Carl Weathers: Always the Best Man, Never the Groom

He got name-above-title on the poster, but not in the opening credits.

I had a swell time working once again with one my former Washington City Paper editors, Jon Fischer, over the weekend in his new role as WaPo’s arts editor in this piece that it only occurred to me to pitch as I was out for a run Friday evening, just a couple of hours of learning of Carl Weathers’ death.

Alt lede:

A long time ago in a century far, far away, before Liam Neeson turned AARP-eligible throat-punching into its own thriving genre, it was unusual for action movies to be released in the winter. But that was where the long-defunct Lorimar Motion Pictures chose to dump “Action Jackson” in February of 1988 — just under a year after the release of “Lethal Weapon,” seven months after “Predator,” five months before “Die Hard.” Each of those better-remembered, franchise-launching shoot-’em-ups were, like “Action Jackson,” produced (or coproduced) by Joel Silver, and each one features memorable moments from actors who were perhaps not quite famous enough even to be called character actors, but who also show up in “Action Jackson.” If you’ve a yen for hypermasculine Reagan-era bloodbaths, you’ll know their faces, if not their names: Robert Davi. Bill Duke. Mary Ellen Trainor. Ed O’Ross. The unofficial Joel Silver Players.

The exception, of course, was Jericho “Action” Jackson himself, Carl Weathers.

Completing THE AIRBORNE YULETIDE EVENT!

Halldeckers! Merrymakers! Gay Apparel-donners! It’s been another exhausting journey, but my 2022 yulemix, The Airborne Yuletide Event, is now complete in its two-sided analog entirety. And I only cheated on the length a little.

Longtime listeners may spot nods to installments past here and there, because to neglect such a long and rich and long and storied and long history would be ungrateful, somehow. But the vast majority of these 103 minutes — 54 percent of the run-time of Avatar: The Way of Water by volume — are comprised of entirely new old material. There’re even four actually new, released-in-2022 yuletunes strategically sprinkled throughout this most festive and beguiling of sonic canvases.

Listen close, my dear ones, and listen loud. Merry Christmas.

ctklimek · THE AIRBORNE YULETIDE EVENT — Yuletunes Eclectic & Inexplicable XVII [Side B]

The Future Is Female: "Terminator: Dark Fate," reviewed.

Mackenzie Davis and Linda Hamilton working together are a cybernetic assassin’s worst nightmare.

As in every Terminator movie, the new Dark Fate offers no explanation for why the A.I.—SkyWho? It’s called LEGION now—dispatched only a single cyborg assassin to this time period, or why the human resistance sent only one bodyguard. The answer, of course, is that the one-on-one conceit is just more compelling and dramatic than a platoon representing each faction would be.

My NPR review of Terminator: Dark Fate, a these-were-canon-those-were-not half-reboot in the tradition of Superman Returns and Halloween (2018), is here.

Pop Culture Happy Hour, Small Batch Ed. — Terminator: Genisys (sic)

Arnold Schwarzenegger as a long-serving T-800. (Paramount/Skydance)

 Skyped in from the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center in beautiful New London, CT to dissect Terminator: Genisys (sic) — the underwhelming reboot of/fourth sequel to one of my favorite movies — with Pal-for-Life Glen Weldon. While I was taking in this movie in the “Luxury Seating” equipped Waterford 9 Cinemas, several of my fellow Critic Fellows, all ladies, were next door enjoying Magic Mike XXL. My proposal for a double feature was summarily rejected.

The Future Is Not Set: A Terminator Dossier

A T-800 goes shopping for clothes at the Griffith Park Observatory, May 12, 1984.

I haven't seen the by-all-accounts underwhelming Terminator: Genisys yet, because I've been busy being a "Critic Fellow" at the one-of-a-kind Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center in the wilds of Connecticut. But I did indulge in some quippy dramaturgy on the wandering-ronin Terminator franchise, for NPR.

Bulgarian Holiday: The Expendables 3, reviewed.

No idea who those two guys in the back row at left are, but next to them are MMA champ Rhonda Rousey and welterweight boxer Victor Ortiz. Maybe they should've called this film The Availables.

I reviewed The Expendables 3 for NPR, because their audience demanded it.

This movie made me weirdly nostalgic for the days when martial artists or athletes like current MMA champ Ronda Rousey or retired MMA fighter Randy Couture might be deemed worthy of their own low-budget action flicks. No, I can't explain, really.

The Infiltration Unit: Terminator 2's Brilliant Game of Good 'Bot, Bad Cop

Robert Patrick's "mimetic pollyalloy" T-1000 could look like anyone. For most of T2, he looks like an LAPD patrolman.

I've very proud to have contributed the concluding essay of The Dissolve's Movie of the Week coverage of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, long one of my sentimental favorites. My piece examines how cowriter-director James Cameron's decision to disguise the film's mysterious villain, the advanced T-1000 Terminator played (mostly) by Robert Patrick, as a uniformed Los Angeles police officer anticipated our growing discomfort with police in general and the L.A.P.D. in particular at the start of the 90s. It also explores the film's ironic connection to the tragic beating of Rodney King by four L.A.P.D. officers near one of T2's key locations while the film was in production. Read it here.

Listen, all y'all, this is my review of Sabotage.

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"Vhat did I tell you about those stupid cornrows!" Arnold Schwarzenegger and Joe Manganiello in Sabotage.

Both of Sabotage's prior titles, Ten and Breacher, make more sense than the one it ended up with. Actually, the title is no more nonsensical than the convoluted plot of David Ayer's gruesome, vulgar, throughly disreputable dirty-cop thriller. It's only just barely a Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle, which is part of why it's the most satisfying picture he's made in 20 years.  I reviewed it for The Village Voice.