Personal Canon #86: T2: JUDGMENT DAY (1991)

For the 20th anniversary of the James Cameron classic Terminator 2, Judgment Day a reposting of the Personal Canon essay on the film, easily one of the best actioners of all time with a performance by Linda Hamilton which rivals Sigourney Weaver's Ripley badassery ...and that's a nearly impossible feat.

T2: Judgment Day (1991)  Directed by James Cameron | Screenplay by James Cameron and William Wisher Jr | Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Robert Patrick, Joe Morton, S Epatha Merkerson and introducing Edward Furlong | Released 07/03/1991

Once the big profits for the small budgeted The Terminator began rolling in in October of '84, James Cameron became a hot commodity. He wasted no time on the follow up. Twenty-one months later the release of the much larger sci-fi spectacle Aliens (1986 -- to be celebrated here very soon) catapulted him from "filmmaker to watch" to the real deal. His long absence from the multiplex -- Avatar's December 2009 bow ended a 12 year drought -- made it easy to forget this basic truth: the director once moved swiftly through the stages of filmmaking if never quite as rapidly as his movies moved through their action. After Aliens, he left outer space for the deep seas with The Abyss (another hit) and having proved himself thrice over, returned to the killer robots that made his name.

"Model Citizen"
The Terminator cost 6 million to make, Terminator 2: Judgment Day would cost 100 million plus. The budget wasn't the only thing exploding: salaries, visual effects, setpieces, ambition, and public reaction were all supersized. Yet for all of this exponential external growth, Cameron smartly kept his focus tight and intimate.

Early shots give you the color scheme: fiery reds|steel blues. (Michael Edwards as JC.)

Sarah Connor's opening narration and the imagery of post-apocalyptic LA it plays over, both review the first movie and download Cameron's game plan for the sequel.

The computer which controlled the machines, Skynet, sent two terminators back through time. Their mission: to destroy the leader of the human resistance, John Connor my son. The first terminator was programmed to strike at me in the year 1984 before John was born. It failed. The second was set to strike at John himself when he was still a child. As before the resistance was able to send a lone warrior, a protector for John. It was just a question of which one of them would reach him first.

In other words, it's more of the same... only bigger which we notice immediately by way of shinier effects and massive fireball explosions. This repeat template is familiar but it won't be comfortable. We're also going deeper. The story structure is varied only enough to reflect the passage of time. But what has that passage of time wrought?

Upgrade U: The origin T-800 (Arnold) and the leaner meaner T-1000 (Robert Patrick)

As before... two naked men arriving from the future are introduced first. Once clothes are violently procured, their target is immediately identified by text (a phone book in the first film, a police car monitor in the second). Cut to target: John Connor (Edward Furlong). He's even introduced with a shot of a motorbike just like his mother was in 1984. So far so remarkably similar. This makes the slight tweaks stand out all the more. First, the film is more self consciously "funny" (the "Born to Be Bad" accompaniment to the T-800's intro). Second, both visitors from the future are instantly portrayed as formidable threats rather than as a David and Goliath mismatch. Third... where the hell is Sarah Connor?

Click to read more ...

Yes, No, Maybe So: "War Horse"

I didn't think we'd be getting this trailer so soon but I guess the year is getting on. Wowee - 2011 is half over tomorrow... should we do a "best of"? Herewith, the first trailer for Steven Spielberg's Christmas-time presumed Oscar frontrunner spectacle War Horse. We'll decide how excited we are with our yes, no, maybe so treatment.

Can you imagine flying over a war, and you know you can never look down? You have to look forward or you'll never get home. I ask you: What could be braver than that?

YES If there's any director who excels at capturing the spirit of (boy) wonder, it's Spielberg. The first shot of the lead (Jeremy Irvine as Albert) brings to mind both E.T. and Empire of the Sun in particular as a boy is amazed at the wonderment he beholds ...in this case, a horse rather than an alien or an airplane. The trailer also reminded me of something totally off-topic but that warmed my heart. Do you remember those old ads about indie movie making starring Jesse Eisenberg's little sister Hailee. Remember those? I forget what they were for. She played the world's youngest movie director or something?

My movie is called Horses Are Pretty because horses are pretty.

That they are. Don't think Spielberg won't know how to exploit their innate majesty.

NO "RUN FORREST ALBERT RUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN" [trailer and Oscar commentary after the jump]

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One Take Wonders

Though I don't recall when it began -- maybe with Rope as just discussed? --  I've been obsessed with one-take scenes for what seems like forever. You know the kind. It's that thrilling moment when the editor seems to go out for a smoke break and the director allows the film and/or performances to fully breathe. That free breathing is probably an illusion since the scenes must be rigidly corseted by the technical and performative choreography required to get it all without "coverage".

When you see a great one take scene or film, even if that "one" take is partly a matter of film trickery (examples: Atonement, Children of Men basically the entirety of Alfred Hitchcock's Rope and Aleksandr Sukorov's Russian Ark and a scene we just discussed from 25 years ago in Peggy Sue Got Married) it can be hard to return to the world of "regular" filmmaking with its generic one and a ½ second cuts composed of plentiful coverage. Over the shoulder. Close up. Over the shoulder. Repeat for billions of converszzzzzzzzzz  

I'm sorry I fell asleep.

So why do so few film directors trust in the highwire potency of long or single takes? Are they too difficult to pull off? Are film actors that unable to sustain themselves throughout emotional hairpin turns the way stage actors can 8 shows a week for hours at a time? Do people think the audience will get bored (a falsity since these scenes are usually THE talking points of their movies)?

If they're so hard to pull off why do music videos with significantly lower budgets than movies keep selling them so well?

The latest one I saw was the low budget but high entertainment "Party Girl" by XELLE 

Absolutely hot. Think of the rehearsal time required just to time things like that glitter blow? But it works, don't you think?

And I've already expressed my love for both Robyn's "Call Your Girlfriend" - just her dancing in a gym but with all the lighting tricks it's just totally a great watch --  and Cosmo's Jarvis "Gay Pirate" which is both sing-a-long fun and actually moving.

Although it's NOT a one take video, this REM "üBerlin" video starring rising actor Aaron Johnson (directed by his partner Sam Taylor-Wood) breathes enough to suggest that it wanted to be one and would have been a classic video instead of just a frisky uninhibited one, if it were. 

So I ask in full sincerity...

  Why are today's directors so afraid of letting a moment play out without zillions of edits? If music videos -- which were once blamed for shortening the average shot length in movies -- can ironically use them so often now, why can't today's full length pictures? 

Overheard at "The Tree of Life"

This weekend I was collecting tweets about things people have overheard at their screenings of Terrence Malick's mysterious artful epic The Tree of Life.

I kicked things off with two stories from my screening. The first was two very old ladies teetering out of the theater arm-in-arm.

Some of that was very moving... but most of it was very boring.

Next came a bored middle aged husband and his angry loud wife...

Wife: I couldn't wait for that to be over.
Husband: It was...long.
Wife: It was a DAY long. I couldn't take one more symbol, metaphor or paradox.

Mikhael joined my "overheard" enthusiasm, submitting the following from his screening:

Woody Allen look-a-like to his wife: So tell me what that was all about?

Will Holston heard this:

Old Lady Yelling: CAN ANYONE TELL ME WHAT THAT WAS ABOUT?

Jake Cole saw a hipster in a fedora with a Che t-shirt who was above it all.

It's not as smart as it thinks it is.

And finally Erin had a very boisterous crowd so I think she wins. She heard the following random snippets, all of them utterly hilarious if you've seen the movie.

There's no acting!

Are we in the right film?

Are those sunflowers?

[during last ten minutes] Is that SEAN PENN?!

None of these comments surprise me and all of them delight me because The Tree of Life is so meditative and personal and open to interpretation that anyone can probably feel anything while they're watching it. I imagine that people who don't like their mind to wander, to fill in, to have associative adventures both scary and peaceful and god-knows-what-else during a screening probably become utterly unhinged. I like that feeling in a movie theater but I was unnerved a couple of times by the barrage of things I was feeling and the distinct impression that the film wasn't trying to make me feel them exactly and maybe the film wasn't even responsible for me feeling them... which was both exciting and annoying.

I haven't talked about the movie at all here because i missed the first wave or critical discussion (I have yet to read even one review) and was totally shy thereafter. I mostly enjoyed it but for its repetitive preciousness about prayers to God and the Sean Penn sequences. But I think in some key ways it's the most inaccessible thing I've seen in theaters since Matthew Barney's 10 hour Cremaster cycle (which I was gaga for) so I'm perversely enjoying that some unsuspecting moviegoers are tricked into seeing it by Malick's reputation and the twin towers of stardom that are PITT and PENN.

To be frank I adamantly believe that Sean Penn was a financial compromise the movie shouldn't have made. This part, which should only be a vessel to provide the visual passing of time, needed a complete unknown. His star presence kept taking me out of the movie --  'Why is this big star Brad Pitt's angry son all grown up?' -- because Penn didn't have enough of a character to play to justify an "actor" playing it.  Every other cast member seemed to have been utterly absorbed into the film like they were just appendages or organs powered by its brain, blood and nervous system. Brad Pitt in particular was fantastically convincing and period specific as the frustrated father. Unlike Penn I never felt like I was seeing "Brad Pitt". I'll assume you've read a hundred times by now that the child performances were sensational examples of the kind of "naturalism" that most movies don't ever attempt. One scene in particular with the two eldest boys in tall grass, one of them crying, totally unnerved and upset me and it's my strongest memory of the movie. Well, aside from the bravura creation sequence. Those briefly glimpsed dinosaurs had more soul than any screen dinosaurs ever, yes?

YOUR TURN. Sorry it took me so long to say anything. How unruly was your audience and how conflicted was your own response to the year's most challenging movie to see regular release thus far?

Best Shot: "Peggy Sue Got Married" ... Her Second 25th Anniversary

Hit Me With Your Best Shot is a series where we look at favorite images and choose a "best shot" from a pre-selected movie. The moments that most define a film, elevate it, or merely gives us the most visual pleasure. "Best" is a fluid adjective. TWO WEEKS FROM NOW (June 29th) we'll be discussing Luchino Vischonti's Rocco And His Brothers (1960). Won't you join us? It's supposed to be awesome.

Francis Ford Coppola's PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED (1986).

It's all in the transitions with Peggy Sue Got Married. And with Peggy Sue (Kathleen Turner), who begins the picture distraught over her impending divorce and ends the picture by rejecting that new future (divorce) and for the recent past (troubled marriage). In the present tense, she's attending a high school reunion (a celebration of the past) while worrying about her future. And soon, after collapsing on the reunion's stage, she's thrust back into her own past... but aware that she shouldn't be there and viewing her past from the vantage point of the future. She's always out of time.

Note the way Coppola frames her at key moments, like this one above, where he separates her from things she is very much a part of, like this 25th High School Reunion. (I figured the movie's 25th anniversary year was a good time to revisit it and I'm so glad I did.)

In the lead up to the most magical and compelling shot in the film, she returns to her childhood home and considers knocking as the door drifts open of its own accord. Again we see the heroine separated visually from the main setting of the story, but in both cases she's about to enter into the present, whichever present that is, but she's doing so very tentatively. She either doesn't want to be there or she does but happens to be terrified. It's hard to live in the present but it's even harder when that present is the past.

The best shot in the film comes very early when Peggy Sue enters her childhood bedroom. Coppola moves the camera around the room and accelerates in a dizzying circle until we're back with the middle aged woman as she rediscovers her adolescence. There are no edits (THANK YOU!) as Peggy repeats the circling, rediscovering the room she grew up in. She seems utterly bewitched by the simplest things like a shoe on the carpet, her record player, a wee book. The room is lit so softly and superbly by the late cinematographer Jordan Cronenwerth and he was deservingly Oscar nominated for this picture! [Trivia note: His son Jeff was nominated just last year in the same category for The Social Network]. When Peggy finishes her tour, we've seen Kathleen Turner go from hypnotic trance to simple joy to confusion and then back to terrified, still not at peace with her time travelling.

WHAT is going on."

This fluctuation of mood in the space of one scene, is in perfect synch with the spotty brilliance of the movie which finds funny, sad, silly and mysterious ways to dig into the crazy moodswings of those hormonally charged teenage years while simultaneously commenting on middle aged "it's all behind me" panic. You could say the same of many time travel or body switching movies, but Coppola's vision is more adult than much of this peculiar subgenre. The movie is quite funny but it's also shot through with despair. Even the finale, a "happy ending" has a strange undertow of defeatist compromise, despite the fantastical happenings proceeding it. Even if you can go home again, you can't reboot your life; you have to make peace with it.

Peggy Sue peaked early. And so it is with Peggy Sue Got Married which is wonderfully compelling in the first third, less so in the second, and sputters and collapses at the finale. In a way the movie's primary weakness is absolutely fitting. It showed such promise during its youth! Does the movie's minor reputation reflect merely that it's an older person's film -- people Peggy Sue's age, who had the most to gain from its high school in the late 50s nostalgia would be hitting 70 about now -- or is it simply a result of its own shortcomings?

Arguably the movie is only a minor footnote now, but I still love it. If it's remembered it's mostly within the context of Coppola's career and family trivia (his daughter Sofia, her accomplished filmmaking career way ahead of her plays Peggy Sue's younger sister and his nephew Nicolas Cage gets the male lead) or as the  for the peak of Kathleen Turner's short-lived mega stardom. It had a disappointing Oscar run. Turner's wonderfully playful work, which is complicated but looks easy (that's Oscar death!) is still a real beauty of a star turn 25 years later. The final image that really stung on this revisit, is not a single shot but two of them, fused in a slow melancholy dissolve.

Peggy Sue has just broken up with her boyfriend again in an attempt to save them both from their 25 years-later divorce. She sits tired and despondent, lights a cigarette and we dissolve to the next scene. The beautiful thing is that it looks just like a memory: Soulful, colorful, lively... but half-imagined.

Check out these other Peggy Sue articles!

• Movies Kick Ass "Reverse Dorothy"
• The Entertainment Junkie "one woman's hall of mirrors" -- this is a really interesting take celebrating my least favorite scenes. It's making me rethink them!
• Film Actually loves the film's quotability. It does have great lines. And hair. And teeth. And eyes.
• Missemmamm really loves Peggy Sue and shared her favorite moments
• Awwww, the Movies Peggy's wild night.