Barefoot

Believe me when I tell you that this remake has nothing on the original. Somehow they managed to suck all the charm out of a lovely story.

The original film is German and bears the same name (Barfuß). It was written and directed by Til Schweiger, who also plays the lead. Yes, you know him from Inglourious Basterds. The barefoot mental patient is played by Johanna Wokalek. The film - as it came out in 2005 - was fine the way it was and did not need an Americanization.

Rather than go into the details of the remake, let me just tell you about my biggest disappointment: Evan Rachel Wood or, rather the character she portrayed here. She plays Daisy as a ditsy blonde, hopping from one embarrassment to the next for - I'm guessing - cheap laughs. The character (of a different name) did get her fair share of laughs in the German film without trying so hard. Whereas then she was mentally ill, here she is just plain stupid, at times even crass - a far cry from the quiet sweetness and innocence that Johanna Wokalek brought to the same role.

This is the kind of film that makes me wish that American audiences finally got over their arrogance about foreign films and learned how to read subtitles. Their lives would be so much richer for it.

Oh so disappointing.

3/10

The Crazies

I have seen The Crazies before. I have also seen the original version of the film before. The earlier one was made in 1973 and sports all the craziness one would expect from a horror flick made by George A. Romero. The kung fu was probably the most ridiculous bit.

I much prefer the new version, for several reasons. Firstly, there is no kung fu in this. The lead is played by Timothy Olyphant, who is very easy on the eyes. And the new version is set in Iowa. Why they would change the setting from Pennsylvania in the original to Iowa in the remake I do not know.

The disaster is caused by a combination of accident and government involvement. A plane transporting a bio-weapon goes down in a body of water that supplies the county with drinking water. Very unfortunate. Not only does the water now turn the locals into the crazies in the title within a 48 hour incubation period, but the government also tries to contain not only the virus (for lack of a better word) and the information that this ever happened. The latter, of course, means that everyone - healthy or sick - has to be terminated.

The ones walking away are the local sheriff and his pregnant wife, who walk, run and fight they way out of the military controlled (or the lack of it) area. The last thing they see of their former home is a mushroom cloud. But this being the naughties, the will only end up in the next contamination area.

No revelation, to be sure, but good fun for an hour and a half.

6/10

Carrie

Um.

Okay, so from the beginning. Margaret White is giving birth. Apparently, she does not know what is happening to her. She thinks she may be dying of something, cancer maybe. Ridiculous! She knows how she got pregnant ("Your father took me," as she later yells at her daughter) so she would know what is going on.

The Carrie as portrayed by Chloe Grace Moretz is just a little too pretty to be a realistic outcast in the context of the high school she is in. The other kids - good or bad - are just bland. Sue is the ultimate goody-two-shoes, as is her boyfriend Tommy (he is such a lovely boy). The girl playing Chris cannot hold a candle to the one from the original.

And what about the big scene?

So the car crashing into nothing was kind of awesome, but everything else about Carrie going total mayhem on all her high school colleagues is ridiculous in so many ways. The telekinesis massacre from the original film (and, indeed, the novel) was just slightly outside of reality. Here, it goes way overboard. Not only does Carrie move her hands in weird ways whenever she moves something but...SHE FLIES!

Never mind that it was totally unnecessary to remake the near perfect 1976 version of the Stephen King story, but why did it have to feature that much slo-mo? Why did the blood have to spill down (in slo-mo, of course) four fucking times from four different angles? We've been through all the hand moving as opposed to Sissy Spacek's scary wide eyed stare of doom. And why, oh why, did there have to be a musical interlude? I am not kidding, there is a musical bit, when everyone is getting ready for prom.

And, well, yes, Chloe Grace Moretz is just no Sissy Spacek. Not even close.

3/10

The Hitcher

Brace yourselves for what I am about to tell you...Sean Bean's character dies.

This is a reimagination of  the 1986 film of the same name. Back then it was Rutger Hauer hunting down C. Thomas Howell. This time around it is Sean Bean coming after a young couple played by Sophia Bush and Zachary Knighton.

The two ignore a guy with a broken down car standing by the side of the road in the pouring rain only to run after him again at the next rest stop. He is being all chummy and "I wouldn't have picked my up, either *chuckle*" and when he now asks for a ride to the nearest town the young man, guilt ridden, says yes. And really, he should have listen to his girlfriend, as she will remind him later.

The drive turns pretty ugly, pretty quickly and after the hitchhiker pulls a knife on them, they throw him out of the moving vehicle. They thought they were done with him but the very next day they are overtaken by a Christian family with two kids and see the culprit sitting in the back, playing with the young son. They pull up next to the car to warn them - which is never a good idea, because the people in the other car will think you are crazy and an oncoming vehicle will force you off the road.

Now the car is trashed and they have to walk and soon enough come across the family car with all but the badly injured father dead. They think they can save him and drive him (and the very bloody bodies) to the next diner to alert help. This all looks pretty bad, with the young couple all bloody and now their fingerprints all over the car.

They get taken into custody but the hitchhiker is not yet finished with them. He kills off everyone in the police station except for the two (no, I don't know what he wants with them, either) which they will also be suspected of doing. Only one cop has his doubts about their guilt and after a highway chase with multiple police fatalities it is pretty obvious who the bad guy is.

The hitchhiker is taken into custody after ripping apart (literally!) the young man with the help of two trucks only to cause the police car that is to transfer him to another location to crash, killing of that one sympathetic cop and gets offed by the woman, lone survivor of the string of tragedies.

The film is not as good as the 1980's one but Sean Bean is as evil a killer as Rutger Hauer was.

7/10