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Reviews
Highlander II: The Quickening (1991)
Save Yourself Some Pain. Avoid This Movie.
Although it is true that most sequels are not as good as the original movies on which they are based, it is truly rare to find a sequel that is so bad it actually tries to undermine its original.
Unfortunately, Highlander 2 is one of those movies.
Highlander (the original) is a great movie. It is one of my all time favourites. It may have some laughable details in the depiction of the swords, such as swords being able to hack through steel girders, but I can forgive these silly little details in the original movie, because it is such great fun to watch.
The same can not be said of Highlander 2.
This movie is bad.
It is so bad one can hardly believe it is anything more than some kind of sick parody, as opposed to a true sequel, and, if one is stupid enough to watch it, will leave that person in a shocked stupor wondering just how the makers of this film could have corrupted the themes and characters of the original film to the outrageous extent that they did.
I will not bother giving you any details about this movie. I have seen it, and I can honestly tell you that you are better off not knowing anything about it. I kid you not.
Even Christopher Lambert threatened to quit during the making of the movie, because it was so bad.
Highlander (the original) is an excellent movie. I would highly recommend it.
Highlander 2, on the other hand, is a painful and grotesque abomination of the original movie's concept with no entertainment value what so ever. Avoid it at all costs. Trust me on this.
***ADDENTUM: Looking through the comments, I can see a great disparity between people who give this movie good reviews and those who rate it as downright awful.
This is not the contradiction it seems to be however. Upon closer inspection one will notice that the majority of bad reviews, like my own, are based on the original theatrical release (The Quickening), which is truly awful, while the majority of good reviews are based on another version of the movie (The Renegade Edition), which, I am told, is actually quite good. I have not seen the Renegade Edition, so my review is based on the earlier version.
The Renegade Edition of Highlander 2 is quite different from The Quickening, because the original director went back, and completely re-edited the film, restoring it as closely as possible to the way he had originally intended for it to be, as opposed to The Quickening, which had been heavily meddled with by various people within the studio that produced the film. ***
King Kong (1933)
Long Live The King!
There is virtually nothing I can say here that has not been said before.
King Kong is perhaps one of the greatest films ever made, and, over 70 years later, still holds up well by today's standards.
I first saw the film in 1975(or was it 1974?) as a kid, and it is still one of my favourite movies.
Perhaps my favourite scene in the movie is the scene where Kong fights the tyranosaurus. After a long and hard battle, Kong rips the tyranosaur's jaw off, killing it, then, as if confused by his adversary's sudden lifelessnes, Kong starts opening and closing the dead tyranosaur's jaw to make it mimic what it was like only moments before in life.
Fantastic.
This is one of those scenes where, as a kid, you often find yourself excitedly shadow boxing along with the action without realizing you are doing it.
This same scene was in the 2005 version of Kong by Peter Jackson, but was not nearly as good. The Jackson version of this scene has, instead of one, three tyranosaurs, and actually has Kong juggling Anne from hand to hand to foot, with some outrageous acrobatics and other over the top fighting, but it goes on way too long, and just doesn't create the same excitement that the original fight has.
As much as I enjoyed Peter Jackson's new version of Kong, it is still not quite as good as the original 1933 thriller. In my mind at least, the original still reigns supreme.
Long Live the King!
Shanghai Surprise (1986)
Possibly the Worst Film I have Ever Seen (And I've Seen a Lot of Bad Movies Over the Years.)
The IMDb advises that I should say ...
*Warning Spoilers Follow*.
... but there is no way to spoil this movie, because it is already spoiled to the point of being compost, and is ready to be spread out on the fields.
It has been almost 20 years since my girlfriend of the time, an obsessive Madonna fan, talked me into seeing this piece of trash, and I still go to bed at night praying to God that I can somehow get that two hours of my life back. This is not one of those movies that is so bad it is good. This is one of those movies that is so bad it actually slingshots right around past good and right back to bad again.
Madonna stars as a missionary (I know this is a leap of faith folks, but I am *not* kidding!), who teams up with Sean Penn (her then husband) to search for "Faraday's Flowers", a cache of opium balls she hopes can be used as a pain killer for wounded troops. From about this point on, the movie takes on a rhythm that more or less goes "1, 2, 3, plot twist, 1, 2, 3, plot twist, 1, 2, 3, plot twist, and so on", as the duo of Penn and Penn bounce around randomly from one ridiculous situation to another with plenty of plot twists, but absolutely no plot evident to be twisted. In the mean time, they are being chased by a corrupt official with prosthetic hands (He lost his real hands from opening a booby trapped money belt called a "shanghai surprise", which is what the movie is supposedly named after. This seems appropriate to me, seeing how I had lost my money from watching this booby trapped movie.).
You may wonder why it is that I am able to remember so much about a movie I haven't seen in almost 20 years. To that I can only say one thing ...
... emotional scarring.
This movie is that bad folks! I have seen a lot of bad movies in my time, but this one rules as the unchallenged chief god in my pantheon of stinkers. It makes Ed Wood's movies look like Academy Award winning material. It even makes the worst of the worst of the flash animation that I have seen over the last six years on the net look good. I would eagerly gnaw my foot off to escape from this movie.
If, for some reason, you are ever unfortunate enough to find a copy of this little "gem" on the shelf of your local video store, the only thing I can recommend is that you slowly and carefully turn yourself around, then run, run! RUN!!!!!, and immediately seek psychiatric counseling so as to avoid any possible post traumatic stress syndrome you may suffer from exposure to this movie.
I give this movie a 1, but that is only because IMDb will not let me input negative numbers.
The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey (1988)
A believable representation of medieval people. (minor spoilers?)
I just saw "The Navigator" for the first time last night, and I must say that it is a very well done film. Unlike Hollywood films, the medieval characters are not simply modern men in medieval garb, nor are they treated as ignorant buffoons. The portrayal of the characters is highly believable.
They see everything with religious and medieval attitudes, and try to cope with the nightmare world of a modern city as best they can, in order to complete their pilgrimage / quest. This is perhaps the greatest strength of the film, as it helps the viewer to successfully suspend his disbelief and identify with the characters.
It may be subtle, but there is also medieval symbolism used in the movie.
There are some things in the movie that don't quite make sense, like the complete willingness for the foundry workers to help a group of people who should for the most part seem insane to anyone not knowing they are actually from the fourteenth century, or the apparent pathological need for every car driver in the movie to try to run the characters down, without any attempt to swerve, stop, or otherwise avoid them. These, however, are merely nit picking trifles, when placed in the context of the full story.
It is not the greatest movie I have seen, but I would definitely say that it is worth a look. It's respect for and realistic depiction of it's medieval characters is a strength that really helps to hold the movie together.
I give it a thumbs up.