Cinematic Mulligans - List Five Films You Wish Someone Would Remake (1 Viewer)

[Paul_Scott]

Superman Returns.

 

[george kaplan]

Rich,

You and I simply disagree. I found Blow-Up to be a very good, Hitchcockian thriller, which instead of solving the mystery, decided to have mimes play tennis with imaginary balls.

There is nothing wrong with 'resolving' a film, and nothing brilliant or artistic about failing to do so. I've used examples like this before, but I'll give some here.

If Citizen Kane had not told us what Rosebud was, but simply ended with a bunch of leprachauns dancing around, that would NOT have been a better film IMO, though you might consider it to be better.

If Vertigo had not revealed what happened on the tower, but instead ended with juggling clowns on unicycles reciting Shakespeare, that would NOT have been a better film IMO, though you might consider it to be better.

I just don't consider a wild goose chase with no resolution other than a poke in the audiences eye to be good cinema. It might be a hilarious prank from the director's point of view, but I fail to see why anyone would want to be on the recieving end of it.

Since I only listed 2 instead of 5, I'll list my other 3 now.

The Lord of the Rings Here we have three movies that I like a lot. But as good as they are, they could have been better. The Lord of the Rings is maybe my #1 book of all time (it's certainly right up there). I love these films, but they don't even crack my top 100. But they would be in my top 10, if they had been more faithful to the book.

I realize Jackson couldn't film every single line of the books. But there are 3 ways he could deviate, two of which are fine. Unfortunately, he did all 3.

1. Delete material - This is understandable. If you need to skip something, so be it. No room for Tom Bombadil. A shame, but understandable.

2. Add material - If the material is faithful, and shows what could have reasonably happened that Tolkien just didn't write down, fine. Additional conversations, minor characters, whole scenes, all are fine as long as they fit in with the books.

3. Change material - This is my no-no. I just see no reason to swap actions of characters, or change scenes so that they clearly contradict what's in the book.

As I said, those unfortunate changes don't keep me from considering these great films, but they're not as great as they could be, IMO.

 

[Rich Malloy]

"Blow Up" is not about a murder mystery, save only in the most superficial sense. Rather, it's the archetypal Antonioni theme of the alienated, ennui-ridden modern man utterly lost in a life devoid of meaning and purpose, a void that he attempts to assuage with sex, drugs, a fab lifestyle and other forms of superficial, fleeting anodyne. A life that briefly takes on a purpose -- of solving the mystery, yes, but even more the sense of purpose that the protagonist acquires in using his talents in the service of something substantial, something that might finally provide purpose, something the he even turns down sex to pursue -- only to watch each of those elements... the negative, the woman, the body ...literally vanish into the void, disappearing from the frame just as the protagonist does himself in the last scene after watching the pranking students' (mimes) own pretence at action. Like Antonioni's other (IMO, far better) films from that period, it's not meant to provide a conventional resolution, but rather a taste of the dark abyss, of life in a universe devoid of meaning and purpose.

This isn't Agathie Christie; it's Antonioni! Resolving the mystery in any conventional sense would be completely antithetical to Antonioni's purposes.

I have to admit, it's not so much fun defending a movie I don't much care for, though for me it's because Antonioni worked this theme better in the trilogy and Red Desert, and I find so much of the fab London stuff to be terribly dated -- could you perhaps rag more on "L'avventura" instead?

 

[george kaplan]

But Rich, that's the whole point.

Up until the very end, this is a murder mystery. If it had resolved it, we'd have a great murder mystery.

By putting in the avant-garde bullshit ending, he turns the murder mystery into the "alienated, ennui-ridden modern man utterly lost in a life devoid of meaning and purpose, a void that he attempts to assuage with sex, drugs, a fab lifestyle and other forms of superficial, fleeting anodyne" film you talk about.

I guess it's all a matter of taste, but I love the murder mystery this could have been, and hate the "alienated, ennui-ridden modern man utterly lost in a life devoid of meaning and purpose, a void that he attempts to assuage with sex, drugs, a fab lifestyle and other forms of superficial, fleeting anodyne" the ending turned it into.

I'm not disagreeing that Antonioni didn't make a murder mystery. I'm just saying, in response to "List Five Films You Wish Someone Would Remake", that this is at the top of my list, because if it were remade as a murder mystery, it would (for me), turn from a horrible film into a great film, or at least from a film I have no interest in (""alienated, ennui-ridden modern man utterly lost in a life devoid of meaning and purpose, a void that he attempts to assuage with sex, drugs, a fab lifestyle and other forms of superficial, fleeting anodyne" is about as uninteresting a topic for a film as I can imagine), into one I would find very interesting.

 

[Haggai]

george, have you seen Coppola's The Conversation? It's clearly influenced by Blow-Up, with a hidden "clue" coming from a taped conversation instead of from a blown-up photo. But it sticks to the suspense/mystery story-line all the way through the ending, with some other great stuff along the way, focusing on the paranoia and guilt of Gene Hackman's lead character. My best guess is that liking most of Blow-Up until feeling betrayed by the ending would indicate a good chance that you'll like (or liked, if you saw it) The Conversation.

 

[george kaplan]

Haggai,

I certainly liked The Conversation better than Blow-Up, and certainly see the similarities you are talking about. However, I didn't like it enough to buy it, though frankly, it's been long enough since I've seen it, that I don't recall what about it didn't quite work for me, though it may have been that it spent too much time on the Hackman character's personality deficiencies.

 

[Mark Ram]

1. Pay It Forward.
Lamest ending ever. There was no good reason for that.

2. Unbreakable.
Speed it up. How about a smile or two from one of the characters.
Take out the director's crappy scene.
Make Bruce Willis' family not a bunch of freaks.

3. Weird Science.
This movie started with a premise ripe for jokes. Where most of the jokes went, I dunno. But it ran out of steam about 1/3 of the way through.

4. Biloxi Blues.
Terrible ending. Remake the last 20 minutes with a more believable and funny ending.

5. Pirates Of The Caribbean.
Editing this really good fun movie by about 30 minutes would make it great IMO.