Archive for the ‘Action’ Category
Monday, March 10th, 2025
LEGENDS OF THE CONDOR HEROES: THE GALLANTS is the unwieldily titled new Tsui Hark joint, which I was grateful to be able to see in a theater. (This puts my lifetime Tsui Hark theatrical screenings at four, after DOUBLE TEAM, KNOCK OFF and FLYING SWORDS OF DRAGON GATE 3D IMAX). Based on a famous story by Jin Yong (whose books also inspired the SWORDSMAN trilogy), it’s the type of thing I hope for from Tsui these days: a wild and extravagant wuxia epic, expertly put together at a swaggering blockbuster scale. A great time at the movies.
It opens with narration by a guy talking about witnessing many famous battles of Genghis Khan (Baya’ertu, CREATION OF THE GODS I: KINGDOM OF STORMS) and the Mongol army. As you watch these enormous conflicts on screen you wonder how the fuck a guy was witnessing it without getting chopped to bits, and then you find out: he was perched above on a cliff. When the Mongols spot him they shoot arrows at him, but he seems to repel them with some sort of energy shield trick. Okay, good, we got a real one here. This is our protagonist Guo Jing (Xiao Zhan, THE ROOKIES), a martial artist who aspires to greatness and has an interestingly convoluted backstory. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ada Choi, Alan Aruna, Baya'ertu, Hu Jun, Jin Yong, Tony Leung Kai-fai, Tsui Hark, Xiao Zhan, Zhang Wenxin, Zhuang Dafei
Posted in Reviews, Action, Fantasy/Swords, Martial Arts | 5 Comments »
Tuesday, March 4th, 2025
Lately, with reality increasingly losing its appeal, I’ve had more desire to lose myself in fantastical worlds of animation. Even when those places are horrible in their own right it feels like an escape, because at least they’re made of nice drawings and paintings. NINJA SCROLL transports us to a mystical past of deadly assassins, some with magic powers, others just so skilled that they might as well have ‘em. This is from 1993 and it was legendary in that decade for providing extravagant violence that seemed novel to us Americans when delivered in cartoon form. It still kinda works as that, but more importantly I think it holds up as a pretty entertaining movie.
The writer/director is Yoshiaki Kawajiri, and though I never really made the connection that it was the same guy, I’ve written about several of his works. I talked a little about VAMPIRE HUNTER D: BLOODLUST (2000) in my original BLADE II review, I covered THE ANIMATRIX (2003) when I was revisiting that whole franchise (he did the “Program” segment), I really liked his DTV/OVA HIGHLANDER: THE SEARCH FOR VENGEANCE (2007) when I did my review series Highlanderland. Also he wrote the live action AZUMI 2: DEATH OR LOVE, though unfortunately I was disappointed in that one. I do like his stories on the other stuff, but it’s obviously the drawing and movement that makes them fly (often literally). (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: anime, ninjas, Yoshiaki Kawajiri
Posted in Reviews, Action, Cartoons and Shit, Martial Arts | 14 Comments »
Monday, March 3rd, 2025
THE GORGE is a movie with an appealing, simple premise, strong execution, great tone, and a fun mix of elements you don’t usually see together but that feel perfectly natural. It’s a romance within a monster movie, or vice versa, but not in a a jokey way at all (though that worked for LOVE AND MONSTERS). It’s funny because its two main characters know how to make each other laugh, but its outlandish situation is taken seriously.
It’s also a movie star movie, as most good romances are, with its two leads reaching new levels of onscreen charisma, though for some reason Apple made this for the small screen only. I guess that’s none of my business. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anya Taylor-Joy, Atticus Ross, C. Robert Cargill, Miles Teller, Scott Derrickson, Sigourney Weaver, Sope Dirisu, Trent Reznor, William Houston, Zach Dean
Posted in Reviews, Action, Horror, Monster, Romance, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 12 Comments »
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 | 7 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 | 6 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 »
