The Terminator (James Cameron, 1984)

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Brad Rearden, Bill Paxton, and Brian Thompson in The Terminator

The Terminator: Arnold Schwarzenegger
Sarah Connor: Linda Hamilton
Kyle Reese: Michael Biehn
Lt. Ed Traxler: Paul Winfield
Detective Hal Vukovich: Lance Henriksen
Ginger Ventura: Bess Motta
Matt Buchanan: Rick Rossovich
Dr. Peter Silberman: Earl Boen
Pawn Shop Clerk: Dick Miller

Director: James Cameron
Screenplay: James Cameron, Gale Ann Hurd
Cinematography: Adam Greenberg
Art direction: George Costello, Maria Caso
Film editing: Mark Goldblatt
Music: Brad Fiedel

Watching The Terminator a week after the school shootings in Parkland, Florida, is a different experience than it might have been, especially when the Terminator goes into a pawnshop to get his weaponry and is told by the owner, "There's a 15-day wait on the handguns, but the rifles you can take right now." Still, although the movie's promiscuous mayhem may feel a bit off at the moment, it serves its purpose. The Terminator is a film of ideas about humanity and artificial intelligence, about machismo and law and order and survival -- maybe not as much as it's a film about things blowing up, but still enough that many of us can watch it and not feel the deadening effect that some action films produce. It's also a movie whose old-fashioned special effects like stop-motion puppetry feel oddly fresh and real when contrasted with the slick computer-generated effects of most sci-fi films now -- including most of director James Cameron's later work. The performances are good, the pacing is right, there's just enough humor in the dialogue, and even the time-travel gimmickry manages to make enough sense to be plausible within the confines of its fable.

Aliens (James Cameron, 1986)

Carrie Henn, Michael Biehn, Sigourney Weaver, Bill Paxton, Paul Reiser, Jenette Goldstein in Aliens

Ripley: Sigourney Weaver
Newt: Carrie Henn
Hicks: Michael Biehn
Burke: Paul Reiser
Bishop: Lance Henriksen
Hudson: Bill Paxton
Gorman: William Hope
Vasquez: Jenette Goldstein
Apone: Al Matthews

Director: James Cameron
Screenplay: James Cameron, David Giler, Walter Hill
Cinematography: Adrian Biddle
Production design: Peter Lamont
Film editing: Ray Lovejoy
Music: James Horner

Before James Cameron become "king of the world" and infatuated with the possibilities of CGI, he made this exciting sequel to Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979), which is not only a superb movie on its own but also one of the few sequels whose creator has actually studied what made the first film so satisfying. In this case, characters. Just observe the still above and compare it with the one I chose from Alien in which the crew of the Nostromo gathered around the infected Kane. In the one from the sequel we see Newt, Hicks, Ripley, Hudson, Burke, and Vasquez gathered around a schematic to plot out a way of dealing with the alien threat. And if you remember the film at all, you can immediately recall what made these characters so appealing -- or in the case of Burke, so appalling. Aliens could have been your standard shoot-'em-up in space, with lots of mindless action. In fact, it starts out that way, with an obnoxiously gung-ho crew of space marines blustering about how they're going to kick some extraterrestrial ass. But as the cast is whittled down by the monsters, we get to know the seven survivors -- Bishop, the android so mistrusted by Ripley, is missing from the picture -- and to feel a genuine concern about their fates. Moreover, because Cameron hasn't yet fallen under the spell of CGI, what takes place looks and feels real -- there's a tactility about the sets that computers have yet to learn how to supply. Action movies don't come any better than Alien and Aliens.