Okay, the first thing you’re gonna have to do is completely forget the trailer for THE GREY. It deliberately tricks you into believing something cool is gonna happen in the movie that is not gonna happen in the movie, and it gives away most of the major events, including the very end. It’s a mean trailer.
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Posts Tagged ‘post-action’
The Grey
Sunday, January 22nd, 2012
Warrior
Wednesday, September 21st, 2011
I’m surprised it took this long for somebody to make a straight drama about mixed martial artists. It seems so obvious. It would inherently have all the same dramatic elements as a boxing movie (underdog reaching for the top, wife tired of seeing him beat up, society treating him as a dumb brute, then the fear of losing it all by a loss or an injury, all that) plus the novelty of an expanded repertoire of moves (kicks, chokes, armbars, throws, flying knees) and of being a popular newer sport that hasn’t been done to death in movies.
Required reading: David Bordwell’s Bond vs. Chan essay
Friday, September 24th, 2010
Mouth and several others have sent me the link to this blog post by the film academician David Bordwell. (Unfortunately he never mentions Seagal in there, so I can’t call him ‘fellow Seagalogist’ or ‘my esteemed colleague.’ And I’m not familiar enough with his work to call him ‘Dave.’)
It’s a good one and I figure it oughta be on the reading list. Basically he does a shot-by-shot analysis (with screen grabs) of a fight scene from the Pierce Brosnan James Bond movie TOMORROW NEVER DIES and one from the Jackie Chan movie RIGHTING WRONGS. He shows how in the Bond scene the hits or even the enemies are often off screen, and shows how the Chan scene is designed to show fluid and clear movement. He also makes a good point about how the Chan scene is able to use very quick shots and still be understandable, which proves that the problem with that Michael Bay style is more than just the editing.
Salt
Friday, July 30th, 2010
Hey, have you guys ever noticed how alot of these so-called action movies they do now days make no effort to show any action in their action scenes? I think I might’ve mentioned something about that before, not sure.
Okay, it’s getting old for me to write about, and I’m sure it’s even worse for you to read about. But I feel like if we stop mentioning it it’s like we’re saying it’s okay. Whether it’s Michael Bay’s ridiculous edits or Paul Greengrass’s wobblecams that opened the floodgates, something happened, and old fashioned notions like geography, coherency, and visual storytelling got buried. The language and standards of action cinema that have evolved and developed over generations have been thrown out the window and it’s become acceptable to just have a quick smear of photography that sort of loosely implies the fights and chases that audiences used to pay money to actually see with their own eyes. I think there’s gonna be a backlash against this type of movie pretty soon, and it’s bubbling up in this new wave of DTV action we’ve all been enjoying. But still, you can’t just let it go. You gotta say something. (more…)
The Horseman
Tuesday, June 15th, 2010
THE HORSEMAN is an Australian revenge picture out on DVD in the U.S. today. At the start this guy’s daughter has already died of a heroin overdose just after filming a porno. It’s a low budget deal shot in a boxing gym – she’s not a Vivid girl or nothing. He doesn’t really know what happened but he blames the porn people for her death, so he’s tracking down everybody involved, burning them alive, etc. (more…)
Taken
Wednesday, February 4th, 2009TAKEN has finally hit American shores many months after everybody else in the world already saw it and emailed me about it. As reported, it is a Luc Besson-produced version of a Seagal-type scenario: ex–CIA badass’s daughter gets kidnapped in Paris, he goes and gets her back. An old favorite. The hook is that this badass is not played by a Seagal, or even a Statham. It’s Liam Neeson (SCHINDLER’S LIST).
Okay, so admittedly action is not completely new for Neeson. He was a swordsman in both BATMAN BEGINS and PHANTOM MENACE. A long time ago he was Darkman. He even co-starred in a (not very good) Patrick Swayze action picture called NEXT OF KIN. (The one where not-famous-yet Ben Stiller plays a mobster’s douchebag son.) But mostly he’s moved beyond that, and I think most people consider him a Serious Actor. You know – MICHAEL COLLINS, KINSEY, GANGS OF NEW YORK, Spielberg’s choice to play Lincoln. And here he is playing a role that the first Ain’t It Cool review complained could’ve been played by Jean-Claude Van Damme. But of course you and I agree that’s why it’s so cool. We want to see a Van Damme movie but with Liam Neeson. Or how about a Michael Dudikoff with Frank Langella? Or a Bolo Yeung with Daniel Day Lewis? A Cynthia Rothrock with Susan Sarandon?
In TAKEN Liam Neeson gets to do all the badass ex-CIA shit that was so sorely lacking in ETHAN FROME and LES MISERABLES. Lots of quick, blunt chops to dispatch foes, appearing out of nowhere to beat people up, outsmarting and outfighting police and organized crime to find out things he’s not supposed to know and get into places he’s not supposed to be, working his way through the chain to find his daughter. As a bonus he thwarts a knife attack on a pop star. (more…)
Doomsday
Monday, March 24th, 2008and the end of the world of action and horror movies
Well, shit. I been looking forward to this one for a long time. ROAD WARRIOR + ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK from the director of THE DESCENT? Yes please. I thought. And in the week since it came out I’ve gotten alot of emails about it and talked to several people who saw it and only 2 of them said they didn’t like it. Most weren’t willing to call it “good” but they did seem pretty delighted by it.
So hopefully most of you who see it will like it too, but Jee and Zuss. To me DOOMSDAY seems like my own personal doomsday, the end of the line for my two favorite genres.
DOOMSDAY is not a horror movie, but after DOG SOLDIERS and THE DESCENT Neil Marshall is a bigshot in the “Splat Pack” or whatever stupid name you want to call what passes for the best horror directors these days. I’ve had alot of discussions with other horror watchers about this crop and what worries me is that so much of modern horror – including the stuff I like – is looking backwards. You got Rob Zombie with his various ’70s homages, Eli Roth with his “grindhouse” and Italian horror and Takashi Miike references. I think Aja shows some promise, but his best movie is a faithful Wes Craven remake. Everybody complains about the avalanche of remakes but even among the well-reviewed movies you got some stuff that’s 100% tribute and references (HATCHET, BEHIND THE MASK). I get it, I like those old movies these directors like too. Let’s all high five each other and quote a couple lines but then let’s make some new movies, shall we? Where is the George Romero or the John Carpenter of today? It can’t be the fucking SAW guys, can it? (more…)
The Condemned
Wednesday, April 25th, 2007My friends, I write to you with a heavy heart to admit that the prestigious WWE Films banner is starting to lose its luster. They have three movies under their belt now (get it, belt – that is a wrestling pun in my opinion) but the record now is 1 in 3. And the one I’m counting as good is SEE NO EVIL (click for review!) , the slasher movie about a big bald sexually repressed muscleman poking out people’s eyes in a scary hotel. So your mileage may vary. (mileage is a car metaphor, that is no longer wrestling related, sorry.)
THE CONDEMNED sort of stars Steve Austin, formerly known as Stone Cold Steve Austin, but maybe he dropped that after he got fired from wrestling for getting arrested for wife beating. I’m not sure. Austin is the most sympathetic of ten convicts that an amoral millionaire buys out of prisons in third world countries, puts on an island and forces to kill each other for one of those live streaming internet shows they have in horrible movies (see HALLOWEEN RESURRECTION). They have bombs attached to their ankles so they can’t escape, and if one is able to be the last one remaining he or she will be set free.
The movie has two advantages over the disappointing THE MARINE. Number one, it’s rated-R so it can have actual violence in it, not just explosions. Number two, Steve Austin makes a good action anti-hero, he is not bland and laughable like John Cena. Sure, they both have unnaturally large necks, but Austin seems like a genuine tough guy, not just an out of control muscle-sculpting experiment for some crazed fitness artist. The bad guys always call him “redneck” and “hillbilly” and I guess he has a little bit of a drawl, but his main appeal is his gravelly voice and his Plissken-esque don’t-give-a-fuck attitude. This crowd seemed to love it every time he barked out a sarcastic comment or called somebody “sweetheart,” and I don’t blame them. If he was given an actual character to play in a movie by people who knew how to make a real movie, he could be at least as good as Roddy Piper. (Not that any wrestler movie will ever match THEY LIVE. That’s a pipe dream.) (more…)
