Chris Vaughn is an ex military veteran who has just returned to his home town. Back after eight years, he suddenly gets a crash course in learning the fact that you can never go home again, and now he walks tall and carries a big stick. Dwayne Johnson jumps into the seat of action hero yet again this time around, first with the crappy “Scorpion King”, the next with the wicked “The Rundown” and now with this very good action ride known as “Walking Tall”. A remake of the cult classic “Walking Tall”, and based on the true story of the utterly heroic feats of sheriff Buford Pusser, a man who was elected to sheriff after promising to clean up crime, and did so, taking down big time crime syndicates and corruption in his hometown of Tennessee with his giant wooden club.
Tag Archives: Remake
Willard (2003)
“Willard” 2003 has a very Tim Burton motif that just didn’t work and with characters that were over the top, and a love interest that’s under-used, it’s not hard to believe there’s barely a story to see here, especially one that is just comprised of Willard seeking revenge on his enemies through the mice. There’s nothing but filler and mild violence that hardly displays the carnage of the mice who are supposed to be the devil incarnate, the devil in Willard, but nothing is accomplished except a lot of tricks involving rats. This time around, there’s a loon playing a loon, in this case Crispin Glover who is delightfully over the top as Willard himself.
The Remake Game
Is it a remake?
No. Studios won’t admit it’s a remake anymore. It’s a re-telling, a re-imagining, a re-visioning, a re-tread, a modernization, an interpretation, a redux, it’s the same story but set in a contemporary setting, it’s not a direct remake because it will be my interpretation (I’m talking to you Jonathan Demme!), it’s the same story but with different characters, and a different plot, and it takes place before the timeline, but after the sequel. What? When the fuck did creativity and originality become out of style? Can someone please give me the answer?
Studio execs will tell you, no it didn’t go out of style, there’s just a lack of creativity in Hollywood, well why isn’t it being-addressed? Obviously there is a lack of creativity, a disturbing and shocking lack of creativity, especially when studios won’t admit that their movie is a remake, yet make up pompous terms to hide what it really is. It’s a remake. And most of the time, it’s not a good one, and almost always is unnecessary.
The Grudge (2004)
The remake of “Ju-On” now called (sigh) “The Grudge” is the perfect example of faulty westernization in which the translated work suffers in the translation and completely misses the point of the original. The original had the surprise ending which makes you re-assert your thoughts on the characters, while the remake has the “You thought the monster was dead, but its not!” ending that I yawned at.
Freaky Friday (2003)
The classic Disney film from 1976 is redone into this entertaining and funny remake starring the duo of Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis. Writers Heather Hach, and Leslie Dixon manage to take a creaky wheeled comedy and make it fresh, of course modernizing it, but also create a cast of genuinely likable characters that people will love. In this version Jamie Lee Curtis plays Tess Coleman, an uptight, strict, and anal mother who is very busy with her career. As well as her family and her upcoming marriage to her boyfriend Ryan (Mark Harmon), and her daughter Anna, who is a drama queen who is bullied in school, failing in class and is at war with her mother almost 24/7.
Dawn of the Dead (2004)
In 1978, George A. Romero followed up his classic “Night of the Living Dead” with an even bigger horror hit known as “Dawn of the Dead” this time showing the world only weeks after the outbreak where society is now overrun by the undead and carnage ensues as people struggle to comprehend what is happening and how it happened. True, director Zack Snyder’s re-working of “Dawn” is a lot slicker than the original, but ultimately it lacks the truly sick and sometimes twisted satire and jabs at pop culture and the consumer era.
Solaris (2003)
The film “Solaris” poses some interesting questions about life; How much of life is reality and how much is illusion? How much of life is illusion we’re not aware of, and illusion we prefer to endure for the sake of going on in life? When someone dies, how much of their memory that we store in our minds is real and how much is distorted by the way we preferred to see them as? And, finally, one of the truly provocative questions: Do we ever really know someone? Do we know their flaws and personality inside out or do we just create our own images of them.