Archive for the ‘Action’ Category
Tuesday, February 25th, 2025
I’m generally a sucker for an international co-production action movie, especially the ones based in Chinese martial arts but with some western stars. For example the one with Milla Jovovich, or the one with Coolio, or NAKED WEAPON. But I’m suspicious of these big period piece ones with an American star or two outside of their usual context. I’ve even hesitated to pull the trigger on the one with Arnold in it. I’m still a defender of THE GREAT WALL, but most of these are not Zhang Yimou joints. It’s easy to assume that the Hollywood guy is phoning it in for a paycheck and the international producers are trying to coast on name value, leaving us to be bored by a bunch of yelling and sword clanging and CG armies.
DRAGON BLADE (2015) also has the hurdle of being a late-period Jackie Chan movie, but it defies the odds. Give or take some of the awkwardness of the format, this is an entertaining (and charmingly corny) story about what happens when a rogue Roman legion link up with a badass squad of disavowed Chinese peacemakers. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Adrien Brody, Daniel Lee, Jackie Chan, John Cusack, Lin Peng, Mika Wang, Sharni Vinson
Posted in Reviews, Action, Martial Arts | 6 Comments »
Thursday, February 6th, 2025
Yep, they made a new STREET TRASH in 2024, it recently had a limited theatrical release, it’s produced by Bloody Disgusting and Screambox so it’s probly on there, and also it’s on blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome. When I say “a new STREET TRASH” I’m intentionally being vague about how it relates to the 1987 slime epic of the same name, like those entertainment reporters who announce an upcoming “reboot” and the more you read the more clear it is they didn’t ask if it was a remake or a sequel or what, so they’re just using a term that has been bastardized into meaninglessness and hoping nobody notices that they don’t actually have any information.
This could qualify as a remake, but a very loose one, using part of the premise and spirit of the original, but otherwise being totally different. Or it could be a sequel if you figure that the biological weapon called “Tenafly Viper” is a militarized version of the deadly spoiled wine from the first one. At any rate, it’s a movie called STREET TRASH that has a few similarities to the previous film, including the only important one: a bunch of people melt horribly, and a variety of beautifully colored liquids pour out of them. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andrew Roux, Carel Nel, Donna Cormack-Thomson, Gary Green, Joe Vaz, Jonathan Pienaar, Lloyd Martinez Newkirk, Ryan Kruger, Sean Cameron Michael, Shuraigh Meyer, South Africa, Suraya Rose Santos, Warrick Grier
Posted in Reviews, Action, Comedy/Laffs, Horror | 4 Comments »
Wednesday, January 29th, 2025
DON’T MESS WITH GRANDMA (which played Fantastic Fest as SUNSET SUPERMAN, written in a better font) is a new Tubi original from writer/director Jason Krawczyk. I’ve kept an eye out for him since I saw his great Henry Rollins horror/crime/comedy HE NEVER DIED (2015), but I probly would’ve watched this anyway because it stars Michael Jai White.
It’s also figuratively made for Tubi – a modest, agreeable time that fuses the MJW action persona with the MJW comedy chops. I suppose you could also say that of BLACK DYNAMITE, but this does it in a different way. White plays JT, a Kosovo-era army ranger who has left that life far behind. He works as a driver for a Meals On Wheels type service called Trusted Trays, and regularly makes a 2 hour drive out to the boonies to take care of his “Granna” (Jackie Richardson, MAXIMUM RISK). Today he’s going up there to fix her sink and maybe, if he can get up the nerve, try to convince her to make his life a whole lot easier by moving into assisted living closer to him. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Billy Zane, Jackie Richardson, Jason Krawczyk, Michael Jai White, Rob Archer, Tubi Original
Posted in Reviews, Action, Comedy/Laffs | 1 Comment »
Monday, January 27th, 2025
If DRACULA UNTOLD isn’t forgotten, then it’s kind of notorious. From what I remembered it was the start of the Dark Universe, the planned shared universe of action-oriented Universal Monster reboots. The public scoffed at that whole idea, then everybody (besides me) hated THE MUMMY and the whole thing got scrapped and became a punchline.
But it wasn’t originally intended to be part of that anyway. The script had been around for a while. I remember reading about it years earlier when it was gonna be an Alex Proyas movie called DRACULA: YEAR ZERO. Sam Worthington was to star. It wasn’t about starting anything, it was about prequelizing Dracula as a thrilling 21st century fantasy adventure character – to give the iconic cape-wearer a heroic backstory, or at least good intentions and motives. Basically it asks what if before he was the Count we all know, he was what I call a Fantasy Sword Dude: the pretty cool, unevenly charismatic hero of a digital era studio b-movie. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Art Parkinson, Burk Sharpless, Charles Dance, Dark Universe, Dominic Cooper, Dracula, fantasy sword dudes, Gary Shore, Luke Evans, Matt Sazama, Sarah Gadon
Posted in Reviews, Action, Fantasy/Swords, Horror | 23 Comments »
Wednesday, January 8th, 2025
After seeing THE WILD ROBOT I decided to bite the bullet and watch 2024’s other automaton-related animated feature, TRANSFORMERS ONE, the first theatrical Transformers cartoon since 1986’s seminal-ish THE TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE.
It may seem odd that I didn’t want to see this in the theater, because here are the Transformers movies I did bother to see on the big screen, often in 3D and/or IMAX: TRANSFORMERS, TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN, TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON, TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION, TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT, BUMBLEBEE and TRANSFORMERS: RISE OF THE BEASTS. That’s right, all seven of the live action ones, even though only the next to last one I consider to be Actually A Good Movie. The rest I mostly just find fascinatingly crazy, but I’ve learned to enjoy watching them. I started as their enemy, but later joined them, like Skyfire. Like so many others of my generation I had the Transformers cartoon and toys imprinted on my brain as a child, and there is some residual lure to the concept in there, even if I don’t hold it sacred. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andrew Barrer, Brian Tyler, Brian Tyree Henry, Eric Pearson, Gabriel Ferrari, Hasbro, Isaac Singleton Jr., Jon Hamm, Josh Cooley, Keegan-Michael Key, Laurence Fishburne, robots, Scarlett Johansson, Steve Buscemi, Vanessa Liguori
Posted in Reviews, Action, Cartoons and Shit, Family, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 4 Comments »
Thursday, January 2nd, 2025
Unless I’m forgetting something, Clint Eastwood only has two movies that could be classified as spy movies, and both involve a mission to a mountain in the Alps. One is WHERE EAGLES DARE (1968) and the other is this one, THE EIGER SANCTION (1975). I’d say it’s about 65% suspenseful mountain climbing thriller, 25% assassin intrigue, and 10% colorful James Bond type shit. That last portion includes all the sexy stuff and the sinister boss, an albino war criminal named Dragon (Thayer David, ROCKY).
Clint plays Dr. Jonathan Hemlock, a great pulp hero because he’s an ex-Green Beret, secretly a retired assassin, but famously a retired mountain climber (there are fawning magazine profiles of him), now working as a college art history professor, and has a side gig as a book critic. I wondered if this might’ve been an influence on RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK when I saw one of his students (Candice Rialson, CANDY STRIPE NURSES) making eyes and spreading legs at him in class. He turns her down because he doesn’t take advantage of students or drunks, he says. Good to know he has some limits. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brenda Venus, Candice Rialson, Clint Eastwood, Elaine Shore, George Kennedy, Gregory Walcott, Hal Dresden, Jack Cassidy, Susan Morgan Cooper, Thayer David, Trevanian, Vonetta McGee, Warren Murphy
Posted in Reviews, Action, Thriller | 37 Comments »
Tuesday, December 24th, 2024
RED ONE is not a prequel to THE BIG RED ONE or READY PLAYER ONE, but in fact a Christmas fantasy action movie produced by Amazon Product Corporation and starring Dwayne The Rock Johnson and Chris Formerly Captain America Evans. It has made around $180 million in theaters but is considered a flop because it cost something like $250 million before marketing. I have seen many holding it up as an example of the worst fucking crap imaginable. “Slop,” if you will.
I don’t have a high opinion of most of the recent artistic choices of the named parties, so I didn’t rush out to see it. But now I have seen it on Amazon’s streaming/package delivery service (it’s already on there) and it is my duty to report that I liked it. This is a genuinely funny movie! That is not something I expect out of Dwayne T.R. Johnson in the year 2024. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bonnie Hunt, Chris Evans, Chris Morgan, Christmas, Christmas action, J.K. Simmons, Jake Kasdan, Kiernan Shipka, Lucy Liu, Reinaldo Faberlie, The Rock
Posted in Reviews, Action, Comedy/Laffs, Fantasy/Swords | 42 Comments »
Wednesday, November 20th, 2024
TRIGGER WARNING is a b-action vehicle for Jessica Alba (MACHETE, MECHANIC: RESURRECTION). You don’t see her in big movies anymore but she looks basically the same as you remember and she’s playing a CIA covert ops badass whose father dies, so she comes home to her small town, uncovers a criminal conspiracy and fucks up some motherfuckers.
When I saw the trailer I was thinking it was like how Netflix gave tough lady action vehicles to Allison Janney and Halle Berry and different people. But then it opens with a war scene in Syria and I thought oh no, this is more like a recent made-for-VOD movie that Dolph Lundgren and Mickey Rourke would each have a couple scenes in. That’s the general feel of the thing, and storywise it’s all well-worn tropes, very low on original spins. It’s generic – all the numbers are there, all in order – but slightly above average for this sort of thing. Alba seems very dedicated and is cool in it, so at the bare minimum level of “is it a movie where Jessica Alba beats up a bunch of chumps?” it is successful. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anthony Michael Hall, Eric Brown, Gabriel Basso, Halley Gross, Jake Weary, Jessica Alba, John Brancato, Josh Olson, Justin Yu, Kaiwi Lyman, Mark Webber, Mouly Surya, Tone Bell
Posted in Reviews, Action | 8 Comments »
Monday, November 11th, 2024
100 YARDS was one of my most anticipated movies this year – it’s the latest period martial arts epic from writer/director Xu Haofeng, this time with his brother Xu Junfeng credited as co-director. Junfeng is a newbie but Haofeng is one of my favorite modern martial art directors, a true auteur with a very distinct style and tone and a set of reoccurring themes that happen to be extremely my shit.
This one is about the Tianjin martial arts scene in 1920, so it’s about what was going on there around a decade before his 2015 film THE FINAL MASTER. At this point there is only one kung fu school, Master Shen’s, but the world is changing and the next generation are trying to establish themselves. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andy On, Bea Hayden Kuo, Duncan Leung, Guo Long, Jacky Heung, Kevin Lee, Li Yuan, Shiyi Tang, Xu Haofeng, Xu Junfeng
Posted in Reviews, Action, Martial Arts | 4 Comments »
Monday, November 4th, 2024
Maybe it’s weird to watch a post-apocalypse movie right before this particular election, but I’d wanted to see AZRAEL and then I saw that it was on Shudder. I knew it was a low or no dialogue movie starring Samara Weaving (MONSTER TRUCKS, THE BABYSITTER, SNAKE EYES), and not much more, but “genre movie starring Samara Weaving” is enough for me. It would’ve been a bonus if I’d known it was written by Simon Barrett (YOU’RE NEXT, THE GUEST) or if I recognized the name of director E.L. Katz from the dark comedy CHEAP THRILLS.
We’ve seen so many post-apocalyptic worlds, but this is a new one for me. It opens with a card that says, “Many years after the Rapture… Among the survivors, some are driven to renounce their sin of Speech.” Yes, it’s a movie where none of the main characters speak, or even sign, so the details of their situation are never directly addressed. But that leaves plenty of space to interpret and contemplate.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: E.L. Katz, Katariina Unt, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, no dialogue, post-apocalypse, Radoslav Parvanov, Rapture, Samara Weaving, Simon Barrett
Posted in Reviews, Action, Horror | 5 Comments »
