Carrie

[bleeding heart]

I'm ambivalent. It's not bad...and if the 1976 Brian DePalma film with Sissy Spacek (and John Travolta playing mean as a junkyard dog) didn't exist, I would like this one very much.

Unfortunately, it's virtually the same movie--except the original has more style, I think.

That said, the are two things I like about the new version. First of all, Carrie and her mother, though their relationship is profoundly dysfunctional, obviously love each other. I hadn't seen this as an absence is the first film, but now I do

Also, Mrs. White, played by Julianne Moore, is far more sad, and so she has more humanity than the monster of the first movie. Her religious fanaticism is mostly quiet, a soul shunned by society, tortured by, it's quite clear, mental illness, and continually wounding herself. (She is, in fact, a "cutter.")

I liked Sissy Spacek's Carrie better than Chloe Grace Moretz's; but to be fair, Moretz had an iconic performance to follow, and did a good job.

Worth a rent; but better if you haven't seen the seventies' version.

[cybercoma]

I saw the original 70s version for the first time earlier this year. I don't know why I slept in on this one (for some 30 years...yeah yeah), but I didn't think it was anything to really write home about.

[bleeding heart]

I thought it quite sublime, so agree to disagree, I guess.

I also find it contextually interesting; unlike now (which might help account for the remake's relative weakness), there was no way to avoid thinking about feminism in light of the film; mid-seventies, all these powerful female characters. Carrie's powers (arriving full-fledged at the moment of menstruation, no less); but also her domineering mother, the kindly gym teacher, the rotten Chris who bullies Carrie, and finally the "good girl" Sue Snell, in effect forcing her boyfriend to take Carrie to the prom.

[cybercoma]

All good points. Makes the movie more interesting. Thanks.