Tag: Max Landis

TIFF20 REVIEW: Shadow in the Cloud [2021]

Jared Mobarak

Be safe. Shape up. Stay on task. Try as they might, Max Landis‘ name is still there on the big screen when the opening titles to Roseanne Liang‘s Shadow in the Cloud begin to roll. They’ve scrubbed it from the press notes save a single mention in the full credit list, IMDB hasn’t added it to their page (yet), and star Chloë Grace Moretz has gone out of her way to ensure everyone knows Liang (who shares that screenwriting credit) rewrote the original draft multiple times. That Landis hasn’t been…

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REVIEW: Me Him Her [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“Are you about to be super interesting up in this bar right now?” You have to give Max Landis credit for trying to breathe fresh air into Hollywood tropes through his genre merging scripts whether you believe they’re effective or not. Everyone loved Chronicle‘s sci-fi, found footage, horror thriller combo and reviled American Ultra‘s stoner Bourne Identity meets Mr. & Mrs. Smith (although the latter’s reaction may have hinged upon people’s inability to remove his Twitter-celebrity-the-world-loves-to-hate-on from the work). His latest foray in the millennial screenwriting annals is a play…

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REVIEW: American Ultra [2015]

Jared Mobarak

“We fired the ugly one” When there are only seven basic plots—as the saying goes—to implicitly choose from as a screenwriter, genre-bending homage becomes the sole path towards creativity. So while Max Landis‘ script for American Ultra is The Bourne Identity meets Mr. and Mrs. Smith through a Pineapple Express filter, it’s a damn good ride regardless. He’s throwing common tropes on their head by making a government-trained agent into a paranoid stoner filled to the brim with anxiety. He’s creating laughs out of dramatic convention while director Nima Nourizadeh…

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REVIEW: Chronicle [2012]

Jared Mobarak

“What does seriously mean?” It’s not an easy feat to take prevalent Hollywood tropes and make them fresh, unique, and exciting, but director Josh Trank and screenwriter Max Landis—son of John—somehow found a way in their feature length debut Chronicle. Utilizing the in-fashion idea of regular kids discovering superpowers—see “Heroes”, “Misfits”, Push, or even X-Men: First Class—and placing it inside the found footage genre, these young filmmakers are able to keep things both comically relevant and darkly tragic at the same time. When watching the trailer, you may assume this…

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