Marathon Man * was recently on TV and I didn’t think it was very good. Too slowly paced. Too bad it didn’t get a better treatment.
Good call. I was entertained by Constantine, and I loved the “horror-noir” look and feel of it, especially in the first act. I was annoyed that they made him an American, but I could accept moving the setting to L.A. due to the history of hard-boiled detective heroes in Southern California, like Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe, and Jake Gittes in Chinatown. As it is, you have another dark, conflicted P.I. who handles supernatural horror in L.A. in the Angel series, and that show could have been a template for the makers of Constantine.
I had the feeling that Keanu Reeves was trying his absolute best to be dark and gritty, a “hard man” with a shady past. I definitely felt he was better in that role than in The Matrix or Speed, where he played other action heroes, and I heard he even read all the Hellblazer TPBs in preparation for his role. But he was just a poor choice, when it comes down to it. My top casting choice for John Constantine was – and is still – Daniel Craig from Layer Cake, but I think Paul Bettany, Ewan McGregor, James Marsters, Jason Statham, or if they were dead-set against a Constantine with a British accent, Kiefer Sutherland, would all have been great in the role.
Van Helsing could have been awesome if it was a lot scarier, or conversely, a lot more of a fun buddy comedy/action movie like a period version of Ghostbusters. As it was, it couldn’t make up its mind which of those it wanted to be, and ended up as a horrible mishmash.
Sky Captain would have been the. Best. Movie. Ever. if it played with the classic serial movie formula, updating the old cliches and inserting a more complex story and more twists and turns. As it was, it felt like watching a mediocre '40s serial with gorgeous cinematography and special effects, rather than what it could have been: an exhilarating movie that embraced the look and feel of the past, but rooted firmly in the present. Raiders of the Lost Ark did what I consider the perfect job in bringing the thrills and chills of an adventure serial into a more modern context, while remaining a period piece. I just wish Sky Captain had done for dogfights, robots, and 1930s-style death rays what Indiana Jones did for its more earthbound pulp adventure genre. A better script could have made all the difference.
When I read the OP, the first movie I thought of was Dune. It was such a disappointment, and not because I set my expectations too high. They had all that money, why, oh why, did they monkey with the story for no real good reason that I could see? The “weirding way” was a weapon? The stillsuits were open-faced? Baron Harkonnen flew around in an suspensor belt? The prince was a grown man? It was like they missed the whole point. What a wasted opportunity.
Oh, but Sting was, indeed, mad cool.
But the Baron did have a suspensor belt…
This would be my pick as well. If the rest of the movie had been anywhere near as entertaining as the first five minutes it would have been a pretty kick-ass movie. Or even if they’d spent a little more time in hell–as it was, they gave us a couple of tantalizing images and left the rest up to our imagination.
I can’t quite put into words how I would describe the style of the movie, but it just REEKS of the 80s. You know the feel I’m talking about; that grungy, industrial, electro-punk mishmash. Bleh.
Lynch got the atmosphere of the story completely wrong. Awful movie of a book I adore. 
But from what I remember, it was to hold up his gargantuan amount of fat; he didn’t fly around with it.
IIRC
I wonder if that’s why he got his name removed from the movie. I never really heard.
That’s wierd. I’ve always felt the look of the movie was one of the best things about it. Kind of a neo-renissance look that seemed to work nicely with the whole feudal society. Conversly,it was the one thing I didn’t like about the miniseries, because there it felt far too much like star trek.
Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. The filmmakers should have used Daniel Handler’s original script, cast Tim Curry instead of Jim Carrey and taken out all the cutesy/slapsticky stuff involving Sunny.
This summer’s Fantastic Four. I heard rumors a few years ago that Peyton Reed, who directed Down with Love, was next going to do FF as a '60s period piece.
That would’ve been awesome.
Also, separate Dr. Doom’s origin from the FF’s, don’t turn Reed into a highly educated idiot, and either CGI the Thing or figure out a way not to make Michael Chiklis’ performance embarrassing. Adapt the origin story plus a good go-round with Dr. Doom (probably not the first Blackbeard-related encounter) and it would be really, really good.
And much as I enjoy watching Jessica Alba, she’s no Sue Storm.
Bonfire of the Vanities. They started with this totally awesome book with lots of insights about New York culture and politics in the '80s, and then they made the movie like they were trying to make it a self-parody that shat on everything worthwhile about the story. :mad:
Yes, it was an awful movie, but have you read the book? Stinky. The beginning was very gripping, and then it kept escalating, and then it just falls apart and becomes completely stupid. I’m surprised they got a movie out of it at all. Best course of action for that would’ve been to just nuke it from orbit.
How about Hannibal? Not that I don’t think the film was kinda cool, but it just seemed to have these little roadblocks that stopped it going on to being a classic. And a stupid, sucky ending.
mm
Strange Days, which wasn’t a bad movie, but needed a bit of ruthless editing so that the story could be followed in one viewing and half the dialogue didn’t consist of speeches.
The cinematic release of The Abyss, which again wasn’t a bad movie, indeed it contains some of my favourite movie bits! But the Special Edition version was the movie they had planned to make, and was the movie they shot. The cinematic release was practically invented during the edit. It had a very different emphasis - it was about people in a crisis and their interactions and relationships, as opposed to a “first contact” sci-fi during a tense part of the Cold War. And it was an improvement, but some scenes should have been re-shot so it made more sense.
Tomb Raider. I had low expectations, but even so. I’d been waiting for a movie that recaptured the spirit of the Indiana Jones trilogy, and still am. Additionally, there’s very few action movies with a female lead that are any good yet weren’t made in Hong Kong. This was an opportunity to do both, but they didn’t even try. I was disappointed even taking into account that I was expecting to be disappointed.
The Secret of NIMH. The book rocked. The movie had the potential to be dark and intense, with strong characters. Think Watership Down. Instead, mass-market, cute widdle animals crap.
How was the original script different? I admit I haven’t read the books, but I saw the movie recently and loved it, in spite of Carrey’s mugging.
Actually, he had his name removed from the expanded TV-movie version, not the theatrical release.
I was hoping for that too. I didn’t see Fantastic Four (waiting to rent it), but Down With Love is awesome, and visually perfect for capturing that optimistic era that the FF seems to fit best in.
Ah, see I hated Down with Love—Renee Zellweger is completely graceless and gawky, and Ewan MacGregor was slumming, and winking at the camera. Plus, the clothes were c1960 and the hair was c1967—not a huge deal, but irritating to me. I thought David Hyde Pierce as “Tony Randall” and Tony Randall himself were the only bearable parts of that film.
Oh, and while I’m at it . . . There was soooo much wrong with De-Lovely, but mostly the casting: Kevin Kline 20 years too old for Cole Porter, and Ashley Judd 20 years too young for his wife, Linda. Plus, neither of therm could sing, and they were physically wrong for the roles, too. Nathan Lane and Christine Baranski might have made it a bearable film.