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Raiders of the Lost Ark

The apex of Harrison Ford’s career is right around the early 1980s. One of the reasons why it’s so sad to see him in films like Extraordinary Measures isn’t just because we remember him as Indiana Jones, it’s because when Ford was a star, he was the biggest star in the world. The three Star Wars movies, the three Indiana Jones movies, Witness, Blade Runner, and on and on the list goes. Perhaps - I’m not going to commit to this one - the best of his many films is Raiders of the Lost Ark. In 1981, he, producer George Lucas and director Steven Spielberg introduced the world to one of the great movie characters, Indiana Jones. The intrepid archaeologist-cum-adventurer travels the globe to save and protect various artifacts from lost civilizations. The first of four films in the series concerns Indy saving the Ark of the Covenant from the reach of the Nazis.

Ford is surrounded by a feisty love interest, Karen Allen (who plays Marion Ravenwood, an old flame), weaselly villains, a roguish sidekick, and scene after scene of breathless action. The opening sequence, which runs about 15 minutes of the film’s two-hour length, features some of the most iconic, memorable moments in film history. Yes, the scene climaxes with Indy outrunning a gigantic boulder, but it begins with booby traps, massive spiders, a golden idol, and a young Alfred Molina (yes, Alfred Molina) telling Indy, “Throw me the idol. I throw the whip!” It’s almost impossible to believe that Steven Spielberg is able to keep up the momentum of that first section throughout all of Raiders of the Lost Ark, but the movie is so fast, so charming, so funny, and so thrilling, you wish Spielberg, Ford, and even Lucas could reach the heights they had back in 1981.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day

In a few short months, Arnold Schwarzenegger will once again be free to be an action star. I’ll leave aside any discussion of his governorship, or the state of the state of California once he’s out of office to…well, not this site. I could go on, but that’s not what you’re here to read. Though Schwarzenegger has been in many action movies over the years (like Bruce Willis, he shows up in The Expendables), his biggest and best is the 1991 summer-movie titan Terminator 2: Judgment Day. In the first Terminator film, written and directed by James Cameron (who returns here), Schwarzenegger played a robot hell-bent on killing Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), whose unborn son would prove to be the downfall of a future robotic resistance against humans. In the second film, he’s sent back to 1991 to protect the son, John, who’s now a teenager, against a rival Terminator.

Most of Cameron’s movies share the same tendencies: they’re all long, they’re all filled with groundbreaking special effects, and they’re all breathless to sit through. Terminator 2 is no exception. The story here doesn’t take too long to get rolling: within 20 minutes, the good Terminator is chasing down the bad one on a stolen motorcycle through the back alleys of Los Angeles. Terminator 2 became one of the biggest films in history, giving us a great one-liner (“Hasta la vista, baby”), never-before-seen effects, badass action scenes, and Schwarzenegger’s most heartfelt performance - which is sad, when you consider that he’s playing a robot, but never mind. But the surrogate father-son relationship between him and Edward Furlong is realistic, if a little sappy; what’s more, the mother-son relationship in the film is prickly but still sweet. Add to that shotguns, car chases, and a robot who regenerates in an instant, and you have a great action movie.

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