25 Remakes and My Reaction to Them: 11-15

A NIGHT TO REMEMBER 1958 and TITANIC 1997

OVERALL CONCLUSION: I enjoy and appreciate both of these films a lot.  Feel both have a great deal of strengths and few weaknesses.

As well acted, directed and shot as A NIGHT TO REMEMBER was it's hard for me to believe that it was released in 1958.  Sixty one years ago they didn't have the ability to ooh and ah us with dramatic special effects, but they made up for it with an interesting story.  What A NIGHT TO REMEMBER has over TITANIC is that the cast and crew knew they had a strong enough and compelling enough story on its own that liberties need not be taken.   Don't get me wrong I love Cameron's TITANIC but feeling a need to center it around a love story gives it a sense of uncertainty and doubt.  As if Cameron didn't trust the story on its own to draw an audience.  Speaking a movie lover, I overlooked the inaccuracies in accordance to historical fact, but in contrast to A NIGHT TO REMEMBER what actually took place was just as if not more compelling.  Both great films, simply that one took what was realizing that it as it was, was interesting enough. The other, feeling a need to change what didn't need to be changed.

THE WICKER MAN 1973 and 2006

OVERALL CONCLUSION: I thought both of these films were pretty awful.

I enjoyed the 1973 version a bit more than I did the 2006 version. Both were difficult to sit through. Yet I felt the 1973 version was trying hard to get across the psychological wickedness of brainwashing and how people can be convinced of some really screwed up ideas through manipulation and religion.  I felt the 2006 version was more about the creativity in how best to torture Nicolas Cage. 

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST 1991 and 2017

OVERALL CONCLUSION:  BEAUTY AND THE BEAST 1991 is my all time favorite animate film and BEAUTY AND THE BEAST 2017 sucked the big one.


The 1991 animated feature was energetic, fun and exhilarating.  I laugh, I cry.  I even get up sometimes and to the best of my ability (which isn't worth a shit) I dance and sing along with the songs.  The film moves me, it makes me feel. The voice work of the actors and the attention to detail of the animators is so precise and oozing of tenderness and care. 

The 2017 version was lifeless and dull.  A bunch of classically trained and gifted singers who could not act.  Every scene was nothing more than a reading of lines and going through the motions.  There was no energy, no emotion, no passion.  It was painful to watch.   The 2017 version couldn't lace up the 1991's versions boot straps.

CAPE FEAR 1962 and 1991

OVERALL CONCLUSION: I must be missing something cause I thought the first film was barely mediocre and I thought the remake was even worse.

Not sure what the rest of the world sees that I don't.  These films were both a critical and commercial successes. Fans and critics alike are generally pretty positive about both the original 1962 version and its 1991 remake.  I on the other hand found the original film to be lackluster and only worth a view due to the performance of Robert Mitchum.  I thought the remake was even more nonsensical, ridiculous and melodramatic.  What an unrealistic story, told in a laughable way with performances that seem influenced by illegal drug usage.  C for the original, D- for the remake.

DEATH AT A FUNERAL 2007 and 2010

OVERALL CONCLUSION: Aren't comedies supposed to be funny?

I watched the American version first and I want to say I may have cracked a smile once throughout this cheap, junior high, fart and penis joke excuse for a comedy.  In my vast disappointment I was told to check out the British film because it was "so much better."   I guess I don't get English humor because while I did laugh once during the film, I found the jokes to somehow be even more trivial than the American version.