Cold Eyes (감시자들) (2013)

A police surveillance unit stakes out the streets to identify and bring down an uncommon team of heist criminals whose expertise in subterfuge comes from being schooled in the art of surveillance themselves. Whose methods will ace the operation, whose subterfuge will reign supreme?

Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)

JJ Abrams remakes The Wrath of Khan as a summer action movie, circa 1985

Young and Dangerous Reloaded (古惑仔:江湖新秩序) (2013)

Teen recruits to the Hong Kong mafia find themselves embroiled in a triad's power struggle.

The gimmick: It's a straight up remake with smart phones, DVD monitors, and flash drives while characters spout 80s lingo and act out 80s gangster film character arcs.

Not postmodern and anarchic anachronistic enough to justify a remake.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 9 January 2013.

Red Dawn (2012)

American gets invaded by Russians Chinese North Koreans in this remake of the classic by John Milius.

Things play out the same, mostly. Aside from the rampant gore and body count of the original, and Milius's vision of a war that is both noble and soul-destroying for both occupiers and guerilla fighters.

Watch: The Original. This one lacks conviction.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 21 November 2012.

Dangerous Liaisons (危險關係) (2012)

This would be the third cinematic remake of Les liaisons dangereuses of note.

Cheat sheet: A pair of frenemies decide to ruin a morally upright society woman for fun and giggles. And sex. This remake trades the Ancien Regime for Jazz Age Shanghai.

It's a huge mistake. Jazz Age Shanghai was never a strait-laced, moralistic society where the proceedings of such dangerous liaisons would be a shocking, untold scandal. There's no sense of near-absolute cynicism, amorality and malice either.

Watch for: Stupendous sets. Otherwise: Watch the Korean remake instead.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 10 October 2012.

Total Recall (2012)

The sci-fi setting may be further away from Philip K Dick's short story but this remake is still a plot point for plot point, action scene for action scene retread of the Arnold flick, made with CGI instead of props and pyrotechnics.

Creatively though, it's a very unambitious film, which suggests Len Wiseman was more of a hired hand than a visionary for this project.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 8 August 2012.

The Three Stooges (2012)

The Three Stooges may have been second bananas to far superior acts like the Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy, or Charlie Chaplin but the Hollywood Machine says they're about ripe to milk your nostalgia dollar.

The adaptation tries our patience as it tries to shove the classic Stooges antics as the punchline to every gag in a very, very long movie.

Watch this for: the nostalgia value and the flawless mimicry of the original characters.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 25 July 2012.

Mirror Mirror (2012)

This isn't a feminist revisioning of Snow White but a comic deconstruction of the genre.

Julia Roberts hams it up as the genre-savvy evil stepmother, who provides a non-stop, hilariously cynical commentary on narrative conventions of fairy tales.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 4 April 2012.

LOL (2012)

A mom from the era of sexual liberation raises a hormonal teenage daughter. Hilarity ensues.

Almost a line for line and scene for scene remake of the French film (also called LOL), this one features a cast that equates 'acting a teenager' with 'being really, really obnoxious'.

Skip this. Watch the original; it has Sophie Marceau.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 29 February 2012.

The Well-digger's Daughter (La Fille du Puisatier) (2011)

A daughter of a well digger gets pregnant by the son of the local merchant. Oh, the scandal!

Beginning with such a sour note, a sympathetic, even comic story is woven around the provincialism of small-town types and their fiercely held, though quaint, mores and codes of honour.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 7 December 2011.

Footloose (2011)

It's a remake but I'll recap the premise anyway. A teen rebel transplanted to a conservative town organises its youths to overturn or at least flout its ridiculous ban on dancing.

On top of being a pointless point-for-point remake, the attempts to set the story in the present day make it feel more ridiculous than the original.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 26 October 2011.

Sex and Zen: Extreme Fantasy (肉蒲团之极乐宝鉴) (2011)

Back in the 1960s and 70s, Shaw Brothers made softcore erotic titles. With director Li Han-hsiang, the softcore film genre was raised to an art...

Sex and Zen: Extreme Fantasy is a cruel, perverse attempt at approximating this by-gone era.

It's not erotica of the good old days. Watch this only if you'd like to see Wong Jing's crass, lame humour and unimaginative visual jokes in an erotic film.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 22 July 2011.

True Grit (2010)

A precocious 14-year-old browbeats the meanest, baddest US Marshall in the land to bring justice to her family.

In their remake, the Coen brothers decide to play up the inherent comedy in the premise...

Because you can't really get any funnier than pairing up a violent, pragmatic old man with a naive, idealistic and precocious girl in a western.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 23 February 2011.

What women want (我知女人心) (2011)

Yes, this is a remake of the Mel Gibson/Helent Hunt romcom of the same name.

A cautious, competent, slick remake at the hands of Chen Daming, one of many Chiense New Wave directors graduating from social satire to strictly mainstream fare.

It's still an unimaginative effort that doesn't justify its existence.


Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 16 February 2011.

Time Traveller: The girl who leapt through time (時をかける少女) (2010)

The girl who leapt through time is the title of far too many novels, manga, anime, and live action films that feel like remakes, sequels, and adaptations all at the same time.

This 2010 entry thankfully IS different though. Watch it for the side-plot where the time travelling protag and her friends learn to make short films, and wait for the recognition of filmmaking as memory and thwarted desire to hit you square in the eyes.

Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 15 December 2010.

Dinner for Schmucks (2010)

Hollywood remakes Le diner de cons.

From a mean, social comedy of manners about a moron driving an average man mad, we now have a moralistic, sentimental comedy about an idiot savant who drives a type A yuppie mad.

May work if you're the sentimental type.


Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 6 October 2010.

The Crazies (2010)

The Crazies is one of the very rare remakes that surpasses its original source.

What's more astonishing is how Brett Eisner achieves that by jettisoning the zombie apocalypse genre's tradition of social and political commentary...

So much so that this feels like a perfect vehicle for the NRA and paranoid survivalists.


Read my full review on Fridae, first published on 21 July 2010.

Chloe (2009)

Etom Egoyan returns to form with Chloe, another film showcasing the director's obsession with metafiction and metanarratives.

This time round, a successful doctor hires a call-girl to set up a series of liaisons to ensnare her husband, whom she suspects of being already unfaithful.

Ergoyan gets to play postmodern Douglas Sirk with this film, and the results make for fascinating viewing.

Read my full review on Fridae, first published on 7 July 2010.

The Karate Kid (2010)

Surprisingly superior to the original, 2010's The Karate Kid retreads the old ground of coming of age of a cultural outsider, his initiation into the responsibilities of adulthood via the philosophy and discipline of martial arts, and his bonding with a much older father figure.

It goes on to add, in its favour, an emotionally realism as it explores the themes of cultural isolation, bullying, and friendship.


Read my full review at Fridae, first published on 9 June 2010.

Robin Hood (2010)

Well, that's one way of telling the Robin Hood legend.

Here we go again! Another Ridley Scott 'historical epic' that has far more politicking and fantasy than actual history. Not that the Robin Hood legend is based on any true history, mind you.

But if you really want to know what modern political agendas Scott has Robin Hood fight, you'll have to read my full review at Fridae, first published on 12 May 2010.