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  • Deep Impact (1998) -vs- Armageddon (1998)

    August 22, 2008 106

    It’s the End of the World as We Know It. Back in 1998, during the Year of Lewinsky, Paramount/DreamWorks got into a game of chicken with Touchstone. The result was two disaster films about comets that were about to crash into the Earth and destroy all life. The two films could share a single log-line:

    When a “planet-killer” sized comet is discovered to be on an imminent collision course with Earth, an international space effort — led by the United States — sets out to deflect the object by setting off nuclear weapons deep inside its core so that it will miss Earth and, therefore, save humanity.

    I won’t tell you how the Earth fared yet, but I can tell you that the point of impact in the theaters was about two months apart. Talk about operational redundancy!

    Even though Deep Impact was the first in the theaters, for our purposes, we’re giving the “Defending Champion” designation to Armageddon because it won at the box-office. Armageddon grossed $553-million world-wide to the Deep Impact gross of $349-million. Incredibly, IMDB (the Internet Movie Database) has it as a virtual tie with both films scoring a 5.9 out of ten audience rating. […]

  • Wyatt Earp (1994) -vs- Tombstone (1993)

    June 29, 2011 84
  • Without Limits (1998) -vs- Prefontaine (1997)

    July 14, 2007 44
  • Hairspray (2007) -vs- Hairspray (1988)

    August 6, 2007 38
  • Warrior (2011) -vs- The Fighter (2010)

    September 6, 2011 35

Random Articles

  • How I Won the War (1967) vs. The Magic Christian (1969)

    October 28, 2012 3

    Because the Beatles both led their times and and lived with the creative and political expectations of them as well, the energy drain from Beatlemania had been significant. By the time these two films were made in the late 1960s, the cracks were already showing — definitely in society but even, now, in the Beatles who were, more than ever, four guys named John, Paul, George and Ringo.

    The Beatles had had a mixed film run. Certainly A Hard Day’s Night (1964) and Help! (1965) were commercial and artistic successes for United Artists (see Smackdown here). But following them up with the barely conceived Magical Mystery Tour (1967) and an arm’s length involvement with Yellow Submarine (1968) hardly signaled that the Beatles had gone Hollywood.

    All the Beatles toyed with Hollywood as solo artists both behind-the-scenes and in front-of-the-camera. The first to show individual interest, though, were John Lennon in How I Won the War (1967) and Ringo Starr in The Magic Christian (1969). They each acted in an establishment-tweaking, sarcasm-bubbling and sometimes cringe-inducing films that are certainly cultural artifacts.

    Want to know which one of those films works so much better than the other? As Paul McCartney wrote in a song he gave Badfinger that went in his buddy Ringo’s film, keep reading and “Come and Get It.” […]

  • The Invention of Lying (2009) -vs- Liar Liar (1997)

    October 15, 2009 4
  • SmackPoll: Best Continuing Film Franchise

    August 25, 2011 0
  • Beau’s Ten Best Films of the Past Ten Years

    December 22, 2009 5
  • The Departed (2006) -vs- Infernal Affairs (2002)

    June 10, 2007 10