This article is taken from the October 2024 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

I first watched The Terminator on a 12-inch black and white TV, some time in the late Eighties. It’s a reflection of the quality of the film that it still managed to be terrifying. Arnold Schwarzenegger, playing a robot sent from the future on an assassination mission, was at a point in his career when he felt no need to be likeable or tell jokes.

His most famous line, “I’ll be back”, would become a punchline, but when first delivered it simply reflected his character’s unstoppable nature.

I did eventually see it in colour, but like most people under 60, I’d never seen it on the big screen until this month. Where would I have? Outside of film societies and a few cinemas like London’s Prince Charles, which specialises in older movies, there was simply no opportunity.

That’s changing, thankfully. The digitisation of cinemas makes it much easier for them to put on varied programmes, meaning that my local Odeon could, on a Friday evening at the end of the summer, offer a Terminator double bill.

I was there because of another industry trend. The version of The Terminator we were watching was a “4K restoration”, a piece of jargon that essentially means what you’re seeing on screen is a perfect copy, produced to make the most of modern high-definition projectors.

It was not simply that we were seeing the film in a cinema for the first time in 40 years. What we were seeing looked as good as it would have at its premiere.

It was a great night out. There have been five sequels that all made more money, as well as a TV spin-off, but the original packs more punch. There’s no light relief, no spare moments, just a pure woman-on-the-run movie. High-definition viewing doesn’t always flatter the early-Eighties special effects, but here their physicality delivers authenticity that modern computer effects still can’t.

Restorations are being released all the time, and for everyone’s taste: in the coming months we’re promised North By Northwest, Carrie and White Christmas. Black and white films can especially benefit from the process. Modern TVs can show far richer blacks than we’re used to. The recent restoration of Casablanca, for instance, looks like a new film. Short of hiring people to sit in front of you chain-smoking, there’s little you can do to get closer to the film as it was first shown.

Not all of these restorations make it to the cinema, of course, but there’s a thriving home market, via streaming or Blu-ray disc. I’d avoided the latter because I didn’t want to shell out for a new player, until I realised that I already owned one, in the form of the family games console.

I tested it out with another film I’d loved as a teenager. Another assassin movie, in fact: Luc Besson’s 1990 Nikita — a tale of a young drug addict recruited to kill for the French government — that has just been re-released.

It’s a film that cast a cultural shadow, launching Hollywood careers for Besson and Jean Reno. Something about the idea of a government assassination department staffed by beautiful young women caught imaginations: there would be an inferior US remake and two long-running TV spin-offs.

It’s hard to know what to say about these restorations except that they look great, giving you a chance to appreciate films whose presence was often lost in horrible transfers to the small screen. Chances to watch old classics are especially welcome as we continue to endure a shortage of exciting, original filmmaking, the result of pandemic delays and strikes but also Hollywood’s addiction to big-budget blockbusters and existing intellectual property. It would be worth someone noting that before they spawned franchises, The Terminator and Nikita were both original ideas made on tight budgets.

If studios are looking for ideas about what should be restored and re-released, they could do worse than dip into the 640 pages of 1001 Movie Posters: Designs of the Times, just out from Reel Art Press. At £80, this is hardly an impulse purchase, but as a collection of the art of movie marketing, it’s a beautiful tribute to the unsung artists who shape the way we think about films before we even see them. My only complaint was that I wanted both more pictures and more words.

Some of the book’s entries transport you back to the moment you saw them. Others show how differently films were sold around the world: when Star Wars was released in Russia in 1990, the poster artist hadn’t seen it, so he drew what he could, to the brief “Space Cowboy”. Were viewers disappointed by the lack of horses on the Death Star? The book doesn’t record.

Finally, it would be remiss not to mention The Critic, which turns out not to be the movie of this magazine. Having got over this disappointment, I found it was an enjoyable tale of a curmudgeonly, bullying reviewer played by Ian McKellen, with excellent support from the rest of the cast including Mark Strong, an actor I feel doesn’t get enough great parts.

Hated by his contemporaries, McKellen’s well-hidden redeeming feature is his love for the art he writes about. But with his expenses slashed and his job under threat, he resorts to blackmail. Perhaps it is based on the magazine after all.