Verhoeven (1987-1990)

1987 - Robocop - Best revamp of Frankenstein since 1931? Like Verhoeven's second Dutch movie, his second Hollywood movie explodes with intensity. Fittingly, the sexual intensity of the European movie has been replaced with intense violence in the American film. Humanity, greed, privatization, technology-gone-wild: Robocop, like any great sci-fi movie, covers a lot serious ground behind a whiz-bang shell.

1990 - Total Recall - To this day, the best Mars movie out there. As well as being an excellent Schwarteneggar action flick and flirting with some interesting ideas about identity, the texture of this film is great. A giant tracer pulled out of a nose, a tri-breasted woman, annoying robot cabbies, Mars Today,... all are details that add to the experience. As I mentioned above, it's too bad scenes that take place before Quaid's visit to Recall destroy the potential ambiguity in the story. Interesting, for Matrix fans, that Quaid is offered and refuses "the red pill" so that he can stay in the dream.

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