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. (read the rest of this shit…)
BEST OF THE BEST 4: WITHOUT WARNING finds our hero Tommy Lee (still Phillip Rhee, also directing again) wandering into yet another action movie subgenre – this time he’s the reluctant badass who gets stuck trying to stop a plot by heavily armed, highly organized commandos. So it’s DIE HARD in a BEST OF THE BEST. In the three years since part 3 Tommy’s had a daughter and had a wife pass away. All he wants to do is bake his daughter a cake for her birthday, but coincidentally his friend at the mini-mart who he asks for baking advice has a computer expert daughter who’s fleeing from Russian counterfeiters with a disc they just stole. And of course Tommy ends up stuck with the disc and everybody trying to kill him. 
I almost didn’t bother trying out the sequel, but I’m so glad I did. It turns out 1993’s BEST OF THE BEST 2 is an unheralded gem of the ’80s style American b-action movies. It’s such a huge leap in entertainment value from BEST OF THE BEST that I couldn’t even believe it. I guess this is a spoiler for the next couple reviews, but not only does BEST OF THE BEST 2 best BEST OF THE BEST, but BEST OF THE BEST 2 is the best of the BEST OF THE BESTs, too. 
BEST OF THE BEST is a watchable movie, but not the best of any genre, except possibly Eric Roberts non-sequel karate tournament movies. So I’m not sure about using the word “best” two times in the title. Seems a little presumptuous, unless one is supposed to cancel out the other. They were definitely set on that title, though. It’s spoken out loud in the movie and appears in one of those ’80s inspiration-rock montage songs.
THE KARATE KID was such a phenomenon, man. It mainstream-popularized karate in the U.S. and was heavily imitated in everything from kid’s movies to sports movies to actual action movies. It was sequeled, next generationed, cartooned, action figured, parodied in REVENGE OF THE NERDS, postmodernly referenced and recently remade. It’s hard to remember what the context was then. I can’t really watch it without comparing it to martial arts themed movies made since then. But I’ll try to be nice. 
Wow, I must’ve really misread the ol’ zeitgeist. I thought for sure with that depressing new Ben Stiller indie drama having come out on DVD last Tuesday GREENBERG was gonna be all anybody had on their minds for weeks. But the comments thread there almost makes it seem like you guys are more interested in this “Inception” business.
GREENBERG (Ben Stiller from NEXT OF KIN) is a 40 year old sometimes-carpenter who, after some kind of breakdown and stint in a mental hospital, comes to house sit (crash at) his banker brother’s place in L.A. while the family’s on a business vacation to Vietnam. His plan is to “do nothing,” but he’s a huge fucking baby so he starts getting the family’s nice assistant Florence (Greta Gerwig, HOUSE OF THE DEVIL) to shop for him, have a relationship with the dog for him, etc. Through horrendously awkward maneuvers he gets sloppily into her pants and makes things weird. Then he starts being a dick until she doesn’t want to see him again, but the dog gets sick and he doesn’t have a car so she has to bring him to the vet, etc. Romance does not ensue, just awkwardness. 
I meant to do this back when I reviewed 
Okay, let’s say that hypothetically you went to the Paramount Theater in Seattle last night for the Ice Cube/Snoop Dogg “How The West Was One” tour, and were about ready to jump off a bridge after Ice Cube’s set. And we’ll assume that the reasons for this severe disappointment have to do with Mr. Cube not performing a single song from his classic solo albums ‘Amerikkka’s Most Wanted’ and ‘Death Certificate’, and only two obvious ones from ‘The Predator.’ This after playing a bunch of bullshit songs from his most recent album and then declaring “okay, that’s the new shit, now we’re gonna play the old shit.” To make matters worse he played a Westside Connection song, then said “But there was another group I was in…” and after a big build up performed… a song about N.W.A. Nothing by them.
