The narrative surrounding its Oscar win and its reputation as a crime flick have come to mask what a remarkable work The Departed is.
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Our world is too fragmented and our cinema too convoluted to allow for movies as simply, competently fun as Men in Black.
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The 2011 movie version of Mr. Popper’s Penguins shows little interest in the classic children’s book, let alone affection for it.
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Jon Favreau’s Elf still remains the 21st-century’s most iconic Christmas classic.
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Irvin Kershner’s Eyes of Laura Mars has the thematic and narrative obsessions of giallo without the style.
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Tod Browning’s Freaks is an icon of pre-Code horror and a great drama about the lives of circus performers.
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The Witches remains a notable blend of horror and adventure for kids, and the most surprising movie of Nicolas Roeg’s career.
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An imperfect film yet still a classic adventure, mostly thanks to Johnny Depp’s iconic performance.
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Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is Frank Capra’s great American political folktale.
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With Avatar, the biggest film of all time, James Cameron makes a populist blockbuster that works as a cinematic baptism for the viewer.
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In his third deep sea documentary, Aliens of the Deep, James Cameron explores the amazing life forms that thrive in some of Earth’s most hostile environments and paves the way for the next phase of his career.
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James Cameron, Bill Paxton, and a team of explorers return to the wreck of the RMS Titanic to bear witness and memorialize those who were lost.
Titanic is a gargantuan summation of the breadth and depth of Cameron’s cinematic craftsmanship as well as his thematic obsessions.
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True Lies is an outlier in James Cameron’s filmography, but this screwball action-comedy delivers on the action and domestic drama.
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James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day is the ur-sequel, the cinematic text that shows what is possible not only in sequel cinematic storytelling, but in the blockbuster movie as a whole.
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In The Abyss, his most intimate and idiosyncratic film, James Cameron takes us to the bottom of the ocean in order to discover what it means to be human.
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Aliens is a deep exploration of the warrior mother as well as a gripping and relentless science-fiction action thriller.
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With The Terminator, James Cameron arrives on the stage as a director in full control of his craft, delivering one of the greatest science fiction films of all time.
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James Cameron might’ve been fired from the production of Piranha II: The Spawning, but the shlocky Jaws ripoff remains instrumental in showing the elements that shaped Cameron as a filmmaker.
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Twelve O’Clock High is a great account of the physical and mental toll on active servicemen, as well as a gripping portrayal of the nuts and bolts of daytime precision bombing during World War II.
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