hey richard! i really dug the highlander series too... i don't follow movies.. the other one on your list that i really liked was seven samuri - all those kurosawa shows are amazing.. i mostly stick to music..
I have Seven Samurai on my drive waiting for another viewing, as well as Yojimbo (the stimulus for "A Fistful of Dollars" Clint Eastwood movie) and Zatoichi, another classic.
I'll be going through the various classic Japanese ninja movies in the a future installment of the annotated list, as well as the classic "Lone Wolf and Cub" series. Stay tuned.
Thanks for the list, Richard! I have a recommendation for the shelf adjacent to the Sevens, a 7.1/10 Brazilian weird Western from 2019 called _Bacurau_. It is particularly relevant for its depiction of information and other warfare against a forlorn village sitting atop valuable resources, and I suspect you'll appreciate the village's response.
Highlander 2 is good too. The sequel went insane, going into the science fiction road. Russell Mulcahy is a great director, so the movie looks great with interesting camera angles even if the story is complete bananas.
The second Highlander movie was non-canonical and an utter disaster. LOL Fortunately the remaining movies, especially the one spun off the TV show - "Highlander Endgame (2000)" - were decent. I still haven't seen the last one - "Highlander - The Source (2007)" - which has been sitting in my "New Movies" folder for like a year. I think the reason is they finished off the concept - and my favorite character, Methos - which I will find disappointing. They could have resurrected the franchise and kept it going, even if not with Adrian Paul and Christopher Lambert. Maybe someone will one day.
There can be only one, but unfortunately the producers squeezed the franchise dry even when the story ends with the first film. The story is basically over when MacLeod cut off the Kurgan's head but the producers are too greedy and make inferior sequels and shows. It's like Shakespeare trying to write Hamlet 2.
The first TV series was very good. I'm very glad they did it. The spinoff with Amanda wasn't that good which is why it only lasted one season. I don't begrudge them making it a franchise because the concept was good enough to support one, which is why we got several movies and two TV shows. It's just that some of them weren't that good as the original, which is the usual fate of franchises (with a couple exceptions.)
I had a couple ideas on how the franchise could have been expanded and continued. For instance, what if Duncan MacLeod suddenly learned that everything he and most Immortals had been taught about "The Prize" and the fight requirement was a lie? That in face Methos wasn't the oldest Immortal and that there were Immortals that were five or ten times his age (fifty thousand year old Immortals!) and were behind much of human history. You can see how expanding the concept could have reinvigorated it for several more movies or another TV show.
I think they could easily reboot the franchise on that basis and make it fresh again. It all depends on how you do it. Now you'd have to do it with a completely new cast, which is not really a problem as a new generation has grown up that has never seen the original movies or TV show. Peter Wingfield, for instance, who played Methos, has retired from acting and has become a doctor doing anesthesiology work in a California hospital. Adrian Paul is getting on in years. But it wouldn't be hard to find a new cast. It would depend on a smart showrunner and decent writers.
hey richard! i really dug the highlander series too... i don't follow movies.. the other one on your list that i really liked was seven samuri - all those kurosawa shows are amazing.. i mostly stick to music..
I have Seven Samurai on my drive waiting for another viewing, as well as Yojimbo (the stimulus for "A Fistful of Dollars" Clint Eastwood movie) and Zatoichi, another classic.
I'll be going through the various classic Japanese ninja movies in the a future installment of the annotated list, as well as the classic "Lone Wolf and Cub" series. Stay tuned.
Thanks for the list, Richard! I have a recommendation for the shelf adjacent to the Sevens, a 7.1/10 Brazilian weird Western from 2019 called _Bacurau_. It is particularly relevant for its depiction of information and other warfare against a forlorn village sitting atop valuable resources, and I suspect you'll appreciate the village's response.
Thanks for the reference. Downloading now from here:
https://movieparadise.org/movies/bacurau/
Highlander 2 is good too. The sequel went insane, going into the science fiction road. Russell Mulcahy is a great director, so the movie looks great with interesting camera angles even if the story is complete bananas.
The second Highlander movie was non-canonical and an utter disaster. LOL Fortunately the remaining movies, especially the one spun off the TV show - "Highlander Endgame (2000)" - were decent. I still haven't seen the last one - "Highlander - The Source (2007)" - which has been sitting in my "New Movies" folder for like a year. I think the reason is they finished off the concept - and my favorite character, Methos - which I will find disappointing. They could have resurrected the franchise and kept it going, even if not with Adrian Paul and Christopher Lambert. Maybe someone will one day.
There can be only one, but unfortunately the producers squeezed the franchise dry even when the story ends with the first film. The story is basically over when MacLeod cut off the Kurgan's head but the producers are too greedy and make inferior sequels and shows. It's like Shakespeare trying to write Hamlet 2.
The first TV series was very good. I'm very glad they did it. The spinoff with Amanda wasn't that good which is why it only lasted one season. I don't begrudge them making it a franchise because the concept was good enough to support one, which is why we got several movies and two TV shows. It's just that some of them weren't that good as the original, which is the usual fate of franchises (with a couple exceptions.)
I had a couple ideas on how the franchise could have been expanded and continued. For instance, what if Duncan MacLeod suddenly learned that everything he and most Immortals had been taught about "The Prize" and the fight requirement was a lie? That in face Methos wasn't the oldest Immortal and that there were Immortals that were five or ten times his age (fifty thousand year old Immortals!) and were behind much of human history. You can see how expanding the concept could have reinvigorated it for several more movies or another TV show.
I think they could easily reboot the franchise on that basis and make it fresh again. It all depends on how you do it. Now you'd have to do it with a completely new cast, which is not really a problem as a new generation has grown up that has never seen the original movies or TV show. Peter Wingfield, for instance, who played Methos, has retired from acting and has become a doctor doing anesthesiology work in a California hospital. Adrian Paul is getting on in years. But it wouldn't be hard to find a new cast. It would depend on a smart showrunner and decent writers.
Fascinating. Now I'm off to part 2...