Well, it's not like it was an ancient tribal burial ground.

Poltergeist

(2015)

MGM’s ransacking of their archives for properties to remake to negligible response, other than sullying their reputation through wanton disrespect, might not seem that heinous in respect of Poltergeist. It was, after all, the spooky equivalent of Jaws. A Spielberg concept “directed by Tobe Hooper”, run into the ground through neglect and the desire for artistically bankrupt sequels. But Gil Kenan’s update is so wilfully redundant, particularly when the original had something special going for it, it might be worth keeping the 2015 take in mind as a harbinger of what will become of many an ‘80s classic (well, there are only so many ‘80s classics to start with, but you get the idea) when their master architects are no longer around to put the kibosh on suits’ plans to jump-start a brand.

MGM’s plundering hasn’t produced anything anyone’s sat up and taken notice of, and none of them have felt like a prestige or event picture, from Carrie to Robocop to Fame to Red Dawn. And with a ho-hum speed-ramped Ben-Hur and a Fuqua’d The Magnificent Seven to come this year, and Road House and another Thomas Crown Affair in the pipeline, that doesn’t look like it’s going to change very soon. There was some vague hope for Poltergeist. After all, Sam Raimi was attached as producer, who had garnered respect for shepherding various horror properties to the screen (mostly remakes of Japanese fare). And Kenan seemed to have the right sensibility. Monster House was well-regarded, and his live-action debut, City of Ember was under-seen but suggested he wouldn’t have to return to expressing himself purely via pixels any time soon.

Poltergeist, though, as suggested by the limp attempts to update it for a generation 30-years on, brings little new to the table, particularly arriving as it does in the shade of James Wan’s more effective series of family-shockers. Maybe that’s down to David Lindsay-Abaire’s antiseptic screenplay (he also contributed to the less than impressive adaptations of Rise of the Guardians and Oz The Great and Powerful; the latter suggests he impressed Raimi, but I can’t think why, given the end result), or maybe it’s just a general lack of confidence given the original’s insurmountable iconography.

The closest we come is in the depiction of the parents, whose own domestic disturbance is far more engaging than the frightful occurrences (he’s out of work, demanding she stay at home to complete that novel, although really it’s about his insecure breadwinner status). Indeed, when Sam Rockwell and Rosemarie DeWitt (another reason to have looked to the picture’s potential, as they’re excellent choices) are on screen, before they’re bowdlerised by the incessant un-special effects of the last half hour, you might almost believe Poltergeist is heading some place interesting. Rockwell’s never one to play a normal guy, but that makes his efforts to be an understanding dad and gracious husband more marked, leading to a memorable sequence of gross immaturity as he embarks on a spending spree with his one non-maxed-out credit card. DeWitt has less to do, but she tends to make you forget when she’s doing it.

The kids aren’t as successful, though. Kyle Catlett, the lead in The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet, comes across like he’s just stepped out of a new Kenan CGI animation, and where his oddball quality worked in Spivet, here it just tends to mark the movie out as cartoonish and ungrounded even before anything strange has happened. Saxon Sharbino is just another teenage daughter, and Kennedi Clements, essaying the “They’re here!” role, is insufficiently supported by gradually escalating strangeness so her plight lacks any impact.

Which is the biggest problem. The picture unfolds in such a functional, mechanical manner in respect of the supernatural element, it neither surprises nor scares anybody. Tree scene? Check. TV set (big TV set)? Check. Gateway to another realm, but now with copious, bland CGI? Check. Jared Harris offers some relief as smooth showman ghostbuster Carrigan Burke, full of war stories and bearing the demeanour of a faker, and Jane Adams offers contrasting gravitas as the earnest faculty professor on hand, but by this point the picture can only play out its store in undemanding, unconvincing fashion.

When we arrive at the house kidnapping the family car, for yet more CGI-assisted attempts at a top-that finale, there’s still ten minutes to go, and it’s a snooze. One might hope this would impede the studio’s will to remake its back catalogue, since none of them thus far have really been worth the effort, but if there’s any chance of just one landing, you know they’ll take it.

I’m smarter than a beaver.

Prey (2022) (SPOILERS) If nothing else, I have to respect Dan Trachtenberg’s cynical pragmatism. How do I not only get a project off the ground, but fast-tracked as well? I know, a woke Predator movie! Woke Disney won’t be able to resist! And so, it comes to pass. Luckily for Prey , it gets to bypass cinemas and so the same sorry fate of Lightyear . Less fortunately, it’s a patience-testing snook cocking at historicity (or at least, assumed historicity), in which a young, pint-sized Comanche girl who wishes to hunt and fish – and doubtless shoot to boot – with the big boys gets to take on a Predator and make mincemeat of him. Well, of course , she does. She’s a girl, innit?

This entire edifice you see around you, built on jute.

Jeeves and Wooster 3.3: Cyril and the Broadway Musical (aka Introduction on Broadway) Well, that’s a relief. After a couple of middling episodes, the third season bounces right back, and that's despite Bertie continuing his transatlantic trip. Clive Exton once again plunders Carry On, Jeeves but this time blends it with a tale from The Inimitable Jeeves for the brightest spots, as Cyril Basington-Basington (a sublimely drippy Nicholas Hewetson) pursues his stage career against Aunt Agatha's wishes.

Just because you are a character doesn't mean that you have character.

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I think it’s pretty clear whose side the Lord’s on, Barrington.

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Poetry in translation is like taking a shower with a raincoat on.

Paterson (2016) (SPOILERS) Spoiling a movie where nothing much happens is difficult, but I tend to put the tag on in a cautionary sense much of the time. Paterson is Jim Jarmusch at his most inert and ambient but also his most rewardingly meditative. Paterson (Adam Driver), a bus driver and modest poet living in Paterson, New Jersey, is a stoic in a fundamental sense, and if he has a character arc of any description, which he doesn’t really, it’s the realisation that is what he is. Jarmusch’s picture is absent major conflict or drama; the most significant episodes feature Paterson’s bus breaking down, the English bull terrier Marvin – whom Paterson doesn’t care for but girlfriend Laura (Golshifteh Farahani) dotes on – destroying his book of poetry, and an altercation at the local bar involving a gun that turns out to be a water pistol. And Paterson takes it all in his stride, genial to the last, even the ruination of his most earnest, devoted work (the only disappoint

Death to Bill and Ted!

Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991) (SPOILERS) The game of how few sequels are actually better than the original is so well worn, it was old when Scream 2 made a major meta thing out of it (and it wasn’t). Bill & Ted Go to Hell , as Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey was originally called, is one such, not that Excellent Adventure is anything to be sneezed at, but this one’s more confident, even more playful, more assured and more smartly stupid. And in Peter Hewitt it has a director with a much more overt and fittingly cartoonish style than the amiably pedestrian Stephen Herrick. Evil Bill : First, we totally kill Bill and Ted. Evil Ted : Then we take over their lives. My recollection of the picture’s general consensus was that it surpassed the sleeper hit original, but Rotten Tomatoes’ review aggregator suggests a less universal response. And, while it didn’t rock any oceans at the box office, Bogus Journey and Point Break did quite nicely for Keanu Reev

I’m the famous comedian, Arnold Braunschweiger.

Last Action Hero (1993) (SPOILERS) Make no mistake, Last Action Hero is a mess. But even as a mess, it might be more interesting than any other movie Arnie made during that decade, perhaps even in his entire career. Hellzapoppin’ (after the 1941 picture, itself based on a Broadway revue) has virtually become an adjective to describe films that comment upon their own artifice, break the fourth wall, and generally disrespect the convention of suspending disbelief in the fictions we see parading across the screen. It was fairly audacious, some would say foolish, of Arnie to attempt something of that nature at this point in his career, which was at its peak, rather than playing it safe. That he stumbled profoundly, emphatically so since he went up against the behemoth that is Jurassic Park (slotted in after the fact to open first), should not blind one to the considerable merits of his ultimate, and final, really, attempt to experiment with the limits of his screen persona.

If you ride like lightning, you're going to crash like thunder.

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Everyone creates the thing they dread.

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Your Mickey Mouse is one big stupid dope!

Enemy Mine (1985) (SPOILERS) The essential dynamic of Enemy Mine – sworn enemies overcome their differences to become firm friends – was a well-ploughed one when it was made, such that it led to TV Tropes assuming, since edited, that it took its title from an existing phrase (Barry Longyear, author of the 1979 novella, made it up, inspired by the 1961 David Niven film The Best of Enemies ). The Film Yearbook Volume 5 opined that that Wolfgang Petersen’s picture “ lacks the gritty sauciness of Hell in the Pacific”; John Boorman’s WWII film stranded Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune on a desert island and had them first duking it out before becoming reluctant bedfellows. Perhaps germanely, both movies were box office flops.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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