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.

You Can Castle-Keep It: Ironclad: Battle for Blood, reviewed.

What's in a name? Twinnie Lee Moore (!) as Crazy Mary (!!) in Ironclad: Battle for Blood.

Look, I'm not sorry for likening Predator to The Seven Samurai in my Dissolve review of Ironclad: Battle for Blood. And compared to this thing, Predator may as well be The Seven Samurai. 

Sex Tape Is the Funniest Move About Sex Under the Corrupting Influence of Marriage Since Eyes Wide Shut

Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel set fire to The Cloud (Claire Folger/Sony).

Here's my Village Voice review of Sex Tape, a defiantly R-rated farce starring Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel that's almost good enough.

Quizzed on Pop Culture Happy Hour's 200th episode, live!

Audie Cornish and Linda Holmes compete in the Wonder Woman quiz administered by Glen Weldon, June 24, 2014.

This was my enviable view for most of Pop Culture Happy Hour's special 200th episode live show at NPR headquarters last month. But I did have the honor of briefly ascending the stage to join All Things Considered film critic (and my Washington City Paper colleague) Bob Mondello in absolutely crushing NPR's Tanya Ballard Brown and Petra Mayer in the blockbuster movie IMDB plot keyword quiz conceived by PCHH host Linda Holmes. That's about halfway through the quiz segment of the show, posted today.

The highlight of the show is the Wonder Woman crucible designed by my Pal-for-Life Glen Weldon, against which both Audie Cornish and Linda were tested. Playing from the audience, I actually did relatively well, because I remembered a 13-year-old Hank Stuever story from the Washington Post about when the monthly Wonder Woman comic got its first openly gay writer & artist, Phil Jimenez. I can't find a link to its original WashPo version, but it's reprinted in Hank's book Off Ramp, which I recommend, for whatever that's worth.

Thanks as always to Linda, Glen, and Stephen Thompson for having me on the show.

NPR PCHH #200, part 2 - Quizzes and Q & A

That Equine Object of Desire: A Brony Tale, reviewed.

As has been the story of my life for the whole of July after Independence Day every year since 2010, I am hip deep in Capital Fringe Festival coverage for Fringeworthy, the Washington City Paper's CapFringe blog. But I took some time out to review A Brony Tale,  a documentary about the organized, adult fandom of the cartoon My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, for The Dissolve.

Anyway, We Delivered the Bomb: On Choosing the 50 Greatest Summer Blockbusters

In honor of the historic 25th anniversary of the release of Lethal Weapon 2, give or take a couple of days  -- no, that's not actually why I did this -- I elucidated the agonizing process of logrolling and negotiating required for me to determine my votes in The Dissolve's list of the 50 greatest summer blockbusters in this essay for NPR Monkey See.

Sometimes you need the Socratic Method and math to discover you're dead inside.

The Unbearable (B)lightness of Being... Rich! Affluenza, reviewed.

Valentina de Angelis and Nicola Peltz in Affluenza. I could barely tell them apart.

I reviewed the unenlightening spiritual-poverty-among-one-percenters melodrama Affluenza for The Dissolve. The movie is set just prior to the 2008 financial crisis, which is uses as a backdrop for its lame love triangle plot. You could read a couple or three chapters of Michael Lewis' The Big Short with your 85 minutes instead. Or just watch some soaps.

(My Contributions to) The Dissolve's 50 Greatest Summer Blockbusters

Ricardo Montalban's Khan was Star Trek's greatest villain.

Nuclear Family: Eddie Furlong, Linda Hamilton, and Arnold Schwarzenegger fight the future in Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

Minority Report, Steven Spielberg's most Hitchcockian film, was all about not being able to trust what you were seeing.

It's only July 1, but thanks to the ever-accelerating start date of the summer movie season -- it kicked off the first weekend of April this year, when Captain America: The Winter Soldier came out -- summer movies are done. I still want to see Snowpiercer, which will roll out to Washington, DC this week, but the less-than-enthusiastic early notices from critics I respect has tempered my enthusiasm for that. There's no Dark Knight coming in two weeks. There's no Terminator 2: Judgment Day opening at midnight tomorrow night. Does that sadden me? It does, a little! Shut up.

Anyway, I was honored to be one of a dozen critics who determined -- through three rounds of voting -- the 50 Greatest Summer Blockbusters for The Dissolve. Numbers 50-31 were posted yesterday; 30-11 went up today. Tomorrow you'll all find out what we deemed the Top Ten.

I had the honor of writing the entires for three of my favorites: Steven Spielberg's Minority Report, from 2002, which placed 46th; Nic Meyer's Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, from 1982, which placed 37th; and at lucky no. 13, James Cameron's Terminator 2: Judgment Day, which is probably my personal all-time favorite summer movie. (I still love you, Jaws, but so does everyone else, and you arrived before I did. Whereas I had the experience of discovering T2's greatness at the same as the rest of the world.)

The process of choosing our 50 from the initial list of 655, I think it was, was fairly agonizing. Like any exercise is winnowing, it forces you to examine your priorities in art. I'll probably try to write about that this week. UPDATE: I did write about it.