Archive for the ‘Action’ Category
Thursday, May 14th, 2026
I have not revisited MORTAL KOMBAT (2021) since at-home-viewing during pre-vaccine COVID times. My review opens by calling it “a perfectly okay movie,” and that’s my memory of it. Good cast, some fun fatalities, but it was a movie I’d anticipated for some time and it was sadly middle of the road. Its attempt to MCU-ify the Mortal Kombat mythology was not terrible, but not nearly as fun as the brazen, brain-damaged approach of Paul Wonder Stuff Anderson’s 1995 version.
MORTAL KOMBAT II comes from the same director (Simon McQuoid) but a different screenwriter (Jeremy Slater, FANTASTIC FOUR 2015, GODZILLA X KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE), and it’s one of those sequels that’s being made with the understanding that nobody liked the first one very much and they gotta convince everyone this is gonna be different. (How many of those are there, even? Off the top of my head I’m only coming up with GI JOE: RETALIATION.)
They were pretty much required by law to center this one on the titular tournament that strangely didn’t get around to happening during part 1. They also made the two most popular game characters not featured last time into the leads, while the previous non-game audience identification dude becomes just a guy who’s on the team already when they get there. You’d never guess from this that part 1 was all about Cole Young (Lewis Tan, FISTFUL OF VENGEANCE) unless you pick up on the line that’s there to explain that his wife and kid won’t be in the movie. I like Tan and feel bad he got sidelined, but what they do to his character (SPOILER: squash his head with a giant hammer like he’s one of Gallagher’s watermelons) is really fuckin funny. He takes one for the team. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Adeline Rudolph, CJ Bloomfield, Desmond Chiam, fighting tournament, Hiroyuki Sanada, Jeremy Slater, Jessica McNamee, Joe Taslim, Josh Lawson, Karl Urban, Lewis Tan, Ludi Lin, Martyn Ford, Max Huang, Mehcad Brooks, Simon McQuoid, Tadanobu Asano
Posted in Reviews, Action, Fantasy/Swords, Martial Arts, Videogame | 6 Comments »
Tuesday, May 12th, 2026
May 10, 1996
I don’t remember ORIGINAL GANGSTAS playing in a theater near me, but it apparently opened on 474 screens, enough to make it into the top 10 (at #9, below JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH, which had been out a whole month already). I was excited for it because it was basically a Blaxploitation family reunion. It stars Fred Williamson, Jim Brown, Pam Grier, Richard Roundtree and Ron O’Neal, it was back when you actually had to have them all on set together to make that work, and director Larry Cohen (BLACK CAESAR, HELL UP IN HARLEM) did manage to get a shot of them all in a row firing guns in front of an exploding car. In the dark, though. But I think it’s them.
Unfortunately the script by Aubrey K. Rattan (HIT LIST) doesn’t do anything beyond trudging through the most basic tropes you expect, and Cohen doesn’t manage to find much energy, momentum or style in it (much less humor). Unsurprisingly, but crucially, the score by Vladimir Horunzhy (ELVES) could not hold a candle to the worst and most generic of ‘70s studio musician jams, and the modern songs we hear bits of don’t do much even though they got Ice-T, Geto Boys and MC Ren to contribute. This movie has the most famous faces of the genre, but not a single drop of the juice. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Aubrey K. Rattan, blaxploitation, Charles Napier, Dru Down, Eddie Bo Smith Jr., Fred Williamson, Jim Brown, Larry Cohen, Pam Grier, Richard Roundtree, Robert Forster, Ron O'Neal, Shyheim, Wings Hauser
Posted in Reviews, Action | 4 Comments »
Monday, May 11th, 2026
May 10, 1996
They’re scientists, but they’re cowboys. And they follow the wind. When they get the call they strut and they smile at each other knowingly as they hop into their Jeeps and trucks, slam on the gas and hurtle toward the danger, thinking nothing of it except ha ha, what a fun time we’re having here. They playfully exchange lingo-filled banter over the CB as they look up to the sky or down to the dots on their computer screens. They each have their own quirks and their own styles of musical accompaniment and their own ways of yelling “WAHOO!” in the face of God’s mighty wrath.
They are the wildpeople of weather, the maniacs of meteorology, the tornado terrorists, the thunder jockeys, the Doppler demons, the Hell’s Angels of nerds. They are the storm chasers, and they absolutely will not stop, ever, until they deploy their new device designed to release hundreds of small floating sensors into a tornado to measure it from the inside and obtain data that could potentially help improve early storm warning systems in the future.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alan Ruck, Alexa Vega, Anne-Marie Martin, Bill Paxton, Cary Elwes, disaster movies, Helen Hunt, Jami Gertz, Jeff Nathanson, Jeremy Davies, Joey Slotnick, Joss Whedon, Lois Smith, Michael Crichton, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Scott Thomson, Sean Whalen, Steven Zaillian, Todd Field, Wendle Josepher
Posted in Reviews, Action | 23 Comments »
Thursday, May 7th, 2026
ONE SPOON OF CHOCOLATE, the new movie written and directed by The RZA, is a little bit deranged. I say that in a neutral way. I kind of like that it’s crazy, but I don’t overall think it’s a movie that works. When I describe what it’s about to you it’s going to sound like a pulpy exploitation movie, a ’70s style revenge thriller with a modern GET OUT type edge, something that could’ve been branded as part of a GRINDHOUSE double feature if those had become an ongoing concern like V*H*S. (In fact it has a “Quentin Tarantino Presents” credit and an appearance by Red Apple Cigarettes.) But most of the time the tone is very earnest, kinda dour, sometimes feeling like a PSA. And when the hero finally gets to fight the lead villain the score (by Tyler Bates and The RZA) chooses not to hype us up like it’s the big pay off, but just give us some synth textures, like it’s sad. It’s kind of a downer. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Blair Underwood, Cliff Weissman, Darin Heames, Emyri Crutchfield, Harry Goodwins, Isaiah R. Hill, James Lee Thomas, Jason Isbell, Michael Harney, Morgan Brown, Paris Jackson, Quentin Tarantino presents, RJ Cyler, RZA, Shameik Moore
Posted in Reviews, Action, Drama | 2 Comments »
Thursday, April 30th, 2026
APEX is a solid made-for-Netflix picture – nice looking, to-the-point, occasionally surprising, and a good showcase for its star, who happens to be one of my favorites. When I revisited ÆON FLUX recently I mentioned how ever since that movie I’ve thought of Charlize Theron as one of those rare actors who’s exactly as serious about the physical performance as the emotional, and excels at both. So, you know, she wins an Oscar for throwing herself into MONSTER and then when she does ATOMIC BLONDE she goes just as hard at fight training and stunt work as she did at portraying the inner life of a serial killer. Here she says you know what? I’m gonna learn how to climb rocks. I’m gonna climb so many rocks in this movie.
Not that that’s the entire topic. Her character Sasha enjoys extreme sports. In the opening she and her husband Tommy (the motherfuckin HULK Eric Bana!) are tandem climbing the Troll Wall in Norway. You know, climbing until they get tired, hanging a tent from the side at night, it’s fucking terrifying, who does that? Sasha and Tommy, that’s who. Though Tommy is getting wary that maybe he’s past his prime. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Australia, Baltasar Kormakur, Charlize Theron, Eric Bana, Jeremy Robbins, Taron Egerton
Posted in Reviews, Action, Horror, Thriller | 11 Comments »
Tuesday, April 28th, 2026
FATAL DEVIATION (1998) is “Ireland’s first martial arts film.” I had heard of it before but I didn’t realize it’s kind of infamous online. Cracked.com once did an article calling it “the worst film ever made” and “an ancient curse on the Irish people,” but that’s, frankly, an extremely stupid thing to say. Amateur shit. This review is for pros.
This is a no budget, shot-on-video, home made production faithfully following all the traditions of the western martial arts picture: a guy who left town long ago has returned to set things straight, there’s a fighting tournament, there’s a death to avenge, there’s a local crime boss, a woman to fight over, all conveyed crudely and awkwardly. In a good way. Absolutely it’s good for a laugh, but considering the amount of resources and level of experience here (virtually none), writer/director/star James Bennett has achieved the feat of making one of these movies admirably well, and with what seems like complete sincerity.
Bennett stars as Jimmy Bennett, “the young Bennet boy” who has returned to his home town of Trim, Ireland “to discover who I am, what it is I should do, and what happened to my father.” He breaks into and fixes up his dad’s old trashed barn as a place to live, work out, and train. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: fighting tournament, Ireland, James Bennett, micro budget, Mike Graham
Posted in Reviews, Action | 15 Comments »
Thursday, April 23rd, 2026
NIGHT PATROL is a movie released by Shudder (first in theaters, now on their service) that has a promising premise. It’s kinda like TRAINING DAY but the corrupt cops are also vampires. In fact, I didn’t catch it until reading the credits but the main character’s name is “Ethan Hawkins.” The tagline is “Defang the police.” That’s good. I like that.
It has a cool, grainy look to it (cinematographer: Benjamin Kitchens) and an ominous, synthy score by Pepijn Caudron (CAMINO). It even has David S. Goyer’s name in the credits as a producer, so there is a distant connection to the greatest vampire movie that ever has been or will be made. So I was ready for this thing to really rip. And then it didn’t really, and I went on with my life, but here’s my review.
Hawkins (Justin Long, still not thought of as a horror guy even though he’s in JEEPERS CREEPERS, DRAG ME TO HELL, TUSK, BARBARIAN and COYOTES) is an LAPD officer who’s about to join the titular gang-like police task force. For the initiation they make him shoot a young Piru Blood named Primo (Zuri Reed, 2 episodes of The Get Down). At the time she’s with a guy named Wazi (RJ Cyler, POWER RANGERS, THE HARDER THEY FALL), who manages to escape. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: C.M. Punk, David S. Goyer, Dermot Mulroney, Flying Lotus, Freddie Gibbs, Jermaine Fowler, Justin Long, Nick Gillie, Nicki Micheaux, RJ Cyler, Shudder, vampires, YG, Zuri Reed
Posted in Reviews, Action, Horror | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, April 21st, 2026
Last week I asked Mrs. Vern if she’d want to see the new Bob Odenkirk action movie from the same writer as JOHN WICK and NOBODY. She loves both of those movies as much as I do (and Odenkirk going back to the Mr. Show days) so of course she did. Then on Saturday, as we were getting ready to go, she asked “What is this movie called, by the way?” I guess I’d sold her on it pretty much the same way I would a new Jason Statham – just the new Bob Odenkirk action movie. I hope he does another one and the poster says “ODENKIRK” at the top in giant letters.
NORMAL opens in Osaka, with a great Japanese cover of Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid” and a group of Yakuza atoning for some type of failure by cutting off a pinky and accepting a new job. The job sends them to some small American town called Normal, Minnesota.
Odenkirk does not play one of the Yakuza. He plays Ulysses Richardson, also a fuckup arriving in Normal for a shit job, though in narration he tries to sell it to us as a pretty good one. He’s the interim sheriff, because the old one died, so he’s there to stamp forms and maintain the status quo for the five weeks until the election. He’s playing dumb a little, though. He acts like there’s nothing suspicious, but we see his eyebrows raising at various red flags. We even see him looking at the sheriff’s death certificate and later quizzing the guy who signed it. I’m sure it’s nothing, though. Don’t worry about it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ben Wheatley, Billy MacLellan, Bob Odenkirk, Brendan Fletcher, Derek Kolstad, Henry Winkler, Jess McLeod, Lena Headey, Peter Shinkoda, Reena Jolly, Ryan Allen
Posted in Reviews, Action, Comedy/Laffs, Crime | 16 Comments »
Monday, April 13th, 2026
Taken on its own, ÆON FLUX (2005) is an interesting oddity among post-MATRIX techno-soundtrack sci-fi action movies. The look is clean and brightly lit, the premise is vague, it has some legitimately strange tech and costumes. One of its shootouts happens in a rose garden, another on a manicured lawn beneath blossoming cherry trees. A major third act action set piece involves hanging from and climbing up the gold-lame-scarf tail of a blimp called “The Relical.” To date I think it might be the only movie with a Relical in it.
It’s an MTV Films production, but’s that just because it’s based on a cartoon birthed by their envelope-pushing animation anthology Liquid Television. It doesn’t have any needle drops and doesn’t seem fully invested in being of the time, or of pop culture. If not for the generic beats in the score by Graeme Revell (MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS: THE MOVIE) it would feel pretty otherworldly. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Charlize Theron, Frances McDormand, Jonny Lee Miller, Karyn Kusama, live action remake of cartoon, Martin Csokas, Matt Manfredi, MTV Productions, Pete Postlethwaite, Peter Chung, Phil Hay, Sophie Okonedo
Posted in Reviews, Action, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 4 Comments »
Thursday, April 9th, 2026
PRAYER OF THE ROLLERBOYS (1990) is not a great ‘90s b-movie in the sense of being a thrilling piece of cinematic storytelling, but it stills stands as a type I enjoy due to many valuable qualities. First, there is its pure nineties-ness: its strongly held belief that rollerblading is really cool, Corey Haim’s skater hair, tying a flannel shirt around his waist, “Head Like a Hole” on the soundtrack. It being only the very beginning the nineties, there’s also a leftover-eighties-ness: lots of outdoor TVs, ritzy apartments with weird art made out of mannequins, some attempts at Verhoevenian satire in news reports.
Most notable, I think, there’s a political side to it that’s sadly right on the money for now. Not all of it; its idea of American collapse is that the government will borrow too much money, then force all the newly homeless people into camps, and also Harvard will be moved brick-by-brick to Hiroshima. (There used to be anxiety about Japanese business taking over America. See also: GUNG HO, DIE HARD.) But the part that’s sadly trenchant right now is that the title villains are like sci-fi Proud Boys: an anti-immigrant, white power gang with a uniform (beige trenchcoats and droog suspesnders). They’re controversial, yet they have strong enough ties to the government to buy a former naval shipyard, including its freighters! Some cops are trying to bust them but (spoiler) it’s actually for corrupt purposes. Oh yeah and they rollerblade around in a flock, synchronizing the waving of their arms to look menacing.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Christopher Collet, Corey Haim, Dan Bradley, Devin Clark, Julius Harris, Mark Pellegrino, Morgan Weisser, Patricia Arquette, Rick King, rollerblading, W. Peter Iliff, white supremacists
Posted in Reviews, Action | 4 Comments »
