Archive for the ‘Action’ Category
Thursday, February 7th, 2008
THE EXTERMINATOR is a crude but enjoyable vigilante action movie from 1980. It’s kind of in the vein of ROLLING THUNDER but closer to the quality level of THE PARK IS MINE. Robert Ginty plays a troubled Vietnam vet whose best friend (Steve James, more on him later) gets paralyzed by a gang so he kills them in revenge, then decides to declare himself The Exterminator and go murder various criminals. Now that I think about it this is actually in the vein of THE PUNISHER (either version), but it came before those movies.
You know this movie means business when the very first shot is the main character being tossed through the air by a huge explosion. There’s not even a studio logo before that, that is the very first shot. It starts out with a gruesome battle in Vietnam that explains why a dude would be troubled enough to become The Exterminator. There’s a very realistic and disturbing beheading in this scene. Stan Winston was one of the effects guys. It’s one of those action movie paradoxes because on one hand these things are what torments the main character, they are what cause him to go crazy and what he flashes back to when he’s murdering criminals. But on the other hand we think they are awesome. We want to see explosions and beheadings. As viewers, what’s worst for him is best for us. We are cruel gods. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: crazed veterans, revenge, Steve James, vigilantes
Posted in Action, Crime, Drama, Reviews, Thriller | 10 Comments »
Saturday, January 26th, 2008
RAMBO: JUST RAMBO, NOT RAMBO FIRST BLOOD PART 2
Poor John Rambo. Drafted into ‘Nam, transformed into a killing machine, trained to eat things that would make a billygoat puke. He came home, butted heads with an asshole sherriff, fought a bunch of cops, got a pardon so he could rescue some POWs and “win this time,” lived at a monastery I believe, real good stickfighter, made some allegiances in Afghanistan that in retrospect were not so hot but you know what they say about hindsight. Now he lives in a shack in Thailand where he catches deadly snakes for a living. His first line in the movie is telling a guy to go fuck himself. He’s real cynical about the state of the world and the inevitability of bloodshed, but some Christian missionaries convince him against his better judgment to take them in his boat and drop them off in a war zone in Burma. You guys run along now, don’t get raped or blown up. Then when they don’t come back on time he has to go back and drop off the team of mercenaries the church hires to rescue them. I wish the team had a cool name like The Holy Rollers and had pictures of Jesus, Joseph and Mary airbrushed on their weapons, but no, they’re just regular guns for hire, they don’t give a shit about that stuff. They don’t even care about the money that much, so they’re gonna turn around when things look bad. But Rambo (to them “the boatman”) changes their minds. Using a bow and arrow. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Badass Laureates, Sylvester Stallone
Posted in Action, Reviews, Thriller | 65 Comments »
Sunday, January 20th, 2008
CLOVERFIELD is a new movie about a giant monster named Cloverfield who comes out of the water and attacks New York City. Cloverfield knows he has a sissy name that’s way too close to that asshole cat Garfield. He wants it to have a more rebellious ring to it, like [Holden] Caulfield, or at least semi-respectable, like Seinfeld before he started advertising BEE MOVIE. So to prove he’s not fucking around and to establish dominance one of the first things Cloverfield does on his visit to the big city is rip the head off the Statue of Liberty and throw it across Manhattan. If he was trying to bowl it was a gutterball but, poor bowler or not that shit is threatening to a human like you or me. Let’s face it, he has a size advantage. That is the main thing going on between Cloverfield and us. More weight, more reach. Not really a fair fight.
Since we don’t actually witness the incident (except for where the head lands) it’s hard to really know for sure what Cloverfield’s motive is. It’s easy to jump to conclusions that he’s making a statement about the loss of liberty in America post 9-11, or perhaps he is some sort of rabid anti-American and is threatening our liberty. He should realize that it is very insensitive in the post 9-11 world to not only attack landmarks in Manhattan but to make people think of being beheaded. I don’t care if the fucker’s from space, if you’re visiting some place you gotta do research on the local customs and not just be a big asshole like that. So he’s either very anti-american or just a prick. Or maybe he hates women. My guess though is he thought the statue looked at him funny. Or he saw that torch and thought she was armed and just acted on reflex. After all, it is New York. Okay, I have gone through alot of theories here but I’m sticking with that last one, the Amadou Diallo theory. If anybody finds evidence to back me up on one of those stupid “viral marketing” websights everybody got all caught up in please let me know. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: another fucking found footage movie, giant monster
Posted in Action, Monster, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 20 Comments »
Friday, December 28th, 2007
SPOILER ALERT !!
VERN VS. ALIEN VS. PREDATOR DASH REQUIEM
Aliens, predators, why do you always gotta fight? Why can’t you just resolve your differences? I know they say “whoever wins, we lose” but I’ve seen both the AvP movies and clearly nobody is winning anything. We lose, and you lose our respect.
RESURRECTION and RATATOUILLE were already taken and they needed something that started with an R, so the title of this thing is REQUIEM. That might make you wanna ask who died, but you already know the answer: the remaining dignity of aliens and predators across the universe. Two proud races slandered and humiliated, on the Lord’s birthday no less. And why? For what? What the hell did aliens and predators ever do to us other than entertain and delight us, scare us, fuck up our space colonies and skin some dudes in a jungle? Nothing. And for that we give them a franchise so lazy it can’t even be bothered to spell out its own titles. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: aliens, AvP, Predator series
Posted in Action, AICN, Horror, Monster, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit, Vern Tells It Like It Is | 6 Comments »
Thursday, December 20th, 2007
Man, I’m a sucker for these QUIET EARTH type stories. You can’t help but think about what you would do in a situation like that, alone or with a couple other people, living in an abandoned city, everybody else either dead or disappeared. All of society’s leftover resources would be there for the plucking. Where would you take up residence? What would you drive? Would the rides at Disneyland still work? What sort of games would you play to amuse yourself? Backhoe Rampage? Skyscraper Free Throw? Condo Shitting? How would you deal with your loneliness? And would you bother to wear pants?
If there’s monsters involved, like in DAWN OF THE DEAD or any of the three movies based on Richard Matheson’s book I Am Legend, then it becomes more of a survivalist challenge, you start thinking about strategies. How to fortify your home, how to transport yourself around safely to scavenge, etc. In this case it’s vampires he’s dealing with so he can pretty much wander around and do what he wants during daylight (vampires have a sunlight related disability), but at nightfall it’s on. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alice Braga, Francis Lawrence, omega men, Richard Matheson, vampires, Will Smith
Posted in Action, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 3 Comments »
Saturday, December 8th, 2007
Not to be confused with THE HUNTED (starring Christopher Lambert) or BENJI THE HUNTED (starring Benji)
Early in William Friedkin’s THE HUNTED we are introduced to its hero, L.T. Bonham (Steven Seagal), an expert in tracking, knife fighting and wilderness survival who used to train special ops soldiers in these skills. As he learned that the guys he was training were being sent to assassinate people for purely political purposes he grew disillusioned and quit. So now he’s in the BC wilderness where we see him track an injured wolf through the snowy woods, get the trap off of his paw, chew up a root and rub it on the wound as a homeopathic healing agent. Then he tracks the responsible poacher down at a tavern, bangs his head against a table and tells him never to do it again.
Oh wait, did I say Steven Seagal? Actually L.T. Bonham is played by Tommy Lee Jones. I was surprised how much of this movie reminded me of Seagal, though. The story is about a special ops badass (Seagal– er, I mean Benicio Del Toro) who comes back from Kosovo totally wacked out and kills some guys, and Tommy Lee Jones (UNDER SIEGE) is the guy who trained him so he has to help catch him. So I thought it was gonna be like FIRST BLOOD meets THE FUGITIVE. Not Steven Seagal meets Steven Seagal. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Benicio Del Toro, Tommy Lee Jones, William Friedkin
Posted in Action, Drama, Reviews, Thriller | 7 Comments »
Wednesday, November 21st, 2007
I always knew the title to this one, because of that song by Wang Chung. But I never knew what exactly it was about. Turns out it’s loosely based on a novel by this guy Gerald Petievich. He was in the Secret Service, and the book was inspired by some of his experiences. So it’s supposed to be about the weirdness of that job, where one day you’re protecting the president of the United States and the next day you’re working for the treasury department so you’re just chasing some dude with counterfeit twenties.
This movie has the thumbprints of great filmatism smeared all over it. It has the kind of opening I’m a sucker for, the kind that throws you in the middle of something, sets the tone, then goes into the opening credits. Like a preamble or an overture. The main character Richard Chance (William Petersen) is on security detail for a Reagan speech (you just hear Reagan’s voice off screen, they don’t have Martin Sheen or anybody playing him). The guys are just kind of killing time when he notices something odd that leads him to the roof, where he finds an Islamic suicide bomber. (oh, shit.) He’s not able to talk him down but his partner climbs up the side of the roof and yanks the guy by the leg so that he explodes in mid-air, like a big balloon full of blood and chunks of meat. Then the two sit on the edge of the building to think about what has just happened. Chance says, “Let’s go get drunk and play cards” and it cuts into a stylish opening montage showing various images from the movie and that represent L.A. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: car chases, William Friedkin
Posted in Action, Crime, Drama, Reviews, Thriller | 16 Comments »
Monday, November 19th, 2007
LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD: 2-DISC ALLOWED TO SAY ‘MOTHERFUCKER’ EDITION
“YIPPEE KI YAY, MOVIE FANS!” That’s what some dipshit wrote on the back of the new LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD dvd. But in the new unrated cut of the movie itself John McClane is allowed to live free and say the whole legendary, maybe-shouldn’t-have-become-part-of-the-DIE-HARD-formula catch phrase. Say goodbye to “Yippee ki yay mother(gunshot).” It’s out the window like Hans Gruber.
The new cut is not drastically, hugely or monumentally different. If you hated the theatrical version you’ll still hate this one. The story is the same, I didn’t notice any scenes removed or added, there’s no new narration or a corny shot of a unicorn that’s supposed to make you see the whole movie in a new light. McClane still doesn’t make good on his threat to beat Kevin Smith’s character to death – not even in a deleted scene, unless it’s one a them “easter eggs” and I just didn’t find it. I’ll keep looking. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bruce, Bruce Willis, Cyril Raffaelli, Len Wiseman, Maggie Q
Posted in Action, AICN, Bruce, Reviews, Thriller | 8 Comments »
Friday, November 16th, 2007
THE BEOWULF 3-D IMAX EXPERIENCE
BEOWULF is the new “motion capture” weirdly computerized sword and sandal 3-D movie from Robert Zemeckis. He’s using the same technology and directational style as POLAR EXPRESS but it will go over better because that one was for kids, this one has a bunch of stabbings and monsters and a part where Virtual Angelina Jolie gives a handjob to a sword, so that means it’s more sophisticated and adult.
Ray iWinstone voices the blonde he-man of the title. Anthony Hopkins 2.0 plays the old king, Robin Wright Penn’s likeness plays the princess from the fuckin Shrek movies, and John Pac-Mankovich does his usual distractingly weird performance as some asshole who is pissed off about something or other. Also you got Crispin Glover inhabiting the monster Grendel and a very good computerized duplicate of Angelina Jolie’s head as Grendel’s hot mom. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: 3D, Angelina Jolie
Posted in Action, Cartoons and Shit, Fantasy/Swords, Reviews | 65 Comments »
Tuesday, November 13th, 2007
FANTASTIC 4 2: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER 1
Man, I don’t know how this works, but somehow just putting a silver guy in a movie brings me in. When FANTASTIC 4 PART 1 came out I had no interest, but when they started advertising part 2 I thought, oh, who am I fooling? Nobody can resist a silver guy. So I rented part 1 to catch up. And I gotta say, as bad as I pictured that movie being, it was actually alot worse. Definitely in the lower tier of comic book movies, which puts it in the lowest tier of movies overall unless you include immoral material like child porn, snuff, crush videos or TRANSFORMERS.
Basically the first one is the story of four unappealing dorks who get in a space accident that gives them magical powers so they put on shiny blue scuba suits, make bad puns in a big cheesy laboratory set and fight some prick that shoots lightning. The makeup on “The Thing” looks stupid, the digital effects are surprisingly terrible for a big budget movie and any attempt at turning this ridiculous shit into actual drama or excitement is immediately undermined by the constant stream of groan inducing “jokes.” (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Chris Evans, Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Julian McMahon, Marvel Comics, Michael Chiklis, Tim Story
Posted in Action, Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews | 3 Comments »
