The Magnificent Seven (Antoine Fuqua, 2016)

Wasn’t John Wayne’s performance in True Grit outstanding? Won him his only Oscar. I prefer the 1969 film to the 2010 version, not least because Wayne’s Rooster Cogburn speaks a language I’m somewhat familiar with, whereas Jeff Bridges’s Cogburn employs a verbal mode of expression approximating unintelligible mumbling and grunting. Nah, just kidding, both are fine movies in their own right. Moreover, I wouldn’t necessarily label the Ethan and Joel Coen version a remake of Henry Hathaway’s film since both are based on Charles Portis’s novel and therefore, as filmic adaptations, offer two different interpretations of a literary source. No one would call Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings a remake of Ralph Bakshi’s animated film from 1978.