This week's two so-so movies

- Eilean Donan castle

One movie was a chance pick-up from the library - Highlander. This 1986 fantasy film starred Christopher Lambert, Sean Connery, Clancy Brown, and Roxanne Hart. Some parts were just dopey, some rather objectionable, but you get to see footage of Scotland including the castle pictured above, and I sort of liked the basic storyline about a group of people who were immortal, who could only be killed by decapitation, and who were pitted against each other in a final "gathering" in which only one would survive (as then mortal) to usher in a new era on earth.


- Lambert as the modern day MacLeod

Lambert plays Connor MacLeod, originally a 16th century Scot who is mentored by Connery's character, Ramírez, an immortal from Egypt who ended up working for Charles V of Spain :), and the movie flashes back and forth between medieval Scotland and present day New York, where the gathering is taking place and where MacLeod must defeat his life-long nemesis, the Kurgan (Brown). As fans of the Highlander tv series know, the story had to be later tweaked a little so that there could be (numerous) sequels


- Connery and Lambert as their medieval selves

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The other movie was Predators, a 2010 science fiction/horror film starring Adrian Brody, Laurence Fishburne, and Alice Braga, among others. When looking for photos of the movie I saw this one of Brody, who won such acclaim in The Pianist, with a quote from the original Predator film superimposed :) ...



The movie is the latest in the Predator franchise that began with Arnold's 1987 version. The story begins with a number of pretty tough people (Brody plays a former black ops now mercenary, Braga's an IDF sniper, louis ozawa changchien's Yakuza, etc.) being scooped by aliens and deposited on a game reserve planet to be hunted by said aliens.


- Brody and Braga

Roger Ebert gave the movie only 2 stars. It's rated R for violence, language, and exposure to aliens that need serious deep root planing :) ...