Visual Parallels: Knives Out + The Handmaiden

Visual Parallels: The Cabin in the Woods + Ready or Not

Visual Parallels: The Witch + Midsommar

The Witch and Midsommar have a lot in common - they both came from A24, they are directed by young, promising directors and they are both led by an incredibly talented young actress - the world was introduced to Anya Taylor - Joy in The Witch and Florence Pugh's breakthrough role came in Midsommar.

Visual Parallels: A Simple Favour + Gone Girl

David Fincher's Gone Girl is one of my all time favorite movies. And then last year we had the unexpected pleasure of witnessing Paul Feig's wickedly delightful A Simple Favour. These films have many similar elements so it was very easy to come up with that pair for Visual Parallels. We have a cunning, beautiful woman who decides to make a life for her husband difficult, we have a sweet, naive character who unknowingly helps her with her plot, we have a disturbing murder sequence and we have worrisome past of our cunning villain revealed.

Visual Parallels: Solaris + Annihilation

Visual Parallels: Wonder Woman + Captain America: The First Avenger

Both Wonder Woman ad Captain America are the most idealistic heroes in their respective universes, DCEU and MCU. Heroic, noble, compassionate and always ready to fight for the innocent in peril. While Captain America: The First Avenger is a relatively modest movie comparing to other films in MCU, Wonder Woman is so far DCEU's crowning - or only - achievement.

Visual Parallels: Logan + Mad Max: Fury Road

It's almost too perfect. Mad Max: Fury Road is my favorite movie from 2015 while Logan is my favorite in 2017. I do realize it's May but in my experience we only get one masterpiece per year. And Logan is that masterpiece. It's not just well done and beautifully acted film with wonderfully crafted story at the center of it, but it also truly stays with you. Just like Fury Road did.

Visual Parallels: The Neon Demon + Black Swan

I know it's technically cheating since I already used Black Swan in a pair with Shame, but that was years ago and as for potential pairing up with Suspiria, Swan has way more visual parallels with Refn's latest, so I went with that one.

Visual Parallels: A Single Man + The Hours

Stephen Daldry's The Hours and Tom Ford's A Single Man are both beautiful movies dealing with the subject of loneliness. The first follows three women, each living in different time, but each of them hopelessly stuck in their lives. The second shows a day of a man who lost his lover and is set on killing himself.

Visual Parallels: Stoker + The Guest

A handsome, intriguing, dangerous stranger. A young girl. A house in small town. Murder, desire, mystery.

Visual Parallels: Zodiac + Se7en

Zodiac and Se7en. On paper they should be very similar - they both deal with the hunt for a monster - enigmatic, evil man killing innocent people. They both have good characters chasing after the bad guy. Finally they are both directed by David Fincher. But although so similar on the surface, and sharing so many visual similarities, they are completely different. And completely unequal.

Visual Parallels: Melancholia + Sleeping Beauty

Two movies that are perhaps not well known but they remain some of the most unique films I've seen. Both quite difficult and similar - not just when it comes to the disturbed heroine but also the way we are shown her life on screen.

Visual Parallels: Lars and the Real Girl + Her

I never choose the easy way. And an easy way would be to pair Spike Jonze's Her with Sofia Coppola's Lost Translation - people kept banging on about the similarities between the two for months now, hell I even saw comparison gifsets of tumblr. But kids, yours truly always tries to make her life harder. So here we go, from the scratch.

Visual Parallels: Take Shelter + The Hunt

Take Shelter and The Hunt don't have much in common at the first glance. But when you start looking closely similarities arise - both stories center around a man, who despite having a family and people who love him, is utterly alone with his problems. In case of Curtis, the hero of Take Shelter, he is suspecting that he is becoming mentally ill. Lucas, the protagonist of The Hunt, on the other hand has been accused of molesting a little girl in his village.

Visual Parallels: Game of Thrones + Rome

Game of Thrones and Rome. Both excellent series from HBO, both highly expensive with huge ensemble casts and intricate and astonishing scale of production. But there are even more similarities between the two.

Visual Parallels: Somewhere + Earrings

Usually I come up with ideas for these fine posts myself, but once something is pointed out to me and makes me go "that's right" it would be a shame not to use it. Some time ago, Chris of moviesandsongs asked me if I'm planning to do parallels for Somewhere and Earrings. Having not seen Somewhere in a long time, the comparison between that one and Alex Withrow's debut film did not occur to me. But I've recently rewatched Somewhere and some of the similarities between them are just striking and not just when it comes to visual aspect.

Visual Parallels: Breaking Bad + Pulp Fiction

As I was rewatching Breaking Bad recently I noticed an astonishing amount of parallels to Pulp Fiction. I'm sure the creators and the writers of Breaking Bad saw Tarantino's classic and some of these are just too similar to be dismissed as a coincidence.

Visual Parallels: Skyfall + The Dark Knight

Skyfall and The Dark Knight - both highly successful and considered by many to be the best films in their respected franchises. Both directed by acclaimed directors, featuring iconic hero and fantastic villain.

Visual Parallels: Rosemary's Baby + Repulsion

Rosemary's Baby along with Repulsion and The Tenant create Roman Polanski's Apartment Trilogy about the horrors and psychosis that lurk in the ordinary walls, in peepholes, under the carpets and behind the furniture. While The Tenant has a male protagonist who moves in the new apartment and has to deal with bizarre neighbors and creepy occurrences - like finding tooth in the wall - both Rosemary's Baby and Repulsion have delicate, timid blondes as their heroines.

While Rosemary struggles with her pregnancy after she moves in to new building and grows increasingly worried of new neighbors and distant from her husband, Carol is left alone in her apartment after her sister leaves for holiday with her boyfriend. Young repressed girl's sanity starts to collapse in the face of her solitude. Both films are very creepy and subjective - you constantly wonder what is real and what is a hallucination, what's a threat and what's just a distorted perception of the troubled heroine.

Visual Parallels: Alien + Prometheus

Alien and Prometheus, though set years apart in movie-making and storytelling terms, share many similarities. Both directed by Ridley Scott and taking place in the same universe, they have strong women as the protagonists - Ellen Ripley and Elizabeth Shaw - first one fierce to begin with and forced to fight for her own survival on board of Nostromo, where xenomorph is determined to kill every single passenger, second - a little naive and too trusting changes in the course of the story when she has to find the inner strength and courage to stay alive.