remake tagged posts

December 3, 2017, Posted in  Reviews Comments: No comments

When discussing Blade Runner, Ridley Scott said, “It’s as bad to be ahead of your time as behind it.”

Director William Friedkin can sympathise with this.

In the early 1970s he was a filmmaker in synch with the mood of the nation. He revitalised the cop thriller with The French Connection in 1971, nabbing Best Director and Best Film among a five Oscar haul.

Two years later he reinvented horror cinema for the modern age with The Exorcist.

Then, in 1977 he delivered to American audiences Sorcerer, a film fundamentally at odds with a country aching to slough off a decade of uncertainty and corruption.

A loose remake of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1953 thriller The Wages of Fear and Georges Arnaud’s same-name source novel, Friedkin’s movie was too bleak for a nation hungry for the escapist th...

September 3, 2017, Posted in  Features Comments: 2 comments

Horror Channel FrightFest 2017 has come and gone. Like any good horror icon, it will be back. But, let us take time to reflect upon a suitably wild eighteenth year for the festival. For the first time we have decided to round-up FrightFest with a series of awards. Awards which we hope will provide a flavour of what FF 2017 was like. So, until FrightFest 2018…

BEST “INTRO & Q&A” AWARD– Jennifer Tilly, Cult of Chucky

“I’m here now, bitches!” If we learnt one thing at FrightFest 2017, it’s that an intro to a movie and said movie’s Q&A will go insane if Jennifer Tilly is in the room. A force of nature, when director Don Mancini was late announcing her she burst onstage with, “I have a thing about people starting without me. But, I’m here now, so continue Don, I would love ...

March 29, 2017, Posted in  Reviews Comments: No comments

Director: Rupert Sanders

Writers: William Wheeler, Jamie Moss, Ehren Kruger (screenplay), Masamune Shirow (manga), Kazunori Ito (1995 movie)

Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Pilou Asbæk, Takeshi Kitano, Juliette Binoche, Chin Han, Peter Ferdinando, Danusia Samal, Michael Pitt, Rila Fukashima

Cert: 12

Running time: 107 mins

Year: 2017

What’s the story: In New Port City, a Far Eastern metropolis of the future, Major (Johansson), a human brain planted into a cyborg shell after a terrorist attack, is a front-line soldier in the city’s counter terrorism unit. A cyberhacker killing high ranking personnel at technology company Hanka is her greatest threat to date.

What’s the verdict: Mamoru Oshii’s 1995 anime Ghost in the Shell, based on Masamune Shirow’s manga, hit Hollywood influencers with...

January 15, 2017, Posted in  Reviews Comments: No comments

Director: Howard Hawks

Writer: Charles Lederer (screenplay), Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur (play)

Cast: Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy, Helen Mack, Joe Qualen

Cert: U

Running time: 92mins

Year: 1940

Film:

Extras:

What’s the story: Ruthless newspaper editor Walter Burns (Grant) schemes to keep his ex-wife and best reporter Hildy Johnson (Russell) from marrying new fiancé Bruce (Bellamy).

What’s the verdict: Renowned as the archetypal screwball comedy, 76 years on from its original release His Girl Friday remains sparkling and surprisingly relevant. With a few wince-inducing comments that betray its age.

On the surface this is the madcap rom-com territory Howard Hawks previously traversed to great effect in 1934’s Twentieth Century and Bringing Up Baby four years later...

August 31, 2016, Posted in  Reviews Comments: No comments

Director: Marcel Walz

Writer: Philip Lilienschwarz (written by), Philip Lilienschwarz, Marcel Walz (story by)

Cast: Robert Rusler, Caroline Williams, Sophie Monk, Sadie Katz, Roland Freitag

Cert: 18 (TBC)

Running time: 90mins

Year: 2016

What’s the story:  In a Parisian suburb restaurant owner Ramses (Rusler) begins ritually murdering woman to resurrect the Egyptian goddess Ishtar.

What’s the verdict: If director Marcel Walz’s intention was for his remake of the 1963 Blood Feast to honour the original movie, then mission accomplished.

Blood Feast 2016 is as leaden-paced, awkwardly-acted, and boringly gory as Herschell Gordon Lewis’ film, without having the advantage of being the first of its kind to temper the awfulness.

More than just a name-only redo, the plot echoes the ori...

July 10, 2016, Posted in  Reviews Comments: No comments

Director: Paul Feig

Writer: Paul Feig, Katie Dippold

Cast: Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Leslie Jones, Katie McKinnon, Chris Hemsworth, Andy Garcia, Neil Casey

Cert: 12

Running time: 116mins

Year: 2016

What’s the story: Buttoned-down scientist Erin Gilbert (Wiig) has rejected the world of the paranormal. But, she is pulled back in when she and her childhood buddy Abby Yates (McCarthy), plus oddball genius engineer Jillian Holtzmann (McKinnon), witness a real life apparition. After New York subway worker Patty Tolan (Jones) spots another ghost, the four women realise something dead and deadly is about to take a bite out of The Big Apple and team up to battle it.

What’s the verdict: “I hear he likes the girls” goes a line in Ray Parker, Jr...

March 19, 2016, Posted in  Reviews Comments: One comment

Director: Kevin Goetz, Michael Goetz

Writer: Mark L. Smith

Cast: Troian Bellisario, Bailey Noble, Kate Burton

Cert: 18

Running time: 86mins

Year: 2015

What’s the story: Young girl Lucie escapes a group of torturers and in an orphanage befriends orphan Anna. Ten years later Lucie goes looking for the adults who abused her, taking Anna into a nightmarish world of violence and madness.

What’s the verdict: Producing a “meh” remake of a film that saw members of the horror hungry FrightFest crowd losing their lunch, plus multiple walkouts at the official press screening really is some kind of achievement.

But, directors Kevin and Michael Goetz (whose sole previous outing was the little seen Wrecked) achieve maximum shruggage with their reimagining of Pascal Laugier’s 2008 original, one...

April 18, 2015, Posted in  Reviews Comments: No comments

Director: Alfonso Gomez-Rejon

Writer: Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Earl E. Smith (1976 version)

Cast: Addison Timlin, Anthony Anderson, Travis Tope, Veronica Cartwright, Gary Cole, Edward Herrmann

Cert: 15

Running time: 84mins

Year: 2014

The lowdown: Slasher horror gets a bloody enjoyable makeover in American Horror Story co-creator Gomez-Rejon’s do-over of the 1976 original. Nicely balanced between black comedy suspense and guffaw gore, it also cannily blends the actual, unsolved 1940s murders that inspired the first film, that film itself and a modern day detective plot for fun thrills. There’s life in the unkillable slasher yet.

The full verdict: If you want to remake a slasher movie, you’re always better off avoiding the household names...

May 21, 2014, Posted in  Reviews

Director: Gareth Edwards

Writer: Max Borenstein

Cast: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Bryan Cranston, Ken Watanabe, Elizabeth Olsen, Juliette Binoche, Sally Hawkins, David Strathairn

Cert: 12

Running time: 123mins

Year: 2014

The lowdown: After 2010’s £400,000 budgeted Monsters, director Gareth Edwards proves he is the go-to creature feature guy for the King of Monsters, Godzilla himself. And as the 1954 original dealt with hot-button topics of the day so Edwards uses his titular leviathan to shoulder a story touching upon post-9/11 apocalypse paranoia, environmental disasters, and of course nuclear anxieties...

February 8, 2014, Posted in  Reviews

Director: Jose Padilha

Writer: Joshua Zetumer, Edward Nuemeier & Michael Miner (1987 script)

Cast: Joel Kinnaman, Gary Oldman, Michael Keaton, Abbie Cornish, Jackie Earle Haley, Michael Williams

Cert: 12A

Running time: 118mins

Year: 2014

The lowdown: Elite Squad director Jose Padilha bravely or foolishly takes on the impossible mission of rebooting Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop. Saddled with a contractual PG-13 rating, it’s no surprise that the result is an assembly line action vehicle sorely lacking the anarchic human touch that made the original hit home with a bullet. Robo may look slicker than he did in 1987, but someone should have oiled the rusty script.

The full verdict: Ah, RoboCop...