THIEF

(March 1981, U.S.)

For the purpose of writing this post, I re-watched Michael Mann's THIEF for the first time in over ten years. While I was watching it, I was repeatedly overwhelmed with thoughts that began with "I remember" and "Whatever happened to?" Whatever happened to major motion pictures directed by Michael Mann since PUBLIC ENEMIES ten years? Whatever happened to the intense, edge-of-your-seat thriller that wasn't necessarily a hardcore action film? Whatever happened to movies scored by the electronic musical genius of German band Tangerine Dream? I remember when I was addicted to the music of Tangerine Dream through much of my new age music obsession during the 1990s. I remember when actor James Caan was a real bad-ass son of a bitch, even when he wasn't a Corleone. I remember when THIEF was considered my favorite thriller before it was eventually replaced with John Frankenheimer's 1977 film BLACK SUNDAY. All of this is not to suggest that THIEF is a perfect thriller. Michael Mann's touch for this genre would later be improved, in my opinion, with later films like MANHUNTER (1986) and HEAT (1995). However, for a period at the beginning of the 1980s prior to the action vehicles of men like Harrison Ford, Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, THIEF fits in perfectly among other thrillers of 1981 that include ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK and NIGHTHAWKS.

James Cann plays Frank (no last name is given), a professional safecracker and jewel thief seeking to escape his life of crime and settle down to a normal and structured family life with his girlfriend Jesse (played by Tuesday Weld), even as he fronts his criminal enterprises with a successful Chicago car dealership and a bar. After taking down a successful diamond score with his partner Barry (played by James Belushi), Frank is inevitably sucked into meeting with the unknown high-level fence and Chicago Outfit boss ultimately behind all of the operations he's pulled off so far, Leo (played by Robert Prosky). Leo expresses his admiration for Frank's style and professionalism for eyeing quality stolen property and offers him the opportunity to work directly for him, offering large profits and extra incentives. As a "self-employed" independent contractor who answers to no one, Frank is reluctant and doesn't hide his verbal contempt in working for a crime boss, not wanting to increase his exposure. However, it's easy to give in to the temptations of the favors a man like Leo can provide, including access to a beautiful house, a new baby boy, and protection from corrupt police shakedowns. Frank eventually gives in to a large scale diamond height in California organized by Leo for what's promised to be a promised cash payoff of over eight hundred thousand dollars. Returning from the successful job, Frank is screwed when he receives only a fraction of what he was promised. Frank pulls a gun and tells Leo that their deal is over and takes the cash as he leaves, demanding the rest of his money in twenty-four hours. Before any of this can happen, Frank is captured and told the true nature of things. Leo owns him, his career and his family and will destroy all of it if Frank doesn't continue to work for him at his demand. Now a man with a hardened heart, he sends his wife and child away forever and blows up his house and his businesses. With nothing left to loose, he seeks revenge against his enemies, armed only with a single pistol. One man against many, Frank destroys all those who sought to destroy him and walks away into the night, his future uncertain.

THIEF being Michael Mann's feature film directorial debut, it features many of the cinematic techniques that would be his trademarks in the years to come, including cinematography, which utilizes light and shadow to give a strong sense of danger during scenes taking place at night. The film pays close attention to meticulous detail, even employing the consulting advice of real-life thieves to serve as technical advisers. As a thriller, it hold a much higher level of intelligence as it may be compared to some of the more modern heist films we've seen over the last two decades, including two many OCEAN'S films. James Caan is the traditional tough guy with a gun who still manages to make us believe that he can love in the traditional sense, if only given the proper change. Tangerine Dream provides some of the best cutting-edge electronic music that combines intensity, as well as a moody soundscape at the beaches of California (I own the soundtrack!). As previously stated, I miss them and would love to see them perform live, if only they'd come to New York.

Favorite line or dialogue:

Frank: "I am the last person in this world...that you wanna fuck with!"

THELMA & LOUISE

(May 1991, U.S.)

By the end of the 1980s, I wasn't quite sure what to make of director Ridley Scott. It seemed that the science fiction mastery of ALIEN (1979) and BLADE RUNNER (1982) had been traded in for the New York City copy thriller of SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME (1987) and BLACK RAIN (1989) by the end of the decade. By 1991, a movie poster with Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis with a tag line that said, Someone said get a life...so they did, only promoted whatever confusion I was feeling about the man. What sort of female road movie would Ridley Scott make, was the question that burned in my brain, and I had to find out.

THELMA & LOUISE starts out lighthearted enough, with two best friends Louise Sawyer (Sarandon) and Thelma Dickinson (Davis) setting out for a weekend road trip in their 1966 Ford Thunderbird to a friend's cabin to take a break from their mundane lives in Arkansas. Thelma is rather ditzy and married to a dominating and disrespectful man, while Louise is sharp and constantly on the defense, as she immediately rebukes the advances of a flirtatious stranger like Harlan in a roadhouse bar. Before we know it, any lightheartedness the film started with has turned to anger and violence when Louise unexpected kills Harlan in a deserted parking lot after he attempts to rape Thelma. Now fugitives from the law, Thelma and Louise have to figure out how to handle the situation. Going to the police is not an option because Louise recognizes that even in the 90s, we don't live in a world where anyone will believe Thelma's claim of attempted rape when she was seen by many dancing and appearing to have a good time with Harlan in the bar.

On the run now, headed for Mexico, and investigated by Detective Hal Slocumb (played by Harvey Keitel), Louise refuses to go through Texas to get there, and won't explain why, though we in the audience who are capable of intelligent thought suspect why. As time and the circumstances of their trip across the states progresses, the so-called mundane, everyday women of Arkansas are slowly becoming the tough, resourceful and resilient women of power and independence, fighting for not only their freedom, but their feminine right to fight for themselves in a man's world. Still, even in these circumstances, there's room for continued flirtation and the pursuit of lust; i.e., enter a young and unknown Brad Pitt as hitchhiker J.D. Thelma experiences sex (great sex, actually) with someone other than her asshole husband for the first time, but her ditzyness returns the next morning when she stupidly leaves J.D. alone with all the money she and Louise have to start their lives over in Mexico.

Broke, alone and afraid now, the two divas of the highway must now turn to armed robbery to survive, and it would seem they have a knack for it. By the time our two heroines are cornered at the edge of the Grand Canyon, we've had more than two hours to turn our sympathies for these two women into genuine concern and respect for what they've not only experienced, but who they once were and who they are now. There's no going back, no going to jail and no going forward. We know what the final solution is and we may actually find ourselves smiling as they "keep going", kiss each other for the last time, and drive off the cliff to their ultimate destiny. Like taxes, death was surely the only thing certain for two women like Thelma & Louise who would refuse to compromise themselves and their freedoms of choice for anybody or any reason. There's actually something almost quite visually beautiful with that final image of their car sailing across the Grand Canyon and then freeze-framed...

Today we live in the "Trump" world that has produced the #MeToo movement and a tremendous spike in feminism and recognition for the respect that women deserve. But we cannot ignore the strong feminist overtones of THELMA & LOUISE twenty-eight years ago. Even Time magazine recognized the nerve the film struck with audiences with this 1991 cover photo...

Ridley Scott, a man, recognizes how to express an uncompromising and unapologetic validation of Thelma & Louise's experiences on the road while trying to outrun the law (all men, by the way) for the revenge crime of killing a would-be male rapist. Even before all the trouble has started, the men these two women must deal with, whether in marriage or as a waitress in a restaurant, are for the most part, stereotypical and chauvinistic. But even as all of this is valid, we're forced to argue the point that all of this has occurred because Louise is an angry woman who has looses her reason under pressure when she chooses to murder Harlan in cold blood, rather than perhaps just wound him, instead. Did Harlan deserve to die, even for attempted rape? Thelma loses her reason when she chooses to rob a convenience store to get money. Was that warranted? Both of them loose their reason together when they blow up a fuel truck to smithereens in order to teach the pig who's driving it a lesson for being so disrespectful and disgusting toward them. Was that warranted? These are debates that I'm not willing to participate in because the point of my blog is film interpretation and nothing else. They do exist, nonetheless.

Regardless of all its feminist controversies, THELMA & LOUISE remains an cinematic achievement about women during a period when stronger women's roles in the movies were becoming more evident, sharing screen stardom with others like Sigourney Weaver in ALIENS (1986), Jodie Foster in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and Linda Hamilton in TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY (both 1991). And for Ridley Scott, the film remains a welcomed change of cinematic pace that would eventually lead to other great works like GLADIATOR (2000) and BLACK HAWK DOWN (2001), just to name a couple.

Favorite line or dialogue:

Detective Hal Slocumb: "I don't wanna get two personal, but do you have a good relationship with your wife?"
Darryl Dickinson: "I...I love Thelma."
Hal: "I don't intend anything by that, sir. Just a question I have to ask. Are you close with her?"
Darryl: "Yeah...I guess. I mean, I'm about as close as I can be to a nutcase like that!"

TERROR IN THE AISLES

(October 1984, U.S.)

I'm guessing that many of you outside of my own generation reading this post have likely never heard of TERROR IN THE AISLES. This is a documentary film about many of the most popular horror films up until the year of its release. Released shortly before Halloween of 1984 and even plugged by "Mistress of the Dark" Elvira on television, I'm sure Universal Pictures expected a money-making hit. It was anything but and it was easily dismissed by audiences and critics. But someone like myself, a Gen X'er who employs fond movie memories that many others many not have, there are elements of this documentary that I've come to appreciate over the years. Hardly a perfect film, or even a great film, TERROR IN THE AISLES, hosted by actor Donald Pleasence of HALLOWEEN (1978) and Nancy Allen of CARRIE (1976) and DRESSED TO KILL (1980), the film features endless clips from popular horror films. These segments of terror and suspense, accompanied by commentary, attempts to create an effective compilation of effects designed to induce fright, as well as tap our memories of our movie theater experiences in front of the horror movie.

There's elements of terror with sex in films like KLUTE (1971), WHEN A STRANGER CALLS (1979) and DRESSED TO KILL (1980), loathsome and terrifying villains like DRACULA and FRANKENSTEIN (1931), Norman Bates in PSYCHO, Michael Myers in HALLOWEEN (1978) and HALLOWEEN II (1981), Jason Vorhees in FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980) and FRIDAY THE 13TH - PART II (1981) and Leatherface in THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1974), terror of natural elements like JAWS (1975), ALLIGATOR (1980) and Hitchcock's THE BIRDS, and even the occult as in THE EXORCIST (1973), THE OMEN (1976) and AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (1981). For someone like myself, the documentary reminds me of a time at the very beginning of the 1980s when horror and slasher films were all the rage on the big screen.

However, more than just any typical documentary that tells you the what and the when, TERROR IN THE AISLES attempts to explain and dissect the reasons why we get scared and why we very often enjoy it. In a moment of psychological relevance, we become part of a experiment in which a movie audience reacts a certain way when they're surprised and jolted by an act of terror and when the movie audience is actually told about the same act of terror to come and then experiences the fear and the terror of knowing what shall happen soon and knowing they're powerless to do anything about it. It's a mild experiment, to be sure, but one I actually find psychologically-effective to our minds.

The film does, however, stretch its point a little to the point of invalidity when it attempts to extract the same horror elements from films like MARATHON MAN (1976) and NIGHTHAWKS (1981). Don't get me wrong - these are both great thrillers, but that's just what they are - thrillers, and to link them into the same effective genres as pure horror seems like a stretch, if not an outright cop-out. As narrators, Donald Pleasence and Nancy Allen are no more effective or believable than say, Abbot and Costello. They are, at best, selections that conform to their popularity at the time of the early 1980s, and nothing more. The editing is often very rapid and its techniques of juxtaposition to create a feature length film (as opposed to a simply hour-long television feature) may be considered a cornball and damaging effort to many classic horror films that should be properly preserved instead.

In short TERROR IN THE AISLES is hardly a cinematic learning tool, even in the genre of horror films. It is, however, a film that employs a degree of worthwhile and nostalgic fun, and a writer like myself has always depended on nostalgia and its true meaning in our lives. That's why I write this blog, and that's why you're reading it right now.

Favorite line or dialogue:

Sorry, there are none (oh, the horror...the horror!).

LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MY NEW BOOK!

As I've occasionally done every now and again, I'm interrupting my traditional movie blog posts to tell you all that my first book entitled IT'S STRICTLY PERSONAL: A Nostalgic Movie Memoir of 1975-1982 has finally been published. This book vividly chronicles myself as a child of the movies during the eight-year period of 1975 to 1982, when groundbreaking blockbuster motion pictures like JAWS, ROCKY, STAR WARS, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KING, SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER, GREASE, SUPERMAN-THE MOVIE, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, and E.T. not only impacted my childhood, but also shaped the man I would one day become. It's a tale of how I felt about the movies then and also how I interpret them now.

I believe that movies constitute an emotional form of time travel that allows us to drift backward and take stock of the different periods of our personal lives, and this is a personal story about the movies told with great memory and affection, for those who still remember and those who will never forget a time when movies were changing, growing, and evolving into deep-rooted memories for every child, teen, and adult who sat in front of the big screen and waited for the magic to unfold.

So, if you're ready to go back in time and remember, then I hope you'll purchase a copy of my new book, now available in softcover and digital formats on Amazon.com, Barnes&Noble.com and iTunesApple.com.

Thank you all for your support. It is sincerely appreciated.

TERROR BY NIGHT

(February 1946, U.S.)

This may be one of the shortest blog posts that I write because, quite frankly, how much can you possibly write about a film that's only sixty minutes long? In case you've never heard of this crime drama noir, it's one of the many Sherlock Holmes films made with Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as his sidekick Dr. Watson; one of four Holmes films that have fallen into the public domain over the years, which means you can often purchase these movies on a bargain-priced DVD.

This film revolves around the theft of the famous and valuable Star of Rhodesia diamond aboard a train which is transporting a coffin to Scotland. On board are various suspicious characters that will remind you of the sort of mystery setting frequently used by Agatha Christie, particularly MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS. Sherlock Holmes, on board to protect the diamond, is soon involved in murder when the son of Lady Margaret, the owner of the diamond, is found dead and the diamond stolen. In the traditional fashion, questions are asked and various suspicions are investigated. We learn that the notorious jewel thief Colonel Sebastian Moran may be on board the train. By the time additional bodies start to pile up and it all comes to a conclusion, we've learned of the mysterious compartment inside the coffin, the truth behind the diamond and it's fake counterpart, and of course, the identity of the true murder and his accomplices playing the part of police inspectors who attempt to remove the guilty man from the train before Holmes can have him arrested. Holmes, being Holmes and elementary and all that, solves the crime and brings the true criminal to justice, just as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle intended, and just as we watch it all happen in just sixty minutes.

While I haven't seen all of the Sherlock Holmes films that Rathbone and Bruce made together, this is one of the more thrilling ones I've seen if for no other reason than thrillers often take on a more intense and exciting approach when they're on board a fast moving train. Perhaps this is why I (and many others like me) look forward to those moments in James Bond films like FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, LIVE AND LET DIE and THE SPY WHO LOVED ME when we get to see Bond in action on board a speeding train and usually gets the girl just where he wants her inside one of those folding beds (hey, it worked for Cary Grant, too, in Hitchcock's NORTH BY NORTHWEST). Holmes is a classic literary character that Nigel Rathbone seems to have a solid command on (a lot better than an American like Robert Downey Jr. ever could!), while Nigel Bruce often comes off as nothing more than an overweight comic relief (perhaps he's the reason I've never truly embraced Hitchcock's SUSPICION). If absolutely nothing else, I've found that these classic black and white Sherlock Holmes films, with their public domain grainy texture, are great for very late night movie watching when you're looking for something that will help you fall asleep. It worked last night!

I told you this would be short!

Favorite line or dialogue:

Sherlock Holmes: "Did you discover anything, Watson?"
Dr. Watson: "Yes. He's a very suspicious character. He tried to put me off the scent."
Holmes: "From the little I heard, he seemed reasonably successful."

TERMS OF ENDEARMENT

(November 1983, U.S.)

As a kid in the 1980s, ever since my tenth grade class trip to see GANDHI at New York City’s Ziegfeld Theatre in 1982, I’d been looking for opportunities to expose myself to more serious adult drama on screen. Perhaps this longing I had to occasionally break away from the traditional teenage fare of action, adventure and comedy was a sign of my growing up a little more. Yet for James L. Brooks's TERMS OF ENDEARMENT, I chose to keep my interests to myself. These interests at the time stemmed from nothing other than my fond memory of recently watching Debra Winger in AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN when it premiered on HBO. When it played in my town, I didn’t bother asking any of my friends if they wanted to go see it with me. At sixteen, even before I knew what a "chick flick" really was, I somehow felt that wanting to see a movie about a mother and her daughter would pass me off as feminine somehow and I didn’t want to take a chance that it would make me the subject of ridicule at school. Sure, there was always the possibility that someone I knew would see me at the local movie theater, but I guess I chose to ignore that and take my chances.

Because I was a still a boy (and sometimes I still act like one), I had no concept of the relationships between a mother and her daughter. Still, when a movie begins with a mother so worried about her infant dying in her sleep and easing her fears by waking up the baby instead, taking comfort in her crying, you know you’re probably in for some interesting exposure to the world of adults beyond the traditional romantic comedy. Aurora Greenway (played by Shirley MacLaine) and her daughter Emma (played by Debra Winger) clearly love each other, but their moments of conflict are astounding. I honestly never know how to feel when Aurora tells Emma the night before her wedding that she's likely making the biggest mistake of her life by marrying Flap (played by Jeff Daniels). On the one hand, I can understand her absolute honesty toward protecting her daughter’s future. On the other hand, I can also hear myself asking, "Who does this to her daughter the night before her wedding?" Conflict, indeed.

The film continues through many years of Emma’s life with Flap and their three children. Life is often difficult because they're always broke. The scene in the supermarket when Emma doesn’t have enough money to pay for her food actually still gives me a small lump in my stomach because the mere thought of such a humiliation in public is enough to reach me on an emotional level. Still, even though Emma struggles with her cheating husband and her own affair with an older man from the local town bank (played by John Lithgow), her relationship with her mother improves, giving her reason to occasionally find joy in her life. I can still remember the smile on my face when I first watched mother and daughter on the bed together and talking, Aurora declaring that even late in her life, she discovered that sex was "so fan-fucking-tastic", as she put it.
Aurora’s relationship with Jack Nicholson is intriguing for me. First of all, it's JACK, and he's always a sight. TERMS OF ENDEARMENT was the first time I saw him on screen since THE SHINING, but I’d also watched in him in parts of ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST on TV. His character in this film never seems to be serious about anything for even a moment, but one can tell he has a heart for kindness and love, given the time. The scene where he drives his sports car into the water is wild and crazy and I simply love his sort of insanity. Again, this is what makes Jack...well, Jack.

Soon the film hits us with an unexpected shock. Back in 1983, during a time when social media didn’t exist and one often didn’t have to worry about movie spoilers that didn’t involve Darth Vader being Luke’s father and Spock dying, it was a shock to learn when Emma was diagnosed with terminal cancer. I can still remember hearing myself ask, "Why are you doing this to me?" We've followed along with Emma, her mother, her silly husband and all of her life’s mishaps this entire time and we haven’t complained once. Now you’re hitting us with her death?? How can this film and Hollywood be so damn unfair to us? When Emma finally dies, I won’t tell you that I cry (because I never cry at the movies, not even as a kid), but one can't help but walk away from TERMS OF ENDEARMENT with a newfound sense of curiosity and astonishment at the adult world through the eyes of the movies. Life is often unfair. Life can spend its entire time hitting you, knocking you down and testing your limits, and in the end, finally take it from you. As a teenager, when I first saw the film, it was the first time I was realizing that, like or not, bad things happened to good people. I still remember riding home on my bicycle, thinking to myself that it would be better never to tell any of my friends that I’d watched TERMS OF ENDEARMENT and loved it. Not only did I not want to take the chance of being ridiculed, but I think I also wanted to keep my feelings and emotions toward this tearjerker with its wonderful combination of humor and heartbreak to myself...that is, until I’ve written them now in this blog post.

In the summer of 1989, I was dating a girl younger than myself whom I shall call Caren L. (she’s briefly mentioned in my post blog for DEAD POET'S SOCIETY). When she was seventeen years-old, she learned that her mother was terminally ill with cancer (she died three years later). During one of our weekends together, we chose to stay in on a Saturday night and she told me she wanted to watch my videotaped copy of TERMS OF ENDEARMENT. I asked her why, knowing full well how the film ended and that it would make her very sad to watch. She told me that it was her way of accepting her mom’s illness and somehow coming to terms (no pun intended) with it. At the time, I may not have fully understood her rationale and reasoning, but today I realize it’s just another way that movies speak to us and reach some of us on an emotional level that others may not always understand. I understand.

TERMS OF ENDEARMENT won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1983.

Favorite line or dialogue:

Aurora Greenway: "What's wrong with you?"
Emma Greenway-Horton: "I got some good news."
Aurora: "What's that?"
Emma: "I'm unofficially pregnant. We haven't gotten the tests back yet, but you know me, I'm never late."
Aurora: "Well...I don't understand."
Emma: "If you're not happy for me, I'll get so mad if you're not happy."
Aurora: "Why should I be happy about being a grandmother??!!"
Flap Horton: "Does this mean you won't be knitting the baby any booties?"

TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY

(July 1991, U.S.)

A sequel to THE TERMINATOR (1984) was a total shock to me. For starters, I saw no conceivable way for the story of James Cameron's fantastic sci-fi-action thriller to continue. I mean, the Terminator was destroyed, Sarah Connor's unborn child was going to live and it looked like mankind's future had been saved from destruction and war. Furthermore, there was no internet or social media back in 1991. At best, if you wanted to keep up with what was new and exciting in the world of entertainment, you had to watch ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT on CBS, which I didn't. So when I saw a full page ad of Arnold Schwarzenegger riding a motorcycle and carrying a rifle in the New York Times Arts & Leisure section advertising the new sequel, my immediate reaction was, "When the hell did this happen?" I was skeptical, of course. But when I noticed that it was also directed by Cameron, who by now, had thrilled the world since THE TERMINATOR with ALIENS, I figured that, perhaps, it would be worth a look.

Worth a look? If ever there were three more understated words in the English language when pertaining to movie, these were it! From the moment the movie opened with a spectacular, futuristic war taking place on the grounds of Los Angeles in the year 2029, I was hooked. In fact, when I saw this awesome shot on the big screen in front of me...

...my immediate wonder was if they sold a poster in stores of this exact image. Oh, how great this would have looked on my college dorm wall (today, it would simply make a great computer screen saver).

The time is the not-too-distant future when John Connor (played by Edward Furlong) is now ten years-old (ten? Looks more like twelve to me), so figure the year is 1995. John is a troubled and delinquent kid living with foster parents because his own mother Sarah Connor (played again by Linda Hamilton) got herself locked up in a mental institution when she tried to blow up a computer lab while preparing her son for his future role as the leader of the Human Resistance against Skynet, the artificial intelligence entity with control over the United States nuclear missiles and the initiator of the nuclear holocaust called "Judgment Day" that Sarah already knows will take place on August 29, 1997. Of course, she's considered insane and no one will believe her prophecies, including her own son.

Like the first movie, Skynet of the future sends another Terminator (played by Robert Patrick), the advances T-1000 prototype comprised of liquid metal, back in time to kill John as a child. This new Terminator coincides well with the new CGI moviemaking of the 1990s because it has the awesome ability to take on the shape and appearance of just about anything and anyone it touches, including the power to transform its arms into knives and other stabbing weapons. Arnold, this time, plays the Terminator charged with protecting young John Connor, programmed and sent back in time by John himself in the future. Together, John and the Terminator break Sarah out of her imprisonment and head for the road in order to escape the authorities and prevent "Judgment Day". While the T-1000 is constantly in pursuit, the action is hardcore and easily outsoars everything we were treated to back in 1984.

Along the way, we learn about our own future in a world where scientists and technicians of Skynet retrieved the mechanical CPU arm and computer chip of the first Terminator and used it to advance our technology that would inevitably lead us all to our "Judgment Day". But with the horrifying knowledge of the future also comes the power to potentially change it. In their race against time, Sarah, John, the Terminator and the man most responsible for our future, Miles Bennett Dyson (played by Joe Morton) are out to destroy everything (including the T-1000) that Skynet can use to destroy us. After some intense battle and combat action inside a steel mill, the T-1000 is destroyed in a vat of molten steel (sorry for the spoiler!) and the future appears saved, or at least it will be after the hero Terminator of the movie destroys itself, as well. Our lives can now feel a sense of hope...at least until they make three more damn TERMINATOR sequels!

Let me say right off the bat that TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY is still my favorite action movie of all time. Despite all the films of franchises like James Bond, STAR WARS, DIE HARD and the countless comic book superhero movies that have bombarded us since Tim Burton's BATMAN (1989), it's still James Cameron's hardcore version of what might become of our future in a world where machines think more and human beings think less that continues to take my breath away even after twenty-eight years. T2's thrilling and carefully staged action sequences and awesome, eye-popping visual effects are nothing short of a landmark achievement in the what was the future of filmmaking back in the early '90s. But more than action, there's an effective human quality to the film that also includes the depth of the cyborg characters. As the savior of the human race, it's Arnold (despite his lack of credibility as a true actor, in my opinion) as the machine, who while constantly learning about the human condition, realizes the importance and value of life. T2 inaugurates a new decade before the end of the century immediately following an era when action was simply limited to the mindless thunder and high-voltage of men like Chuck Norris and Sylvester Stallone. Perhaps we, like Cameron, were getting smarter and more discriminating about what we called good entertainment on the big screen. If we were, it certainly didn't last too long. Still, I'll take the legendary history of TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY for everything it gave me when I was younger and everything it continues to give me today...on high definition Blu-Ray!

Thank you, James! Keep the great movies coming!

Favorite line or dialogue:

Sarah Connor (voice-over): "The unknown future rolls toward us. I face it for the first time with a sense of hope. Because if a machine, a Terminator, can learn the value of human life, maybe we can too."

It would seem that we can't!