Decades after being Oscar-nommed way back in 1956 for Around the World in Eighty Days, director Michael Anderson sunk his claws into a literary property and fashioned it into a modern sci-fi classic. I speak of Logan’s Run, of course, because his late-career Millennium is a low-flying turd. Despite arriving at the tail end of the ’80s, the shiny movie has its feet planted firmly in the style of the previous decade, in which Logan’s Run and Anderson’s made-for-TV Martian Chronicles were born. The most telling example is its out-of-vogue touch in casting, with Kris Kristofferson and Cheryl Ladd in the leads — neither a box-office sparker. (Don’t get me started on Daniel J. Travanti.)

Credit screenwriter John Varley, on whose 1977 “Air Raid” short story the film is based, for at least getting these miserable 108 minutes off the ground quickly; the commercial plane crash that sets the story into motion (as it were) happens within the first two minutes. With mass casualties and mysterious circumstances surrounding the wreckage, NTSB investigator Bill Smith (Kristofferson, the Blade trilogy) is sent to, um, investigate. Catching his (beady) eye is Louise Baltimore (Ladd, TV’s Charlie’s Angels), a rather fetching blonde airline attendant who, in actuality, is from a barren population 1,000 years in the future.

What Ms. Baltimore (the fakest of fake names) is doing there and why she does it with Mr. Smith (the most generic of generic names) isn’t 100 percent clear — although Stargate clearly owes a great deal to Millennium — but you’ll be too distracted by Anderson’s wacky, wonky vision of tomorrow to care: Louise and her cohorts operate from an industrial hangar run partially by an Erector Set robot named Sherman (Robert Joy, Amityville 3-D). In this world, Ladd’s hair is fashioned into a Mohawk, like a soccer-mom Grace Jones, and everybody debates time travel, dropping the word “paradox” as often as “the.”

If you feel a bit sleepy as Millennium drags on, Kristofferson is right there with you. (Ladd, for the record, impresses.) Whether his character is ordering coffee, surveying a disaster, squeezing tit or saving mankind, the actor exhibits his go-to move: the vacant stare. Among the leading men of his time, Kristofferson may be the least expressive of all. Being saddled with him as the hero in a would-be sci-fi epic is as aggravating as the baffling ending. As it unfolds and sits there, we hear Sherman’s omnipotent voice echo and boom and Zardoz-ize as if saying Something Meaningful: “This is not the end. This is not the beginning of the end. It is the end of the beginning.” It is an abortion. —Rod Lott

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When sequels start dropping numbers from their titles is one sign consumers can take as caveat emptor. Another is when none of the franchise’s stars is willing to show up, even for an easy-paycheck cameo. And yet another is skipping theaters entirely.

Species: The Awakening checks all three of these boxes. You have been warned. And warned. And warned yet again.

With Natasha Henstridge in absentia, the direct-to-DVD flick falls upon the supple shoulders of Swedish actress Helena Mattsson (Guns Girls & Gambling) as the resident Hot Alien Who Kills When She Gets Horny. The twist here is that she just doesn’t know it yet. Her Miranda is a university professor in pure Sexy Librarian Fantasy mode; her first-scene lecture is nothing short of lascivious, with director Nick Lyon (Hercules Reborn) shooting through her parted legs and at her adoring male students, who all but have books strategically placed on their smoldering crotches. (These guys would appreciate being pointed to the 56-minute mark of the Blu-ray.)

On the faculty with Miranda is her only family member, Uncle Tom (!), played by a very sweaty Ben Cross (The Unholy). It is he who helped make her that way — not to mention help make her, period — by mucking around with alien DNA, thus providing screenwriter Ben Ripley (who also penned the slightly better Species III) a tenuous connection to the previous films.

However, Uncle Tom (!!) has kept this a secret from his niece until now, when the corpse of a young man is discovered in the park, shortly after Miranda comes home dazed from a date — a sexual Awakening, perhaps? The answer is as affirmative as Mattsson is strikingly beautiful, and sadly, that is not reason enough to sit through this fourth and (until the inevitable reboot) final Species. Once Uncle Tom (!!!) takes her to Mexico to meet her creator, the sci-fi slasher becomes increasingly dull, despite them being pursued in part by a tentacle-sprouting nun. While Mattsson and Cross do try their best, their efforts are not helped by Lyon’s contagious disengagement and shoddy effects that recall the heyday of CorelDRAW. —Rod Lott

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Toasts Charles Grodin’s sniveling corporate villain in the opening scene of 1976’s King Kong, “Well … here’s to the big one!” While he’s referring to his hunt for untapped petroleum on an Indonesian island, the comment winks at an audience fully aware that a big ol’ angry ape awaits. Personally, I can’t help but take Grodin’s line as a reference to the movie itself: a Dino De Laurentiis production as giant-sized as its cryptozoological star; a spare-no-expense spectacle that bridged the gap between Jaws and Star Wars; and, lest we forget, a once-sacrilegious remake of the 1933 all-time classic — not just for the fantasy-adventure genre, but the art form of cinema as a whole.

Do-gooder hippie Jack Prescott (Jeff Bridges, Iron Man) stows away in the ship carrying Petrox exec Wilson (Grodin, Midnight Run) and crew. Unlike Wilson, Prescott is not there for the oil; as a professor in Princeton’s Department of Primate Paleontology — try fitting that on a business card — Prescott has in his heart the best interest of the rumored gargantuan gorilla worshipped by the primitive islanders. En route to the isle, the Petrox vessel picks up something else for Prescott’s heart: the lifeboat-stranded, would-be actress named Dwan (Jessica Lange, Tootsie) — not Dawn, but Dwan, and she is dmub as drit.

Her eventual presence on the island catapults Kong into a horny tizzy; I can relate. Other than the climax’s change of venue from the ESB to the WTC, the largest difference this bicentennial Kong has over its Depression-era forefather is the cranked-up kinkiness! The ’33 Kong may have sniffed his fingers after handling his distressed damsel, but this ape intends at hitting a homer, starting with stripping Dwan from the confines of that clingy evening gown of hers. Although unnatural and imbalanced, their chemistry is a welcome sign o’ the times; when Kong saves Dwan from a giant snake … well, let’s just say the symbolism is not lost — in fact, it’s as clear as Crystal Pepsi.

Time has been both kind and unkind to director John Guillermin’s Towering Inferno follow-up. To deal with the “unkind” part firstly and quickly, its Oscar-winning (!) effects by E.T.’s Carlo Rambaldi play beyond hokey by today’s standards, heightening the comedy not intended by Guillermin or screenwriter Lorenzo Semple Jr. (who re-teamed for the 1984 stinker Sheena: Queen of the Jungle). On the coin’s flip side, Lange’s performance now registers as one. This being her film debut, she played an IQ-challenged, dim-bulb bimbo of enormous naiveté so well, audiences and critics confused the character with the actress. We have come to know better.

The approach taken to the source material by Guillermin is admirably workmanlike and unassuming, in that he doesn’t allow his direction to get in the way of — or distract from — the action. (It’s still uncertain if he possessed an authorial stamp at all.) His shots do not call attention to themselves, with the exception of the POV of a NYC subway car as it careens toward Kong’s greedy grasp. The biggest complaint we can throw the pic’s way is that at two hours and 14 minutes, it could be considered slow … until you compare it to the 3.35-hour slog of Peter Jackson’s oversized 2005 remake, whereupon Guillermin’s trip to camp looks duly efficient. Even without Jackson’s version retroactively propping up Guillermin’s, this second King Kong remains a good time. —Rod Lott

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