Latest news with #TheBonfireoftheVanities
Daily Record
8 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Record
Tom Hanks' worst film ever branded 'lifeless' as his all time top 10 ranked
Tom Hanks has been in some of the most beloved films over the years, from Toy Story to Saving Private Ryan, but he has also appeared in a film that only has 15% on Rotten Tomatoes Hollywood legend Tom Hanks has starred in some of the biggest hits since the 80s. Now, his films have been ranked in order of their popularity by Rotten Tomatoes, using real-life reviews to create an overall score. While many of Hanks' movies have received high praise, one film that has come out as the least popular among fans is 1990's The Bonfire of the Vanities, with a lowly 15% score. Starring Hanks, Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, and Melanie Griffith, viewers might expect the comedy to be a hit. However, despite its A-list cast, the film has been panned by fans online as "lifeless satire". On Rotten Tomatoes, one viewer wrote: "Bloated, facile, mostly lifeless satire that takes forever to get going and doesn't have much to say once it gets there. Actors are either miscast (Hanks), misused (Willis), or shamelessly cartoonish (Griffith)." Another critic stated: "Even with an all-star line-up, the stars couldn't hold up this movie from eventually sinking. The satire was good, but the comedy was hit and mostly miss." Early in his career, the film was marred by controversy and underperformed at the box office, despite being based on Tom Wolfe's popular novel of the same name, reports the Irish Star. Despite its A-list cast, the film failed to attract viewers and grossed only $15.6 million upon its 1990 release, falling short of its $47 million budget. In contrast, Hanks' highest-rated film, with a perfect 100% score, is Disney Pixar's Toy Story 2. Released in 1999, this beloved animated children's film has become deeply ingrained in popular culture, featuring one of Hanks' most iconic roles - albeit one that doesn't show his face. As the voice of Woody, a toy cowboy brought to life, Hanks has become synonymous with the feel-good franchise, appearing in all four instalments, which comprise his top four rated films. Such is the enduring popularity of Toy Story that even the fourth film boasts an impressive 96% rating. Beyond his animated voice work, Hanks' highest-rated live-action film, ranking fifth overall, is the 1988 comedy Big, where he plays a teenager who wakes up to find himself an adult overnight. Critics attribute the film's success to Hanks' "brilliant performance", citing his ability to capture both childhood innocence and the challenges of navigating the adult world. The review concludes: "Unique, fun and charming, there is a lot to love about Big." At the sixth spot is a 2002 addition, Catch Me If You Can, followed by Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood at eighth place, with Captain Phillips coming in ninth. Just scraping into the top ten, with an impressive Rotten Tomatoes score of 94%, is the highly acclaimed Spielberg film Saving Private Ryan, still regarded by many as one of the finest war films ever made. Tom Hanks' Top 10 films as rated by Rotten Tomatoes Toy Story 2 (1999) Toy Story (1995) Toy Story 3 (2010) Toy Story 4 (2019) Big (1988) Catch Me if You Can (2002) Apollo 13 (1995) A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019) Captain Phillips (2013) Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Telegraph
08-04-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Trump's billionaire backers are suffering a heavy dose of buyer's remorse
They can hardly complain that Donald Trump is doing what he said he would. But it is astonishing how many of those who really should have known this would happen convinced themselves otherwise. On the other hand, could anyone really have forecast the current madness? The US president is now threatening to retaliate to China's retaliation, raising the effective tariff on Chinese goods to 104pc. He might as well ban Chinese imports altogether and be done with it. In any case, tariffs on such a scale would cause close to a complete decoupling of the two economies. The latest example of buyer's remorse over the turn of events comes from the hedge fund titan Bill Ackman, a prominent if less than fully committed Trump supporter, who now protests that 'this is not what we voted for'. Perhaps Mr Ackman was asleep during the long months of campaigning that led up to November's presidential election, for Mr Trump could not have been clearer about what he intended. And indeed, tens of millions of Americans voted for precisely what he is now doing. Mr Ackman seems to have thought that, as with Trump's first presidency, wiser counsel would prevail, and that the bits of Trump's agenda that he approved of, such as tax cuts and deregulation would sail through, but that the trade protectionism would be largely dropped. Big mistake, and clear evidence of the arrogance that often blinds those who think that making tons of money gives them a special insight into – and influence over – the way the world works. History is littered with examples of financial and business elites who think they can control the political forces they unleash, only to find that events run away from them. Once you let the tiger out of his cage, there's no controlling him. 'We are heading for a self-induced, economic nuclear winter, and we should start hunkering down,' Mr Ackman wrote on X. 'By placing massive and disproportionate tariffs on our friends and our enemies alike and thereby launching a global economic war against the whole world at once, we are in the process of destroying confidence in our country as a trading partner, as a place to do business, and as a market to invest capital'. He's not the only one. Even Elon Musk, increasingly alarmed at the impact tariff wars are going to have on Tesla, has taken to X extolling the virtues of free trade. The Trump confidante – or should that be former confidante? – now suggests there should be tariff-free trade between Europe and the US. Despite his closeness to the US president, it appears that he too has not been listening. Few are going to shed a tear for the likes of Messrs Ackman and Musk, or any of the other financiers and business leaders who lined up in support of Mr Trump on inauguration day. They had it coming. It's like something out of Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities. Ordinary mortals will inevitably take pleasure in seeing these vainglorious 'masters of the universe' humbled and forced to admit they got it wholly wrong. Mr Ackman advocates a 90-day 'time out' to allow for negotiations on 'unfair asymmetric tariff deals', but there is no sign of Mr Trump – who has warned foreign governments that they would have to 'pay a lot of money' to avoid tariffs – agreeing to anything quite so sensible. The fact is that Mr Trump believes in tariffs as an enabler of US re-industrialisation, and he's not for turning back. A journalist who asked the US president what degree of pain he was willing to tolerate before taking evasive action was told her question was 'so stupid' and that 'sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something'. If it's only about making America more economically self-sufficient and resilient, and righting the wrongs in today's globalised trading system, then most of us will have at least some sympathy with what Mr Trump is trying to achieve. The story of the humble Brussels sprout is possibly apocryphal, but perfectly embodies the sort of thing Trump is on about. The sprout is picked at a farm near Edinburgh by migrant workers before being sent by lorry to the buyers' centralised cleaning and packaging plant somewhere in Poland. Once duly processed, it then finds its way back to a supermarket shelf in Edinburgh close to where it was originally grown, having been through a round trip of nearly 3,000 miles. Apocryphal, perhaps. But not at all unusual amid the madness of today's hyper-efficient, corporate supply chains, with materials, products and components constantly criss-crossing national borders. Trump wants to put a stop to this nonsense and have the US do more of its own stuff. Yet it is one thing to highlight these absurdities, quite another to act on them. The reason why so many US stock prices are plunging is only partly down to mounting fears of a recession. Mainly it's about the pioneering role many American companies have played in globalisation, building their business models around access to cheap labour in far away places. That model now looks to be at severe risk. Most iPhones, for instance, are still made in China. If Apple were to pass on the full cost of the new tariffs – including the additional 50pc Trump threatened on Monday – it would double the US retail price of an iPhone 16 Pro Max, with a 6.9-inch display and 1 terabyte of storage, from $1,599 (£1,253) to $3,200. One way or another, Apple's profits and/or revenues are about to get trounced. So when Mr Trump tells investors to ' be strong, courageous, and patient, and greatness will be the result', he basically doesn't know what he's talking about. A more resilient America is a worthy ambition, but it is likely to come at the price of a far less profitable corporate America and a much more expensive American economy. Already, clueless central banks are left further in the mire, not knowing which way to turn. Like Dr Dolittle's 'pushmi-pullyu', it's impossible to know which way interest rates should move. In America, tariffs are almost bound to be at one and the same time inflationary and contractionary. Inflationary because they add to the price of imports, and contractionary because they squeeze disposable incomes, undermine business confidence, and crash the stock market. But in the UK and Europe the effect will be somewhat different. By coincidentally clobbering export demand and driving a surge in cheap imports displaced from Trump's America, the impact will be doubly deflationary. Once a panic sets in, it tends to be self-reinforcing, with strong, negative feedback loops. It's going to take a long time for the dust to settle, and when it does, we are all likely to find ourselves a good deal poorer.
The Independent
06-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
25 books that should have never been made into movies
It makes sense for Hollywood to look to the written word for inspiration when it comes to producing new films. But the sad truth is, there's become an over-reliance on using pre-existing material to either find the next big franchise or to capitalise on the success of a bestseller. It's fair enough – these adaptations will always be guaranteed large box office takings thanks to the book's readers merely showing up to see how the film has translated certain parts to the screen. While there are solid examples of successful big-screen adaptations – The Lord of the Rings, stray Harry Potter films, Gone Girl – there have more than likely been a larger number of botch jobs. Nothing is more disappointing than seeing a film version of your favourite book and realising minutes in that the director has misjudged the novel's spirit or two actors have been cast in the wrong roles and have no chemistry whatsoever. Below, on World Book Day 2025, we rank the 25 books that should have been left alone and never made into films. Dune (1984) Dune was never going to be an easy book to turn into a two-hour action movie – and David Lynch's attempt seemed to be proof that it should be left alone. The director's adaptation is a nonsensical, deeply convoluted disaster that wastes an enjoyably oddball cast. It's the only one of Lynch's films the director has publicly disowned. A version from Arrival director Denis Villeneuve, starring Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya, received much better reviews from critics. The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990) Fresh off the success of bestselling novel The Bonfire of the Vanities, Warner Bros bought the movie rights from Tom Wolfe for a staggering $750,000. Tom Hanks and Melanie Griffiths were both (mis)cast in the lead roles after director Brian De Palma's preferred choices turned him down. The filmmaker himself struggled to spin the 1990 production's many plates amid reports of rising on-set troubles that were all witnessed and documented in Julie Salmon's follow-up book, The Devil's Candy. Billy Bathgate (1991) The gangster film Billy Bathgate, which stars Dustin Hoffman and Nicole Kidman, did no justice to EL Doctorow's beloved 1989 novel. With the efforts of Oscar-winning Kramer vs Kramer director Robert Benton and a script by Tom Stoppard, the film had all the ingredients to become as good as The Godfather, Scarface, and Goodfellas. Instead, it was a hollow adaptation, largely because all the magic was lost with the absence of the central character's narration – a huge reason behind the novel's success. The Scarlet Letter (1995) The Scarlet Letter is regularly ranked as one of the worst book adaptations ever made, and for good reason. Described by DH Lawrence as 'a perfect work of the American imagination,' the book was handed a Hollywood makeover that found itself the brunt of ridicule after flopping at the box office. Director Roland Joffé strayed so far from Nathaniel Hawthorne's pages that what should have been an enticing romance became an extremely throwaway erotic drama. Battlefield Earth (2000) To be fair, few would be able to turn L Ron Hubbard's allegedly Scientology-inspired Battlefield Earth into something decent. This John Travolta-with-dreadlocks epic has since gone down in 'Worst Movies Ever' infamy, effectively ending Travolta's mainstream movie career and destroying Barry Pepper's before it even started. Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2001) Louis de Bernières's Captain Corelli's Mandolin was one of the biggest literary successes of the 1990s, but the 2001 film version – from the same British company that made Notting Hill – lost all traces of the novel's heart and soul. The dialogue is disastrous and lead stars Nicolas Cage (Captain Corelli) and Penélope Cruz (Pelagia) lack any chemistry. It may look pretty, but this adaptation was a complete mistake. The Time Machine (2002) The beauty of HG Wells's 1895 science fiction novella The Time Machine was lost amid all the CGI in this insipid 2002 adaptation, which was directed by Wells's great-grandson, Simon. Everything featured, including Guy Pearce's lead performance, is wooden apart from the copper time travel contraption at the heart of the story. Dreamcatcher (2003) There have been just as many disappointing Stephen King adaptations as there have been successful ones, but Dreamcatcher sits at the bottom of that list. The talent was present (Damian Lewis! Morgan Freeman! Timothy Olyphant!), but the end product never once correlates to anything at all decent. The film's late-stage swerve into monster movie territory is nothing short of dreadful. Enduring Love (2004) Before he took on the role of 007, Daniel Craig starred in this adaptation of Ian McEwan's novel about people whose lives become entangled after witnessing a deadly accident. While Craig's performance as college lecturer Joe, along with Rhys Ifans as Jed – the man who becomes obsessed with him – are convincing, the film allows little time for character development and suffers because of it. The Perfect Catch (2005) Nick Hornby adaptations don't inherently need to be set in the UK (the John Cusack-starring High Fidelity, if you like that sort of thing, is something of a classic, after all), but they do need to translate the fussy, infuriating male neuroses of his novels. The Perfect Catch is the 2005 US adaptation of Hornby's Fever Pitch, released a decade after Colin Firth starred in his own British adaptation, and transforms the source material into a more throwaway and uninteresting big-city romcom. Drew Barrymore, in a 'girlfriend' role significantly beefed up in comparison to Hornby's novel, is great, but watching her try and source chemistry with a shrill and unappealing Jimmy Fallon (in one of his rare, pre-talk show acting roles) is harrowing. The Da Vinci Code (2006) The Da Vinci Code is a stinker of the highest order. Its sequels, Angels & Demons (2009) and Inferno (2016), are also awful films, but the reason the initial Dan Brown adaptation ranks as the worst is because the others wouldn't have existed had this one not been so successful. Eragon (2006) Twentieth Century Fox clearly wanted Eragon to be their answer to Harry Potter, but the terrible reviews stopped that plan dead in its tracks. Eragon is the worst kind of fantasy adaptation – one where all of the source materials' sense of fantastical vibrancy disappears during its translation to the big screen. Running with Scissors (2006) Augusten Burroughs's Running with Scissors consistently walks a dangerous tightrope between manic farce and adolescent horror tale. Ryan Murphy's adaptation, released in 2006, collapses beneath such a task. You can see why Murphy, for his feature film debut, would be attracted to a tale of neurotic family dysfunction and sexual awakening as they are themes that crop up in many of his TV shows (Glee, American Horror Story, etc). But this adaptation is a tonal misfire from start to finish, despite the best efforts of an all-star cast that includes Annette Bening, Gwyneth Paltrow, Evan Rachel Wood and Brian Cox. It's no wonder this sunk without a trace. The Time Traveller's Wife (2009) Where to start with this disaster of a film? Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveller's Wife is beautifully and convincingly written, but there's nothing convincing about its adaptation. Producers thought casting two major Hollywood stars was a good idea, but Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana had zero chemistry. Cloud Atlas (2012) Cloud Atlas is by no means a disaster, but it's meandering plot lines, sketchy pacing and often questionable acting (Hanks has never been dodgier) do David Mitchell's sprawling, inventive novel a disservice. Still, it's an enjoyable Wachowskis romp that features Hugh Grant as a cannibal tribesman, so it has that going for it. The Hobbit (2012-2014) Fans of The Hobbit did not expect the novel, so short and sweet and set in such a familiar and adored world, to be messed up by The Lord of the Rings maestro Peter Jackson – but that's exactly what happened. While the trilogy of Hobbit films were a box-office success, they came under fire from critics for stretching the book's material too thin. Third outing, The Battle of Five Armies, was the worst-received of all three. The Book Thief (2013) The film adaptation of the profoundly moving and dark tale The Book Thief, which follows a young girl in Nazi Germany, is tonally off from the first scene. The glossy cinematography and excessively sentimental score jar with its grim subject matter and the performances verge on caricature. It doesn't help that all of the English dialogue is spoken with a German accent. The Great Gatsby (2013) No adaptation of The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald's most famous work, has managed to capture the excess, glamour and underlying sleaze of the roaring Twenties. Baz Luhrmann's 2013 version was fun and arguably the best at revealing the insecurities of (a brilliant) Leonardo DiCaprio's Gatsby. However, the flashiness of the production stripped away all of Fitzgerald's delicate story-telling. The Giver (2014) Disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein's fingerprints are all over this messy adaptation of Young Adult novel The Giver (2014), which attempts to fuse a sincere, thoughtful allegory with a Twilight-style love story backed up by action fresh from The Hunger Games and a Taylor Swift cameo. By attempting to appeal to every single teenager all at once, though, The Giver loses sight of its fascinating dystopian premise and gives its eccentric cast (among them Jeff Bridges, Meryl Streep, Alexander Skarsgård and Katie Holmes) very little to do. Kill Your Friends (2015) John Niven's Kill Your Friends is a blistering, debauched exploration into the life of a cocaine-sniffing record label agent. It passes by in the blink of an eye, which can't be said for its adaptation. The film, released in 2015, tries so hard to nail what Niven achieves so fluidly and it shows – the result is nothing short of embarrassing with the clean-cut Nicholas Hoult failing to convince as the sociopathic Steven Stelfox. The Girl on the Train (2016) Although it will always exist in the shadow of Gillian Flynn's ingenious thriller Gone Girl, The Girl on the Train is an undeniably pacy and intelligent novel. But it was completely let down by this US film adaptation. The 2016 release, starring Emily Blunt, is cheesy and lacking in nuance – and criminally takes the story away from its original gritty London setting, plonking the characters down in suburban New York for no apparent reason. Me Before You (2016) The 2016 adaptation of Me Before You, starring Emilia Clarke and Sam Claflin, was brutally panned by critics for being emotionally manipulative. Its bad acting and problematic premise didn't help, either. Clarke's performance as the paid companion to Claflin's quadriplegic was in particular criticised for being offensively exaggerated. The Dark Tower (2017) While not the same calibre of flop as Dreamcatcher, The Dark Tower is a fine example of a botched attempt at adapting one of Stephen King's finest works. With Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey in the lead roles as the heroic and villainous characters caught in a fated tussle, it should have soared – but a rush job such as Nikolaj Arcel's 2017 film is no way to treat such an expansive piece of work. On Chesil Beach (2017) Despite magnetic performances from Saoirse Ronan and Billy Howle, this adaptation of Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach was weighed down by a turgid script and clumsy old-age make-up. The finished product is worlds away from the McEwan adaptation that Ronan previously starred in – the Oscar-winning drama Atonement (2007).
