The Abyss
Encore, 8:00 p.m. ET
James Cameron is re-releasing Titanic in 3-D this week, and has just returned from a solo visit to the ocean’s deepest trench. This, then, is a perfect time to revisit the 1989 movie that prefigured both of those undersea passions. Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio star in a story of ocean explorers and rescue divers drawn, for various reasons, to unknown and previously unexplored depths. Some of the special effects used in this film were unprecedented, but Cameron’s direction is most evident, and impressive, in terms of drawing out the very intense and romantic leading performances. Here as in Titanic, it’s the love story that keeps everything else afloat.