It Happened One Christmas (1977)

It Happened One Christmas, the rarely-aired 1977 gender-reversed remake of It's A Wonderful Life was the first Frank Capra movie I saw; in other words, the television movie is pretty much a shot-by-shot copy of the classic original - with the same artificial snow and some small script modifications. Fortunately, the story is so strong that this version stands on it's own as a pleasant tale. Producer Marlo Thomas (who as lead actor channels her future television daughter, Jennifer Aniston) also made the right decisions in hiring Orson Welles (as Mr. Potter) for gravitas, Cloris Leachman (as angel Clara Oddbody) for humor and Wayne Rogers (as Mary Bailey's other half) for banality.

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...Poseidon (2006)

Yes, it's got a big, fuckin' wave; yes, a ship turns over on New Year's Eve; and yes, some make it and others don't but, those similarities aside, Poseidon, the 2006 remake of the 1974 adventure, is predictably void of anything resembling the excitement or originality of the original. It settles for Emmy Rossum as a vapid, prattle-on girl, Kurt Russell as her annoyingly right-wingesque father, and Richard Dreyfuss - ridiculous as a fussbudget, wimp of a gay man on the verge of suicide (shades of Boys in the Band) that I would like to murder myself. Although watching Josh Lucas doing his best Gene Hackman impersonation alarmingly made the trip almost palatable, I'd still rather see Maureen McGovern (singing The Morning After) than Stacy Ferguson (aka Fergie) doing her shtick with whatever piece of crap was put in front of her.

Pulse (2006)

It's always a pleasure to see the performing chops of Kristin Bell (from the excellent Veronica Mars) and Pulse is a neat little addition to the actress's resume. Based on the Japanese film Kairo, this world domination thriller, despite its lack of flesh-eating zombies, owes more than a wink and a nod to Night of the Living Dead. In this tense techno-take on George Romero's classic, zombies are replaced by ghosts (of a sort) and flesh is replaced by, well, if I told you there'd be no sense in you watching the movie then, would there?