THE TERMINATOR

Arnold Schwarzenegger

THE TERMINATOR (1984). Director: James Cameron.

In the year 2029 Los Angeles and the world are in the midst of war started by rogue robots who want to destroy mankind. When a cyborg killing machine known as a "terminator" (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is sent back in time to murder the mother of the leader of the resistance -- John Connor --  he is followed by Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn of Deadly Intentions), whose mission is to save her life at any cost. At first Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) is resistant to Reese's approaches, but after the Terminator wipes out a police station she realizes that his fantastic story is utterly true ...

Michael Biehn and Linda Hamilton

I confess I was never all that carried away with this picture at the time of its release, and my opinion hasn't changed all these years later. The Terminator uses a number of sci fi and comic book tropes to tell its story, which is mildly interesting, and the characters are hardly that dimensional. (Harlan Ellison felt the opening moments of the film were too close to one of his stories and received a settlement and a credit on the DVD.) Although the movie moves at a very fast pace, it seems better edited than directed. The performances are good -- Schwarzenegger only needs to look determined and grim and he does that okay -- and the film has an undeniably exciting climax in a factory when the robotic infrastructure of the Terminator is revealed. The obligatory sex scene is tiresome, but necessary in some ways for the plot.

The Terminator sheds its Schwarzenegger skin

Although these questions may have been answered in the sequels -- to date there have been five -- one has to wonder why the unmarried Sarah doesn't ask Reese why her son in the future has the same last name that she does. And why does the cyborg have an Austrian accent? Bill Paxton has a very small role as a thug but in a few years he would be co-starring with both Schwarzenegger and Biehn [Aliens] in different productions (both directed by James Cameron). Dick Miller [A Bucket of Blood] has a cameo as a gun shop owner who gets on the wrong end of Schwarzenegger's shotgun. Brad Fidel's score is generally pretty cheesy, but the FX work by Stan Winston and others is fine.

Verdict: Odd that this mediocre and highly over-rated little film started such a successful franchise. **1/2. 

ALIENS

Sigourney Weaver and Michael Biehn

ALIENS (1986). Director: James Cameron. Extended edition/director's cut.

After the climax of Alien, Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) has drifted in space for 57 years. (In a scene omitted from the theatrical version, we learn Ripley had a daughter who grew up and died while she was away, which intensifies her feelings for the little girl, Newt, that she meets later on.) The powers-that-be, including corporate employee, the slimy Burke (Paul Reiser), first "disbelieve" Ripley, but then they learn that a colony that was established on LV-426, from whence Ripley escaped, is no longer in communication with earth. Stripped of her rank, Ripley is promised a promotion if she returns with Burke, android Bishop (Lance Henriksen), and a contingent of marines to LV-426 to see what's up. Naturally they find a whole host of alien monstrosities, along with the sole survivor, Newt (Carrie Henn), and a monstrous mother queen who is laying more eggs on a regular basis. Unlike the first film and in spite of its sci fi/horror trappings, Aliens is more of a war movie/action film than anything else, but on that level it is extremely exciting, although, as in the first movie, there are too many long scenes of Ripley running and running through smoky corridors. One especially good and scary scene has Ripley and the child discovering that a face-hugger (the creature that wraps itself around your face and deposits a parasite) has gotten into their quarters and they're locked inside with it. The acting from Weaver [Tadpole], Reiser [One Night at McCool's], Henricksen [AVP] and Henn is excellent -- I rarely like Weaver in anything but the Alien movies -- and there are also noteworthy performances from Michael Biehn as Corporal Hicks, William Hope as his commanding officer, Lt. Gorman, and especially Bill Paxton as the overtly cocky but understandably terrified Private Hudson, with some nice work from Jenette Goldstein as the tough, Hispanic Private Vasquez. This vision of the future is already dated, and the movie has several illogical moments, but it is very, very entertaining. Followed by Alien 3.

Verdict: Like quite a few people, the aliens have acid for blood. ***.

GALAXY OF TERROR aka MINDWARP

A touchy-feely alien gets another victim

GALAXY OF TERROR (aka Mindwarp/1981). Director: Bruce D. Clark. Produced by Roger Corman.

"There's no horror here we don't create ourselves."

A spaceship is sent to a distant planet to see if they can find the survivors of the last expedition. What they find are the remains of the spaceship, some weird creepy-crawly aliens that attach themselves to their body parts, and a giant pyramid-like structure in which they are stalked by half-seen creatures and must confront their own fears. This is an old idea -- astronauts bedeviled by materializations of their own terrors -- but it's also an obvious copy of Alien. The movie has surprisingly good production design, courtesy of James Cameron [later famous as the director of Titanic] and Robert Skotak, and an interesting cast, including Edward Albert, Erin Moran, the ever-brooding Zalman King, Ray Walston as a cook with secrets, Robert Englund [Nightmare on Elm Street], Sid Haig as an astronaut who's murdered by his own severed arm, and Grace Zabriskie as a kind of butch captain, sole survivor of something called the Hesperus disaster (as if any vessel would be named after a famous shipwreck!).  Taffee O'Connell is pursued by a maggot grown to giant size that seems more interested in tearing off her clothing and licking her naked body than it is in eating her. Despite some fairly impressive sequences and decent acting, Galaxy of Terror has a cheapjack look and feel to it, and while not awful, it's not that memorable, either.

Verdict: One of the better Alien imitations, so you can imagine how awful some of the others were. **1/2.

SANCTUM

SANCTUM (2011). Director: Alister Grierson.

Very loosely inspired by a true incident which fortunately had no fatalities, Sanctum deals with a group of cavern explorers who are trapped inside a huge, twisting network of often underwater caves in New Guinea after a storm cuts off their exit. If there's any problem with the move it's that the leader of the group, Frank (Richard Roxburgh) is a total cliche, the expedient, practical hard-as-nails S.O.B. who shows little emotion until the script demands that he do so. During the movie Frank slowly bonds with his disgusted son, Josh (Rhys Wakefield), who doesn't share his interest in exploring. Ioan Gruffudd from Fantastic Four is another explorer who in a suspect "dramatic" development goes nuts after his girlfriend dies a horrible death in the caves [the women in this are much less dimensional than the main male characters]. For the first half of the movie you can't tell who anybody is because of the face masks, and don't especially care. The picture gets better and more suspenseful as it goes along, and is ultimately reasonably entertaining. But a much better script that avoided stereotypes and developed its characters better would have been welcome.  This picture got a little more attention than it might have because it was produced by James Cameron (Titanic).

Verdict: Nice scenery, even if most of this was filmed on a sound stage. **1/2.

AVATAR

AVATAR (2009). Director: James Cameron.

Wheelchair-bound ex-marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) takes the place of his dead twin brother, a scientist, in an unusual mission on the world of Pandora. The Omitacaga people, the indigenous natives of Pandora, have made their home right on top of a generous supply of oil -- uh, I mean, "unobtanium," a rare element-- and the company that wants this element hopes to either get the natives to cooperate and move, or will simply wipe them out if they don't. Jake is one of several people who transfer their minds into artificial life forms [called Avatars] that are a cross between human and native. While in this form Jake bonds with a native woman named Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), and is accepted by her people even as he falls in love with her, her tribe, and the beauty and simplicity of Pandora. But he learns that there are reasons why these natives can never be talked in to leaving their home, and tragedy ensues. Writer/director James Cameron has taken various elements from sword and sorcery epics and melded them to a rather heavy-handed allegory that evokes everything from American treatment of Original People to intervention in Afghanistan. On the plus side the film is well-directed and fast-paced [if definitely overlong, repeating itself and its ideas], and it is full of beautiful images and wonderful FX and photography. [A particularly memorable moment has Jake and Neytiri soaring through the air on pterodactyl-like lifeforms.] On the debit side, Avatar is simplistic, drawn out, and at times there are so many composite FX elements that it just seems like a particularly cluttered, if ingenious, cartoon. Worthington is noteworthy, and there are also good performances from Sigourney Weaver, Giovanni Ribisi, and especially formidable Stephen Lang as the ferocious bad guy who heads the mercenaries.

Verdict: Eye-popping and intriguing for some; tedious for others. **1/2.

TITANIC (1997)

TITANIC (1997). Director: James Cameron.

James Cameron's Titanic sort of combines the first two films about the disaster (Titanic; A Night to Remember), but doesn't add a blessed thing to them except even more harrowing detail of the final moments, and eye-popping special effects work. There is little suspense or atmosphere and the long love story is never that compelling because these are not people whose relationship has a lengthy, interesting history (as is the case with Webb and Stanwyck in the original), and -- let's face it -- Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet are not in the same talent league as the first picture's stars. (And, to be honest, Gloria Stuart is no Katharine Hepburn.) In the final moments they never register the kind of terror they would have been feeling, only the alarm they probably experienced being hung up on whatever wobbly device the FX department cobbled together for the sequence. The effects are marvelous, but a picture about the Titanic tragedy is not supposed to be The Poseidon Adventure -- "Wow! Watch The Ship Flip Over And People Die!" -- but a moving human document. The problem isn't just the screenplay, but that director Cameron, a very capable action/FX helmsman, is not the kind of filmic genius who could have turned this picture into a masterpiece. He muffs a lot of sequences, such as when the ship's officer shoots at the crowd and then commits suicide -- imagine what Jean Negulesco could have done with that! And why did he allow Winslet and other actors to wade around through supposedly frigid water without reacting to it (until DiCaprio finally says something about it in a later scene.) Titanic certainly isn't a bad film, and it does hold the attention for more than three hours, but considering that forty years have gone by since the last Titanic movie, you would think we'd have something that improves upon its predecessors in more than just special effects (which were actually perfectly good in the earlier pictures). On that horrible night in 1912, 1500 people died terrifying deaths in what must have seemed to them like Hell on Earth. It's doubly awful that they seem to have died just so James Cameron could declare himself "King of the World" and an utterly mediocre singer like Celine Dion could have herself a hit record.

Verdict: One can only imagine what the victims would think of all this "Titanic" exploitation. **1/2.