Archive for the ‘Action’ Category
Tuesday, January 1st, 2002
Well god damn here’s an action picture like I’ve NEVER seen. This is a must see for ANY action fan and I am not fucking joking. I mean you don’t have to see Payback, you don’t have to see Die Hard with a Vengeance or any of these other movies I talk about but in god and mary’s sweet name of christ jesus, you OWE it to yourself and to the lord to see this chinese picture Hard Boiled.
I mean don’t get me wrong I like the van dammes and what not but this is on a whole other plane flying way up in the sky. It will forever change what you expect from an action picture in my opinion although I only saw it this afternoon so what the hell do I know. But it is to shootout movies what Godfather is to mob movies or Jaws is to shark movies. Don’t take this the wrong way but it is such a leap ahead it is like die hard times ten. It is WAY, and I mean WAY more violent than anything you will see in the US of A but at the same time the characters and story plot are far more developed. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anthony Wong, best movies ever, Chow Yun Fat, John Woo, Tony Leung
Posted in Action, Crime, Drama, Reviews, Thriller | 54 Comments »
Tuesday, January 1st, 2002
This movie is about as corny as they make em, but I kinda liked it. Supposedly the stars here are a real group of young fellas who are known for climbing up buildings, jumping off buildings, sliding down ropes and all that sort of shit. Sort of like the poor french man’s cirque du soleil.
So Luc Besson found out about them and decided to make a movie showcasing their talents. This is kinda what Besson does if you think about it. I haven’t seen KISS OF THE DRAGON yet but that was his attempt to make a better English language Jet Li vehicle than ROMEO MUST DIET. FIFTH ELEMENT was a vehicle for the detailed sci-fi world he had created when he was in boarding school. And what was THE MESSENGER if not a vehicle for his lolita bride of the time, Milla Jovovich, who he manages to make look stunning even with a pageboy haircut and splattered with blood and dirt. Now he’s doing the same thing but for some guys who run around and jump off things and what not. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Besson productions, parkour
Posted in Action, Crime, Reviews | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 1st, 2002
This is a nice little 1967 action picture starring Lee Marvin and directed by John Boorman, the sick fuck who made the movie deliverance I think you know what I’m talking about, oink oink.
Lee Marvin plays Walker. Not Walker the Texas Ranger, this walker is a Badass criminal type who is betrayed by his partner and his wife and left for dead. But he resurfaces, sees his wife die of a drug overdose and then works his way through his ex-partner and a crim corporation called The Organization, trying to get back the $93,000 that was stolen from him. As you can tell the plot is very similar to 1999 Outlaw Award winner Payback. There is even one scene in Payback that seems to be a direct lift from Point Blank, and believe it or not alot of the characters even have the same last names! An even stranger coincidence is that both films are based on the same book, “The Hunter” by Richard Stark. I mean what are the chances of something like that happening it boggles the mind, in my opinion. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Angie Dickinson, arthouse badass, John Boorman, John Vernon, Keenan Wynn, Lee Marvin, Parker, Richard Stark
Posted in Action, Crime, Drama, Reviews, Thriller | 13 Comments »
Tuesday, January 1st, 2002
If you’re on the internet (and I’m betting you are), maybe you heard legends about it. Or if you know how to read, maybe you saw the article in Vanity Fair a while back. The story is these kids who, from ages 11 to 17, took upon themselves the monumental task of remaking that movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, which was popular at the time.
Their movie has all the same dialogue, and they pretty much faithfully re-created the whole god damn thing, with the one exception being the scene where the big bald guy gets chopped up in the propellor blade, because they decided it was too dangerous. They’re just kids, man, cut them some fucking slack. But they have everything else: jungles, caves, deserts, the giant boulder, real live snakes, a teenage Indiana dragged from a truck. And most of this was filmed in their basement, garage or backyard. A few times they had to be clever to be able to pull it off, so one plane chase was changed to a boat chase, and instead of a traitorous Nazi monkey on his shoulder, he carries a sieg-heiling weiner dog. But as the years went on and they got more on tape, they convinced more and more people they weren’t fucking around and they were able to shoot on a real boat and submarine. (read the rest of this shit…)
Posted in Action, Reviews | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, January 1st, 2002
The Fifth Element is your usual Bruce Willis movie that starts out in Egypt in 1934 and ends up in some fancy space hotel in 2334 with this blue skinned space opera lady singing opera and then busting off dance moves. Bruce is introduced down on his luck, pretty much like in the Die Hards – his wife left him, he’s trying to quit smoking, his mom won’t stop hassling him and he’s “5 points away” from losing his job as a flying cab driver in space age New York.
In fact this is a lot like a Die Hard movie except in a cartoony comic book space world instead of a building. Instead of talking to a cop on a walkie talkie, he just talks to his mom on the phone, and instead of terrorists there’s this big ball of fire hurtling toward the earth that turns light to dark, life to death, sometimes has a giant skull for a face, eats missiles and sattelites, and calls himself Mr. Shadow during phone calls. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brion James, Bruce, Bruce Willis, Luc Besson, Luke Perry, Milla Jovovich, Tiny Lister
Posted in Action, Bruce, Reviews, Romance, Science Fiction and Space Shit, Thriller | 78 Comments »
Thursday, December 20th, 2001
Well in late December as I was preparing to face down the ol’ Y2K problem I got to thinking about the old Mad Max and Road Warrior movies I used to like so much, and that got me thinking about Mel Gibson, the young Australian actor who played Mad Max.
Well okay, I admit that Mel hasn’t amounted to as much as we as a society thought he would back in those days, but that doesn’t mean you can Write the man off entirely. I know what you are thinking, this dude hasn’t done shit since Mad Max so just forget about him. But sometimes even after he’s considered washed up by the general public an actor or actress is still putting out high quality type performances with little recognition. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bill Duke, Brian Helgeland, Gregg Henry, James Coburn, Kris Kristofferson, Lucy Liu, Maria Bello, Mel Gibson, Parker, Paul Abascal, Richard Stark
Posted in Action, Crime, Reviews, Thriller | 4 Comments »
Thursday, December 20th, 2001
This is the story of some magical midgets called the hobbits (sort of like the smurfs except caucasian instead of blue). What they do is, one of them inherits a powerful magic ring created by an evil individual from the past. If this took place in america in 2001, the hobbits would just go ahead and use the ring, and everybody would be all for it. It might not even make the headlines, it might be buried on page 11 like the story I read yesterday about how the Bush regime is already developing “small” nuclear weapons to use in the caves in Afghanistan.
But this is Hobbitland or whatever so they do the right thing, they take the weapon, they REFUSE to use it because they know it corrupts them, and they travel toward the Mountain of Doom, the only place it can be destroyed. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Christopher Lee, Ian McKellen, Peter Jackson, Viggo Mortensen
Posted in Action, Fantasy/Swords, Reviews | 5 Comments »
Friday, November 16th, 2001
Well, it looks like I’m doin these columns once a month now, and I guess that’s better than nothin. This time I’ll be reviewing a handful of movies that have NOTHING to do with politics. I haven’t seen this Henry Porter witchcraft movie that everybody has a boner about but I have seen some other current pictures and some older ones that I will be discussing.
There’s a catch though. First I’m gonna hafta talk politics some more. I’ll keep it shorter, but this is more important than ever.
There is a grave threat to America right now. Well, another one. In addition to Islamic extremists crashing planes into our buildings, and right wing extremists sending anthrax to us in the mail, and turbulence symbolically knocking the tails and engines off of our American Airlines planes on Veteran’s Day as an accidental commentary on our foreign policy, now we have to worry about our acting president completely and blatantly abandoning the supposed ideals of America, and no one caring. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ernest Dickerson, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Mark Dacascos, Snoop Dogg
Posted in Action, Comedy/Laffs, Fantasy/Swords, Horror, Reviews, Romance, Thriller, Vern Tells It Like It Is | 1 Comment »
Saturday, August 25th, 2001
John Carpenter is one of the most controversial directors of our time. Not because he gets into touchy subjects, like he goes and does some movie about jesus doing somebody in the ass or whatever it is that offends people these days. But because of his actual work. Because no one can really seem to agree whether he sucks with a few brilliant exceptions, whether he used to be brilliant and now he sucks, or whether he is really one of the great masters of the horror and Badass Cinema and that some of these new ones are just an off day.
The correct answer is c.
This new one follows many of the great John Carpenter stylistic motifs and thematic type themes. For example, if you ever read an interview or listened to his dvd commentary tracks, you know that practically every movie he ever did he claims is “really a western.” So he always has some stranger walking into town, or has some prisoner being transferred from a jail or a new sherriff in town or what not. In Assault On Precinct 13 he has the gangsters doing blood rituals like evil movie indians in a John Wayne picture. In They Live Roddy Piper strolls into town, walking down the middle of the street even though it’s LA. In Escape From LA he does the old jumping from horse to horse routine, except with motorcycles. Vampires takes place in a sunny Mexican ghost town even though it’s about fuckin vampires. Even Big Trouble In Little China and if I remember right the Elvis TV movie started as western scripts but were re-written to modern settings. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ice Cube, Jason Statham, John Carpenter, Natasha Henstridge, Pam Grier
Posted in Action, Horror, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 3 Comments »
Friday, July 27th, 2001
It pains me to be that jackass who tries to point out that the remake is not as good as the original. Whoah, you’re blowin my mind, Galileo! But facts are facts, and science is science, fellas. The one and only mainstream event movie of the summer of 2001 is a big fat mess.
Planet of the Apes is the story of Mark Wahlberg landing on the Planet of the Apes. After this happens, there are many apes, etc.
Now if you’ve seen the original 1968 film by Rod Serling and friends starring Charlton Omega Man Heston, you know what not to expect in the remake – a strong story with unique elements of social commentary, good direction and atmosphere, etc.
Now I’ve read a thing or two about this one in the magazines and what not but I wouldn’t have to know it already to tell that this is one of those mega budget hollywood vehicles where they were still trying to Write it when they had already filmed it. And I know this is gonna be unpopular but buddy, you need a script for a picture like this. I know Mike Leigh, Wayne Wang, Christopher Guest etc. would disagree with me but improv is for pussies, in my opinion. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Mark Wahlberg, remakes, Tim Burton
Posted in Action, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit, Thriller | 2 Comments »
