Category: Directed by James Cameron
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Thirty-six years after its release, recreating the original Aliens (albeit on home media) experience is difficult. Not only has there been a direct sequel, there have been multiple reboot sequels, and the extended, “special edition” version has been readily available for nineteen years now. I’m not ready for an Aliens canon deep-dive, but when did…
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Director James Cameron opens Terminator 2: Judgment Day with a couple things the audience has to think about when watching the film and isn’t going to see or hear again for a while, so they need to have it in mind to recall it later. Because Terminator 2 is an amazing kind of sequel to…
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Given his rather infamous history of personal problems, one’s got to wonder what having to humiliate himself by acting like a twelve year-old-when nineteen-did for Edward Furlong in T2 3-D: Battle Across Time. Especially since the short accompanied a theme park attraction, undoubtedly seen by more people than saw most of Furlong’s films at the…
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Xenogenesis doesn’t just have lengthy opening titles for a twelve minute short, it then has exposition explaining it as directors Cameron and Frakes pan over some sci-fi illustrations. There are some amazing things about the short, but they’re all related to the stop motion animation. First there’s a giant robot maid, though its size is…
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I always think of Aliens as a precisely choreographed ballet. Director Cameron moves his large cast–though it does winnow over time–around in these cramped sets and everyone has something to do; Cameron draws the viewer’s attention to one character, but the rest are in motion setting up the next moment in the scene. Watching the…
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I remember The Terminator being a lot better. Even as it started–I think during the first chase sequence (Michael Biehn in the department store)–I thought about the great highway chase sequence at the end. Then, as things went sour during, I kept waiting for that sequence, sure it would bring things around. But it doesn’t…
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Running almost three hours, the special edition of The Abyss manages to be too long in an interesting way. It forgets its story. There’s about an hour there with the valiant undersea oil workers battling the psychotic military man–there’s fight scenes and chase scenes and drama scenes and all sorts of scenes… just nothing about…
The Stop Button 