Archive for the ‘Action’ Category
Wednesday, September 9th, 2026
August 23, 1996
SOLO is a sci-fi action movie starring Mario Van Peebles (EXTERMINATOR 2, DELIVERY BOYS, RAPPIN’, JAWS: THE REVENGE, POSSE, FULL ECLIPSE, GUNMEN, HIGHLANDER III, PANTHER) as an android super soldier. General Clyde Haynes (Barry Corbin, MY SCIENCE PROJECT) explains the idea upfront: “He’s proficient at all types of combat. He has no family, no friends, not even a Social Security number. If he’s wounded beyond repair, we throw him away. No guilt, no worries, no medical benefits. No one will cry when Solo is gone. We’ll simply build another one.” (Personally I think it’s rude that he says that right in front of him.)
One issue with this two billion dollar program comes out in the first mission we see, an attack on an airstrip being built for rebels in an unnamed South American country. (No, not Val Varde, I think I would recognize it.) When Solo sees that civilians are being forced to build the airstrip it clearly upsets him, and he overrides his commands to avoid blowing them up. (Also he takes home a tarantula as a pet.) There’s a great part where the humans detonating the bombs on the outskirts have given up on Solo and abandoned him, then there’s a thunk on their helicopter and he’s hanging from the bottom.
Afterwards his creator (?), the young hotshot scientist Dr. Bill Stewart (twentysomething Adrien Brody!) can sense his trepidation, and is impressed that a program somehow has emotions. (Disclaimer that I feel like I need to include in every other sci-fi review now: this is a completely not real sci-fi concept that has poetic meaning in fictional stories, but if someone today is telling you it will really happen they are a scammer, a mark, or a kook, in my opinion.)
The General and especially his asshole colonel Frank Madden (William Sadler, BILL & TED’S BOGUS JOURNEY) are pissed at Solo, who argues that he’s programmed to prevent harm to noncombatants. Madden, of course, claims the civilians count as combatants because they’re “working for” the rebels. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Abraham Verduzo, Adrien Brody, Barry Corbin, Buddy Joe Hooker, David Corley, Demian Bichir, Mario Van Peebles, William Sadler
Posted in Reviews, Action, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 14 Comments »
Monday, September 7th, 2026
After spending nearly a decade making the literally gigantic FX extravaganzas GODZILLA VS. KONG and GODZILLA X KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE, director Adam Wingard has returned to the territory of YOU’RE NEXT and THE GUEST – horror/action/thriller hybrids where he doesn’t have as much money but can kinda do what he wants. This time he’s armed with that blockbuster experience and a bigger small budget (three times as much as THE GUEST) courtesy of A24, so he and his long time writer Simon Barrett (FRANKENFISH) had a chance to really let ‘er rip. I thought. Maybe next time.
I hope other people will get more out of it than I did. It has many of the elements for a movie I could love. Adria Arjona (TRIPLE FRONTIER, 6 UNDERGROUND, MORBIUS, HIT MAN, but mainly Bix from Andor) is very charismatic as Celeste, a cynical war vet who purposely isolates herself in a desert town, living in and managing a trailer park, her only loves in the world the daughter she has partial custody of and the illegal stockpile of guns in the cabinet. She’s not ready when her more responsible ex (Jacob Scipio, WITHOUT REMORSE) drops off young Daisy (Blake Kennedy) on an unscheduled weekend. She missed the text about it because she was out shooting jack o’lanterns. So compared to everyone else she is pretty ready for the other unexpected guests, the rampaging super soldiers who escape from a nearby secret military site and start killing everybody. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Adam Wingard, Adria Arjona, Dan Stevens, Drew Starkey, Eric Wareheim, Jacob Scipio, Michael Biehn, Rebecca Hall, Reginald VelJohnson, Simon Barrett, super soldiers
Posted in Reviews, Action, Horror, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 7 Comments »
Friday, September 4th, 2026
August 9, 1996
John Carpenter’s ESCAPE FROM L.A. is a movie that I still like, but (kind of like THE FRIGHTENERS) not as much as I did at the time. Come to think of it maybe part of that was that Carpenter had been, up to that point, almost entirely a video experience for me. When I saw BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA in the theater I was too young to be aware of who the director was. ESCAPE FROM L.A. was the first time I was purposely watching a John Carpenter film on the big screen, excited to see Kurt Russell play Snake Plissken again, his theme music blasting through the then-state-of-the-art THX sound system.
But I remember people trashing it at the time. Carpenter hadn’t done a sequel before, they didn’t like seeing him rehash a previous story, they didn’t like seeing c.g. in one of his movies, at least not like this. In many cases, I have to say, they really didn’t get the joke. I was, and still am, a person that finds it funny to move the anti-hero from a classic ‘80s urban dystopia over to the west coast and make him surf with Peter Fonda. Not everyone feels that way. They’re missing out on some of life’s beauty, in my opinion.
Okay, the c.g. complaint, I still get that. There are shots that look bad for the time, and that was 30 years ago. On the other hand, I’d guess it’s around 30 seconds of screen time, and lit murkily enough that it doesn’t look as shiny and ridiculous as most of the similarly budgeted stuff from the same era. One of those shots is underwater at night. What I found interesting on this viewing was that as the movie ages it looks and feels much more like ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK than it seemed to at the time, when it felt too current. The arc of time is starting to merge them. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: A.J. Langer, Bruce Campbell, Cliff Robertson, Debra Hill, Georges Corraface, James Lew, Jeff Imada, John Carpenter, Kurt Russell, Michelle Forbes, Pam Grier, Peter Fonda, Robert Carradine, Shirley Walker, Stacy Keach, Steve Buscemi, Valeria Golino
Posted in Reviews, Action, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 14 Comments »
Thursday, September 3rd, 2026
TOXIC: A FAIRY TALE FOR GROWN-UPS is a new Kannada-language Indian film that I went and saw at the multiplex on opening day last week. I’d been waiting for it since they played the trailer before RZA’s ONE SPOON OF CHOCOLATE and I felt like I’d seen God. I think it already left that theater, but maybe you can find it in your area, so I want to get the word out. I’m a TOXIC crusader.
I was already sold on the movie when I learned that American martial arts legend J.J. “Loco” Perry (competitor in BLOODSPORT III, choreographer of UNDISPUTED II) is one of the action directors. That makes it an event in my book. You might wonder why he’d want to go overseas to work behind the scenes after graduating to director with DAY SHIFT, THE KILLER’S GAME and AFTERBURN, but this was an opportunity he couldn’t turn down. In a Q&A at Big Bad Film Fest recently (as heard on Action for Everyone), he said that UNDISPUTED II was shot in 30 days, all the movies he’s directed were 42, Chad Stahelski’s upcoming HIGHLANDER was 125, but TOXIC was 225! It’s one of the most expensive movies ever made in India, and taking a whipping in their media for not making the money back. But ACAB includes armchair studio accountants, so I will break with those pigs and thank the producers for investing so much in my entertainment.
TOXIC is an operatic, ultra-maximalist gangster action movie co-written, produced and starring (in a dual role) a superstar called Yash, credited as “Rocking Star Yash.” That it’s directed and co-written by a woman, the former actress Geetu Mohandas, adds an interesting layer to its depiction of masculinity, which is so over the top there’s simply no chance we’ll ever be able to locate the top again. R.I.P. The Top. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Akshay Oberoi, Darrell D'Silva, Geetu Mohandas, Huma Qureshi, J.J. Perry, Kyle Paul, Rocking Star Yash
Posted in Reviews, Action, Crime | 8 Comments »
Wednesday, September 2nd, 2026
August 2, 1996
Roald Dahl was my favorite author when I was a little kid, but I didn’t know his book Matilda because it didn’t come out until ’88. Watching the movie version again the story seems kinda sweet and wholesome by his standards, even though it envisions the world as a place full of cruel, crude idiots. Its warmth lies in its heroine, a smart girl who finds an angelically supportive teacher to help her through her difficulties. Similar idea, but a little more pure than a poor boy winning a chocolate factory. (I wasn’t that surprised when I read that an editor had to talk Dahl out of his initial version where Matilda uses her psychokinetic powers to torment innocent parents and help her teacher gamble.)
Director Danny DeVito (THROW MOMMA FROM THE TRAIN) must’ve still been concerned about MATILDA (adapted by Nicholas Kazan [MOBSTERS, DREAM LOVER] and Robin Swicord [SHAG]) being a little mean, because he cast himself as the kind-sounding narrator to balance out playing the asshole dad, Harry Wormwood. Harry and his wife Zinnia (Rhea Perlman, CLASS ACT) somehow raised their daughter Matilda (the precocious Mara Wilson, MRS. DOUBTFIRE) to the age of six without noticing – or at least not approving of – her brilliance. She loves to read, but has to sneak out to go to the library. Harry, an unethical used car salesman, forces her to watch TV junk and refuses to let her go to school, because “Who would sign for the packages?”
She’s delighted when he finally enrolls her at Crunchem Hall Elementary, but unfortunately it was just to help sell a car to principal Agatha Trunchbull (Pam Ferris, MEANTIME), an abusive monster who has a dartboard with pictures of students in her office and frequently locks kids in an iron maiden closet she calls “the Chokey.” A former shot putter, hammer and javelin thrower who competed in the 1972 Summer Olympics, she uses those skills to throw children long distances. Somebody should do something about this, but nobody’s up to it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andrew Davis, Brian Cox, Danny DeVito, Embeth Davidtz, Fred Ward, J.F. Lawton, Josh Friedman, Keanu Reeves, Mara Wilson, Michael Shannon, Morgan Freeman, Nicholas Kazan, Pam Ferris, Paul Reubens, Rachel Weisz, Rhea Perlman, Roald Dahl, Robin Swicord, Tracey Walter, Tzi Ma
Posted in Action, Family | 11 Comments »
Thursday, August 13th, 2026
There’s a scene in SPIDER-MAN: BRAND NEW DAY where Peter Parker (Tom Holland, THE ODYSSEY) sees his high school best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon, THE WRECKING CREW) at the bodega. Ned doesn’t remember him due to a spell Dr. Strange had to do to save the world from multi-dimensional doom (long story, and I don’t remember it), so Peter just watches as he tells the clerk to never let him buy a certain type of energy shot that he’s addicted to. Then he asks to buy one last bottle. Then two.
Yeah, that’s sorta like the MCU these days. We all say we’re over it, then this movie has the biggest opening weekend of all time. It sure doesn’t give me the same kick it once did, but maybe my body craves an approximation, and this will do for now.
I wouldn’t go to bat for BRAND NEW DAY. It’s definitely more of the MCU episodic dilly-dallying and not the compact, standalone cinematic storytelling that used to be the goal. Seems like a lost art in the days of late stage comic book movie – is that why they gave up on doing a new BLADE? But this one has plenty that works, particularly in Peter’s relationships with MJ (Zendaya, THE ODYSSEY) and Frank Punisher (Jon Bernthal, THE ODYSSEY). The love story with MJ has been built up over three previous movies, while his even knowing The Punisher happened (I believe) off screen between movies. But Peter will long for his lost love until they meet again, and he’ll butt heads with his street vigilantism rival until they’re a mismatched buddy pair. One of those classic teams, the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man and the severely traumatized mass murdering gun and bomb freak who hides out in a squalid industrial barge. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andre Royo, Destin Daniel Cretton, Fan Xiaoshuang, Florence Pugh, Jacob Batalon, Jon Bernthal, Jude Poyer, Marisa Tomei, Mark Ruffalo, MCU, Reinaldo Marcus Green, Robert Elswit, Sadie Sink, Tom Holland, Zendaya
Posted in Reviews, Action, Comic strips/Super heroes | 23 Comments »
Monday, August 10th, 2026
July 24, 1996
SKYSCRAPER is a DTV movie that nobody would’ve missed if I’d skipped it in this retrospective. But it’s DIE HARD in a building, starring Anna Nicole Smith, and I hadn’t seen it, so I thought I felt I had a responsibility.
Smith had been Playboy Playmate of the Year in 1993, but most of us knew about her because in 1994 she married 89-year-old petroleum billionaire J. Howard Marshall, who died the following year. She wasn’t named in his will and had to go all the way to the Supreme Court failing to get the half of the estate she said he’d promised her, but the world had opinions about what was going on there. (A deeper and truer love than most will ever know.)
Smith got into movies with bit parts in THE HUDSUCKER PROXY and NAKED GUN 33 1/3 (both 1994), which would remain the jewels of her filmography. But SKYSCRAPER wasn’t her first starring role, or even her first action role – PM Entertainment and director Raymond Martino had already used her in TO THE LIMIT (1995). Maybe that’s why she seems a little more comfortable in this role than I expected. Just a little, though. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anna Nicole Smith, Charles Huber, Die Hard on a ____, Eugene Robert Glazer, PM Entertainment, Richard Steinmetz
Posted in Reviews, Action | 20 Comments »
Monday, August 3rd, 2026
July 19, 1996
As you can see I’m lagging behind on this summer retrospective, struggling to catch up. But it doesn’t feel like it while watching FLED, because this is the kind of mediocre movie they used to dump off in August. Perfectly competent, nothing more. A lesser work from two actors I was excited to see in anything back then. But also Stephen Baldwin.
It’s an action movie directed by Kevin Hooks, the child star turned TV director turned guy who did STRICTLY BUSINESS and PASSENGER 57, and it’s written by Preston A. Whitmore (THE WALKING DEAD [1995]). So we can at least give it credit as one of the ’90s movies by Black filmmakers that’s just allowed to be commercial and not under pressure to represent a culture or stop the violence and increase the peace or anything (even though it features Furious Styles himself).
When I saw the credit for producer Frank Mancuso Jr. (FRIDAY THE 13TH 2–7) and some flashy camera moves (cinematographer: Matthew F. Leonetti, HARD TO KILL, STRANGE DAYS) and then I heard composer Graeme Revell (THE CROW, THE CRAFT, MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS: THE MOVIE) playing DIE-HARD-type orchestral bombast over a hip hop beat on the opening credits, I wondered if maybe this was gonna be more pulpy fun than I remembered. Not really. But I can see, in retrospect, that they’re trying to do a bit of a John Woo thing with some flying through the air shooting and slow motion and vicious squibs. It was neither stylish or emotional enough to register at the time, but now it’s such a time capsule I guess I can appreciate that a little more, at least. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bill Bellamy, Brittney Powell, Fishbone, Frank Mancuso Jr., Graeme Revell, Joe Torry, Kevin Hooks, Laurence Fishburne, Preston A. Whitmore, Robert John Burke, RuPaul, Salma Hayek, Stephen Baldwin, Victor Rivers, Will Patton
Posted in Reviews, Action | 6 Comments »
Friday, June 26th, 2026
June 21, 1996
Today, as I try to catch up on my slightly lagging retrospective, I will take a look at two movies released on the same day a year and a week ago. One is a lavish Disney animated musical, the other a violent Arnold Schwarzenegger action vehicle, each of those art forms seemingly just a little past their peak. Both are about an unusual man trying to protect a woman from bad guys, and they were tied for the most expensive movie of 1996, having budgets of around $100 million.
Disney had experienced the wildly successful “new renaissance” streak of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, ALADDIN and THE LION KING, followed by POCAHONTAS, which was a moneymaker, but not as much as its predecessors, and not as well reviewed (except by me). Now comes THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME, from BEAUTY AND THE BEAST directors Gary Trousdale & Kirk Wise. Like POCAHONTAS it’s very Broadway influenced and addresses surprisingly heavy topics for a fuckin G-rated cartoon. It had a bigger budget and the animation is more showy, but in my opinion not nearly as appealing. With the villain in particular it kinda looks like they’re trying to do PRINCE OF EGYPT era Dreamworks but don’t quite know the style.
I’m speaking of the cruel, sexually repressed, genocidal Judge Claude Frollo (Tony Jay, TWINS), who is engaged in a bigoted crusade against the Romani people in Paris. In the opening scene he kills a fleeing immigrant holding a deformed baby. The archdeacon (David Ogden Stiers, BETTER OFF DEAD…, DOC HOLLYWOOD) witnesses the whole thing and guilts him into not dumping the baby in a well, instead agreeing to raise him as his own, by which he means name him Quasimodo and lock him in the bell tower of the cathedral. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Charles Kimbrough, Chuck Russell, Danny Nucci, Demi Moore, Gary Trousdale, James Caan, James Coburn, James Cromwell, Jason Alexander, Kevin Kline, Kirk Wise, Mary Wickes, Robert Pastorelli, Tom Hulce, Tony Jay, Vanessa L. Williams, Walon Green
Posted in Reviews, Action, Cartoons and Shit | 15 Comments »
Thursday, June 25th, 2026
SWITCHBLADE SISTERS is from 1975, but I’m considering it Slam Evil Summer, because it was re-released June 15, 1996, thanks to Quentin Tarantino’s fandom and his label Rolling Thunder Pictures. It’s directed by Jack Hill (SPIDER BABY, COFFY, FOXY BROWN), and it’s his penultimate movie as a director (the last being SORCERESS in 1982).
I did not see this in a theater, I had to wait to rent the VHS, but it must’ve been a great time with the right audience. It starts off so strong with the wah-wah infused theme song “Black Hearted Woman” playing over a documentary-style black and white photo montage of tough ladies in a world of boarded up houses covered in graffiti. Establishing the landscape.
And then it says “Music by MEDUSA”? What kind of badass group is that!? (Apparently it’s frequent Roger Corman composer and lounge music pioneer Les Baxter.) I’m not sure who took the photos, but the credited title designer is Bill Levey, director of BLACKENSTEIN and MONACO FEVER. His IMDb bio says he was childhood friends with James Dean, hung out with Elvis and discovered Patrick Swayze (who he directed in SKATETOWN U.S.A.).
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bob Minor, gangs, Jack Hill, Jeannie Epper, Kate Murtagh, Marlene Clark, Robbie Lee, Rolling Thunder Pictures
Posted in Action, Crime, Reviews | 1 Comment »
