Aliens (1986, directed by James Cameron)

Posted on October 8, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

When I learned that today was Sigourney Weaver’s birthday, I flashed back to the first time I saw Aliens.

I was just a kid, probably too young for the movie. My father rented Aliens from the local Blockbuster. It had been years since the movie had first come out but my father, who went to every Star Trek movie premiere and who still knows the lore of Star Wars better than I do, had never seen it and he was planning on correcting that oversight. My family gathered in the living room. We turned out all the lights. The tape was slipped into the VCR. Play was hit. Our boxy television turned into a movie screen and Aliens began.

And it scared the Hell out of me.

Today, I think people forget just how scary both Alien and Aliens are the first time that you watch them. After the first time, you at least know when the aliens are going to jump out at people and you also know who is going to survive. Today, if I rewatch Aliens, I know not to get to attached to the any of the Colonial Marines. I also know not to trust Carter Burke, even if he is played by Paul Reiser. I watch the movie in anticipation of Bill Paxton’s “Game over, man,” instead of dreading it. When I first watched it, all I knew is that the screen suddenly went dark, the soundtrack was full of screeches and the deaths of the Marines, and that the only thing scarier then being confronted with one alien was being confronted with a hundred of them at once. When I watch today, I know Bishop (Lance Henriksen) is going to prove to be a good android. I didn’t have the assurance when I first watched the movie. For all I knew, he was going to just abandon Ripley (Weave), Newt (Carrie Henn),and Hicks (Michael Biehn) on the planet.

Sigourney Weaver was the heart of that film. She went from being angry and bitter over what happened during then first Alien to still being angry and bitter but willing to risk her life to save Newt. From the start, she alone understood the Xenomorph threat and she was ultimately victorious because she was not only as determined and ruthless as the Queen but she actually had the heart that her opponent lacked. Ripley won because she was actually fighting for something more than just conquest. She was fighting to save Newt from becoming an incubator.

I usually think of Aliens as being the last Ripley film. I don’t acknowledge the third film because I find the idea of killing Newt and Hicks to be a betrayal of what made the first Aliens more than just a scary action movie. The fourth film, I don’t acknowledge because it asks me to believe that Winona Ryder would still be acting like Winona Ryder in the 23rd century. Aliens is a scary movie but it’s also a movie that ends with the promise of hope. After all that she’s been through, Ripley finally has a chance to start again with Newt, Hicks, and Bishop. That hope is something that is too often missing from the follow-ups.

Happy birthday, Sigourney Weaver! I’m going to go watch Aliens.

Commando (1985, directed by Mark L. Lester)

Posted on July 30, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

John Matrix (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is a former colonel in the U.S. Amy Special Forces. He was one of the best at what he did but he’s now retired from all that and lives in the mountains of California with his young daughter, Jenny (Alyssa Milano). When Capt Bennett (Vernon Wells), Martix’s former comrade-in-arms, kidnaps Jenny, Matrix is told that he has 11 hours to assassinate the leader of the country of Val Verde so that General Arius (Dan Hedaya) can launch a coup. Knowing that the bad guys are planning on killing both him and Jenny no matter what he does, Matrix instead takes out Arius’s men as he makes his way to where Jenny is being held captive.

Commando is one of my favorite Schwarzenegger films. It has some of the best one-liners (“I like you, Sully, I kill you last,”), some of the best character actors (Sully is played by David Patrick Kelly), and also one of Schwarzenegger’s best performances. In Commando, Schwarzenegger shows that he’s willing to poke fun at himself, which was something that set him apart from many of the action heroes of the 80s. (Stallone eventually learned how to poke fun at himself but it took a very long time.) At his California home, Matrix chops down and carries a tree without breaking a sweat. During a chase through a mall, Matrix easily lifts up a phone booth. Matrix may be trying to save the life of his daughter but he still takes the time to come up with one-liners and fall in love with flight attendant Cindy (Rae Dawn Chong). Commando is essentially just a big comic book brought to life and Schwarzenegger understands that and gives a very knowing, self-aware performance. Director Mark Lester wastes no time getting to the action and the result is one of the most entertaining action films of the 80s.

Believe it or not, Commando was originally envisioned as being a Gene Simmons picture. When the KISS frontman turned down the film, the script was rewritten for Arnold Schwarzenegger. Schwarzenegger made this film after The Terminator and it was another box office success. As for Gene Simmons, he would have to wait for Runaway to make his action debut.

The Unnominated #19: The Terminator (dir by James Cameron)

Posted on July 30, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Though the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences claim that the Oscars honor the best of the year, we all know that there are always worthy films and performances that end up getting overlooked. Sometimes, it’s because the competition too fierce. Sometimes, it’s because the film itself was too controversial. Often, it’s just a case of a film’s quality not being fully recognized until years after its initial released. This series of reviews takes a look at the films and performances that should have been nominated but were, for whatever reason, overlooked. These are the Unnominated.

First released in 1984, The Terminator was the one of the top box office hits of the year. It’s the film that established James Cameron as a filmmaker. It’s the film that made a bona-fide star out of Arnold Schwarzenegger. It’s a film that was imitated a thousand times before it even got its first official sequel. It’s a film that’s still celebrated today. 41 years later, people are still saying, “I’ll be back.” Would Arnold Schwarzenegger ever have become governor of California if he hadn’t first played a killing machine? There’s a reason why his political nickname was the Governator.

And yet, The Terminator was not nominated for a single Oscar. For all of the explosions and the gunfire and the screaming, it wasn’t even nominated for Best Sound. Some of the special effects may now seem a bit hokey in this age of rampant CGI but it’s still a surprise that The Terminator was not nominated for Best Visual Effects. The breath-taking action scenes did not result in a nomination for Best Editing. Linda Hamilton was not nominated for her fantastic performance as Sarah Connor, a young woman who finds herself being pursued by a killer cyborg from the future. Arnold Schwarzenegger was not nominated for playing one of the most memorable villains of the past 40 years. Those who claim that Schwarzenegger was just playing himself are being overly glib. Anyone could have said, “I’ll be back.” It took Schwarzenegger’s delivery to make it a great line.

The lack of nominations aren’t really not a surprise, of course. The Academy has only recently started to show an openness to nominating genre films for major awards and, even now, a genre film has to be considered a “cultural event” to even get a nomination. Black Panther, Get Out, and even Mad Max: Fury Road and Dune were all nominated because it was felt that they had transcended their genre origins. The Terminator is a sci-fi action movie and it’s proud to be a sci-fi action movie. (Terminator 2: Judgment Day, it could be argued, transcended its genre origins but it was released in 1991 and Silence of the Lambs was destined to be the genre nominee that year.) It’s also so relentlessly paced and intelligently written and directed that it’s a film that, even after all these years, it can still leave you breathless. Nominated or not, The Terminator is a film that grabs your attention and holds it for a full 107 minutes. There’s not many films that can make that claim.

The Terminator is a film that has held up surprisingly well. (It’s certainly held up better than some of its more recent sequels.) The performances of Linda Hamilton, Michael Biehn, and Arnold Schwarzenegger still work. It’s still terrifying to watch as The Terminator relentlessly kills everyone that he comes into contact with. (One thing that always gets me about the Terminator is that, even though he’s huge and superstrong and could probably physically rip anyone he wanted to apart, he still carries and uses a gun. This makes him seem like even more of a bully.) The Terminator is a machine and what makes him especially intimidating is that he doesn’t care if people see him coming or if they witness his crimes. He has one function and that’s all he worries about. When Michael Biehn first shows up, you can’t help but wonder why this guy, with his slight build and his somewhat nervous mannerisms, would be sent to try to stop the Terminator. Of course, by the end of the movie, you understand.

(And what an ending! The sight of those clouds, Linda Hamilton’s delivery of her final line, and the feeling that the future has already been determined, it all definitely makes an impression that has managed to survive every sequel after Judgment Day. There’s a reason why Skynet — much like “I’ll be back” — has taken on a cultural life of its own.)

There were a lot of very good films that were nominated for Oscars in 1984. The Terminator, much like Once Upon A Time In America, was not one of them but it will still never be forgotten.

Previous Entries In The Unnominated:

4 Shots from 4 Arkansas Films!

Posted on June 30, 2025 by Bradley Crain

4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking.

I love to share movies that are filmed in my beautiful home state of Arkansas. There aren’t a lot of movies filmed in Arkansas, but there are definitely some interesting movies filmed in Arkansas. Check these out!

Scenes I Love: Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt In Twister

Posted on May 17, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Bill Paxton would have been 70 years old today.

Today’s scene that I love comes from Twister and it features Bill Paxton showing off some wonderful chemistry with Helen Hunt. One of the great things about Bill Paxton is that he was equally at home in both big blockbusters like Twister and Titanic and low-budget indies like Near Dark. He was an artist who also happened to be a star. As a lover of both films and eccentric Texans, I will always miss Bill Paxton.

The Unnominated #12: Tombstone (dir by George Pan Cosmatos)

Posted on April 2, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I have come around on Tombstone.

The first time I watched this 1993 film, I was a bit confused as to why so many of my friends (especially my male friends) worshipped the film. To me, it was a bit too messy for its own good, an overlong film that told a familiar story and which featured so many characters that it was difficult for me to keep track of them all. Perhaps because everyone I knew loved the film so much, I felt the need to play contrarian and pick out every flaw I could find.

And I still think those flaws are there. The film had a troubled production, with original director Kevin Jarre falling behind in shooting and getting replaced by George Pan Cosmatos, a director who didn’t have any real interest in the material and whose all-business approach rubbed many members of the cast the wrong way. Kurt Russell took over production of the film, directing the actors and reportedly paring down the sprawling script to emphasize the relationship between Russell’s Wyatt Earp and Val Kilmer’s Doc Holliday. On the one hand, this led to a lot of characters who really didn’t seem to have much to do in the finished film. Jason Priestley’s bookish deputy comes to mind. On the other hand, Russell was right.

The film’s heart really is found in the friendship between Wyatt and Doc. It doesn’t matter that, in real life, Wyatt Earp was hardly as upstanding as portrayed by Kurt Russell. It also doesn’t matter that the real-life Doc Holliday was perhaps not as poetic as portrayed by Val Kilmer. Today, if you ask someone to picture Wyatt Earp, they’re probably going to picture Kurt Russell with a mustache, a cowboy hat, and a rifle. And if you ask them to picture Doc Holliday, they’re going to picture Val Kilmer, sweating due to tuberculosis but still managing to enjoy life. Did Doc Holliday every say, “I’ll be your huckleberry,” before gunning someone down? He might as well have. That’s how he’s remembered in the popular imagination. And it’s due to the performances of Russell and Kilmer that I’ve come around to eventually liking this big and flawed western. With each subsequent viewing, I’ve come to appreciate how Russell and Kilmer managed to create fully realized characters while still remaining true to the Western genre. If Wyatt Earp initially fought for the law, Doc Holliday fought for friendship. Kilmer is not only believable as a confident gunslinger who has no fear of walking into a dangerous situation. He’s also believable as someone who puts his personal loyalty above all else. He’s the type of friend that everyone would want to have.

That said, I do have to mention that there are a lot of talented people in the cast, many of whom are no longer with us but who will live forever as a result their appearance here. When Powers Boothe delivered the line, “Well …. bye,” he had no way of knowing that he would eventually become a meme. Boothe is no longer with us, I’m sad to say. But he’ll live forever as long as people need a pithy way to respond to someone announcing that they’re leaving social media forever. Charlton Heston appears briefly as a rancher and he links this 90s western with the westerns of the past. Robert Mitchum provides the narration and it just feels right. The large ensemble cast can be difficult to keep track of and even a little distracting but there’s no way I can’t appreciate a film that manages to bring together not just Russell, Kilmer, Boothe, Heston, and Mitchum but also Sam Elliott, Bill Paxton, Michael Biehn, Michael Rooker, Billy Bob Thornton, Frank Stallone, Terry O’Quinn, and even Billy Zane! The female roles are a bit underwritten. Dana Delaney is miscast but Joanna Pacula feels exactly right as Doc Holliday’s lover.

But ultimately, this film really does belong to Val Kilmer. When I heard the sad news that he had passed away last night, I thought of two films. I thought of Top Gun and then I thought of Tombstone. Iceman probably wouldn’t have had much use for Doc Holliday. And Doc Holliday would have resented Iceman’s attitude. But Val Kilmer — that brilliant actor who was so underappreciated until he fell ill — brought both of them to brilliant life. In the documentary Val, Kilmer attends a showing of Tombstone and you can say he much he loves the sound of audience cheering whenever Doc Holliday showed up onscreen.

Tombstone was a flawed film and 1993 was a strong year. But it’s a shame that Val Kilmer was never once nominated for an Oscar. Tombstone may not have been a Best Picture contender but, in a year when Tommy Lee Jones won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the similarly flawed The Fugitive, it seems a shame that Kilmer’s Doc Holliday was overlooked.

Tombstone (1993, dir by George Pan Cosmatos (and Kurt Russell), DP: William Fraker)

Previous entries in The Unnominated:

Scene That I Love: Apollo 13 Has A Problem

Posted on March 1, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today, we wish a happy birthday to Ron Howard with this classic Howard-directed scene from 1995’s Apollo 13!

Billy Bob Thornton in A SIMPLE PLAN (1998) – The great performances!

Posted on February 27, 2025 by Bradley Crain

Sam Raimi directed A SIMPLE PLAN, a movie about two brothers and a friend who find a crashed plane on a nature reserve that just happens to have a bag of cash containing $4.4 million. What starts out as the potential answer to all of their problems turns out the biggest problem they’ll ever have to deal with.

Bill Paxton, Billy Bob Thornton & Brent Briscoe play the guys who find the money and come up with a plan to keep it. As you can imagine, it all goes to hell, with one thing leading to another thing that leads to another thing, and none of it good. The performances in this film are uniformly excellent, with Thornton as the standout. He completely disappears into his character and received an Oscar nomination for his work. It’s a great film, but it’s not exactly a fun film as we watch these characters’ lives turn into a slowly unfolding bus wreck. I watched it recently for the first time since I saw it in the theaters in 1998. Although I highly recommend it, I’m probably good for another couple of decades.

This scene with Paxton and Thornton is pretty sad and a pretty strong indicator of why money ultimately can never bring true happiness.

Stripes (1981, directed by Ivan Reitman)

Posted on January 22, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

Bill Murray and Harold Ramis join the army.

Wait, that can’t be right, can it? Bill Murray and Harold Ramis were cinematic anarchists. Early in his career, Bill Murray was the ultimate smart aleck slacker who did not have any respect for authority. Harold Ramis was hardly a slacker but he came across as someone more likely to be marching on the Pentagon than guarding it. Stripes is one of the ultimate examples of a comedy where the laughs come from things that don’t seem to go together suddenly going together.

John Winger (Murray) at least has a reason to join the army. He has a dead end job. He has just broken up with his girlfriend. The country appears to be at peace so why not spend four years in the Army? It’s harder to understand why John’s friend, Russell (Ramis), also decides to enlist, other than to hang out with John. Along with Ox (John Candy), Cruiser (John Diehl), Psycho (Conrad Dunn), and Elm0 (Judge Reinhold), they enlist and go through basic training under the watchful eye of Sgt. Hulka (Warren Oates). John and Russell go from treating everything like a joke to invading East Germany in a tank that’s disguised as an RV. They also meet the two sexiest and friendliest MPs in the service, Stella (P.J. Soles) and Louise (Sean Young). Russell goes from being an proto-hippie who teaches ESL to asking John if he thinks he would make a good officer. John goes from not taking anything seriously to picking up a machine gun and rescuing his fellow soldiers.

It’s a comedy that shouldn’t work but it does. It’s actually one of my favorite comedies, full of memorable lines (“Lighten up, Frances.”), and stupidly funny situations. The cast is full of future comedy legends and P.J. Soles shows that she deserved to be a bigger star. This was early in Bill Murray’s film career and he was still largely getting by on his SNL persona but, in his confrontations with Hulka, Murray got a chance to show that he could handle drama. With all the comedic talent in the film, it’s Warren Oates who gets the biggest laughs because he largely plays his role straight. Sgt. Hulka is a drill sergeant who cares about his men and who knows how to inspire and teach but that doesn’t mean he’s happy about having to deal with a collection of misfits. (Watch his face when Cruiser says he enlisted so he wouldn’t get drafted.)

The movie does get strange when the action goes from the U.S. to Germany. What starts out as Animal-House-In-The-Army instead becomes an almost straight action movie and the movie itself sometimes feels like a recruiting video. Join the Army and maybe you’ll get to steal an RV with PJ Soles. That would have been enough to get me to enlist back in the day. But the combination of Murray, Ramis, and Oates makes Stripes a comedy that can be watched over and over again.

Live Tweet Alert: Watch Mortuary With #ScarySocial!

Posted on January 18, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on twitter. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We tweet our way through it.

Tonight, for #ScarySocial, I will be hosting 1982’s Mortuary, starring Bill Paxton!

If you want to join us on Saturday night, just hop onto twitter, start the film at 9 pm et, and use the #ScarySocial hashtag! The film is available on Prime and Tubi! I’ll be there co-hosting and I imagine some other members of the TSL Crew will be there as well. It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy!