The Expanded Ultimate Story Checklist: Does foreshadowing create anticipation and suspense (and refocus the audience’s attention on what’s important)?

We’ve talked about several forms of foreshadowing already, from obvious methods like using a framing sequence, flash-forward, or voice-over to hint at what’s coming, to more subtle methods like the creation of parallel characters that foreshadow the hero’s fate. 

But there are many more methods of foreshadowing. Here are a few:

1. When a scene cuts away right before a big reveal, or when the story pointedly refuses to identify an important person in the room. 
2. Interrupted dialogue: Somebody sounds like she's about to say something important, but she gets cut off, leaving the audience to perk up their ears in hopes of filling in the blanks. 
3. Whenever we only hear one side of the conversation, or even when we hear both but something still doesn’t add up, the audience assumes this is a big clue. (So let’s hope it is!) 
4. Unexplained cryptic scenes: Who are these people having some secret meeting that seems to have nothing to do with the story? Why is the hero’s ally dropping off a mysterious package somewhere? 
5. Dangling questions: Someone asks a leading question, such as “Why does this keep happening?” and nobody can answer. 
6. Unpaid debts weigh heavily on an audience’s mind. In both Chinatown and The Godfather, a debt is incurred in the first scene that gets called in at an ironic moment later in the movie. 
7. Threats or vows of revenge. Use them to keep the audience on their toes until they finally forget about them. At that moment, deliver the payoff. 

I used to think that foreshadowing was just showboating by writers: They know what’s going to happen and we don’t so they’re rubbing it in our faces. But now I realize that there’s a lot more going on. Foreshadowing is a way to tie together a plot that might not otherwise come together. It’s also a way to trick the audience into caring about things they might not have cared about. You tease the audience with details about the future, which makes them feel cheated, which makes them demand to know what you’re not telling them. But if you hadn’t teased them, they wouldn’t care in the first place.

Rulebook Casefile: Foreshadowing Too Much in The Martian

Now let’s look at one aspect of The Martian that was stronger in the book than the movie, and figure out why. I saw the movie first, and one problem I had was with the scene where they decide to skip the safety procedures on the launch of Mark’s food re-supply. Even if you haven’t seen the movie, you probably know what’s going to happen just from reading that: it blows up on the launch pad. And indeed, in the movie, it’s too obvious what will happen, ensuring that the explosion gets more of an eye-roll than a gasp.

Nevertheless, when I read the novel, even though I really knew what was going to happen, that scene didn’t spell its own doom, and the explosion is genuinely heartbreaking. What did novelist Andy Weir accomplish on the page that adapter Drew Goddard couldn’t accomplish on the screen? First let’s look at the book scene:

Then let’s look at the movie scene:

Most obviously, the book scene is much longer, with much more detail, so we get to focus more on the little dramas, without having to step back and consider the larger impact (and inevitable result) of the scene …but it’s more than that. In the book, Teddy feels like the hero of the scene: he’s willing to do anything to save Mark, even get creative with the timeline, and we admire him for it. In the movie, he just seems like a dick who’s heedless of the science.

One problem in the movie is that we don’t really feel Mark’s potential hunger (and therefore the urgency to resupply quickly) as much as we do in the book scene, but an even bigger problem is what Teddy says instead of talking about the hunger. I had to re-read the two scenes a few times to spot the key word: In the script, Teddy begins the scene by asking:

• Let’s ask the very, very expensive question: Is this probe going to be ready on time?

It’s the word “expensive”, which wasn’t in the book scene, that gives the game away. In the book, he’s going to extremes to save a life, which usually pays off in fiction, so it’s shocking when it fails. In the movie, it sounds like he’s risking all to save money, which never works in fiction. The result is a series of scenes that are drastically inert, ending in an anticlimactic accident that generates no sadness.

I think one reason the movie did this was to try to turn Teddy into a little bit of a villain, but it was a bad decision: Adding a villain usually sharpens our emotional connection to the events, but in this case it dulled it. Weir knew what he was doing: Nature (and its close cousin chaos) is the only villain here, and the emotion comes from the pain of trying and failing to overcome it, despite everyone’s best intentions.

 

The 40 Year Old Virgin	NO. Not at all.  One problem with the improvisatory process is that they have no good idea where it’s going, so they can’t hint at it.  (No hint of her kids before they’re revealed, no hint of Jay’s girlfriend’s pregnancy, etc.)  On the DVD, they point out that the crew was baffled that the movie cut together, because they shot literally 1 million feet of film without much of a plan.
Alien	YES. Very much so.
An Education	YES. Lots of hints of disaster.
The Babadook	YES. Very much so.  The foreshadowing is the same as the framing devices, in this case.
Blazing Saddles	YES. Lots of talk about how awful Mongo is, etc.
Blue Velvet	YES. Sandy has a dream of how the movie will end, keeping the focus on issues of good and evil, rather than the details of this crime.
The Bourne Identity	YES. We see three assassins being activated, so we know that the movie will end with a confrontation with the last one, but that turns out to be ironic. (The last one kills Conklin, not him)
Bridesmaids	YES. Somewhat.  We know that she’s bad on planes, see her rage building at the shower, etc.
Casablanca	YES. see above.
Chinatown	YES. Tons of it.
Donnie Brasco	YES.  lots of unexplained half-scenes get us interested in what each gangster is scheming against the others.
Do the Right Thing	YES. Sal takes out the bat early on, then puts it away unused,  Raheem fights a boombox battle with the Koreans, the Italian-American has his car soaked, etc.
The Farewell	YES. The doctor says that they lied to his mother about her cancer but she died shortly thereafter.
The Fighter	NO. Not really.  Russell is a very direct sort of filmmaker. Everything feels very raw and real, and that describes the characters as well.  He likes to disappear as a director, and not grant himself foreknowledge of their actions. There’s never any ominous camerawork or music.
Frozen	YES. They set up at the beginning that getting hit in the heart will be the worst, so we fear that and know what it means when it happens.
The Fugitive	YES. Each sequence begins with a brief advance look at the big set piece that’s coming (the dam, the parade, the sick kids they’re bringing in to the hospital, etc.)
Get Out	YES. A tremendous amount of foreshadowing.
Groundhog Day	NO. Not really. There’s no foreshadowing that this mystical event will happen, and not much of where it’s going after that.
How to Train Your Dragon	YES. The nature of the Night Fury, the nest, the injury, are all foreshadowed excellently.
In a Lonely Place	YES. the script uses metacommentary, the script Dix is working on keeps predicting what will happen next in his life in ironic ways. Solt keeps our focus off the investigation and on the relationship.
Iron Man	YES. We keep cutting back to Ten Rings, getting us wondering when they’ll come back, and distracting us from Stane as the big bad.
Lady Bird	YES. Danny’s gayness is certainly foreshadowed.
Raising Arizona	YES. The dreams about Smalls.
Rushmore	YES. We see odd glimpses of planning of his schemes before we see what he’s really doing.
Selma	YES. The killing of the girls creates fear of more killings.  The mention that King has just abandoned an unsuccessful campaign creates fear that that will happen again.
The Shining	YES. lots and lots.
Sideways	YES. Lots of times the wedding almost comes up. Early shot of him doing crossword while driving establishes that he values doing the crossword over his own safety, so this sets up the fact that he accidentally confesses the wedding to her while doing the crossword. This would seem too careless if his carelessness had not bee well established.
The Silence of the Lambs	YES. The slow reveals of Bill’s house, Lecter’s escape plan coming together scene by scene (such as when he takes the pen).
Star Wars	YES. “He has too much of his father in him.” “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
Sunset Boulevard	YES. Max keeps hinting at his past.  The wind in the pipe organ plays horror music on its own. The narration keeps hinting at a dark ending.

The Expanded Ultimate Story Checklist: Are there characters whose situations suggest possible fates for the hero?

Another way to create subconscious anticipation is to contrast the hero with parallel characters who face the same decisions. The fates of these characters automatically come to represent possible outcomes for the hero, either as cautionary tales or as potential role models. 

In Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, what happens if burnt-out screenwriter Joe Gillis stays with deranged ex-screen star Norma Desmond? He has his answer in the form of Max, her ex-husband who has now been reduced to the role of butler and chauffer, forced to watch her pursue younger men.

For that matter, when Joe first arrives, Norma is arranging the burial of her longtime pet monkey, insisting that he be buried right there on the grounds, even if it’s against the law. This won’t be the last time she’s willing to break the law to keep one of her “pets” on the estate.

But wait, here’s another: Norma is writing a screenplay about the biblical character Salome, who did the dance of the seven veils to get John the Baptist’s head on a platter. Later, when Norma is dancing with Joe, she throws her own veil on the floor. Hmm …

And then there’s the ultimate clone: Norma herself. Joe tells us his goal was always to be successful enough in Hollywood to get himself a pool, and then he meets a superstar who has one, but at what price? If he finds success, will he end up like her?

In Sunset Boulevard, the heavy hand of fate hangs over everything, but all stories benefit from the use of parallel characters as a subtle way to set audience expectations.

Rulebook Casefile: Parallel Characters in Raising Arizona

Raising Arizona is a beautifully-executed textbook case of the use of parallel characters. As with any new father, Hi is freaking out. Who is he now? How much should he change himself in order to become a better father? What’s the worst-case scenario, either way?

As always the best way to externalize these internal fears is through the use parallel characters. The movie centers around three couples: Hi and Ed in the center, Gale and Evelle (brothers, not spouses) on one extreme, and Dot and Glen (Ed’s sister and brother-in-law) on the other extreme.

Gale and Evelle represent Hi’s worst instincts writ large. When we first meet them in prison, they deliver the movie’s Hi’s false philosophy:

• PRISON COUNSELLOR: Most men your age, Hi, are getting married and raising up a family. They wouldn't accept prison as a substitute.
• GALE: Well, sometimes your career's gotta come before family.
• EVELLE: Work’s what's kept us happy. 

Unlike him, they have a plan for their lives all worked out:

• GALE: It’s just the beginning of a spree to cover the entire southwest proper. And we keep going until we can retire. Or we get caught.
• EVELLE: Either way, we're fixed for life.

Meanwhile, Glen and Dot are equally satisfied with their life, blithely ignoring their awful kids’ destructive rampage, but this outcome is even less appealing to Hi, who can’t help but notice that they’re destroying his symbols of manhood: (Beating on his car with a stick, then shooting a squirt-gun at his crotch and yelling “You wet yourself!”)

If we had just one contrasting couple or the other, then the answer would seem too easy: a Goofus-and-Gallant choice between the right way and wrong way, but seeing these two equally-awful outcomes stresses how hard it is to choose the right path.

This movie has lots of voiceover, but we don’t need to hear what Hi’s worries are, because we see the two lives he fears most manifest themselves before his eyes.

Rulebook Casefile: Parallel Characters in Sunset Boulevard

(Above, I had my discussion of parallel characters from the book, where I talk about Sunset Boulevard.  Here’s my original post I drew that from, which went into more depth: 

In Brian MacDonald’s book “Invisible Ink”, he introduces the concept of clones, characters in the hero’s life who represent possible outcomes, either as cautionary tales or as potential role models. I refer to such characters as parallel characters.

In Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, what happens if burnt-out screenwriter Joe Gillis stays with deranged ex-screen-star Norma Desmond? He has his answer in the form of Max, her ex-husband who has now been reduced to the role of butler and chauffer, forced to watch her pursue younger men. (And don’t forget another version of that outcome: When Joe first arrives she’s arranging the burial of her longtime pet monkey, insisting that he be buried right there on the grounds, even if that’s against the law.)

So what happens if he tries to leave her? She’s writing a screenplay about Salome, who demands the head of John the Baptist by doing the dance of the seven veils. Later, when Norma’s dancing with Joe, she throws her own veil on the floor.

And then there’s the ultimate parallel character: Norma herself. Joe tells us that his goal was always to be successful enough in Hollywood to get himself a pool, and then he meets a superstar that has one…but at what price? If he finds success, will he end up like her?

But wait, what about Betty Schaefer, the idealistic young screenwriter who wants to work with him? That’s the one character he wants to emulate, but it’s hopeless. The most heartbreaking line in the movie is when Joe sadly says to Betty, “What a wonderful thing to be 22.” That’s when he realizes: She’s not a possible future for him, he’s a possible future for her: the cautionary tale about the danger of burn-out.

When Joe tells Norma, “There’s nothing wrong with being 50, as long as you don’t try to be 25,” he’s giving her the best advice she’s ever gotten, but he’s really telling himself something: he can’t start over with Betty. He can’t pretend that he still believes, because then he’d be just as deluded as Norma, and Betty would become his Joe, forced to maintain his illusions.

Even if he wanted to, Joe doesn’t have the talent to become Norma, so that leaves Max, the monkey, or John the Baptist. In this faces of these parallel characters, he sees all of his potential fates. For better or for worse, he chooses the third.

Of course, there is another parallel character hovering over the film. Joe never specifically mentions him, but we can infer his existence: the old man who had the desk across from him when he wrote for the Dayton Evening Post, before he left for Hollywood. Joe has spent the last ten years fleeing from that fate, but now he realizes that he’d be lucky to end up in that man’s shoes, if only he could make it out that gate…

Wilder himself never stopped dreaming of his comeback: in the 21 years between his last movie in 1981 and his death in 2002, he still went in to his office at the studio everyday and sat at his desk from 9 to 5, talking vaguely about projects that never came to fruition. Why didn’t he simply retire at some point, take his millions and start living the good life?

In the face of Norma Desmond, Joe sees the true tragedy of money-hungry America: Those who achieve the most are those for whom nothing is ever enough…which means that the successful are even more miserable than the unsuccessful. Joe finally realizes that he doesn’t want it enough…and that’s a good thing, because there’s no middle ground between not wanting it enough and wanting it too much. You have to choose one or the other…while you still have time left to choose.

The 40 Year Old Virgin	YES. The three guys all represent various fates.
Alien	YES, she’s afraid of getting killed like the others, afraid of becoming Ash.
An Education	YES. Very much so. She’s terrified of becoming her teachers, her parents, and Helen the moll.
The Babadook	YES. The dog for the boy, etc.
Blazing Saddles	YES. We see others getting hanged, and the previous sheriff getting killed.
Blue Velvet	YES. he doesn’t want to end up like his father, he’s afraid he’ll end up like Frank.
The Bourne Identity	YES. the other Treadstone assassins for Jason.  The dead landlady for Marie.
Bridesmaids	YES. The rest of the bridal party provide examples of her concerns: one is unhappily married, one married naively, one is a trophy wife, etc.
Casablanca	YES. Rick is worried that he’s as bad as Ugarte, or as corrupt as Renault.  He also sees that he’ll never be as good as Victor.
Chinatown	YES. He mentions another woman who he tried to help only to get her hurt.
Donnie Brasco	YES.  Lefty, the other inept undercover Fed, Bruno Kirby’s character that gets killed for being sloppy. etc.
Do the Right Thing	YES. Will Mookie end up like Da Mayor?  Like Sal? Should he be more like Buggin’ Out?  Like his sister?
The Farewell	YES. some of the family members seem to have found success either by leaving or staying in China and others seem to have failed by doing one or the other, so lots of possible fates.
The Fighter	YES. Dicky is a cautionary tale for Micky.
Frozen	NO. Not really.
The Fugitive	YES. Gerard catches and kills the other fugitive.
Get Out	YES. Both Andre and Andre’s white self Logan, when we think they are different people, seem like different possible fates for Chris.
Groundhog Day	YES. Phil keeps running into people he could be: Nice Rita, dopey Larry covering the swallows at Capistrano eight years in a row, the drunks at the bar, etc.
How to Train Your Dragon	YES. Lots of people with missing body parts, etc.
In a Lonely Place	YES. Laurel is afraid she’ll be killed like the girl, Dix is afraid he’ll end up like the old drunk.
Iron Man	YES. Co-inventor who dies shows him that he will eventually have to choose, Stane represents what he’s afraid he’ll become.
Lady Bird	YES. She worries she’ll end up loveless like her friend, broke like her parents, living at home like her brother.
Raising Arizona	YES. Her sister and brother-in-law represent his worst fears of becoming a dad, and the brothers represent his worst fears of returning to a life of crime.
Rushmore	NO. Not really.  Max is one-of-a-kind.
Selma	YES. Various characters are killed by racists. Malcolm X is killed by his former allies.  James Forman lets his pride and lack of team spirit compel him to abandon his campaign.
The Shining	YES. The previous caretaker and his family.
Sideways	YES. He fears he can’t pursue love without becoming Jack.
The Silence of the Lambs	YES. Lecter, Chilton and Crawford all share her interest in criminal psychology. Which will she end up like?
Star Wars	Not really.   Again, these were cut (contrasting Luke with his friends who didn’t leave and his friend who did leave.) Han isn’t really a parallel character because he and Luke haven’t faced the same choices.
Sunset Boulevard	YES. many: the monkey, John the Baptist, Max.

 

The Ultimate Story Checklist: Does the story use framing devices to establish genre, mood, and expectations?

When you know there’s a chance your audience will be asking the wrong questions (“Whodunit?” instead of “Howdunit?” or “Will they survive?” rather than “How will they survive?”) then you have to head them off at the pass. 

There’s no more effective way to do that than with a framing sequence and/or past-tense narration (as opposed to a present-tense narration, which has a different effect). A framing sequence establishes the outer bounds of the big picture, keeping some possibilities in the frame and cropping out others. Types of framing effects include the following:

A scene in which a character is telling the story to another person, so we see the entire thing as a flashback. This is most often seen in books, of course, but it’s also used in a lot of movies. In Stand By Me and Forrest Gump, it’s used to paint the scenes in a nostalgic hue they wouldn’t otherwise have. It’s used most often in crime thrillers (Double Indemnity, Murder, My Sweet, D.O.A., The Usual Suspects), where it serves many purposes:

• It allows us to sympathize more with the morally dubious heroes because we’re getting the story through their skewed point of view. 
• It allows their voice-over to establish a hard-boiled mood. 
• It allows the story to move at a faster clip by using voice-over to bridge gaps. 
• It can sometimes create a specific mystery: Why is Marlowe now blind in Murder, My Sweet? Why is the hero dying in D.O.A.? This gets us asking the question the writer wants us to ask rather than other questions that might come to mind. 
• You can even deliberately mislead. A biopic I wrote ends with a suicide, but I begin the movie with a cryptic flash-forward that implies it was murder. Doing so tricks the audience into paying closer attention to the story, as they would with a whodunit. The hope is, by the time they get to the end, they’ll enjoy the story enough that they won’t mind being tricked. 

Begin with a cryptic flash-forward, then cut back to the story in “the present.” This can be used in novels, movies, or just about any form of writing, but it’s become especially common in TV.

Alias and Breaking Bad are two (otherwise very different) shows about heroes who whip back and forth between quotidian domestic problems and international gunplay. Both shows often employ a structure in which the episode begins with a flash-forward where the hero is about to be tortured to death. Then it cuts to a “one week earlier” title card and shows the same hero dealing with some ho-hum domestic problem. This not only plays up the irony but also makes those domestic scenes hum with tension as the audience wonders when the danger will strike.

These can also be used to deliberately mislead. The flash-forwards throughout Breaking Bad season two imply that Walt’s house is about to be blown up, which ratchets up the tension in each home scene. When the end of the season finally arrives, we discover we’ve been misled: We weren’t watching the wreckage of Walt’s blown-up house; we were watching the wreckage of a plane that blew up far above Walt’s house (and was indirectly caused by his actions). This is far more bizarre than what we expected, but just as satisfying. (And it also tricked us into being more forgiving of Walt’s actions, since we had falsely assumed all season that retribution was coming.)

A past-tense voice-over. This is the standard for most novels (although the past-tense narrator often seems to have no foreknowledge of the events she is narrating). It’s possible but far less common in plays (where you need an onstage narrator, as in The Glass Menagerie, to pull it off). This type of framing is fairly common in movies (where you need voice-over narration) and sometimes even in TV.

Both Sunset Boulevard and American Beauty are narrated by heroes who explain right away that they’re dead and this will be the story of how they died. Once again, this tricks the audience into paying much closer attention to the seemingly low-stakes domestic problems, and being on the lookout for the one that will lead to the hero’s death. Obviously, this is an extreme risk, since it gives away the ending. As Hitchcock would say, the writers are sacrificing surprise in favor of suspense, hoping that the trade-off will make the entire movie crackle with tension.

These can also prepare us for difficult transitions. The young girl’s voice-over in Terrence Malick’s masterpiece Days of Heaven not only sets a powerful mood, but it also prepares us for the fact that she will become the main character late in the story.

In each of these cases, the writer is asking a certain question early on to keep the audience from asking others. The case of American Beauty is the most basic of all: If we didn’t know Spacey was going to die, then our question would simply be, “So what?” Why would we care about some random shlub’s midlife crisis, since those crises never have any real consequences? Writer Alan Ball knew that the only way to get us to care was to assure us up front that this time was different.

Rulebook Casefile: Use of a (Literal) Framing Device in Donnie Brasco

When we think of framing devices, we tend to think of retrospective voiceover, flashforwards, or a beginning scene that turns most of the movie into a flashback, but this movie has a more subtle approach.

As Donnie first gets in with Lefty, we intermittently get a literal framing device: we hear an ominous-sounding camera clicking and the action is rendered in a series of still frames, shot from far away at a high angle, until we go back to normal. We never have a clear sense who’s taking these picture or from where…we’re not even sure if Donnie himself knows about it.

The effect is sinister, for both Lefty and Donnie. These are both manhunters with licenses to kill, and they’re both potentially in each other’s gun-sights, but this creepy surveillance reveals them for what they really are: victims of forces beyond their control, ground up by the twin bureaucracies of the mob and the feds.

Like any framing device, this establishes the mood, the nature of the jeopardy, and the dramatic question. In most undercover movies, the question is “Will the hero survive long enough to get the evidence he needs?” Here, it’s more a question of “Can either Donny or Lefty get out of the boxes that their bosses have put them in, or are they both trapped?” The occasional intrusion of these ominous, fatalistic photos set up that dynamic nicely.

This device acts as the cold eye of fate, foreshadowing the ultimate powerlessness of both men. Tellingly, this is the only movie movies I’ve looked at in which the hero is not there for the climax: We finally see the photos manifest themselves in the story when Donnie’s fed bosses walk in to the mob club, toss them on the pool table, explain who Donnie was, and walk out. Donnie will never have the chance to intervene and save Lefty’s life: larger forces are in control now.

The 40 Year Old Virgin	NO.
Alien	YES. In-story onscreen type describes the situation in an intentionally unclear, cold, formal, corporate-speak way.
An Education	NO. Narration doesn’t kick in until the very end.
The Babadook	YES. The opening nightmare. The events of the book predict the events onscreen.   The events on TV comment on the rest of the story.
Blazing Saddles	YES. The theme song comments on everything, and then Bart sees Count Basie’s orchestra playing for him: we know that this is a commentary on westerns, and it’ll take place on both sides of the fourth wall
Blue Velvet	YES. the mom is watching film noirs (films noir?) on TV, and we see gumshoes on the TV doing what Jeffrey is about to do.
The Bourne Identity	Somewhat, with the surveillance footage, and cutting away to the CIA discussing his situation.  There was a terrible framing sequence that was shot at the last moment and then wisely rejected.
Bridesmaids	NO. Nope, we jump right in.
Casablanca	YES. we see a globe, maps, and brief omniscient narration, then we see Nazis asking who has the letters of transit, then people wondering who Rick is.
Chinatown	NO. The narration was cut, which made it feel more immediate, but removed the glue that held the scenes together, giving the movie a hallucinatory lack of scene-to-scene logic.
Donnie Brasco	Somewhat, the device of the cutting away to anonymous camera snapping pictures creates a sense of paranoia and doom coming from the feds.
Do the Right Thing	YES. Senor Love Daddy is our narrator, and he warns us that this will be a hot, dangerous day.
The Farewell	YES. We begin with an intercut phone call between Nai Nai and Billi, establishing the worlds.  The first shot is a picture of a beautiful Chinese landscape, but then we realize it’s just a picture in a hospital, establishing the idea of lies and masking illness.
The Fighter	YES. Interviews with Micky and Dicky.
Frozen	YES. The songs.
The Fugitive	YES. there is a Greek chorus of reporters throughout giving us the larger picture
Get Out	YES. We start with the kidnapping of Andre to establish the genre.
Groundhog Day	NO. It’s actually pretty amazing that this movie doesn’t use voiceover. It’s a credit to Murray’s performance that he can convey what’s going just with his face.
How to Train Your Dragon	YES. Just a little bit of voiceover.
In a Lonely Place	NO. and the movie suffers for it.  We’re never quite sure of what type of movie it is, and where it’s going.
Iron Man	YES. A flashforward establishes the genre and assures us that we can like this jerk we’re about to meet because he’ll soon get his comeuppance.
Lady Bird	Not really.
Raising Arizona	YES. Tons of voiceover and montage.
Rushmore	YES. The curtains establish a theatrical artificiality and formalism.
Selma	YES. Showing the woman fail to register to vote and then showing the little girls killed (which had nothing to do with Selma) establishes these.
The Shining	YES. Danny has flashforwards of the horror to come.  We wonder what will go wrong at the hotel.  Who are those twin girls?
Sideways	YES. Just slightly: We start with a title card saying “SUNDAY”, then they announce a weeklong trip and we get “MONDAY”, letting us know the shape of the movie.
The Silence of the Lambs	NO.
Star Wars	YES. Opening title, followed by scroll.
Sunset Boulevard	YES. a flashforward and narration.