I was having a conversation about The Matrix the other day and how disappointing I found the whole "I can warp reality and that manifests itself as karate" thing really disappointing and banal and uninventive. Then I found myself thinking....." What would it have been like if David Lynch had directed it?" If you gave David Lynch a bunch of characters that could warp reality they sure as shit wouldn't have used it to recreate some below par Asian martial arts movies: Agent Smith would have ended the movie with lobsters for hands answering the telelphone to himself whilst he's watched by a singing midget....

So my question is: what film would you like to have seen directed by someone else and what would it have been like?

Bad Boys II as directed by Jim Jarmusch.

Stripped of Michael Bay's kinetic editing, Bad Boys II becomes a meandering comedy-drama in which two men wax philosophical about the nature of good and evil, deciding whether or not they are truly ''Bad Boys''. The machinations of the plot will occasionally force them to engage in gunfights and arrests, but these will happen either off-camera or in languid, single-takes shot filmed from a great distance.

Tarantino's Home Alone.

No more paint cans and Micro Machines. Tim Roth is Kevin McAllister and no burglar gets out alive. Favourite quote: 'And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to enter my treehouse and destroy my brother's bedroom. And you will know my name is Kevin when I lay my vengeance upon thee.' Favourite scene: Kevin decorates the Christmas tree with various extremeties of the burglars' bodies removed with a snow shovel whilst listening to Brenda Lee's 'Rockin' around the Christmas tree'.

Stanley Kubrick's AI. Nothing funny about it, I just really wish he had made it.

I would've like to have seen what Terry Gilliam would have done with the Harry Potter films if he'd been given the chance. Again, not funny, just interested.

Although I don't think a better job than Snyder's could not have been done, Gilliam (again) doing Watchmen would have been an interesting, and probably very expensive, prospect.

Joss Whedon or Peter Jackson doing the Star Wars prequels would have been nice.

Basically, anyone other than Lucas, although I think it was his writing that was the problem in the prequels, rather than bad direction (see Kingdom of the Crystal Skull for more of the same).

Oh I think the direction was pretty poor as well. An absolute mess in fact.

As much as I like to find fault with Lucas he can't really be blamed with the Crystal Skull script - he's only credited with the story. Though he did chose his own story idea over the, apparentley, much better one written by Frank Darabont.

Sam Peckinpah's Steel Magnolias. Julia Roberts doesn't die of cancer, instead she is machine gunned down by corrupt law men. Sally Field leads an all star cast of actresses who go down to Mexico seeking revenge whilst drinking hard. In the final shoot-out everyone dies, especially the women because it's a Peckinpah film and the bitches probably deserved it.

I'm not sure how many drafts Darabont wrote but the version I read still had the same basic story, complete with all the attached problems, it was just handled in a much better way; no Mutt, Ray Winstone's character was Russian, making the double-cross more believable, and the action sequences just sounded much better. The re-introduction of Karen Allen, the two meeting in a bar and engaging in a delightful bout of verbal sparring, was much better, too.

Okay, I have to concede that, but to put it another way [next to the terrible storyline] the direction pales for me as a source of annoyance.

Bottle Shock as directed by Stephen Frears. There was a really good movie about the day winemaking changed for the world hidden in that absolute mess, and Frears would've been the one to find it.

Atonement directed by Christopher Nolan.

Yes. He would have made it amazing, rather than just potentially amazing. I still enjoyed it though.

Michael Bay's Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Transformers directed by Michel Gondry.

A naive young man is plagued by giant robots who turn into different cakes to disguise themselves, although you can't ever be sure whether they're real or not.