. . . Disturbing to imagine Shirley Temple being implied to have ever had sex! Even as an adult actress in a movie! 
The “mad wife locked away in the attic” bit from Jane Eyre would not be credible nowadays.
I dunno. I think I would enjoy an updated version of Imitation of Life. Get an actress like Jennifer Beals (or Mariah Carey, if you’re desparate), make the story more about her social life than career, and you might be able to work it.
Although the movie was just okay, Human Stain is a passable modern-day “passing” story.
Hmm. You could try resetting it in a fundamentalist Christian family, so that the price of adultery is ostracism from the community, and 1950’s style sexual mores are upheld.
You could . . . but that would result in story so fundamentally different from the original as the soon-to-be released remake of The Wicker Man appears likely to be from the 1973 original
(See this thread.)
I would dare to say that it would work even better today. In '88 we cheered Rambo because he was fighting the Commies. Today, we’d cheer even more since the US is now involved over there.
However you look at it, the premise doesn’t work in either case unless you conced that not every Afghan is the bad guy. Just a thought.
True. But most of those Afghans engaged in active military operations of any kind are now fighting Americans! (And fighting an Afghan government they perceive, not entirely without justice, as an American puppet. But that takes us into GD territory.)
Now that would be an interesting movie. I wonder how the average viewer would feel if the average expendable Commie, Nazi or Muslim were replaced by an American GI, and the rest of the movie still shot in the same way (Manichean characterisation, simple action scenes, emotionally manipulative scenes…).
Guess you don’t watch Desperate Housewives.
Miracle on 34th Street - It’s been a looooong time since the USPS was respected for on-time and accurate delivery of the mail.
The USPS does pretty well these days, but they are the Rodney Dangerfield of package/mail delivery in the US. I don’t know how they’d handle that part of the story if they ever remade the flick.
They never remade Miracle of 34th Street! Never!! LA-laLA-la-LA-la-I-can’t-hear-you-LA-la-LA!
Sayyyy . . . Isn’t Kim Jong Il, among other things, a filmmaker? 
*One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.*There have been many changes in assessment, diagnosis, and treatment, not to mention the general shift away from long-term residential treatment in the majority of cases (due to the advent of antipsychotic medication). In addition, you can’t just give a guy a lobotomy.
This holds for pretty much any movie that takes place in a residential psychiatric facility or that predates most psychoactive medication.
Broadcast News – Holly Hunter’s character would have been driven out of that newsroom ages ago. Trying to keep tabloid journalism and pretty faces out of real news stories? HAH.
**The Philadelphia Story ** – the guilt trip that Tracy Lord’s estranged (I don’t remember if he was divorced or permanently separated) father lays on his daughter, imputing that he turned to drinking and womanizing in part because of her haughty perfectionism. WTF?! A modern-day Tracy would just snort and get all Dr. Joyce Brothers/Oprah/Judge Judy/Dr. Phil on his ass, demand he take responsibility for his own shortcomings without shifting the blame to his family, and then suggest he join a twelve-step program.
And two that played on TCM last night, **Tom Jones ** and Oliver! – because the stigma of bastardy, the inexorable link between promiscuity and bastardy (in the absence of birth control), and the coercive power of parents to arrange the marriages their children have largely withered away in the first case, and in the second, because conditions have improved considerably for orphans in modern western welfare states.
And pretty much any movie in which someone falls unreservedly for a sex worker (Trading Places) or [re]connects with someone who just got out of prison, with no questions asked, is hard to accept at face value. “Not without an HIV test, and another one in six months’ time, and a battery of others for everything else!” is what I’m thinking…
Wouldn’t work today?
What the hell is one of my favorite Adam Sandler movies called?!?!
Sandler/Deeds - “If there wasn’t a lady present, I’d be tempted to knock you out.”
Winona Ryder - “Oh, I don’t mind!”
Gone with the Wind. It’s portrayal of the black “servents” would not be allowed today.
I’m remembering an episode of “Mad About You” when Paul tells Jamie to stay home “in case they call.” She replies “What is this, the forties? We have an answering machine.” That sounds dated in this age of cell phones.
Any movie where the characters are lost or are trying to find their way back to civilization. Nowadays they could just whip out the old GPS receiver. Matter of fact, I can’t believe that, out of a whole planeload of people on Oceanic flight 815, not a single one had a GPS on them or in their luggage.
Yeah, 'cause that snake-bodied and snaky-haired Gorgon turning people into stone with a glance, that’s hardly pushing the envelope at all, right? Or the half-demon Calibos and the two-headed dog and the giant scorpions and all.
My nomination: Both the play and the movie Come Blow Your Horn, in which a major plot point is that the hero’s girlfriend gets herself good and drunk and threatens to take off her clothes and have sex with him in the privacy of his apartment — and he tries desperately to prevent this.
It’s funny that, in the film, this character is played by … Frank Sinatra!
:dubious:
Not one that worked, anyway. Remember, radio jamming?
Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid: “If you need me, call me. You know how to call, right? You stick your finger in the little hole and spin it in a circle.”
Damn, I was gonna mention this movie.
mutters to himself while looking for a Mr. Ratskiwatski