Sci-Fi fans live in constant fear of not knowing what cherished classic Hollywood is going to tastelessly reproduce next. There is little wonder why its dread and not excitement; the current track record for Sci-Fi remakes is certainly nothing to write home about. The wounds are still healing after last year’s remake of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and despite Tim Burton best efforts with Planet of the Apes and Steven Speileberg’s with The War of the Worlds, they still pale in comparison to the legacy of the original. Much to the disdain of Sci-Fi fans, cinemas today are being filled by the remake of the highly regarded 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still. With an array of bland visuals failing to make a typically vacant Keanu Reeves’ hackneyed preachings about global warming somewhat interesting, it’s easy to understand why fans of the original are outraged that the sanctity of their beloved genre has been horribly breached yet again.

I’ve come to the conclusion that originality doesn’t sell movie tickets anymore. If it’s not a sequel, remake or adaptation topping the box office, then it’s most probably a film that borrows heavily from a range of superior films. The importance of the word to filmmakers has clearly been replaced by the term ‘quantity’. To sell a film nowadays it’s got to have an abundance of chase sequences, gun fights, explosions, flipping cars and CGI heavy sequences. When making the action/thriller Eagle Eye, director D.J Caruso clearly took this notion and ran with it. More specifically, he got Shia LeBeouf to quite literally run with it…for 118 pointless and preposterous minutes.

I always though making friends was the hard part. I’ve never really had a problem with trying to lose friends, let alone alienating them in the process. Yet director Robert B. Weide seems to think we need a “how to” guide on this social process and he’s dragged British funny-man Simon Pegg into the lead role to take us through each step. However, Weide’s guide is quite a mess; its [...]