Brian's Thoughts on Movies

          Tom Cruise, while at the peak of his popularity in the mid-1990s, started producing movies for himself to star in with the Mission Impossible franchise.   Many other actors take on a franchise role early in their career that they may return to when they need a lift at the box office (ie Stallone in the Rocky and Rambo series) or they may try a character that may have ongoing appeal later on their careers (ie 2014’s The November Man was clearly such an attempt by Pierce Brosnan, a more successful example is Johnny Depp in the Pirates series or Liam Neeson in the Taken, though originally the first installments of those two series were much more successful than expected).  Cruise effectively purchased an insurance policy for himself since inevitably his star began to wane a little (in the U.S. anyway) after many years of gigantic hits but every time he makes a Mission Impossible movie he gets a boost. The films are all pop spy thrillers that involve deception, disguises

In my discussion of Open Your Eyes/Vanilla Sky I spoke a little about remakes.  To reiterate slightly, I think if there is a new take on existing material if it seems like a good idea I would generally support it.  All too often though remakes are a studio’s easy to way to try to make money off a familiar name (ie the 2011 Footloose adaptation which was very faithful to the original film-even much of the dialogue was the same- but cast a far less skilled actor for the lead leading to an uncomfortable comparison).   In 1998 two remakes of Alfred Hitchcock films were released.  The first was A Perfect Murder, which was a remake of Dial M for Murder, which was originally released in 1954.  Both films are about a man trying to murder his wealthy and unfaithful wife.  The second was Psycho, which was a shot-for-shot remake. Since this discussion is focused on Dial M for Murder I will only briefly address Psycho and its remake.  While Psycho is Hitchcock’s most successful film and by