Archive for the ‘Action’ Category
Tuesday, May 1st, 2007
After reviewing Franco Nero in the white ninja movie ENTER THE NINJA, I got some suggestions to check out THE HUNTED. I’m pretty sure at least one person tried to get me to review this a long time ago, so I hope you will enjoy this and forgive me for taking so long.
Christopher Lambert plays a white businessman who, along with his colleagues, has just wrapped up a big sale one night in Tokyo. Don’t get too excited, he’s not a ninja businessman, just a regular one in a suit and tie. Christopher decides not to go utilize some geishas with his buddies, instead going to a bar to drink by himself. But he sees Joan Chen (ON DEADLY GROUND), drinks some sake with her, ends up going back to her hotel with her. At first he’s very shy and polite, doesn’t go inside, but she invites him in for traditional Japanese hot tub sex. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Christopher Lambert, samurai
Posted in Action, Reviews | 12 Comments »
Saturday, April 28th, 2007
HOT FUZZ is the new British comedy picture from S. Pegg/N. Frost (lead comedy actors) and E. Wright (director). They are the same individuals responsible for SHAUN OF THE DEAD, the zombie comedy from a few years back that is known to be so potent that just the mention of it causes a boner on any film fan under the age of 27 residing within a 50′ radius, even if they don’t have the equipment.
Well, I’m gonna lose some credibility with my friends and colleagues in the nerd community by saying this, but I think these movies are a little overrated. I do not by any means think they are bad movies. They are fun movies, they have laughs, they are fairly original, and they are very sincere about their love for the genres they are paying tribute to, it’s not some Leslie Nielsen style “spoof.” (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Edgar Wright, Edward Woodward, Jim Broadbent, Nick Frost, Paddy Considine, Simon Pegg, Timothy Dalton
Posted in Action, Comedy/Laffs, Reviews | 73 Comments »
Wednesday, April 25th, 2007
SPOILER ALERT !!
My 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. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: post-action, Stone Cold Steve Austin, WWE Films
Posted in Action, AICN, Crime, Reviews, Thriller | 2 Comments »
Thursday, April 19th, 2007
This week I followed an anonymous tip to take a look at an individual name Sho Kosugi. This guy starred in a series of ninja movies and was said to be a missing link in my badass studies to date. I looked him up and found that ENTER THE NINJA is also known as NINJA 1 because it begins a series, so I started with that.
The movie opens promisingly with the badass in question, Mr. Sho Kosugi, in full ninja uniform, standing in front of a black void, demonstrating every weapon he knows. Nunchakas, throwing stars, arrows, daggers, grappling hook, blow gun. You name it, he spins it around or shoots it. The guy is obviously good and it’s kind of cool how he is basically doing show and tell for you throughout the opening credits. It might as well be some Ninja How-To video. But then all the sudden a ninja in all white flies onto the screen and “kicks” him in the head (although it doesn’t look like he makes contact at all). (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Franco Nero, Menahem Golan, ninjas, Sho Kosugi, white ninjas
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, April 17th, 2007
Until recently I was the guy who had never seen POINT BREAK. But the other day I busted my cherry on that matter, pardon my French, so I’m some other guy now.
I’m sure you’ve already seen it but let me refresh your memory: Keanu Reeves plays the perfectly named Johnny Utah, college football hero turned fresh-faced FBI rookie teamed with Gary Busey (in one of the first roles of his Crazy Post-Motorcycle Accident Period) to track down a gang of bank robbers who Busey (correctly) theorizes are surfers. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Busey, Kathryn Bigelow, Keanu Reeves, Patrick Swayze
Posted in Action, Crime, Drama, Reviews, Sport, Thriller | 19 Comments »
Tuesday, April 17th, 2007
I don’t know how familiar any of you are with Payback, the 1999 Mel Gibson-starring adaptation of Richard Stark’s The Hunter. That’s the same book that inspired one of the all time canonical works of Badass Cinema, Point Blank.
Well, Mel Gibson is no Lee Marvin and writer/director Brian Helgeland (A Knight’s Tale) is no John Boorman. But I think Payback is an underrated movie. It’s a good balance of vicious and funny. It’s got a bit of a ’70s throwback feel and lots of weird touches to make it an indistinct time period. There are rotary phones, and primitive credit card technology that makes fraud more convenient, and the film is washed out with bleach making everything have a pale blue tint to it. You’re not sure when this is supposed to be taking place, which in a weird way reminds me of the experience of reading the books. Most of it reads pretty modern but obviously you are dealing with armed robbers, there is money, communication and security technology that would make some of the stories impossible today. So I sometimes have to check the copyright dates to be sure when this would’ve happened. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brian Helgeland, Donald Westlake, Mel Gibson, Parker
Posted in Action, Crime, Drama, Other Sites, Reviews | 6 Comments »
Tuesday, April 10th, 2007
PLANET TERROR and DEATH PROOF
PREAMBLE
Here in the US these two movies were designed and released as a double feature with trailers for fictional movies in between. They were released under one unifying name that starts with a ‘G’ that is a word used to describe the shitty theaters that used to churn out sleazy horror, sexploitation, kung fu and blaxploitation movies back in the day.
I am not going to be using the g-word in this review, because I am sick and fucking tired of hearing it. It’s a perfectly legitimate title for this concept, but here is the problem. Mr. Tarantino is a huge fan and expert on these types of movies, he is the human IMDb judging from some of those interviews. So I don’t mind seeing him talk about it in every article about KILL BILL VOLUME 1 and then KILL BILL VOLUME 2 and then when they announced this g-word movie, and then while he was filming it and now to promote its release. Tarantino can use the g-word all he wants, he has earned it. So I don’t mind him and the trailers for his movie trying to explain to the kids what the g-word means. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bruce, Bruce Willis, Jordan Ladd, Josh Brolin, Kurt Russell, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Michael Biehn, Michael Parks, Robert Rodriguez, Robert Zombie, Rosario Dawson, Rose MacGowan, stuntsploitation, Sydney Tamiia Poitier, Tarantino, Tracie Thoms, Vanessa Ferlito, Zoe Bell
Posted in Action, Bruce, Horror, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, April 4th, 2007
(originally BANLIEUE 13)
I’m way behind on this movie. I remember a couple years ago I went to see some movie at the film festival here, and this one was just getting out on the same screen. I saw some people I knew coming out and I asked them how it was. They said it was ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK except in France, and with some weird martial art where they run up walls and shit. I knew it was a Luc Besson joint so I thought wait a minute, is this related to that YAMAKASI movie I saw? The art of climbing and flipping?
Now it’s years later and the movie has long since played American theaters and DVD players in a dubbed version called DISTRICT B13. The advertising campaign has tried to convince us we know what the word “parkour” means. Another practicioner of the art has battled (and lost) the new, badass James Bond. Now it’s old news, the excitement has worn off, so I saw it now. That’s just how I roll. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Besson productions, Cyril Raffaelli, David Belle, parkour, Pierre Morel
Posted in Action, Crime, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 3 Comments »
Saturday, March 10th, 2007
Make no mistake about it, it’s hard out here for a Spartan. Alot of these bastards, they’re “baptized in the fire of combat.” They grow up having to fight their dad all day, and I mean really fight him. You thought your dad pushed you too hard at hoops, well at least he didn’t beat on you until you fucked up. These guys, the beating is the actual practice. It’s their culture.
In some of the other neighborhoods, like Arcadia for example, you can grow up to be a potter, a sculptor or a blacksmith. In Sparta, you’re a soldier. But you don’t even get to talk about it, like “What do you do for a living?” “Oh, I’m a soldier. I’m baptized in the fire of combat.” In Sparta, they ask you what your trade is you gotta yell out “WHOO WHOO!” or something. You are highly trained in combat and in grunting. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Zack Snyder
Posted in Action, Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews, War | 5 Comments »
Thursday, February 22nd, 2007
If you saw INFERNAL AFFAIRS you know the storyline. Undercover cop vs. undercover gangster. There’s alot of stories about cops going undercover in gangs, but this one also has a member of the crime family who entered the police academy and moved up the ranks as a mole for his gang. So now both traitors are well situated and it starts to get obvious to both sides that they have a mole in their midst. And the moles are given the job of finding out who the mole is. It could be called LOS TOPOS.
Mr. Scorsese took that premise and moved it to Boston and told his own story about contemporary Boston criminals. Scorsese’s young associate Leonardo Del Caprio (looking more like Benicio Del Toro every year) plays the cop who pretends to get kicked out of the force, does some time and then joins Jack Nicholson’s gang. Matt Damon plays the cop who’s really working for the gang. We first see him as a little kid getting money from Nicholson in a diner. And the kid they chose is a dead ringer. They even taught him how to cock his eyebrow like Damon. Somebody’s gonna have to find a young Ben Affleck doppelganger and these two can go on the road. Or they could do THE YOUNG JASON BOURNE MYSTERIES where the camera shakes around while he’s fighting some kid in a treehouse. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alec Baldwin, Boston, Jack Nicholson, James Badge Dale, Leonardo DiCaprio, Martin Sheen, Matt Damon, Ray Winstone, Scorsese, Vera Farmiga, William Monahan
Posted in Action, Crime, Reviews, Thriller | 10 Comments »
