VOTE NOW: Valentine’s Day Rom-Com Smackdown
Valentine's Day is just around the corner, and we are overcome with thoughts of love. Even here at Movie Smackdown, we are not so heartless or cynical as you might think. We wish fervently that […]
film
Nine (2009) -vs- Crazy Heart (2009)
The Smackdown Movies about show business multiply like rabbits, and here’s a simple explanation. Not only do writers write what they know — everyone in show business finds show business (and himself) endlessly fascinating. That’s why they’re there […]
The Young Victoria (2009) -vs- Sherlock Holmes (2009)
Calling all Anglophiles! England’s longest reigning monarch takes on the cleverest subject of her (fictional) realm in this All-Union-Jack Smackdown. Both repackaged and reimagined for the new millennium’s theatergoing audience — the usually buttoned-up Victoria gets unstuffed and sexed up in a lush period romance/political drama, and Sherlock gets the no-holds-barred no-punches-pulled Guy Ritchie/Joel Silver treatment. Both title characters make formidable contenders for the Smackdown crown; there’s nothing I appreciate more than a really good makeover.
[…]
Where The Wild Things Are (2009) -vs- The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Both films adapt difficult and brilliant works of children’s literature and manage to exceed any expectations, evoking and exploring themes only hinted at in the original texts. Both films achieve a technical excellence and rare beauty that thrills and ignites our passion for storytelling on the silver screen. Both films accurately capture the complicated and often overlooked dark sides of childhood; adults see what they want to see and recall what they want to recall. Children can seem to them simplified little people, easy to control. Children feel their feelings deeply and powerfully though; the less they are seen, the more powerfully they ache to be seen clearly. Attention deficit is the usual diagnosis when children misbehave; children want to be seen and heard and attended.
[…]
The SuperMerger! Disney -vs- Marvel!
A Smackdown so big it takes two Smackrefs to write it! Written by Beau DeMayo and Stephen Bell The Smackdown. Disney owns Marvel (or soon will)! Once complete, this means that Disney, responsible for […]
The Day The Earth Stood Still (2008) -vs- The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951)
A few years ago, Klaatu and Gort made their way back to the ‘hood, thanks to the mega-budget re-make of The Day The Earth Stood Still. The duo arrived, over five decades after the original, with every intention of forcing some extra-terrestrial “tough love” on us.
Keanu Reeves stuck his chest out and stepped into the lead role made famous in 1951 by Michael Rennie, joined in this go-round by Jennifer Connelly, Kathy Bates, and surprisingly, John Cleese. Certainly, the overall production and effects budget makes possible images never even imagined back in near post-war filmmaking.
But can all this money and contemporary talent add up to make this new The Day The Earth Stood Still as enduringly memorable as the old The Day The Earth Stood Still that graced the world’s screens during the height of Cold War paranoia? […]