There are
some pretty good lists over at wikipedia.
While it feels like it has been happening a lot recently, there aren't actually many that I've seen, or have cared about.
There are a few on those lists which I didn't even know
were remakes of foreign films though, like True Lies, and 12 Monkeys.
As for films where the remake succeeds, I would say that
Vanilla Sky is one of them - but I may be on my own there.
I saw
Abre los ojos first, and
Vanilla Sky very shortly after. (it had just been released) At the time, I was strongly in favor of the Spanish original.
But when I ended up seeing
Vanilla Sky again a couple of years ago (I think it must have been on TV?) that prompted me to watch the original again, and my opinion had changed. I don't think it's a
great movie, but there's something about
Vanilla Sky that I enjoyed, and I didn't really get much out of watching
Abre los ojos a second time.
I think for a lot of people, which one you see first makes a big difference.
Abre los ojos certainly left more of an impact on me the first time - which is probably true of most people, and I think that led to it perhaps being somewhat overrated, and
Vanilla Sky being somewhat underrated when it came out.
I really like Steven Soderbergh's version of
Solaris - though you will find that most people who like the 1976 film
hate it, and it's not something aimed at a more general audience either, so anyone that saw the trailer and thought they were going to like it based on that, was probably bored to tears - it's a very slow paced film. I generally avoid trailers for films, but sometimes I like to watch them after the film if it was somewhat controversial, or even hated, and this has to be one of the worst offenders of a trailer being cut to try and make a film look like something it's not at all.
I will admit that a lot of why I like the film may just be circumstantial, and it being the right film at the right time for me when I first saw it. (same thing applies to
The Fountain)
I'm really disappointed that this is still not out on Blu-ray, and that the rumors of a special edition being released on its 10 year anniversary were not true.
David Fincher's remake of
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was fairly good I thought - though not nearly as good a film as the original. It was interesting just how close that was to being a shot-for-shot remake though. I wouldn't say that someone was watching a
bad version of that film if they chose to watch it instead. (I know some people who don't like dubs, and refuse to watch films in a language they can't speak
)
Watching
The Departed recently has left me wanting to see
Infernal Affairs, which most people consider to be the better of the two. A lot of people seem to really love
The Departed, but I just thought it was OK.
After looking over the list and being surprised by some of the films which have either turned out to be remakes, or have since had remakes that I was unaware of, there isn't much that stands out as being particularly bad to me - though that is probably because I tend to avoid watching remakes in the first place. The worst offender where I have seen both films is the 2012
Total Recall remake. I don't even rate the original all that highly, but the new one is terrible.
What surprises and disappoints me more frequently than film is the British > US TV show remakes. With a
very small number of exceptions, those are usually terrible, and anything which does take off is run into the ground with US scheduling.
20+ episodes a season, and as many seasons as they can still produce and make money, vs 6 episodes in a season, and maybe two or three for most shows, finishing while they are still at their peak.
Don't get me started.....When they get a royal story then news takes a holiday and all we get is propaganda. It's an embarrassment.
You make a fair point.
All I've seen is people complaining about the baby, and no-one that is actually interested. But it's probably good for tourism?
