Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join in the weekly fun by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and writing a bit about them!
Well, I suppose it was inevitable this topic would come up! Remakes and sequels and "reboots" are all the rage in Hollywood these days. To be honest, I am mostly not a fan. If a movie was good once, that does not mean that it will necessarily be good again with a different team, as movie after movie after movie has proven.
HOWEVER. There are some films that have great concepts that resulted in mediocre-to-bad movies, and that's where I think Hollywood should be focusing their remake/reboot energy. Movies, perhaps, like these.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Stephen Norrington, 2003) This is as great a premise as they come: A rogue's gallery of sci-fi, fantasy, and adventure characters (Captain Nemo, Tom Sawyer, Dr. Jekyll, Dorain Gray, etc.) team up for a secret mission. Unfortunately, the film absolutely squanders this great premise with a director who didn't seem to have any clue what he was doing. The comic books the movie was based on had a sort of deadpan fun with the audacity of the concept, but the film takes it at face value. In fact, Showtime's series Penny Dreadful does a much better job of this, going full-on melodramatic Victorian Gothic horror show, but you don't even have to go that route. Just infuse the concept with some of the audacity and fun of the comic books and it could be really great, instead of just fine.
The Brothers Grimm (Terry Gilliam, 2005) Look, I LOVE me some Terry Gilliam, and I LOVE me some "fairy tales are real" nonsense. But this is an unholy mess of a movie, in part because it's too focused on plot, which has never been Gilliam's strong suit. He's great at creating worlds, and does a fantastic job of that here, too. But after that, the whole thing falls apart, from the script to the casting to all non-design artistic decisions. Recast it and give the reigns to Guillermo del Toro. He'll know what to do with this concept.
The Happening (M. Night Shyamalan, 2008) You remember the trailers for this, right? INCREDIBLY creepy. And there's a whole lot of that creepiness in Shyamalan's first R-rated film, too. But unfortunately, it's also saddled with appallingly terrible Z-grade acting from A-list stars and an explanation (it's not even worthy of being called a twist) that is pulled out of nowhere, thus robbing the movie of everything it has going for it. Hand the script over to Stephen King and then give the director's chair to Bryan Bertino (The Strangers), and this would be much better. Oh, and maybe change that stupid title, too?
Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Play along by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and writing a little blurb about them!
Another week, another edition of Thursday Movie Picks! And a very unfair one!
That's not entirely true.
It's just that, in December, there was a very similar theme: Con Artists. And while not all films about con artists involve heists... well, they usually do. So naturally when I come to this theme, I'm all "I know! Ocean's Eleven!" Except, WAIT. I totally picked that already, and not too long ago at that! So, it was back to the drawing board. But I think I've come up with some good ones. Hopefully you agree! Let's get one thing out of the way first: When it comes to heist flicks, for me, the more ridiculous the better. Give me impossible tasks, impossible twists, and improbably narrow escapes. As many as possible.
Entrapment (Jon Amiel, 1999) Let's start with your basic ridiculous heist. A very young and HOT TO DEATH Catherine Zeta-Jones gets master thief and eternal hottest man alive Sean Connery to work with her amateur ass to pull off the world's biggest heist. Except she's on the right side of the law, trying to bring him to justice. OR IS SHE??? This is pretty much your basic standard-issue heist, but the sex appeal of Zeta-Jones and Connery together is just off the charts and gives the film quite the edge. I mean, you've seen the laser training sequence, right? HOT.
Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010) Now let's up the ante a bit: A REVERSE heist... that takes place entirely INSIDE YOUR MIND. BOOM. Except that, for a film that spends so much time in a dream world, not very much of it feels or looks particularly dream-like. For one thing, where are all the naked people? Oh, don't get your panties in a twist, I'm just kidding. I LOVE Inception. Sure, I bristle a bit when people say the plot is difficult to follow (it's NOT, if you're paying attention!), and it wastes Ellen Page, and it's not a film that lets its imagination run wild when it really could have, but it is clever, and it has Marion Cotillard playing the most complex femme fatale in many moons, and it's much more daring than most major Hollywood motion pictures. I just hope that the debate over that stupid top at the end is over, because what's important isn't whether or not it's still spinning, but that Cobb doesn't care. (But it totally skips a little)
