Archive for the ‘Action’ Category
Thursday, December 16th, 2021
When the second half of the 2-part MATRIX sequel begins, our hero Neo and antagonist Agent Smith are both displaced from their regular realities. Smith has somehow transferred his computer-program-consciousness into the organic human body of Bane, only survivor of the destroyed Nebuchadnezzar, now in the sick bay of the Hammer next to comatose Neo, whose mind is trapped in a purgatorial subway station in a virtual world separate from The Matrix.
Yeah, the sequels get complicated. We learn that programs inside The Matrix are regularly deleted, but some try to escape that fate. The subway is a black market means of smuggling exile programs in and out of the Matrix or the Machine City (01?) mainframe. This is all overseen by the Merovingian, with the subway itself operated by his employee The Trainman, a scary dude played by Bruce Spence, a.k.a. the Gyro Captain in THE ROAD WARRIOR and Jedediah in MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bernard White, Bruce Spence, Carrie-Anne Moss, Collin Chou, Hugo Weaving, Ian Bliss, Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Mary Alice, Monica Bellucci, Wachowskis, Yuen Woo-Ping
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 20 Comments »
Wednesday, December 15th, 2021
THE MATRIX RELOADED may have been the most highly anticipated but immediately rejected sequel of my lifetime. I’m not just excluding PHANTOM MENACE for being a prequel – whatever happened in the rest of the world, I honestly didn’t experience many people hating it until months later, at least. With RELOADED it was pretty instant.
It was the only MATRIX movie I reviewed upon release, so you can click here to see my kinda dumb, mostly still applicable 2003 thoughts on the matter. I seemed to be fielding a backlash against the original MATRIX movie as well as people hating RELOADED, but it was only the latter I found myself feeling I had to defend over the years.
I do think I partly understand why people were disappointed. THE MATRIX ends on a perfect note of letting us imagine what’s next in the “world where anything is possible.” Any definitive answer of what happens next has a hard time competing with the electric feeling of not knowing. Especially when part 1 was a carefully constructed machine of concept, explanation and payoff, while part 2 kind of wanders through a labyrinth of tangential notions and questions before it gets to the battle it’s been promising. And it cuts off in a cliffhanger well before said battle. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anthony Zerbe, Carrie-Anne Moss, Cornel West, Daniel Bernhardt, Gina Torres, Gloria Foster, Harold Perrineau, Harry Lennix, Helmut Bakaitis, Hugo Weaving, Ian Bliss, Jada Pinkett Smith, Keanu Reeves, Lambert Wilson, Laurence Fishburne, Monica Belluci, Nathaniel Lees, Nona Gaye, Randall Duk Kim, Tiger Hu Chen, Wachowskis, Yuen Woo-Ping
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 31 Comments »
Monday, December 13th, 2021
THE MATRIX is, I continue to believe, one of The Great Movies. It absolutely holds up today, and also it reminds me so much of then. I will always remember what it felt like when this was a new movie, and our entire understanding of the MATRIX story. When we all imagined where it would go next, and then we had a couple years enjoying or rolling our eyes at all the movies obviously influenced by it, whether that means corny outfits and techno music or that brief, glorious window when Hollywood actors could be convinced to spend months preparing for action scenes with the great Hong Kong choreographers. But mostly I like to remember what it felt like to be surprised by it. Going in wondering if it would be good and then coming out knowing it was this.
I did have hopes. I had come to respect Keanu Reeves’ taste in movies after SPEED and, say what you will, JOHNNY MNEMONIC. I liked BOUND and it was exciting to see directors like that doing a sci-fi movie. And then a day or two before it came out I heard something about there being kung fu in it? So it wasn’t completely out of the blue that it was good. But I don’t think I was expecting something that a couple decades later would still be thought as highly of as the fucking MATRIX is. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bill Pope, Carrie-Anne Moss, Chad Stahelski, cyberpunk, Joe Pantoliano, Joel Silver, Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Tiger Hu Chen, Wachowskis, Yuen Woo-Ping
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 58 Comments »
Monday, December 6th, 2021
Mario Bava’s DANGER: DIABOLIK stars John Phillip Law, who to me will always be Pygar, the blind angel of love from BARBARELLA. This one came out earlier the same year, 1968, and kinda seems like BARBARELLA’s evil crime movie cousin. It is in fact another Dino De Laurentiis international co-production based on a comic book, and reportedly uses some of the same sets (though I’m not sure which ones). It feels very much like a super hero movie at the beginning: we hear police talking about Law’s character Diabolik as some kind of legendary figure, he first appears in a long black car (Jaguar, not Batmobile), he shows up in a mask, does his thing, makes an escape to a secret entrance to an amazing hidden base inside a cave. But this guy is no super hero, he’s just a thief with a whole lot of flair.
Police Inspector Ginko (Michel Piccoli, THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE) is determined to not let Diabolik steal the $10 million that needs to be transported, going out of his way to deliver decoy money and send the real shipment in a Rolls-Royce with cops disguised as diplomats. But that car finds itself engulfed in plumes of multi-colored smoke and then lifted up by a crane operated by by Diabolik. The camera zooms in on him for a diabolical laugh when the title comes up. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Carlo Rambaldi, Dino De Laurentiis, Ennio Morricone, fumetti, John Phillip Law, Lamberto Bava, Mario Bava, Marisa Mell, Michel Piccoli
Posted in Action, Comic strips/Super heroes, Crime, Reviews | 25 Comments »
Thursday, December 2nd, 2021
I’m still catching up with these RUROUNI KENSHIN movies. I really recommend RUROUNI KENSHIN PART I: ORIGINS (2012), and I watched RUROUNI KENSHIN II: KYOTO INFERNO (2014) a while back and then this one. I got caught up and didn’t finish that review until now but I wanted to finish before I watch this year’s final two installments.
RUROUNI KENSHIN PART III: THE LEGEND ENDS (2014) continues from the cliffhanger of part II, in which our no-longer-believing-in-killing samurai hero Kenshin (Takeru Satoh, SAMURAI MARATHON) had leapt from the pirate ship of aspiring-Japan-conqueror Shishio (Tatsuya Fujiwara, BATTLE ROYALE), failed to save his pacifist sword master friend Miss Kaoru (Emi Takei, TERRA FORMARS), and washed ashore on some beach, to be discovered by a mysterious dude. But the story slows down for a while, correctly judging that part II has earned the filmatists our trust and the right to take a breath and dig into the characters and the melodrama for a while. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Emi Takei, Keishi Ohtomo, Kenji Tanigaki, Masaharu Fukuyama, Munetaka Aoki, Ryunosuke Kamiki, Takeru Satoh, Tatsuya Fujiwara, Yosuke Eguchi, Yu Aoi, Yusuke Iseya
Posted in Action, Comic strips/Super heroes, Martial Arts, Reviews | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, December 1st, 2021
GUARDIAN ANGEL is a 1994 Cynthia Rothrock joint from PM Entertainment, directed by Richard W. Munchkin (RING OF FIRE) and written by Joe Hart (REPO JAKE, STEEL FRONTIER). It’s not one of the better crafted Rothrock pictures, but it’s a worthwhile grade of ridiculousness.
Rothrock stars as Christine McKay, who’s working as a cop when we first meet her. And she’s at a great place in her life. Staking out a public park undercover as “lady standing next to ice cream truck,” she shows off her engagement ring to her partner and confesses that she never thought she’d marry a cop. Then the shit goes down: two groups totaling around 25 people show up at the park to discuss a counterfeiting transaction.
McKay makes the very questionable choice to run by herself toward these gangs firing her gun in the air. The sound causes them to start fighting and shooting at each other. She personally beats the shit out of several of them before backup arrives. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Aharon Ipale, Art Camacho, Cynthia Rothrock, Daniel McVicar, Joe Hart, John O'Leary, Ken McLeod, Lydie Denier, Marshall Teague, PM Entertainment, Richard Norton, Richard W. Munchkin
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews | 4 Comments »
Monday, November 29th, 2021
HYDRA (2019) is a modest Japanese crime movie that I enjoyed for its simplicity. It begins harshly, with a very efficient killing and disposal of a guy in a public restroom. The very human detail that the victim can’t stop peeing as he’s stabbed and dragged from the urinal to a stall ups the disturbing factor by about 150%. And that’s before we see a man wearing tight swimming trunks (Takashi Nishina, GAMERA 3: REVENGE OF IRIS) so he can chop up the body and then hose himself off before giving a few chunks as treats to his piranhas. Seems like he’s got the process down pat.
They have a whole system, because this is some kind of organization that murders crooked cops. Reading other people’s reviews maybe this is a vigilante anti-corruption kind of thing, but I got the impression from the dialogue that it was more like a coverup, getting rid of the guys who go so far they become liabilities. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Hi-Yah! Exclusive, Masanori Mimoto, Naohiro Kawamoto, Takashi Nishina, Tasuku Nagase
Posted in Action, Crime, Martial Arts, Reviews | 3 Comments »
Monday, November 22nd, 2021
THE SWORDSMAN is a 2020 Korean film about a swordsman. Color me intrigued. (Seriously. I like swordsmen.) I wonder what’s up with this swordsman that makes him THE swordsman?
Actually there’s a bunch of swordsmen in THE SWORDSMAN with one that I assume is the titular swordsman but another one you could make an interesting if not totally convincing argument for. The main one is Tae-yul (Lee Min-hyuk), “the best swordsman in Joseon,” who in the prologue (while being played by Lee Min-hyuk) refuses to stand down from protecting the king (Jang Hyun-sung, SHIRI) when the other top officials have decided to topple him in a rebellion. The secondary swordsman is Min Seung-ho (Jung Man-sik, THE YELLOW SEA), an older military official who, to get to the king, challenges Tae-yul to a duel in which Tae-yul’s sword shatters, sending shards into his hand and eyes. At that point the king stops the fight and agrees to step down.
Unspecified years later, Tae-yul (now Jang Hyuk, VOLCANO HIGH) is a recluse living in the mountains with his teenage daughter Tae-ok (Kim Hyun-soo, THE FIVE). He periodically has problems with his vision, and a monk tells them to go get a special herb from a trader he knows named Hwa Seon (Lee Na-Kyung, BATTLE FOR INCHEON: OPERATION CHROMITE) or he’s gonna go blind. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Angelina Danilova, Choi Jae-hoon, Choi Jin-ho, Jang Hyuk, Jang Hyun-sung, Joe Taslim, Jung Man-sik, Kim Hyun-soo, Korean cinema, Lee Na-Kyung
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews | 8 Comments »
Thursday, November 18th, 2021
PRISONERS OF THE GHOSTLAND is the latest entry in the Nicolas-Cage-weirdo-arthouse-version-of-an-exploitation-movie subgenre (see also: BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS, MANDY, PIG). This one is unusual because it’s the first English-language movie from respected Japanese director Sion Sono (SUICIDE CLUB, LOVE EXPOSURE, WHY DON’T YOU PLAY IN HELL). It’s the first movie I’ve seen from him, but I promise I’ll watch TOKYO TRIBE, which has been recommended to me a few times.
It takes place in what seems like a post-apocalyptic settlement, though apparently it’s just a section of Japan that has been quarantined after a nuclear waste accident. The place is called Samurai Town, and it’s mostly populated by Japanese people in traditional robes, but “The Governor” (Bill Moseley, PINK CADILLAC) is an American redneck. I like how it looks like a very colorful period samurai movie but then there’s a car and Moseley in a white suit and cowboy hat. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Aaron Hendry, Bill Moseley, Charles Glover, Nick Cassavetes, Nicolas Cage, Reza Sixo Safai, Sion Sono, Sofia Boutella, Tak Sakaguchi, Young Dais
Posted in Action, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 28 Comments »
Wednesday, November 17th, 2021
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I want them to keep making these franchise western martial arts movies until the cows come home. And how ya gonna get a cow back on the farm after they’ve seen KICKBOXER: RETALIATION? So I’m glad they’re keeping the prestigious NEVER BACK DOWN brand name alive with NEVER BACK DOWN: REVOLT, which came out on Blu-Ray, DVD and digital file download licensing transaction this week. It isn’t connected to the characters or events of the other three, and it’s a very different tone, but Never Backing Down doesn’t belong to any one team of filmmakers or DTV sequelizers. It belongs to the whole world of people who aspire to never backing down (in a good way). And that world apparently includes director Kellie Madison (THE TANK) and screenwriter Audrey Arkins (ELYSE), who bring us a different take on underground fighting movies, this time with all women fighters.
Anya (Olivia Popica, “Receptionist,” FANTASTIC BEASTS 2: FAREWELL TO THE FLESH) is a Chechen immigrant in London. She lives with and supports her brother Aslan (Tommy Bastow, The Crossing), a small time MMA fighter, while studying (and working as a janitor) at a nursing school. But one day her stupid brother and his stupid trainer get her into some shit – Aslan is supposed to throw a fight, but doesn’t (we got a regular Butch Coolidge on our hands here, guys) and when he’s assaulted by the thugs of kingpin Julian (James Faulkner, ATOMIC BLONDE) Anya jumps in to defend him, catching the eye of lusty fight recruiter Mariah (Brooke Johnston, ACCIDENT MAN, 
). (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Audrey Arkins, Brooke Johnston, Cecep Arif Rahman, Chloe Bruce, Diana Hoyos, DTV sequels, Hannah Al Rasheed, James Faulkner, Kellie Madison, Lee Charles, Michael Bisping, Nitu Chandra, Olivia Popica, Tim Man, Tommy Bastow, underground fighting
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews | 1 Comment »
