Highlander II: The Quickening (1991)

 "Let's say it's a kind of magic..."

I'm not saying this film is any good, you understand. I'm just saying that I love it. I mean, how can one not love a film in which Ramirez is on a plane, flying over the Atlantic fresh from a bizarre tailoring montage, and he watches an air safety video which starts with talk of masks dropping from above and ends with stop motion footsge of the plane crashing and fully bursting into flames.

This film is bonkers, and gleefully owns its bonkersness. In 1999, the Earth was almost doomed from the ozone layer (ah, how retro- it wasn't always climate emergency, kids), but McLeod and his mates were able to save humanity by, er, building a huge Dyson sphere thingy. So humanity has no sky and society and technology go backwards for some reason.

Oh, and the immortals are all aliens. But this isn't even the most bonkers thing. 

McLeod puts a Queen song on a jukebox... and it's that one. We have not one but two splendidly moustache-twirling baddies, one of them played by Dr Cox from Scrubs. And... we get quite the performance of Hamlet.

This film isn't a classic, no. It's very silly, with those two assassins from Zeist and all the comical beheadings. But this isn't so-bad-it's good stuff, it's camp humour. The script, co-written by Brian "The Avengers" Clemens, knows damn well how silly it is. 

Ignore the critics. Just watch and enjoy this, preferably with some booze. It's just so much fun.

Scanners (1981)

 "You murdered the future!"

Before I get into it... yes, I haven't blogged for about a week and there won't be much for the next week either. Nothing bad, just life stuff.

It's been a while since I blogged a Cronenberg, hasn't it? Don't get me wrong: all his stuff is bloody good. But the early body horror films are particularly delightful... if that's the word.

This film is a masterpiece. The use of the camera and of music, as ever, creates a uniquely Cronenberg atmosphere. Interior spaces always seem so very liminal. And then we have the subject matter... psychic nutters who can read your mind while making you feel ill, move objects with their mind... and make your head explode. There are some deeply effective body horror moments, not least with the duel at the end. Those pulsing veins... brr!

The performances... well, they're generally bland, Michael Ironside and the ever-superb Patrick McGoohan being very much the exception, but it doesn't matter. This isn't a film about characters, about people. It's about themes, the horror, the ongoing mystery and the visuals.

The big reveal at the end, about what's really been going on, is clever, satisfying and topical. Big Pharma can indeed be a bad thing. Just, y'know, don't let that lead you down the rabbit holes of anti-vaxxer nonsense or "alternative" medicine.

Do you feel a nosebleed coming on...?

Total Recall (1990)

 "Hey, I've got five kids to feed!"

Yes, I know. I'm exactly the age and demographic to have seen this film close to when it came out, but have somehow contrived not to have seen it until I'm tantalisingly close to forty-seven years old. Well, I've seen it now. And, well, it's fascinating.

I mean, obvioudsly, it's an Arnie film and does all the Arnie stuff, but it's also fascinatingly conceptual hard science fiction, based on a story by Philip K. Dick. Admittedly, the only novel of Dick's that I've actually read is The Man in the High Castle, but I've seen enough film adaptations to recognise his signature themes of memory, identity and reality in play here- and the film is conceptually fascinating.False memories of great experiences being marketed to the public; false memories of an eight year marriage; the sheer bloody cldeverness of the plot when revealed at the end; a sex worker with three breasts; the question of, if you have amnesia, would you lose your new identity if you had your old memories back?

Arnie is gloriously Arnie, Sharon Stone has a nicely subtle little role, and you can always rely on good old Ronny Cox to play a damn good baddy at this time. And the effects- not CGI but real effects- are a joy to behold. That thing with the eyes when people are exposed to the Martian surace, though... urgh.

The end may be a bit of a cop out- surely Quaid and Melina would have died long before Mars was fully terraformed by the alien magic button? And would the alien device really terraform the planet with the exact amount of oxygen needed by humans? But these things don't stop Total Recall from being an absolute joy.

Terminator Salvation (2009)

“If you’re listening to this, you are the resistance.”

This is it, then: the moment the Terminator franchise leaps headlong over a large carnivorous fish of the genus carcharhinus.

So what’s so awful about it? After all, it’s inoressive the way they briefly manage to get a T-800 looking like Arbus for a few seconds later on, and there’s a nice little fourth-wall breaking moment later on where Marcus uses a song as terminator bait, and it’s You Could Be Mine by Guns ‘n’ Roses, straight from the T2 soundtrack. Indeed, the first scene, with Marcus signing away his body in return for a kiss an hour before his judicial killing,  is dramatic and interesting.

And yet the film is a crashing disappointment, a generic action film with no time travel and bland CGI terminators that look like nothing special. Even the various air, sea and giant terminators don’t manage to excite; it’s all just a soup of bland CGI dullness.

There’s a glimmer on interest in the decision to set the film in 2018(!), Much earlier than the usual 2029 (although the year Skynet assumes control, after all the times-windy ness of earlier films, is kept wisely vague) so we get a John Connor who is not yet in charge and a young Kyle Reese, played charismatically by the sadly late Anton Yelchin. Trouble is, the part of John Connor absolutely requires a charismatic actor... and they cast Christian Bloody Bale.

Annoyingly, this is a film you probably need to see if you’re a Terminator completist. It won’t be much fun, though. Full, full, full.