Dog Day Afternoon," "Serpico," "Network" and "The Verdict," as well as family-centered stories "Long Day's Journey Into Night" and "Running on Empty."
The adaptation, by Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal (screenwriter of Running on Empty and mother of Jake and Maggie), takes liberties with the details but stays true to the book�s ideas about communication and connection.
It is based on the 2000 best-selling novel by Myla Goldberg, and has been adapted for the screen by Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal (Running on Empty).
Foner, mother of current indie faves Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal, has previously written films such as "Losing Isaiah", "Running on Empty," and "A Dangerous Woman."
Credit for this also goes to writer Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal, whose Oscar-nominated script for "Running on Empty" showed a gift for family dynamics.