For a year now, the global financial crisis has been associated in my mind with a curious movie image from 1979: the gently rippling surface of a cup of coffee. The mug in question is poised at the edge of the Ventana Nuclear Power Plant's main control console, and it's the sight of those tiny vibration waves that remains to haunt shift supervisor Jack Lemmon long after the emergency SCRAM of that day averts THE CHINA SYNDROME, a full-core meltdown dire enough to render all of SoCal uninhabitable.

Hounded by investigative TV journos Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas following the accident and ensuing cover-up, Lemmon is defiant about the system of safety checks and procedures in place: "We stopped it in time for one reason, the system works, now dammit the system works! That's not the problem..." I was wowed by the James Bridges thriller's austere beauty, its expertly wrought tension and boldness in going without a musical score.

The theatrical release coincided famously with the real-life disaster of Three Mile Island (covered in the Special Edition extras). A double-duty metaphor for the abyss we looked down last September? "The shudder...the damn shudder..."

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