The Jerk from 20,000 Fathoms: Deepsea Challenge 3D, reviewed.

The Deepsea Challenger, designed by Ron Allum and James Cameron, is the only submarine in existence that can dive to full ocean depth. (Mark Thiessen/National Geographic)

My review of Deepsea Challenge 3D, the new National Geographic documentary about James Cameron's historic March 2012 dive to the bottom of the deepest part of any ocean on the planet in a one-of-a-kind sub he co-designed himself, is on The Dissolve today. When he isn't busy being a real-life Steve Zissou, Cameron is still one of my favorite filmmakers. And I didn't even like Avatar all that much.

I know: He annoys you. His dialogue is clunky. He should've been nicer to Kate Winslet during the production of Titanic 18 years ago, when the world press was writing every day that he was going to bankrupt 20th Century Fox and rooting for him to fail. He should've played it a little cooler up at the podium on Oscar night 1998, when he won Best Director for the film that was absolutely, positively going to end his career, except that it became the biggest worldwide hit in the history of cinema.  

But you know what? Hollywood, and the world, are full of people who have 100 percent of Cameron's ego and one percent of his talent. And the guy who wrote and directed The Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and Titanic -- as well as the admittedly problematic True Lies and Avatar -- can do whatever he wants.

Whatever He Wants turns out to be designing revolutionary submarines and risking his own life to take them to the most inhospitable climate on Earth, where no rescue would be possible if something went wrong, to show us all what's down there and remind us how little we know of the ocean that covers most of our planet. Wrinkle your nose at him if you must.

Deleted Scene: The Infiltration Unit

The "mimetic pollyalloy" T-1000 in its natural habitat.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day originally had a sunlit coda set on the National Mall in the no-longer-grim future of 2029 with Linda Hamilton in unconvincing old age makeup. Director James Cameron was right to cut it.

My essay about the movie's villain that ran on The Dissolve last week originally had a rambling 500-word introduction. My editor, Keith Phipps, was right to cut it.

So here it is!

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Sixty-one minutes into the theatrical cut of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, there’s a shot so hokey that only the unrelenting intensity of the preceding hour could keep the audience from laughing.

Sarah Connor and her son John — future Che Guevara of the resistance against SkyNet, the artificial intelligence network destined to nuke the Northern Hemisphere and then hunt the human vermin scurrying among its ashes — speed away from the insane asylum from which Sarah has just pulled off a desperate jailbreak. They’re in a commandeered police car driven by the T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger model) Terminator, their ally.

In the rearview mirror, we see the advanced T-1000 Terminator, which wants nothing on Earth but to kill them, in an awkward foot pursuit with two swords/dredging hooks for hands. He is played by Robert Patrick, a 32-year-old former Bowling Green University linebacker who trained himself to sprint full speed with his mouth closed, the way no human being runs, for the role. He looks graceful, fast, and lethal every time he runs in the movie except this one.

Where he looks ridiculous.

Terminator Scissorhands.

Sent from the future by the malevolent supercomputer StruwwelpeterNet to snip the heads off bad little boys and girls.

Is what he looks like.

We know by this point the T-1000 is made from a “mimetic polyalloy” that can rearrange itself into stabby metal objects, and that can at least temporarily alter his appearance to make him an perfect visual doppelganger of any person he touches. We even bought the shot just a moment ago, when the T-800 fired his shotgun point blank into the T-1000’s face — well, “face” — and the thing’s bubbling metal head (just infer the quotation marks around all future references to specific body parts and gender, please) burst open like a tin of Jiffy Pop before zipping itself back together.

But that goofy shot of him running in the mirror is the last time the T-1000 will menace our heroes for 34 minutes — a perilously long chunk of a kinetic thriller like this one. T2’s roughly $100 million cost was a record high when the film went into production in 1990, but this shot wouldn’t have looked any different if it had been a penny-pinching guerilla action movie, like 1984’s The Terminator — the film that earned cowriter/director James Cameron a career.

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Read the final version of this essay at The Dissolve, which jettisoned this looooooong setup to cut to the still-quite-lengthy chase. Thanks again to Keith for his smart, patient, improving edit.

I reviewed a movie "that attempts to do for cunnilingus what Jaws did for ocean swimming."

I want you to think of this picture the next time you reach for a cigarette. Cabin Fever: Patent Zero.

If a giant, irradiated lizard can be the star of a long-running franchise, why not a flesh-eating virus? Many reasons, actually.I still haven't managed to see Boyhood or Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, but  I reviewed Cabin Fever: Patient Zero for The Dissolve.

Psychiatric Help $0.05: Lucy, reviewed.

It's Lucy star Scarlett Johannson's year.

My NPR review of Luc Besson's wiggedy-wack but truly, madly, deeply watchable Lucy. 

I'm still feeling pretty good about the summer movies I recommended (then) unseen in the Village Voice back in May, though Dawn of the Planet of the Apes -- which I still haven't caught with -- probably should've made the list. And I arbitrarily excluded documentaries, even though Life Itself is the only film that's made me cry so far this year. Though I haven't seen Boyhood yet, either.

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.