Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. You should join in! All you have to do is pick three movies that fit the week's theme and write a bit about them - it's fun!
This week on Thursday Movie Picks, we have been assigned movies that happen to be remakes of a film from a different language. Hollywood does this a lot, and usually NOT for the better. These happen to be some of the worst.
Do not - I repeat - DO NOT watch these movies. But DO seek out the originals!
Dinner for Schmucks (Jay Roach, 2010) Crass, grating, and unfunny in the worst way, despite the handsomely talented Paul Rudd and Steve Carell. Screenwriters David Guion and Michael Handelman have taken Francis Veber's classic French farce Le diner de cons, removed its heart, and replaced it with gags galore. The problem is, only about half of them are funny on their own, and the rest rely on the actors, who all turn in their most insipid, obnoxious performances. A quick synopsis: The titular dinner is one held by businessmen, who bring idiotic "friends" along in a sick game of one-upsmanship. While the original French film was smart enough (while still providing tremendously funny slapstick) to have you actually switching allegiances between the two main characters, this version is just nasty through and through.
Last Man Standing (Walter Hill, 1996) Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo is one of the greatest films ever made, with a tremendous lead performance from The Man himself, Toshiro Mifune. The first remake of it, Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars also had a killer lead performance, from Clint Eastwood. Walter Hill's version, however, has a mumbling Bruce Willis in one of his least charismatic performances. Unfortunately, that performance is pretty much of a piece with the rest of the film, which is mostly dull and oppressive. Who'da thunk so many shootouts could feel so listless?
The Vanishing (George Sluizer, 1993) Exhibit A for how Hollywood can ruin even a director adapting his own great film in English. George Sluizer's Spoorloos is a masterpiece, taking a simple premise (one half of a couple vanishes from a public place, the other half becomes obsessed with trying to find out what happened) and teasing out incredible tension and complex philosophical questions in equal amounts. But the Hollywood version (tellingly written by an American as opposed to the director/writer of the original) is a rote thriller, losing nearly everything in translation. But the film's biggest sin is replacing the original's ending (one of the greatest of all time) with a big, fat Hollywood ending, rendering the film completely toothless.
Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Participate yourself by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and telling us about them.
This week's theme for Thursday Movie Picks correlates to the weekend's big release, the new James Bond film SPECTRE. Can I let you in on a secret? Up until Skyfall, I had never seen a Bond film. Not a single one. I'm not really sure why. I've just never been able to muster up the excitement for them.
But anyway, that's not really the point. The point is, there's much more to Secret Agents and Spies on film than Bond and his dirty martinis. Here are three of my favorites.
North By Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959) Probably the most exciting film Hitchcock ever directed, in which Cary Grant is mistaken for a Mr. George Kaplan, a spy who, as it turns out, doesn't exist. Which is especially unfortunate for Cary after he's photographed taking a knife out of a U.N. diplomat's back. Someone else put it there, but try telling that to the police, especially when the secret government agency who created the persona of Kaplan won't get involved at the risk of exposing their real double agent, played by the gorgeous Eva Marie Saint. With James Mason as the big baddie and Martin Landau as his underling.
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (Jay Roach, 1997) Hands down the best thing Mike Myers has ever done, Austin Powers is a dead-on hilarious parody of the 60s and spy films. But you don't have to be particularly well-versed in spy films to enjoy it. It's pure silliness, but it's absolutely INSPIRED silliness. The jokes fly fast and furious from the lips of the inimitable cast (Elizabeth Hurley, Robert Wagner, and Mindy Sterling have never been better, to say nothing of Myers in his dual role as the titular spy and his arch-nemesis Dr. Evil), and the double entendres are the best I've seen in probably any movie ever. The later sequels, The Spy Who Shagged Me and Goldmember, are basically bald rewrites of this one, but why mess with perfection?
Mission: Impossible (Brian De Palma, 1996) One of the rare franchises that has kept up a pretty much even level of quality across each film, the Tom Cruise series is one of the best in film history. This is the one that started it all, and god DAMN is it fun. When Ethan Hunt's entire Impossible Missions Force (IMF) team gets killed, the agency assumes he's the mole they've been trying to find for a while. Except he's innocent, so he has to go rogue in order to prove his innocence. Cruise's "I do my own stunts" go-for-broke star power has never been put to better use than with this character, so it's no surprise that he keeps coming back to it. And given the great directors and scriptwriters that keep coming to the series, it's clear that someone behind the scenes knows what they're doing (for what it's worth, my pick for the best of the series is the fourth, Ghost Protocol). De Palma's original lays all the groundwork with flawless sequence after flawless sequence and a roller coaster pace that only lets up in just the right amounts to relieve the (at times considerable) tension.
BONUS PICK
The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (Guy Ritchie, 2014) It's a pity so many people dismissed this film this summer, because it was really a blast. The cool retro vibe extended from the perfect costumes and hairdos of its (unbelievably good-looking) stars to Ritchie's filmmaking, which has never been slicker or sleeker. It's ultimately a lark, but it's a great looking one, and lots of fun. Plus, between Henry Cavill, Armie Hammer, Alicia Vikander, and Elizabeth Debicki, there really is something here for everyone.
