Tag Archives: Remake

RoboCop (2014)

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Truthfully, how much further can Hollywood damage Robocop? I think the hoopla surrounding the Robocop remake was very over the top, if only because Hollywood neutered Robocop years ago. “Robocop” was about a man brutally shot to death whose corpse was resurrected in a metallic casing that allowed him to shoot rapists in the nuts. By the time “Robocop 3” ended, he was a mascot with a cartoon, appearing on lunch boxes, and a PG-13 television series. So truth be told, José Padilha‘s remake doesn’t damage the character any further. The best thing I can say about it is that it’s better than “Robocop 3.”

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Cat People (1982): Collector’s Edition [Blu-Ray]

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When Val Lewton and Jacques Tourneaur conceived “Cat People,” the budget was low for anything truly spectacular, thus allowing them to get creative. Director Paul Schrader definitely has a larger budget and wider scope to deal with, resulting in a fairly forgettable remake. If you can call it a remake, mind you. All the mythology is lost in favor of a hyper sexual retelling that keeps the cat people and removes everything else. “Cat People” definitely fits the nostalgia bill for people who find Nastassja Kinski especially sexy, as Schrader soaks the film in a palette of neon colors and bold bright pastels while Giorgio Moroder’s score blares non-stop.

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We Are What We Are (2013) (DVD)

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It’s probably a good thing that I didn’t see the original “We Are What We Are” before Jim Mickle’s remake. I typically find time to pick up the original article, but time didn’t allow the convenience, so Jim Mickle’s remake of the Mexican horror film is what I had to base my entire opinion on. And that’s something of an advantage, since on its own it’s a fairly mediocre but interesting tale about cannibalism of the body, and the eternal cannibalism of the family unit.

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Carrie (2013)

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If there’s anything I can say about the remake of “Carrie” is that it’s at least better than the 2002 version. It’s more focused and sleeker. I remember reading on many articles that director Kimberly Pierce was planning to deliver a new and dynamic version of Stephen King’s “Carrie” that differed greatly from Brian DePalma’s iconic horror masterpiece. I’d love to know what happened during the entire development of this film because watching it, all I saw were callbacks to the original DePalma movie. Surely, there’s the addition of the internet and a small riff on cyber bullying but it’s really just a riff on DePalma’s film.

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Assault On Precinct 13 (1976): Collector’s Edition [Blu-ray]

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Almost forty years later, director John Carpenter’s “Assault on Precinct 13” is still an excellent and mean contemporary western that never lets up on its audience. Director Carpenter has a knack for lensing the world to look like an alien habitat filled with despair and evil, and “Assault” is no exception. What begins as moving day for a local precinct descends in to violence, chaos, and murder with an enemy that will stop at nothing to quench its thirst for vengeance.

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The Fly (1986)

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While 1958’s Universal horror film “The Fly” was in fact a truly creepy and bleak horror drama with little to no story elements that signaled a clear cut resolution for anyone that would ensure a life of sanity, it almost seemed like a film that held unrealized potential. The story itself was much too ahead of its time for the fifties and could have given us something more. It’s a classic, but not one that gives a hundred percent. Cue David Cronenberg who had the foresight to realize the almost Lovecraftian potential of the story and transformed a creature feature in to a rather brilliant and incredibly iconic horror drama that mixed elements of Lovecraft, Giger, his own surreal craftsmanship, along with a hint of Frankenstein for good measure.

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Psycho (1998)

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You have to wonder if Gus Van Sant either garners an enormous amount of hubris, or just has a masochistic streak in him. Why else would he dive head first in to a remake of a hallowed horror and cinematic classic? And why else would he deliver a remake that’s exactly shot for shot? And “Psycho 1998” isn’t a remake that’s shot for shot with some liberties taken. It’s shot for shot to where director Van Sant copies every single shot of the original film, except with new actors. Van Sant fills the remake with a surreal tone in the vein of David Lynch to where the movie is adrift in a time period blurred between the fifties and contemporary time.

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