Das Leben der Anderen (5 Stars)

Some films are slow because not very much happens. Others are slow because they have something more important to do than keep the story moving. "Das Leben der Anderen"  (engl. "The Lives of Others") belongs firmly in the second category.

Set in East Germany in the 1980's, the film takes us into the world of the Stasi, but what makes it different from many other films about life in the DDR is that we don't see the Stasi purely from the point of view of its victims. We spend a great deal of time with the people doing the watching.

Captain Gerd Wiesler is assigned to monitor playwright Georg Dreyman and his girlfriend, the actress Christa-Maria Sieland. Wiesler listens to their conversations, observes their private lives and reports anything that might be considered suspicious. At first he is simply doing his job. He believes in the system and has no apparent difficulty with what he is doing.

But then, gradually, something changes.

And it's not only Wiesler. One of the film's great strengths is that the Stasi isn't represented as one-dimensional. There are people who genuinely believe in what they are doing, people who are simply following orders, people interested in their careers and people prepared to abuse their position for their own personal purposes. The machinery of the state is made up of human beings, and that makes it considerably more disturbing.

The film is wonderfully atmospheric. There are no car chases, explosions or unnecessary attempts to manufacture excitement. The tension comes from people talking in rooms while somebody else is listening. A pause, a glance or a change in someone's voice can be more suspenseful than an action sequence.

It's obvious to compare it with other films about the DDR and the Stasi, films such as "Wie Feuer und Flamme" and "Der Rote Kakadu", but "Das Leben der Anderen" approaches the subject from a different direction. Those films show us what it was like to live under the system. This one takes us inside the system itself.

And that's what makes it so fascinating.

The performances are excellent, particularly Ulrich Mühe as Wiesler. He manages to say an enormous amount without saying very much at all. You can almost see his thoughts changing as he listens to the people he has been ordered to spy on.

It's a beautifully controlled film. Nothing is rushed and very little is overstated. Even when the story becomes deeply emotional, it doesn't resort to melodrama. The film trusts the audience to understand what is happening.

And then comes the ending. It's one of those endings that doesn't need a grand speech or an emotional explanation. A small gesture says everything.

"Das Leben der Anderen" is a brilliant film. It takes its time, but that's precisely why it works. The atmosphere, the performances and the gradual transformation of its characters are far more important than action or pace.

Some films are about what happens.

This is a film about what happens inside people.

Success Rate:  + 36.7

Sympathy For Delicious (4 Stars)

A wheelchair-bound DJ discovers that he has the power to heal other people, but not himself. That's the straightforward part of "Sympathy for Delicious". The less straightforward part is figuring out what the director, Mark Ruffalo, is actually trying to say with it.

The clue is in the title. "Sympathy for Delicious" is a play on the Rolling Stones song "Sympathy for the Devil", but the film also has a much closer connection to "You Can't Always Get What You Want". Dean desperately wants the one thing his miraculous power cannot give him: the ability to walk again. Instead, he gets the opportunity to heal other people, and promptly turns his gift into a way of making money, gaining fame and getting involved with a rock band.

And that's really the point. Dean spends most of the film wanting the wrong thing. His physical disability is only part of what needs healing. The real journey is learning to accept what he cannot change and discovering that helping somebody else can be more important than getting something for himself.

It's a good idea, and once I understood what Ruffalo was getting at, I appreciated the film considerably more. But I have to admit that I didn't fully get it while I was watching it. There are so many different elements competing for attention – religion, faith healing, rock music, fame, poverty and Dean's own bitterness – that the message is buried.

So don't expect a conventional story about a man who discovers he can perform miracles. The miracles are really there to ask what "healing" actually means. And as the Stones already told us, you can't always get what you want. Sometimes, if you're lucky, you get what you need.

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World Trade Center (3 Stars)

I didn't enjoy the film. For long sections the picture is so dark that I found it difficult to follow what was happening. I'm sure that's realistic, but I don't watch films to experience exactly how little the characters could see. I much prefer the way films handled night scenes in the 1960's, with a blue tint that tells us it's night without actually making the screen almost black.

I was also disappointed that we never actually see the planes hit the towers. I understand the decision, but those are the images that immediately come to mind when you think of September 11th. Perhaps "World Trade Center" is too concerned with realism for my taste. I found it a rather dull experience.

Success Rate:  + 0.5

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Amazing Grace [2018] (5 Stars)

I saw "Amazing Grace" in the cinema in 2019 and loved it, so I'm glad I finally have it on Blu-ray. I'm not particularly a fan of Aretha Franklin as a soul singer, but as a gospel singer she's phenomenal. Watching her perform in a church, backed by the Southern California Community Choir, is an extraordinary experience. The picture quality is poor, especially on the first evening, but I can forgive that. The footage was lost and unreleased for years, so it's better to have it like this than not at all.

There's something rather surreal about seeing Mick Jagger dancing at the back of the church. Perhaps the Spirit was moving him. Or perhaps Mr Sympathy For The Devil just couldn't help himself.

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The Himalayan (3½ Stars)

Ching Lan is framed for the murder of her husband, so she goes on the run with her childhood friend, Little Hu. They take refuge in a Tibetan temple where they're trained in esoteric kung fu, preparing them to return and take their revenge.

The problem is that it took me more than half an hour to work out exactly what was happening. Too much of the story is skipped over, while the training at the temple goes on far too long. We've seen the old kung fu routine where the novice carries water or stones up a mountain many times before, but here it really does seem to go on forever.

That's a shame because the fighting is good when it finally happens. Unfortunately, there's not enough of it. When the characters gathered for the final battle, I checked the time and saw there were only 12 minutes left. That's much too late for a martial arts film to get to its main event.

Not a bad film, but it could have been much more exciting.

The Tournament (3½ Stars)

I was shocked to hear Angela Mao's character say that Thai boxing is stronger than kung fu. That sounds almost blasphemous coming from a 1974 Chinese martial arts film. The Thai boxing scenes didn't do much to convince me. They were sterile and lacked the excitement I was hoping for.

The film improves considerably when Angela finally gets to use some proper kung fu. The fights in the middle and especially towards the end have much more energy, and this is where Angela Mao comes into her own. She's such an impressive martial artist that it's a shame the film doesn't make better use of her.

It's one of those Angela Mao films where the star herself is more entertaining than the film around her.

So many films, so little time.

Sisu: Road to Revenge (4½ Stars)

As my regular readers have noticed, I've been having a disappointing run of sequels lately. I hoped "Sisu: Road to Revenge" would break the run. It does.

It's 1946. Aatami Korpi returns to Karelia, now occupied by Russia, to dismantle his old house and take it back to Finland. A Soviet officer takes exception to this and gives chase.

It's slower to get going than the first film, but once it gets going, it really gets going. There's more gore, more mayhem, and Aatami gets considerably more battered this time around. It's a wonderfully insane action film.

Success Rate:  - 1.2

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Scream 7 (4 Stars)

It's OK. That's probably the best way I can describe it. I enjoyed watching it, but when the final credits rolled I felt that something was missing.

For a start, there aren't enough teenagers. That might sound like a strange criticism, but this is supposed to be a teenage slasher movie. The teenagers have always been an important part of the formula, and there simply aren't enough of them here. There are too many adults and not enough of the young characters who made the earlier films so much fun.

On the positive side, Sidney Prescott and Gale Weathers are still a great combination. The chemistry between them works. It always has. Put Sidney and Gale together and there's an instant familiarity that reminds you why these characters have survived through so many films.

Unfortunately, I didn't feel the same way about Sidney's husband Mark. He irritated me almost from the moment he appeared. He has no charisma, adds very little to the story and, frankly, I wasn't sorry when Ghostface killed him.

In fact, I breathed a sigh of relief.

Then it was revealed that he'd survived.

"Oh no!" I thought. "That means he'll be back in the next film".

And then there's Ghostface. Or, more accurately, Ghostfaces.

Yes, there are three killers again. I don't actually have a problem with that. Scream has done multiple killers before and it can work very well. The problem here is the motivation.

Karl Gibbs is basically random. He's talked into becoming a killer by Marco Davis, who's the real brains behind the operation. And Marco, in turn, has been talked into it by Sidney's jealous neighbour, Jessica Bowden.

That's quite a chain of events just to get to a group of people wearing Ghostface masks.

The trouble is that none of their motivations are particularly convincing. When the killers are finally revealed, you're supposed to have that wonderful Scream moment when everything suddenly makes sense. Instead, I was thinking "Why?" And then, when the explanation came, I was still thinking "Why?"

That's disappointing, because the identity and motivation of Ghostface are such an important part of the fun. The best Scream reveals make you look back at the film and realise that the clues were there all along. Here, the explanation feels more like the writers needed three people to be Ghostface and then had to find a reason for each of them to be involved.

Having said all that, I didn't hate "Scream 7". Far from it. It's entertaining, there are some good kills, and Sidney and Gale are still fun to watch together. I just don't think it works as well as the best films in the series.

It's OK.

But when you're watching a Scream film, "OK" isn't good enough.

Success Rate:  + 2.8

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Megan 2.0 (4 Stars)

I loved the film "Megan", stylised as "M3GAN". It was a simple but brilliant horror film with a great idea at its centre. Megan was created to protect a young girl, but her interpretation of that job became increasingly murderous. It was funny, creepy and, most importantly, it didn't need to complicate things. "Megan 2.0" takes a different approach.

The sequel is turned into something closer to a science-fiction action film, with a new AI threat, military technology, conspiracies and one plot twist after another. There are some entertaining moments and Megan herself is still the best thing about the film, but the story has become unnecessarily complicated. It's still a good film, but it's disappointing in comparison with the original. The first film knew exactly what it wanted to be; the sequel seems to have forgotten.

Success Rate:  + 0.6

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Heavier Trip: Road to Wacken (4 Stars)

Not as good as the first film.

Too much comedy.

Not enough music.

But Babymetal is cute.

Lust for a Witch (4 Stars)

The first time I watched this film I was a bit confused. It looked like a Medina film, but not quite. It features four of the regular actors from the early Medina films, Evan Stone, Alexandre Boisvert, Nicole Sheridan and Rebecca Love. I was particularly curious about the director, Michael Windsor, who's never made any other films. I wrote to Fred Olen Ray and received this reply:

"That movie has a long history. It was made by a British adult video company called Unionjaxx/RudeBrit. We used to rent them an office and some warehouse space when we had a large presence on Winnetka. Adult stuff had just become legal in the UK and they were trying to distribute their product in the US but it was awful. They wanted to make something here and came over with one of their starlets Poppi Morgan. They hired Evan Stone to put it together for them. We agreed to do their music tracking, special effects and titles in exchange for a softcore cable friendly version, but it was not up to our level of acceptability and we sat on it as being unusable for maybe what seems like a decade. I finally cut it down as far as it could go and still be a feature when I needed something to release one month and it maybe sold 1000 units. I don't remember. Windsor was one of the Brits. His wife was also one of their UK starlets known for having the biggest tits in England. Her names escapes me".

Today I did some research and found the answer. Michael Windsor was a pseudonym. His real name was Michael John. His wife was the actress Tanya Hyde, who was promoted as having the largest breasts in England.

Fast & Furious 10 (4 Stars)

Dante Reyes is completely insane.

That's not meant as an insult to Jason Momoa's performance; it's probably the best thing about the film. Dante is the son of Hernan Reyes, the drug lord Dom and his crew brought down in Rio in "Fast Five". Dante witnessed his father's downfall and has spent twelve years planning his revenge. He doesn't simply want to kill Dom. That would be far too easy. He wants Dom to suffer, and he wants to destroy everything Dom loves along the way.

Dante's plan is so elaborate that Dom and his family are constantly several steps behind him. He manipulates the authorities, frames Dom's crew for a disaster in Rome, steals the surveillance technology known as God's Eye and eventually focuses his attention on Dom's young son, Little B. But Dante isn't interested in simply kidnapping the boy. Everything he does is part of a carefully constructed game in which Dom is forced to watch his family being destroyed one piece at a time.

And Dante enjoys every second of it.

The film eventually brings the two men back to Brazil, where Dante recreates the circumstances of his father's death. Dom manages to save Isabel, Elena's sister, but Dante escapes with God's Eye and uses it to track Little B. The chase eventually moves to Portugal, where Jakob attempts to protect his nephew. Jakob sacrifices himself, destroying a group of Dante's men and giving Dom the opportunity to rescue his son.

You'd think that would be the end of Dante's plan. It isn't even close.

Dom and Little B head towards an airfield, believing that Aimes, the head of the Agency, is going to help them escape. Instead, Dante reveals that Aimes has been working for him all along. Aimes shoots down the plane carrying Roman, Tej, Han and Ramsey, apparently killing them all. Dante then traps Dom and his son on a dam with two enormous tanker trucks racing towards them from opposite directions.

Dom does what Dom does. He drives his car off the side of the dam, races down the concrete slope and escapes the explosion. For a few seconds, it looks as though he's actually beaten Dante.

But, of course, Dante has thought of that too.

The entire dam has been rigged with explosives. Dom and Little B are now stranded at the bottom with no car and nowhere to go. Dante detonates the explosives and the film cuts to black.

That's the end of the film.

And then we wait.....

I'm perfectly happy to accept that "Fast & Furious 10" isn't meant to be a complete story. It was intended to launch the final chapters of the saga, and a cliff-hanger was always going to be part of the plan.

But there's a difference between ending a film on a cliff hanger and simply stopping halfway through the story.

When I saw "Fast & Furious 10" in the cinema, I gave it five stars. I assumed that the next film would follow fairly soon and that I'd get the answers to all those questions before too long. Three years later, I'm still waiting.

So now the ending doesn't have quite the same effect. Dom and Little B are apparently about to be blown to pieces. Roman, Tej, Han and Ramsey have apparently just been killed in a plane crash. Jakob has sacrificed himself. Dante has won. And we're expected to sit here for years wondering how everybody is going to survive.

Because we all know they're going to survive.

This is Fast & Furious. People come back from the dead in this franchise. Gisele, who was supposedly killed in "Fast & Furious 6", turns up alive in a submarine at the end of this very film.

So the cliff-hanger isn't even particularly suspenseful. It's just irritating.

I like "Fast & Furious 10". I like it a lot. Dante is a wonderfully deranged villain, the action is spectacular and the film is enormous fun. But that ending has now cost it something.

If "Fast & Furious 11" had arrived in 2024, I'd probably still be giving "Fast & Furious 10" five stars. But three years of waiting for the story to continue is a different matter.

A cliff-hanger is supposed to make you desperate to see the next film.

It isn't supposed to make you think the filmmakers have forgotten to finish the film.

Success Rate:  - 0.1

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Five Nights at Freddy's (4 Stars)

• Mike Schmidt struggles to keep custody of his younger sister Abby.
• Mike is haunted by the kidnapping of his younger brother Garrett.
• Mike takes a night security job at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza.
• The restaurant's animatronics come alive and attack intruders.
• Abby befriends the supposedly murderous animatronics.
• The animatronics are possessed by murdered children.
• Mike dreams about Garrett and the murdered children.
• Mike discovers that the murdered children were killed at Freddy's.
• The policewoman Vanessa knows the truth about Freddy's and its history.
• The children were murdered by the serial killer William Afton.
• Afton is Vanessa's father and Garrett's kidnapper.
• Afton murdered the children while wearing the Spring Bonnie suit.
• Abby helps the murdered children realise that Afton betrayed them.
• The children turn against Afton and drag him away.
• Afton is trapped inside the Spring Bonnie suit.
• Vanessa is seriously injured and falls into a coma.
• Mike and Abby survive and remain together.

Success Rate:  + 12.9

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Pearl (5 Stars)

Müde bin ich, geh zur Ruh,

Schließe beide Äuglein zu.

Vater, lass die Augen dein

Über meinem Bette sein.

Hab ich Unrecht heut getan,

Sieh es, lieber Gott, nicht an.

Deine Gnad und Christi Blut

Machen alle Schaden gut.

Kranken Herzen sende Ruh ,

Nasse Augen schließe zu.

Lass den Mond am Himmel stehn

Und die stille Welt besehn.

---

I am tired, I go to rest,

And close both my eyes.

Father, let your eyes

Be upon my bed.

If I have done wrong today,

Do not look upon it, dear God.

Your grace and Christ's blood

Make all harm right.

Send peace to sick hearts,

Close wet eyes.

Let the Moon stand in the sky

And watch over the silent world.

Success Rate:  + 8.1

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Stoner (4 Stars)

"Stoner" has one of those stories behind it that's almost as interesting as the film itself. It was originally planned as Bruce Lee's next film after "Game of Death", with Lee and George Lazenby as the two leading stars. Lazenby was going to play the villain, while Bruce Lee would have played the character eventually played by Angela Mao. You read that correctly: Bruce Lee was supposed to play Angela Mao's part.

In July 1973, Bruce Lee died and the whole project had to be reworked. Lazenby's character was changed from villain to hero and Mao was brought in as his co-star. Lazenby was fresh from playing James Bond in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service", and "Stoner" was clearly designed to cash in on that. The trailer mentions James Bond at least half a dozen times, so there's no danger of missing the connection. Lazenby gets the smart suits, the women and the international action, although "Stoner" eventually becomes a very different sort of film.

Lazenby plays Australian police officer John Stoner, who becomes involved in an investigation into a new drug that is spreading through Hong Kong. Angela Mao plays another police officer from Taiwan investigating the same organisation, and the two eventually join forces against the criminals behind it. It's a fairly straightforward police thriller, although the story becomes increasingly bizarre as drugs, sexual exploitation and a mysterious cult enter the picture.

Lazenby is perfectly adequate in the lead, although he looks more like James Bond than Stoner for much of the film. It doesn't help that he's sporting an absolutely dreadful moustache for the first half of the film. Thankfully, he shaves it off and looks considerably better. Sammo Hung also makes an appearance, although I found it hard to concentrate on anything he was doing because of the enormous mole on his nose, complete with a single hair growing out of it. Once you've noticed it, you can't stop looking at it.

For most of the film I was hovering between three and three and a half stars, but Stoner saves its best for last. Angela Mao's final fight with Hwang In-shik is terrific. It's easily the highlight of the film, with Mao and In-shik throwing themselves into a spectacular martial-arts battle that finally delivers the sort of action I was hoping for. Angela Mao is excellent throughout, but this is where she gets to show what she can really do.

That final fight pushed Stoner up to four stars.

Highlander (5 Stars)

After watching "Highlander" again, I find myself looking forward to the new version with considerable czriosity. I'm not going to review the 1986 film here. I've already seen it and I know what I think of it. This is about the film that's coming next, and there is now enough information about it to make it one of the more intriguing remakes on the horizon.

The new Highlander film has had a remarkably long journey to the screen. Henry Cavill was announced as the new Connor MacLeod back in 2021, but for years the project seemed to exist mostly in interviews, rumours and increasingly distant promises that filming was about to begin. There were several false starts before production finally got under way in 2026. Even then there was another setback when Cavill suffered an undisclosed injury during pre-production, pushing the start of filming back.

Now, however, it is an actual film. Cameras have been rolling in London and Scotland since February, with further filming taking place in Poland and Hong Kong. The Scottish locations include the Isle of Skye, Eilean Donan Castle and Glencoe, which is about as encouraging as it gets for a film called Highlander.

And the director is Chad Stahelski.

That could be either the best or the most worrying thing about the project.

Stahelski directed all four John Wick films, so there can be little doubt that the new Highlander will have spectacular action. He knows how to stage fights, shoot fights and, perhaps most importantly, make fights feel like something worth going to the cinema to see. Highlander is a property that lends itself naturally to elaborate sword fights, and putting the man responsible for John Wick behind the camera sounds like an obvious match.

The danger is equally obvious. The first footage shown at CinemaCon apparently looked very much like John Wick with swords. There were neon-lit locations, elaborate sword fights, motorcycle chases and a fight at a rave. The footage also suggested that the new film is considerably larger in scale than the original, with numerous immortals involved rather than concentrating almost entirely on the central conflict.

Personally, I don't see the John Wick influence as a problem. Highlander was always an unusual mixture of genres. There was sci-fi, fantasy, action, romance, historical drama and a fair amount of strange 1980's style. There is no reason why a new version shouldn't reinvent the action side of it. The important question is whether Stahelski remembers that the immortality story is what makes Highlander different from every other sword-fighting action film.

There is certainly plenty of mythology to work with.

Henry Cavill plays Connor MacLeod, as Christopher Lambert did in the original, but this time the character is apparently being treated much more explicitly as Scottish. The CinemaCon footage reportedly established that Connor was born in 1518, and Cavill maintains a Scottish accent throughout. That's already an interesting change from Lambert's famously difficult-to-place accent.

Cavill is also an obvious choice for the role. He's spent much of his career playing physically imposing characters who're required to carry large fantasy worlds on their shoulders. Superman and Geralt of Rivia have already given him plenty of experience with swords, armour and supernatural mythology, so Connor MacLeod doesn't seem like much of a stretch.

More importantly, Cavill has apparently been a fan of the property himself. He's been attached to this film for five years, through all the delays and uncertainty, which suggests that this isn't simply another franchise job for him. His first-look photographs certainly suggested that he's taking the role seriously. One showed him carrying a large sword and the other placed him in a much darker, more mysterious setting.

Then there's the cast.

Russell Crowe is playing Juan Sánchez-Villalobos Ramírez, the role originally played by Sean Connery. That's an inspired piece of casting. Crowe has the presence to play the character as a genuine warrior and mentor rather than simply turning up to deliver amusing lines and disappear again.

There's also something wonderfully appropriate about Crowe following Connery into the role. Connery's presence in the original gave the film a strange mixture of fantasy adventure and old-fashioned swashbuckling. Crowe is obviously a very different actor, but he has enough authority to make Ramirez feel like somebody who has been alive for centuries.

Dave Bautista is Kurgan.

That's another casting choice I'm very excited about. Clancy Brown's Kurgan remains one of the great screen villains of the 1980's, partly because Brown didn't play him like a conventional villain. He made him huge, brutal, funny, grotesque and occasionally almost childlike. Bautista has demonstrated repeatedly that he can do far more than play a big man who hits people, so I'm hoping the new Kurgan isn't simply a physically imposing version of the character.

Early footage reportedly suggests that Bautista's Kurgan is more restrained than Brown's. We've also seen glimpses of the character in a World War II setting, including a sequence in which he fights Connor while apparently serving as a Nazi.

That points towards another significant difference between the two films. The new Highlander seems determined to make much more extensive use of Connor's centuries of existence.

The original had a terrific basic idea: an immortal man has spent hundreds of years living among ordinary people while occasionally encountering others like himself. The new film appears to be expanding that concept considerably. Stahelski has talked about expanding the mythology, and the story moves from the early 1500's in the Scottish Highlands through the modern world and into Hong Kong.

That's potentially very exciting.

The Hong Kong element is particularly interesting. Highlander has always been a story that can move almost anywhere because its central characters have had centuries to travel around the world. A story about immortals shouldn't feel as though everybody has spent the last five hundred years hanging around the same few Scottish hills.

The international locations also give Stahelski an opportunity to make the film visually distinctive. Scotland provides the mythology and the historical foundation; modern cities provide the contemporary action. Poland and Hong Kong add yet more possibilities.

And then there's the Gathering.

The basic idea remains that immortals are drawn towards an eventual confrontation in which there can be only one survivor. According to the CinemaCon footage, Connor is forced to fight fellow immortals as the Gathering approaches, with the ultimate prize still at the heart of the story.

The difference is that the new film appears to be taking the concept much further. Reports from CinemaCon described dozens of immortals rather than simply a handful of principal characters. That's a potentially major expansion of the mythology.

It also raises a question.

How much Highlander is too much Highlander?

One of the things I like about the original is that the mythology is almost ridiculously simple. Immortals exist. They can be killed by decapitation. They fight one another. There can eventually be only one. That's enough.

The danger with expanding the mythology is that the filmmakers could start explaining everything.

I hope they don't.

There's something appealing about the mysterious quality of the original mythology. Why are these people immortal? Where exactly did they come from? Why does the Gathering happen? What is the Prize? Some questions are more interesting when they're surrounded by mystery.

On the other hand, this is also supposed to be the beginning of a new Highlander franchise. Amazon MGM and United Artists have the rights to the property, and there's been talk of developing the world beyond this film. That means the filmmakers have an incentive to establish a much larger mythology that can support future films or television.

I'm not automatically opposed to that. In fact, Highlander is one of the franchises where expansion makes considerable sense. The original television series demonstrated that the concept could generate stories almost indefinitely. An immortal character is effectively a walking history book. You can put him in almost any period and almost anywhere in the world.

The question is whether the first film can stand on its own.

It certainly sounds as though there will be plenty of new characters. Karen Gillan is playing Heather MacLeod, while Djimon Hounsou is playing Sunda Kastagir. Marisa Abela, Max Zhang, Siobhán Cullen, Jeon Jong-seo, Nassim Lyes and Kevin McKidd are also involved, with Jeremy Irons among the cast as the leader of the Watchers. Drew McIntyre is also part of the ensemble as Angus MacLeod.

The Watchers are particularly interesting because they suggest that the new film is borrowing more heavily from the mythology that developed around Highlander after the original film. Jeremy Irons playing their leader also gives that part of the story a certain gravitas.

And Kevin McKidd is an especially nice bit of casting. He was reportedly considered for the lead when the project was being developed many years ago, long before Cavill was attached. Now he's actually in the film.

The production itself is also becoming increasingly impressive. The Scottish shoot isn't merely using Scotland as a convenient backdrop. The filmmakers have been filming in some of the locations that immediately make you think of Highlander: Skye, Eilean Donan and Glencoe. There have been road and location closures around the Highlands, and Cavill has been photographed in costume there.

That's important to me.

If you're going to remake Highlander, make it look like Highlander.

I don't want Scotland to be three minutes of establishing shots before the characters disappear into a CGI city. The photographs and reports from the production suggest that the Scottish landscape is going to be an important part of the film, particularly in the historical material. That's exactly what I'd hoped to see.

The first film's Scottish setting was one of the things that gave it its identity. The new film has the opportunity to make that landscape look extraordinary with modern cinematography and visual effects. It doesn't have to pretend that it's still 1986. In fact, it shouldn't. The original's special effects look dated, but the landscapes don't.

And that brings me back to the reason I'm writing about the remake now.

Having just watched "Highlander" again, I'm struck by how much potential there is in the basic concept. The original doesn't need to be replaced because it's become worthless. Quite the opposite. It remains a brilliant film despite the fact that some of its effects now look very much like effects from 1986.

That's precisely why the remake has to offer something more than improved effects.

Fortunately, it appears to be trying.

The combination of Henry Cavill, Chad Stahelski, Russell Crowe and Dave Bautista is enough to make me curious. The international locations make me curious. The decision to expand Connor's life beyond the original story makes me curious. The Scottish filming makes me particularly curious. And the footage shown at CinemaCon suggests that the filmmakers aren't treating the film as a museum piece.

It looks as though they're making a big, modern fantasy action film while retaining the basic Highlander mythology.

That could be exactly what the property needs.

There's one other encouraging detail. Amazon MGM is now making a substantial commitment to theatrical films rather than treating everything as material for streaming. The studio has explicitly said that it intends to release at least 15 films a year theatrically and described its strategy as making films that give audiences a reason to leave home and see them in cinemas. Highlander is part of that theatrical slate.

That's where this film belongs.

Highlander should be seen on a big screen. It needs the mountains, the swords, the castles, the cities and the action to have room to breathe. Stahelski's involvement makes that even more important.

There still isn't a firm release date. The studio has indicated that the film belongs in its 2027 slate, while earlier comments from Stahelski suggested 2027 or 2028 was the likely window. At the moment, the safest description is simply 2027.

So there's still a long way to go.

But for the first time, Highlander doesn't feel like a remake that's perpetually stuck in development hell. It's been filmed. We've seen footage. Cavill has been in Scotland wearing the costume. The cast is in place. The production has moved from London to Scotland, Poland and Hong Kong. We can finally start judging the film on what it actually is rather than what somebody says it might be.

And what it might be is quite exciting.

I certainly wouldn't want a carbon copy of the 1986 film. There's no point in making one. I've already got the original, and I like it.

Give me something new.

Give me Scotland. Give me centuries of history. Give me immortals who've lived long enough to have acquired stories of their own. Give me spectacular sword fights. Give me Henry Cavill as Connor MacLeod. Give me Russell Crowe as Ramirez. Give me Dave Bautista as the Kurgan. Give me Chad Stahelski directing the whole thing.

And, above all, give me a film that understands why there can be only one.

Success Rate:  - 1.5

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Klondike Annie (unrated)

When I watched this film I realised something was wrong with it. Some things didn't make sense. I found the explanation in Wikipedia: It was censorship. "Eight minutes of the film were deleted. The footage is presumably lost. In this lost footage is the scene in which The Frisco Doll stabs Chan Lo when he was going to stab her instead".

The censored footage has been lost. Nothing can be done about it. What I don't like is the way the film is presented on the Blu-ray. There could have been an introduction warning that an important scene is missing. Even better, there could have been a text page inserted explaining what happened in place of the missing footage. Instead of this, a mutilated version of the film has been sold. It's disgraceful.

I recommend strongly against watching this film.

Goin' To Town (3 Stars)

Mae West: delicious.

"Goin' to Town": not so much.