Essential Viewing: Sunday TV

As is my usual custom on the day of rest I spent most of last Sunday in front of the television.   There’s just something about coming across blockbusters from the 80s and 90s I never intended to see them again that’s hard to resist.  Really, what’s better than pressing a button and seeing a CGI tornado chasing Bill Paxton (or anything chasing Bill Paxton for that matter)?  It’s all in the flipping.  I don’t generally watch anything for more than a few minutes.  For some reason my attention span fluctuates according to medium.  I can sit and watch a movie about a log washing up on the beach (really) but when I watch TV I start channel surfing like a 5 year-old after a box of fruit rollups (those things are dangerous when I was three I saw a commercial for them and ran headfirst into a coffee table.  22 stitches.)

I’m If I’m honest with myself I think the reason I take so much pleasure in these bulging budget marathons is because I enjoy skewering bad movies as much as I enjoy watching good ones.  And if I’m even more honest with myself, it’s because I actually like them (a case of reverse cinematic denial?  Perhaps.)  On with the skewering.  I know movies are big and dumb these days but man, in the 80s and 90s when studios figured out they could make terrible films and market them to huge opening weekends, movies were down right brain-dead.  Sure they’re enjoyable, Independence Day is a great watch.  But a computer virus?  The Aliens just happened to be using Windows 95?  And how did they get an Internet connection in space?!

Another Sunday viewing joy is that it can be serendipitously hilarious.  For example, I caught the scene in True Lies where an incredibly sexy Jamie Leigh Curtis does a strip tease for her husband Arnold Schwarzenegger, (she doesn’t know it’s him, because of the plot).  Then later on I saw her in a commercial enthusiastically endorsing Activia, the yogurt laxative.  Hot.  Speaking of True Lies, every time I see it, or parts of it (I haven’t watched it end to end since I was about 14) I’m reminded of what an great ride of a movie it is.  You need both hands to count the great action sequences.  Plus, it’s genuinely a funny comedy that manages to have a strip tease scene that essential to the plot and Bill Paxton actually being good and funny as opposed to his usual bland and bland routine.

I flipped from True Lies over to the end of Terminator 3.  Which, I’m going out on a limb here, I liked when it came out.  I don’t remember why, I haven’t seen it since, but I left the theatre thinking it was good and I’ve maintained and defended that position ever since.  Boy was this a wake up call.  I’ve been living a lie.  Watching Arnold awkwardly rehash his iconic character from the 90s that, despite being from the future, feels painfully out of date was discombobulating in it’s own right.   But considering that this man is currently the Governor of Caleef-oarn-i-ah and that he took office the same year the movie was released takes its absurdity to new levels.  Still the solid ending (judgment day, nuclear bombs gong off everywhere, because of the plot) did get me kinda amped Terminator 4, coming out next month.  But more than that it made me jonesing to watch Terminator 2.  Because really, is there a better action film than T2?

While pondering this essential question my mind drifted once again to True Lies.   Not as iconic as Terminator but that last 45 minutes has to put True Lies in the conversation.  Another contender I immediately thought of was Aliens, a film I rewatched for the 10th time just a couple months ago.  If I had the ability to visit various premieres in film history, along with Douglas Fairbanks’ The Thief of Baghdad, Buster Keaton’s The General and Star Wars, I’d go to the opening night of Aliens just to hear the crowd’s reaction when Sigourney Weaver lays the smack down on the alien queen.  “Get a way from her you bitch!”  Strong.

Then it dawned on me, Terminator 2, True Lies, Aliens, all directed by James Cameron.  I love to rip on Cameron and won’t stop, when you stand on a stage and say to a billion people “I’m the king of the world!” after winning an award for directing Titanic you deserve what’s coming to you.  But Sunday viewing has forced me to give him his due.  Three kick-ass films films that are endlessly watchable and actually really good.  I tip my hat to you Mr. Cameron.

I don’t what’s going on with him lately.   He hasn’t directed a narrative film since Titanic.  Instead he’s been making underwater IMAX movies with bizarrely similar titles that contain titles of his previous films, Ghosts of the Abyss and Aliens of the Deep.  I wonder if Secrets of the Piranha 2: The Spawning is next.  See, now I’m ripping on him again.  James Cameron’s sense of entitlement is so unlikeable even when being praised he gets made fun of.  Perhaps Avatar, his 3D extravaganza coming out this December, will “right the ship.”  I hope so because I’d love to add another action film to my endlessly watchable repertoire (it’s been filling it up with Paul Rudd’s films lately).

Ahhh, the is the glory of Sunday TV.  Thanks for all the pearls of widsom.  I wonder what fruits will you bear next week.