Cameron is capable of delivering slick, entertaining blockbusters, but it can turn kitsch very fast. He directed some of the absolute biggest films out there, so unless you're completely adverse to blockbusters, his oeuvre is a must.
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Regardless of its diminishing appeal, Aliens is still a film I love revisiting (though the next time I might just ditch the Director's Cut).
Great adventure, strenghtened by a strong mix of scifi, fantasy and action elements. The uncut version is a little long though and the ending is pretty cheesy. Still a very charming film with a bunch of memorable scenes, just not as good as I remembered.
It's been at least 2 decades since I watched this one. I caught it right when I was turning my back on Hollywood cinema, so this 3+ hour kitsch-fest really wasn't something I was craving back then. There were some things I appreciated more this time around, but it's still way too saccharine for me. A crew is trying to locate a precious gem that reportedly sunk together with the Titanic. They fail to find it, but an old woman who recognizes herself in a recovered drawing contacts the divers and is willing to share her tale with them. It's a story of romance and disaster, set amidst one of the most famous boating accidents of all time. DiCaprio is solid and Bates is a delight (with some nice quips, one of them surprisingly saucy), the rest of the cast is a bit doubtier. The romance in the first half beats the epic disaster bits that make up most of the second half, but it's really Cameron's cheesy direction and the excessive runtime that make this film pretty tough to sit through.Read all
13 years after Cameron "gifted" us the first film, he returns with the first in a series of sequels. I'd forgotten most about the first one already, apart from the fact that it was incredibly long, gaudy, and cheesy. This second film is just more of the same, and that's not a good thing at all. Jake and Neytiri are still living on Pandora, where they created their own little family. The peace is only short-lived, as an old threat returns to Pandora, and Jake is forced to flee the forest and build a new home near a reef. The people there are quite hostile toward Jake, but he won't back down and he'll fight anything who tries to touch his family. Technically it may be quite impressive, but it's such an aesthetic eyesore that I simply couldn't enjoy a single thing of it. The CG looks utterly ridiculous, Pandora is the worst kind of color barf and the creatures look like they were designed by old AI. Add to that some cheesy drama, a bland plot, a terrible score, and a runtime crossing the 3-hour mark, and you have yourself one pretty bad film.Read all
