"Still the man!" screamed the posters for this big-budget remake of the 1971 "Blaxploitation" classic, and in Samuel L Jackson director John Singleton had found the perfect actor to inherit Richard Roundtree's leather-clad legacy. Jackson complained loudly about the lack of booty, but otherwise this was a fine and faithful update of Gordon Parks' original, right down to Isaac Hayes' oh-so-memorable "wicka wacka" theme tune. Roundtree gave the film his own seal of approval by making a crowd-pleasing cameo as Samuel L's uncle.
The 1960 original is better known for its "Rat Pack" cast - Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr, Peter Lawford - than for its actual content, so well done to Steven Soderbergh for reinventing it with a new roster of Hollywood talent. Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts and Matt Damon head an all-star cast in a massively enjoyable heist caper that sees George Clooney's ex-con plotting to rob all three of Andy Garcia's Las Vegas casinos on the same night. Making the film was such a ball the entire cast will be back next year in Ocean's Twelve.
The studio insisted that Tim Burton's film was not a remake of the 1968 Charlton Heston classic, but rather a "re-imagining". Whatever: it's still a wasted opportunity, scuppered by Mark Wahlberg's uncharismatic lead performance and a muddled script that makes no sense whatsoever, even after repeated viewings. You can't fault the monkey make-up (yes, that is Helena Bonham Carter under the chimp mask), but that's not enough to excuse the way persistent interference from 20th Century Fox executives neutered Burton's bold vision.
Buoyed by the success of Ocean's Eleven, director Steven Soderbergh and star George Clooney turned their energies to an altogether riskier proposition: a thoughtful, cerebral remake of Andrei Tarkovsky's three-hour Russian sci-fi epic. Audiences stayed away in droves, but those who gave it a chance saw one of George's most accomplished performances as the spaceman shocked to discover his dead wife (Natascha McElhone) on board a stricken space station orbiting a remote planet. Now it's on video, cult status surely beckons.
Horror fans were, er, horrified when Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski released his version of Hideo Nakata's 1998 chiller. But while the Japanese original remains infinitely more frightening, this remake still has the capacity to scare the bejesus out of the unwary. Naomi Watts plays a journalist investigating a mysterious videotape that kills everyone who watches it. The twist is she has only seven days to unlock its secret before she and her son become its latest victims. Enough to make you avoid Blockbuster for a month.