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What makes a good movie? Or, more specifically, what makes a good movie remake? I often play the game of recasting my favorite older films with today's actors, wondering for example how Russell Crow would play Rick in "Casablanca", or how Kathleen Turner would portray Margo Channing in "All About Eve". Notice, I didn't say "how Russell Crow would play the Bogart part". One of the difficulties of remaking a film, as opposed to restaging a play, is that the original movie physically exists, while a specific performance of a play exists only in memory. One might argue that Lee J. Cobb was a "better" Willy Loman than Dustin Hoffman was, but even if one had seen Cobb's original performance from the 1940's, any comparision to Hoffman's is based on an imperfect recollection. A film is there for us to see again and again. Should you argue that Harrison Ford's interpretation of Linus Larrabee in "Sabrina" was better than Bogie's, we can plop in the DVD's and go through them scene by scene and compare the two. Of course, our opinions are just as subjective as in the case of Cobb vs. Hoffman, but at least we aren't relying on memory. The "Sabrina" remake was, by the way, a better film than many reviewers originally allowed. Bogie outacted Ford but Greg Kinnear's David Larrabee was more nuanced (for an essentially comic character) than William Holden's.

The best film remakes are like theatrical revivals; they stick close to the original source. Ian McKellan may have reset "Richard III" in the 1930's, but it was still Shakespeare. The word is the thing, dear friends, not the staging. It helps, therefore, if the film one is remaking had a good script to begin with. After that, the director can do whatever she bloody well wants to in terms of visual images, just as the theatrical director can stage his revival as he sees fit (or as it fits the performance space). Here are five of my favorite films, remade for the 21st century. The originals were popular and critical hits. Four of them were nominated for Best Screenplay Oscars, All of them could be brought back to the screen with minimal changes in the original dialogue. I have cast them with actors I like who I thought would do a good job. In some cases I have listed less "commercial" alternative casting. Who would you cast in these roles, and what other films would you like to see remade? Please send your ideas and comments to Essays and Observations. We will print them in a future issue.