Highlander (1986) and Highlander 2: The Quickening (1991)

Has there ever been a fantasy franchise with such a genius hook more crapped from the beginning than “Highlander”? I love the premise: A 16^th century Scottish warrior is killed in battle, but arises from the grave whole and healed for he is Immortal, an ubermensch race known only to their own kind. They are determined to kill one another until only one is left. 

In the original, hero Connor McCloud (Christopher Lambert) learns of his powers, lives for centuries, relocates to New York, and finally must battle Clancy Brown as Kurgan, which means He Who Cannot Enunciate. 

The plot is good, but the cheap dialogue and director Russell Mulcahy’s relentlessly vulgar metal-band rock video antics are blinding. This bargain-bin Michael Bay never lets his actors or story breathe being too busy shattering glass and blowing up water. Sean Connery as an Egyptian-turned-Spaniard mentor living in Scotland is some kind of painful joke, and the man is dressed like a bed pillow. But it’s all watchable. 

Not so DOA sequel “Quickening,” a cinematic cluster-fuck from the start that rewrites the Immortals as time-traveling aliens in a story too baffling to explain. Michael Ironside looks ashamed as the villain. 

Original: C+ The sequel: F

Trainspotting (1996)

Danny Boyle’s “Trainspotting” is an adrenaline shot of cinematic greatness about heroin addicts that dares show the quick pleasure of shooting up. Bob Dole balked. Idiot. No “ABC School Special” has ever shown an addict hand-fishing for a dropped stash in a shit-filled toilet, or a guy waking up slathered in diarrhea after losing his bowels, or an infant dying from neglect. This tale of poor Scots who see their parents struggling to earn a pound and figure why not shoot up, is the real deal writ large and depraved. It’s sickly fascinating to watch, a stoned mad-hatter film akin to “Clockwork Orange” or “Romper Stomper,” but to live it? No. Ewan McGregor is a guy who wants heroin over the big house, bigger TV, fancy car, and a job, and Boyle, writer John Hodge (taking on Irvine Welsh’s book) charge those commodities as no better than a shot of white liquid. Only an idiot, or a conservative, would see the finale as happy when a druggie says life will be OK with a wad of money. In a film full of sick jokes, it’s the most repugnant laugh of all. That said, this pales next to 2000’s stellar “Requiem for a Dream.” A

Valhalla Rising (2009)

Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, “Valhalla Rising” is a confounding nearly wordless drama set in 1,000 A.D. about a Norse warrior (Mads Mikkelsen) held captive by local chiefs –- Scots, maybe -- and forced to participate in muddy and deadly “Fight Club” match-ups. The one-eyed man can see visions of the future, we know that much. Nothing else. He escapes and kills his captors, sparing the young boy who has been his caretaker. Freed, he runs into a group of Christian warriors, cutting a bloody trail on their way to Jerusalem to kill in the name of God. One-Eyed, as he is called, is strong-armed into joining. But the men, via boat, don’t end up in Israel. They are lost, turned around, at the top of North America. There, the bloodletting really begins. Native Americans. Filmed through cheesecloth and filled with a lot of self-important talk and show-offy shots that might impress Photoshop fans who overuse Photoshop, “Rising” never settles down to a good movie such “Fistful of Dollars." Never boring; never exciting. C+

Highlander (1986)

“Highlander” is a freakish 1980s fantasy action flick turned cult hit. It is absolute cheese, funny in all the wrong places. Queen provides the rock opera music score. To a film with sword fights. The casting alone is mind-boggling. Dig it: French actor Christopher Lambert plays Scotsman Connor McCloud, a 16th century warrior who rises from the dead after battle. Banished as a devil of sorts, he eventually learns of his status as an Immortal from an Egyptian-born Spaniard played by Scotsman Sean Connery, wearing red pajamas and eye liner. That’s not a misprint. Russell Mulcahy directs, and Clancy Brown – all razor-wire voice, and bug eyes – is the Immortal villain. Much of the film takes place in 1980s New York. It’s a sloppy film, with hokey macho dialogue, crap cinematography and strobe light editing. But damn if it isn’t ridiculously fun when the action swings, with sword battles that play like killer video games back when Atari was still cool. Lambert does well. Connery is an acting disaster run over by a fashion train. I think his character inspired Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack. B-

The Wicker Man (1973 and 2006)

A police officer arrives at a remote island, searching for a missing tween girl and finds himself a bit lost and well out-numbered amongst pagan followers of an isolated, almost deranged cult. Nothing goes well, at least for the noble policeman.

The 1973 original is a true cult film – insanely weird and scratchy, especially during a musical scene where actress Britt Ekland sings a seductive tune while throwing herself against walls of a bedroom, whilst naked, as the chaste, self-proclaimed Christian police officer Neil Howie (Edward Woodward) practically flagellates himself in the next room. Seriously demented stuff. Howie huffs and puffs, and tears the small Scottish isle apart, looking for the lost girl, and screaming phlegm at the sexually provocative, Earth-worshipping cultists, saving his deepest ire for the group’s kilt-wearing leader, played by Christopher Lee. As Howie digs into his investigation, he digs his own grave: The man never seems to recognize that he essentially is alone on the island. With no help. The ending is horrific, ironic and strangely – against the grain of the rest of the movie – heroic. It’s a shame this “Wicker Man” seems to have been slashed in the editing room, as we know nothing about Howie’s mainland life. Director Robin Hardy has made a doozey of a film, for sure, where even the cherub-faced grade school girls and smiling old ladies can’t be trusted. A wonderfully offensive trip of a film. A-

What can we say about the remake? It stars Nicolas Cage as the policeman, this time on a hunt for the missing daughter of his ex-fiancée (Kate Beahan) who returned to the cultish island where she was born. This is filmmaking made on a dare: How dumb can we go? The answer is deep. Let’s skip over how inept Cage’s cop is -- the man seems not to know where babies come from -- and how ineptly Cage plays him. No, the real brain killer here is how director Neil Labute (“In the Company of Men”) miraculously makes a cinematic island of all-powerful women and enslaved, tongue-less men a place of utter sexless boredom. How hard does one work to pull off such a feat of … limp drama? As well, religion isn't even mentioned here. So no sex, no teeth. Zero reason to exist. If you’ve never seen Cage running around in a bear suit sucker-punching women in the face, then … count yourself lucky. Ellen Burstn's smirk is nice to watch. D-