Hollywood remakes: The Good, The Bad and the Pointless

Steven Spielberg is garnering rave reviews for his remake of the 1960s classic musical "West Side Story", an act of homage that is perfectly in keeping with Hollywood's love of nostalgia.

Remakes have become a staple of LA studios as they try to mine the past for safe bets - as recent reboots of

"Ghostbusters", "Dune" and the never-ending superhero juggernauts make clear.
Some remakes have - debatably - managed to surpass the original, while others definitely have not.

Heat (1995): Not many directors remake their own film (Alfred Hitchcock was an exception with "The Man Who Knew Too Much", feeling that his first version was too "amateur"). But US director Michael Mann felt he could have done more with his 1989 cops-and-robbers tale "LA Takedown", and he was right. "Heat" is a classic crime caper, famous for putting Robert De Niro and Al Pacino on screen together for the first time.

The Birdcage (1996): Beloved theatre and cinema veteran Mike Nichols ("The Graduate") remade the Franco-Italian 1970s film "La Cage aux Folles" almost scene-by-scene, but threw the unique energy of Robin Williams into the mix. It remains a point of contention as to which is better, but the tale of a gay couple having to pass as straight was certainly a landmark for mainstream Hollywood's depiction of sex and gender.

The Departed (2006): It boasted an extravagant cast (Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon), and finally won Martin Scorcese the best film Oscar he should have won decades earlier. But that did not intimidate Andrew Lau, director of the 2002 Hong Kong thriller "Infernal Affairs" on which it was based. "Of course I think the version I made is better," he told Apple Daily. "But the Hollywood version is pretty good too."<...