Latin remake for a new audience… of rich white people. I love Andy Garcia. I’d watch him in any piece of crap. Even crap like FATHER OF THE BRIDE, the 2022 Latin remake of Steve Martin’s 1991 upper middle-class remake of the 1950 Spencer Tracy white privilege classic. The story (written by Matt Lopez, THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE 2010) might have … Read More
THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN
Far East becomes Old West. John Sturges remakes Akira Kurosawa’s SEVEN SAMURAI as a western, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN. Katanas become guns, samurai become gunslingers, Far East becomes Old West. A small Mexican farming village, tired of being ransacked annually by a marauder and his henchmen, hire seven gunslingers to repel them. Soon enough, the villagers realize meeting violence with violence … Read More
THE ROBINSONS: LOST IN SPACE
Lost In Dysfunction. THE ROBINSONS: LOST IN SPACE is a 2004 remake of the 1965 series LOST IN SPACE, and remains as one unaired pilot episode. Following the unsuccessful filmic remake of LOST IN SPACE in 1998 (starring William Hurt and Gary Oldman), which was criticized (incorrectly) as being too dark, this television production goes in another direction and soaps … Read More
LOST IN SPACE 1998
Lost In Act Three. LOST IN SPACE blasts off as a well-produced science fiction adventure, then gets lost loster than its lostest characters. Brought to the big screen from the 1965 TV series, LOST IN SPACE captures much of the dynamics between all the characters originally created by Irwin Allen; it updates the tech, the spaceship, the production value; it … Read More
IT 2017
He pronouned me… The children of a small town are terrorized by a demon, until they realize they can simply beat the shit out of it. Stephen King’s novel It was a television B-movie in 1990, starring Tim Curry as Pennywise the Clown, with a Cagney-gangster voice that is now dated and goofy. This big screen remake puts the IT … Read More
YOU’RE NEVER TOO YOUNG
It Never Gets Old… Jerry Lewis, whose whole shtick is “an adult playing a kid,” gets to play an adult playing a kid, in YOU’RE NEVER TOO YOUNG. And Dean Martin, as usual, can’t tell the difference. Jerry is Wilbur Hoolick (of COURSE that’s his name), an aspiring barber, planted with a stolen diamond and then pursued by the diamond … Read More
LIVING IT UP
Sham – Wow! Homer Flagg is dying of radiation poisoning. His last wish is to visit New York. An avaricious New York editor, hoping to boost sales of his newspaper, brings Homer and his exclusive doctor on an all-expenses-paid final fling to New York. But Homer’s not really dying. His doctor made up the disease by mistake – and continues … Read More
THE JUNGLE BOOK 2016
Bare Man-cessitites. Am I evil? Yes I am! Am I evil? I am Man! — Diamond Head, “Am I Evil” THE JUNGLE BOOK is “Based on the books by Rudyard Kipling,” which means it is based on the 1967 Disney cartoon. That’s all this is – the Disney cartoon remade as a CGI-animated feature. No mention of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and Nag, … Read More
CARRIE 2013
Rebooted and Re-Blonded. The classic Stephen King novel is remade for a new generation of bullied hot girls. CARRIE is the awkward, bullied outcast at school; her mother is a religious fanatic self-flagellator who regularly imprisons Carrie in the Prayer Closet to atone for whatever sins she has committed by being a girl. With the onset of her period, Carrie … Read More
CARRIE 2002
Snoozefest in Red. CARRIE (2002) is the TV movie remake of the 1976 Brian De Palma feature film, from the Stephen King novel of the same name. And it shows. Director David Carson (STAR TREK GENERATIONS) seems so acutely aware of his film’s low production values, he thinks he can make up for them by adopting the method of MTV … Read More
ROBOCOP 2014
Being more Man than Machine? There’s an app for that… A cop transformed into a cyborg fights for control of his free will over the corporation that controls his unthinking, emotionless mind. Uh, so it’s about ALL cops then? No, only ones who behave like ROBOCOP. Oh, so it’s about ALL cops then?… 2028 Detroit. When Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman) … Read More
BRICK MANSIONS
Brick-headed, flat-footed, Paul Walkered. Here we go again. Another plodding American remake of a blast furnace European film. BRICK MANSIONS is from 2004’s BANLIEUE 13 (aka DISTRICT 13), a jet-paced French actioner that starred Parkour inventor David Belle, weaving his unique free-running abilities into the fabric of the gunmetal plot. BRICK MANSIONS stars Paul Walker, and it weaves his unique … Read More
THE HAUNTING 1999
The terror of bad direction, editing and acting. Not to be confused with THE HAUNTING OF HELL HOUSE, released in the same year, THE HAUNTING is the tiresome, overlong, yawnfest remake of the 1960 movie of the same name. The only reason it’s terrifying is that it illustrates how low the bar for horror movies has sunk. Dr. Marrow (Liam … Read More
GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS
Trying to fix something that ain’t broke – and breaking it. No, it’s NOT just the same movie re-edited. I speak for all cucumber reviewers when I contend – nay, insist – that the 1956 American re-edit of GODZILLA (1954), re-titled GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS, cannot, must not and should NEVER be reviewed with the original, even as a … Read More
POSEIDON
The Boat, The Wave, The Snake. One scene in POSEIDON will live with you long after you’ve dried off and found your land legs: Kurt Russell actually drowning. Literally. In a move that is half-Method/half-Madness, Russell lets his lungs purposely fill with water to achieve what looks like someone actually drowning. And actually drowns! It was arranged that lifeguards retrieve … Read More
SNOW WHITE: A TALE OF TERROR
Once Upon a Terrifying Time… SNOW WHITE: A TALE OF TERROR has the potential to be one of the great revisionist re-tellings of the original Grimm Fairy Tale, but, like BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA, suffers from inauthentic sets, TV production values and bad editing. And big dwarfs. As the title suggests, it’s the age-old German folk tale of Snow White (tabulated … Read More
YOU’VE GOT MAIL
You’ve Got Fail. There’s nothing like a good romance. And YOU’VE GOT MAIL is nothing like a good romance. You see, it’s trying to sell us “romance” via e-mail. And the very nature of electronic mail – digitization, depersonalization – removes the elements that romance is built upon. Writer-director Nora Ephron has taken an old story (Ernst Lubitsch’s THE SHOP … Read More
ARTHUR 2011
Lost between the Moon and New York City. The only way to enjoy ARTHUR (2011), the story of an alcoholic billionaire, is to be an alcoholic billionaire yourself. That way, your brain won’t sizzle with the fury of forced relinquishment of your tax dollars to thug corporate billionaires, who rewarded themselves for crashing the economy by giving themselves bonuses with … Read More
FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX 2004
Phoenix rising from the hashes. Remake of the classic 1965 Robert Aldrich film of the same name, John Moore directs this FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX with a slick, severe spank, yet fails to conjure the tension and desperation of the original. We can pinpoint the exact moment it fails: OutKast – “Hey Ya!” Yes, that “Hey Ya!” – that song … Read More
THE WIZ
If you’re thinkin’ of being my remake, it don’t matter if you’re black or white. Took brass balls to remake the legendary WIZARD OF OZ – or maybe just black balls. The pinky-white euphemism “urban” doesn’t disguise THE WIZ for what it is – a black version of THE WIZARD OF OZ. It’s what the original WIZARD OF OZ desperately … Read More