I’m not sure why I yearned for a Johnny Mnemonic re-watch to reveal a misdiagnosed classic, but I did have hopes. After all, many of my favorites began with a first-viewing sneer of contempt: Prince of Darkness, Lifeforce, From Beyond — all movies to which I gave a cautious-but-gratifyingly-successful second chance. Could Johnny be due for a reappraisal?

Nope. It still blows.

A quick re-cap: In 2021, half of the Earth’s population suffers from something known as Nerve Attenuation Syndrome. Johnny (Matrix man Keanu Reeves, ), a mnemonic data courier whose brain has been cleared of memory to become a transportable hard drive, is hired to carry mysterious information that makes him a target of the yakuza. Much poorly choreographed adventure ensues as Johnny’s path to salvation leads him to a diverse and frankly weird assortment of actors; Dina Meyer (Starship Troopers) as a violence-prone bodyguard, Henry Rollins (Wrong Turn 2: Dead End) as a nerdy doctor, Ice-T (Surviving the Game) as a pirate hacker, and Udo Kier (Blade) in the all-important role as “the character obviously played by Udo Kier.”

It’s not the dated effects; it’s unfair to judge on FX limitations that seemed cutting-edge at the time. It’s not the ridiculousness of the plot, as that’s hardly a barometer for enjoyment (although William Gibson’s short story and initial screenplay are far more interesting than what ended up onscreen). It’s not the actors, all of whom seem intent on making the damn thing work. No, the blame rests almost wholly with Robert Longo, a gent who took a $25 million budget — reputedly the largest ever for a Canadian production at the time — and directed a movie that looks as cheap as the cheapest flick Albert Pyun ever shat out. Which is cheap indeed. Like, Kickboxer 4 cheap.

There’s a good movie in there somewhere. I don’t look to have an automatic hate-on when I pop in a DVD. I want to like a film. And I like these ideas. I like the concept of hacking the brain to become a portable hard drive. I find the concept of our technology eventually causing an epidemic intriguing. I even like the enhanced dolphin that serves as the brain of the underground movement.

And I like Reeves, an actor who too often serves as an easy punching bag but who, with the right director, honestly can bring it. But not here. Every actor in Johnny Mnemonic has on past and future occasions proved effective, even memorable in the right role. But with no leadership, all in attendance give performances subpar enough to disqualify them from appearing in even a Syfy sharkcentric pooptacular starring Lorenzo Lamas and Donna D’Errico.

Longo is so inept a filmmaker he cannot even take a religious-freak assassin who stabs people with a knife/crucifix while in the guise of a genetically modified Dolph Lundgren and make him interesting. How is that even possible? —Corey Redekop

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Goldengirl is about how fast a girl named Goldine can run into a mattress on the wall. At least at the beginning of this oddball sports/sci-fi vehicle for tall, blonde Susan Anton, then a model turned actress, singer and Dudley Moore sperm receptacle — not necessarily in that order.

Goldine knows her adopted father, neo-Nazi Dr. Serafin (Curt Jurgens, The Spy Who Loved Me), has been grooming her to be an Olympic champion; what she doesn’t know is that he’s screwed with sinister eugenics and cooked-up injections to get her there.

Dr. Serafin’s pie-in-the-sky goal is to have her win gold medals in all three women’s sprint events in the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, so that they’ll be able to pocket a rather arbitrary $10 million in endorsement deals and the like. To help plan for that payday, merchandising expert Jack Dryden (James Coburn, Looker) is brought in. Inevitably, Dryden and the much, much younger Goldine soon step up to the podium — the sexual podium.

Sporting a Bill Conti theme crooned by Anton herself, the run-on-titled “Slow Down I’ll Find You,” Goldengirl holds no luster beyond the beauty of its statuesque starlet. Joseph Sargent (The Taking of Pelham One Two Three) directs with a pedestrian nature reflected in Coburn’s just-show-up performance. The results are as deadly dull as Anton is crazy-hot, landing the speculative tale on the side of “agony of defeat,” with “thrill of victory” far out of reach. —Rod Lott

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Brian De Palma shelved the Hitchcock homages just long enough to ape another esteemed cinematic master — Stanley Kubrick — for a foray into big-budget sci-fi, Mission to Mars. The epic space odyssey aims very much to be another 2001 — the mystery is well in place; the pacing is deliberately slow; the feeling of reality is there.

And then he blows it at the end with a wholly unnecessary visit to Mars’ built-in planetarium and spook show, complete with crying aliens. It’s the same problem that plagued the endings of Robert Zemeckis’ Contact and James Cameron’s The Abyss. For God’s sake, when will Hollywood learn? Don’t show the mystic aliens!

But before all that, Luke Graham (Don Cheadle, Iron Man 3) heads an exploratory mission to the red planet that ends tragically, and only Graham survives. A rescue mission is deployed to save him, consisting of astropals played by Gary Sinise (sporting Maybelline MoistureLash), Tim Robbins, Jerry O’Connell and the delicious Connie Nielsen. Despite several obstacles — resulting, as expected, in the usual incredible De Palma set pieces — and even further tragedy, the team makes it to Mars. The scene in which Sinise stumbles upon a mentally unstable Cheadle in a makeshift greenhouse plays like something out of De Palma’s over-the-top Raising Cain, or some nonexistent film where the white man busts in on Bob Marley’s weed farm.

And soon this leads to the aforementioned Twin Peaks-esque trip to the “Golly Gee-Whiz” exhibit at the Mars State Fair, where all credibility is checked at the door for a laughs-aplenty sequence that clearly just should’ve been axed. But up until then, Mission is pretty damn good. It’s intelligent, well-made and looks fantastic. Too bad there’s That Goofy Ending, likely the culprit for the film’s punching-bag rep. —Rod Lott

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In a fairer world, Watchmen would be heralded as the one of (if not the) finest superhero movies ever made. Yet we (or at least I) simply must appreciate the miracle that it ever got made in the first place. Based on Alan Moore’s legendary graphic novel, the adaptation was never going to please everyone. Fans would complain about changes; the dim-witted, narrative complexity; the restless, length and pacing; the uptight, Manhattan’s big blue wang making them feel all squidgy inside.

But for the rest (an admitted minority), Watchmen is a treat, the Godfather of superhero flicks in length, density and atmosphere. Set in a world where America won Vietnam and Richard Nixon is still president, a group of outlawed heroes lives under an ongoing cold war that threatens global nuclear annihilation at any moment. Traipsing through timelines and POVs, director Zack Snyder (Man of Steel) chronicles the fall of the fascist Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), the loneliness of sad-sack Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson), the madness of Ozymandias (Matthew Goode), the objectification of Silk Spectres I and II (Carla Gugino and Malin Akerman, respectively) and the messianic aloofness of Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), a naked, 7-foot-tall CGI blue god who counts as the only true superhero (and who beat the blue CGI characters from Avatar to the punch by a good four months).

Running through all storylines is Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), the maniacal heart of both iterations. A merciless dispenser of justice, Rorschach is both Batman and Joker, a psychotic vigilante unbound by moral compromise. In a movie of terrific performances, Haley is the standout (seriously, where’s his Oscar?), driving everything relentlessly forward as he investigates the death of the Comedian in the shadow of Armageddon.

Yes, there are quibbles. Gugino’s old-age makeup is atrocious. Neither Spectre is really given anything to do other than exist for the gratification of others (a problem shared with the novel). The music is too on-the-nose. The owlship sex scene does raise titters (even if it copies Moore’s work beat for beat). And yes, I miss the squid-alien monstrosity of the original finale.

Yet what remains is extraordinary (particularly in the four-hour cut, which expands much of the backstory and incorporates Moore’s comic-within-a-comic, Tales of the Black Freighter, in animated form). It’s refreshingly adult. The action is clean and vigorous. It’s morally ambiguous in a way The Dark Knight only wished it could be. There are images of absolute beauty. It’s broad and epic, yet intimate when it needs to be.

Finally, unlike many films, Watchmen gets better with each viewing. There’s a lot to catch. As much as I love The Dark Knight, the benchmark of modern superhero films, Watchmen is better. —Corey Redekop

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Big Ass Spider! needs a lesson in basic punctuation. Its title includes an exclamation point that is not needed, yet excludes the hyphen that is. After all, this is a movie about a big-ass spider, not an ass spider that also is big. (I do not know what an ass spider is. Oh, if only a porn parody existed to explain it!)

As an L.A. exterminator named Alex, Greg Grunberg (TV’s Heroes) gets the Bill Murray/Vince Vaughn role of the affable, dumpy slob who nonetheless saves the day and gets the girl (in this case, Bring It On’s Clare Kramer). With the aid of a hospital security guard named José (Candyman: Day of the Dead’s Lombardo Boyar, who makes not-that-funny lines funny in his scene-stealing delivery), Alex chases a deadly spider that gets exponentially larger over the course of one crazy day.

Even before this arachnid has grown large enough to scale the Deloitte office tower King Kong-style, the military is summoned. Immediately, it’s clear the troops have little to no experience dealing with giant spiders that spray some liquid with the power to melt your face like the Ark of the Covenant and take out a public park full of volleyball-playing bikini hussies in nothing flat. (That last part is the best.)

Working from a script by Centipede! scribe Gregory Gieras (I smell a trend), Mike Mendez (The Gravedancers) directs with such a featherweight touch, one practically can sense him smiling from behind the camera. The eight-legged freak’s utter CGI phoniness keeps Big Ass Spider! from venturing beyond a comic vibe into anything approaching fright; I doubt the giving of the willies ever was a goal. At times, the movie feels like you’re watching a video game — the Call of Duty-esque first-person shooter POV sees to that — and that sensibility ultimately seeps into an overall verdict of harmless.

After 75 fleet-footed minutes, the end credits begin. A few seconds later, a stinger suggests a sequel, presumably to be titled Big Ass Cockroach! Fine, boys, but let’s not neglect the hyphen again. —Rod Lott

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