The Big Lebowski (1998)
The Accusation: Most of the Coen brothers' films are based on something, but the postmodern jokers' most cleverly disguised pastiche was to structure the Dude's L.A. adventure along the lines of Raymond Chandler's noir thriller The Big Sleep .
The Spark Of Originality: The rug - it really ties the film together.
A Fistful Of Dollars (1964)
The Accusation: As Akira Kurosawa put it when he spoke to Sergio Leone about the latter's uncredited remake of Yojimbo , "it is a fine film...but it is my film."
Galaxy Quest (1999)
The Accusation: Most critics missed it at the time in their rush to talk about Star Trek , but Dean Parisot's sci-fi comedy steals its premise - actors mistaken for the real thing - from 1980s comedy-Western Three Amigos .
The Spark Of Originality: Never mind the plot. The piss-take of Trek conventions is absolutely spot-on.
The Others (2001)
The Accusation: Never mind the obvious parallels between Alejandro Amenábar's 'ghost story with a twist' and The Sixth Sense , the set-up of an English lady and her two creepy kids echoes Henry James' The Turn Of The Screw and its 1961 film adaptation, The Innocents .
The Spark Of Originality: The final reveal🔥, in which it turns out that ghosts can be just as✱ scared as the rest of us.
