Archive for the ‘Action’ Category
Tuesday, June 18th, 2024
THE LAST KUMITE is a movie designed for a very specific demographic some of you may be familiar with. It’s a throwback to ‘90s tournament fighting movies, its cast is heavily populated with venerated icons of the genre, and they even managed to get a score by Paul Hertzog (BLOODSPORT, KICKBOXER), his first since 1991’s BREATHING FIRE. Best of all it features two new songs by the king of montage rock, Stan Bush (if you’re not familiar he did multiple songs on KICKBOXER and BLOODSPORT and “The Touch” from TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE).
Knowing all that, and that it was partly funded with Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns, you could reasonably expect it to be directed by some young fanboy, but in fact it’s from someone who’s been in the trenches of legit DTV martial arts movies since the ‘90s. Ross W. Clarkson got his start doing cinematography for Ringo Lam (he’s worked with him on five movies) and he did Dolph Lundgren’s THE MECHANIK, Isaac Florentine’s UNDISPUTED II and III and NINJA I and II, and Michael Jai White’s NEVER BACK DOWN: NO SURRENDER. So he knows what he’s doing.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Abdel Qissi, Billy Blanks, Cynthia Rothrock, David Kurzhal, David Yeung, fighting tournament, Kurt McKinney, Mathis Landwehr, Matthias Hues, Michel Qissi, Mike Derudder, Mike Moller, Monia Moula, Paul Hertzog, Ross W. Clarkson, Sean David Lowe, Stan Bush
Posted in Reviews, Action, Martial Arts | 17 Comments »
Monday, June 10th, 2024
June 10, 1994
So far my study of summer ’94 hasn’t found much excitement in the big blockbuster type movies. THE FLINTSTONES got all the hype but the ones I’ve been most invested in were quirky things by well known directors – SERIAL MOM, CROOKLYN, EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES. Now finally we come to a straight ahead action spectacle that truly delivered at the time and still holds up today.
SPEED came out 30 years ago as I post this, and it’s a classic. It feels like a very traditional studio crowdpleaser, but also not quite like anything else before or since. Twentieth Century Fox figured out what they had on their hands and moved it up from August to June, but no one else was sure at first if Keanu Reeves would be accepted as an action hero outside of POINT BREAK, or even if people would want to see him with short hair. So for many it was a surprise how big it became (5th highest grossing movie of 1994). (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alan Ruck, Andrzej Bartkowiak, Beth Grant, Dennis Hopper, Glenn Plummer, Graham Yost, Jan de Bont, Jeff Daniels, Joe Morton, Joss Whedon, Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock
Posted in Reviews, Action | 62 Comments »
Wednesday, June 5th, 2024
June 3rd, 1994
I should’ve known better after BEVERLY HILLS COP III, but I was kind of excited to watch a ‘90s studio action comedy that I’m not really familiar with. I might have seen THE COWBOY WAY on video back in the day, but I don’t remember for sure, so it was basically new to me. Could’ve been an unheralded gem! But it wasn’t. Just some competently produced, very dumb bullshit. I always think of ’94 as a great year for film, but so far, I gotta tell you, the summer movies are not contributing to that impression.
The story is about two bickering New Mexico rodeo pals, Sonny (Kiefer Sutherland, TWIN PEAKS: FIREWALK WITH ME) and Pepper (Woody Harrelson, DOC HOLLYWOOD), who go to New York City to look for their missing friend Nacho Salazar (Joaquin Martinez, JOE KIDD). Nacho turns out to have been killed trying to save his daughter Teresa (Cara Buono) from traffickers, so they try to save her. Both the action premise and the comedy premise are that they only know how to live “the cowboy way” so they don’t really understand the city much but also can punch better than any mere city boy on account of cowboy ruggedness. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: David Newman, Dylan McDermott, Ernie Hudson, Gregg Champion, Joaquin Martinez, Kiefer Sutherland, Luis Guzman, Tomas Milian, William D. Wittliff, Woody Harrelson
Posted in Reviews, Action, Comedy/Laffs | 19 Comments »
Thursday, May 30th, 2024
Note: There aren’t exactly twists or anything to spoil in FURIOSA, but this is all spoilers. You really should see the movie first. This review is the discussion afterwards.
There are over one million things I’ve always loved about the MAD MAX movies, and one of them is that they’re separate tales. There’s no continuity, no narrative references to or consequences from a previous chapter, and other than Max Rockatansky and his Last of the V8 Interceptors there’s never been a returning character, location or faction. They don’t necessarily take place in any order, and they’re so separate that some people think Tom Hardy’s Max is a different character from Mel Gibson’s. I’ve always thought of them as more like the Man With No Name trilogy than, say, STAR WARS.
But FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA isn’t a MAD MAX movie. Says it right there in the title – it’s a saga. And we knew it was the backstory of Furiosa, written in conjunction with MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, shown to Charlize Theron to help her performance, at one point supposedly considered to be shot back-to-back, at another to be done as an anime movie directed by Mahiro Maeda (director of the Second Renaissance episodes of THE ANIMATRIX and animator on NAUSICAA and KILL BILL VOL. 1). So FURIOSA is a traditional prequel in the sense that it depicts an earlier stage of the specific world and characters of FURY ROAD. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alyla Browne, Angus Sampson, Anya-Taylor Joy, Charlee Fraser, Chris Hemsworth, Dawn Klingberg, Elsa Pataky, George Miller, George Shevtsov, Goran Kleut, Guy Norris, John Howard, Lachy Hulme, Nathan Jones, Nico Lathouris, post-apocalyptic, Richard Norton, Tom Burke
Posted in Reviews, Action, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 127 Comments »
Friday, May 10th, 2024
I first heard of David Leitch as one of “the JOHN WICK GUYS” – the two MATRIX RELOADED stuntmen who directed JOHN WICK and changed action cinema. Chad Stahelski was the one credited, and has continued helming that visionary series, while Leitch launched a more normal directing career – half projects from their production company 87North (formerly 87Eleven), half for-hire type gigs. I love his neon-drenched spy movie ATOMIC BLONDE, and his other films (DEADPOOL 2, HOBBS & SHAW, BULLET TRAIN) all have good action, some style, and some other things I like about them, but their increasingly scattershot humor has kept me from fully embracing them. So I’m glad that with THE FALL GUY, a loose redo of the ‘80s TV show premise, he’s found his perfect subject.
The story is light and breezy, and everyone gets to be funny, but the humor leans mostly on one easygoing star persona – Ryan Gosling (director of LOST RIVER) as stuntman Colt Seavers – rather than having every character constantly compete for attention with wacky riffs. And best of all, obviously, it’s a love letter to the stunt profession, so there’s a very specific expertise and passion that makes Leitch more qualified than anyone else to tell this story. He even has a songwriting credit on an end credits “there should be an Oscar for stunts” song! (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: 87North, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, based on a TV show, Chris O'Hara, David Leitch, Drew Pearce, Emily Blunt, Hannah Waddingham, Jonathan Eusebio, Ryan Gosling, Stephanie Hsu, stunts, Stunts Unlimited, stuntsploitation, Sunny Sun, Winston Duke
Posted in Reviews, Action, Comedy/Laffs, Mystery, Romance | 50 Comments »
Wednesday, May 1st, 2024
BOY KILLS WORLD is a new action/dystopia/comedy goof that I could’ve guessed would annoy the shit out of many people even if I hadn’t already seen the evidence. You know, it’s got that splattery paint, sarcastic smiley face type of aesthetic. From the trailers I wondered if I might be one of those people, but I actually really liked this thing until almost the end. I found its brazenly show-offy oddballery pretty charming. It looks at you like yeah, I know this is alot of unnecessary gimmicks and trinkets, but I like that shit, what’re you gonna do about it?
Uh… nothing. Please – continue! I think Glaive Robber called it accurately in the REBEL MOON PART TWO: THE SCARGIVER comments when he wrote, “Old Vern would have PASSIONATELY hated it. But maybe not Contemporary Vern.”
It’s a frenetic, hyper-active, smart-alecky and casually violent movie, so every review besides this one compares it to a Ryan Reynolds comic book movie that’s not BLADE TRINITY or GREEN LANTERN. If you must compare it to modern super hero movies I’d say it’s more SUICIDE SQUAD, THE SUICIDE SQUAD and BIRDS OF PREY, but that didn’t even occur to me until now. I was thinking more along the lines of POLAR, SMOKIN’ ACES, ACCIDENT MAN, a little SHOOT ‘EM UP, a little KINGSMAN. Hell, maybe a little CRANK and CRANK: HIGH VOLTAGE. I hated those but some people swear by ’em. Actually the comic book movies it made me think of are those ones we used to get in the ‘90s where you never heard of the comic before or again but they created a whole stylized alternate universe for it on a medium-sized budget. I always appreciated them for that, and this is better than many of them.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andrew Koji, Arend Remmers, Bill Skarsgard, Dawid Szatarski, dystopian futures, El Michels Affair, Famke Janssen, Francois Chau, H. Jon Benjamin, Isaiah Mustafa, Jane de Wet, Michelle Dockery, Moritz Mohr, Quinn Copeland, Sam Raimi, Sharlto Copley, Tyler Burton Smith, Yayan Ruhian
Posted in Reviews, Action, Comedy/Laffs | 10 Comments »
Thursday, April 25th, 2024
REBEL MOON PART TWO: THE SCARGIVER is, in most traditional senses, a better movie than REBEL MOON PART ONE: A CHILD OF FIRE. It’s more straight forward, less tangents, a little build and then a bunch of action. And I think it looks better, maybe because it’s mostly taking place on one planet (the titular moon of Veldt), so they were able to focus most of their energy on the design and style of that one location. The downside to this is that it feels a little more normal, less unhinged, more restrained. But narratively it’s the big pay off, the exciting part, so it’s hard to be disappointed.
The first movie, you remember, was loosely structured as the first half of SEVEN SAMURAI/MAGNIFICENT SEVEN/BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS. This humble farming village is going to be forced by the evil Imperium to give up all their grain, so secret-former-bad-guy-and-adopted-daughter-of-their-tyrannical-leader Kora (Sofia Boutella, STREETDANCE 2, CLIMAX) flew around and recruited a team of warriors to train the farmers how to defend themselves. They thought they headed off the threat by killing the fascist admiral Atticus Noble (the wonderfully strange looking Ed Skrein, THE TRANSPORTER REFUELED, IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK), but they quickly learn that he’s still alive (technologically resurrected in a cool, slimy opening sequence) so oh shit, it’s back on. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anthony Hopkins, Charlotte Maggi, Djimon Hounsou, Doona Bae, Ed Skrein, Fra Fee, Ingvar Sigurdsson, Kurt Johnstad, Michiel Huisman, Shay Hatten, Sky Yang, Sofia Boutella, Zack Snyder
Posted in Reviews, Action, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 18 Comments »
Wednesday, April 24th, 2024
THE MINISTRY OF UNGENTLEMANLY WARFARE is the new Guy Ritchie picture, and that title sounds like some Matthew Vaughn KINGSMAN type fantasy-secret-agency shit, but it’s a real thing, based on a true story. They say that at the beginning of the movie but I thought, “Yeah, uh huh, ‘true story,’ thanks Guy Ritchie,” so I was surprised when at the end they showed pictures of the real people. Oh shit, you were serious?
Yeah, of course it’s heavily fictionalized, but not as much as I’d assumed. The main characters are at least named after specific real people who really were on a WWII-era British special ops mission called Operation Postmaster, in which an undercover agent from the Special Operations Executive (SOE) threw a party on the Spanish island of Fernando Po to distract German officers and Spanish merchants while commandos snuck into neutral territory and stole the ships they used to deliver supplies to the Axis powers. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alan Ritchson, Alex Pettyfer, Arash Amel, Babs Olusanmokun, Cary Elwes, Christopher Benstead, Danny Sapani, Eiza Gonzalez, Eric Johnson, Freddie Fox, Guy Ritchie, Henry Cavill, Henry Golding, Hero Fiennes Tiffin, men-on-a-mission, Paul Tamasy, Rory Kinnear, special ops, Til Schweiger, Winston Churchill, WWII
Posted in Reviews, Action, War | 15 Comments »
Monday, April 22nd, 2024
FIVE FINGERS FOR MARSEILLES is a very cool 2017 South African movie. I thought it was gonna be a straight-up African western, but it turns out it’s a modern day African western. It’s set in a small town that European colonists named Marseilles. The Africans who originally lived there were forced up the hill, and since most of them worked on the new railway they just called their town Railway.
The title refers to a group of kids who fancy themselves the protectors of the town. It’s weird, though, because there seem to be six of them. The boys are Zulu (the leader), Tau a.k.a. Lion (“Ruthless, the fastest. Sometimes the meanest.”), Pockets (the rich one), Cockroach and Pastor. But also there’s Lerato, who they consider “their heart and soul,” so I sure hope she counts as one of the five and it’s Cockroach or someone who’s just an affiliate, not a full-fledged Finger, like Killah Priest for Wu-Tang. Seems like the heart and soul should get all the privileges of membership.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: contemporary western, Dean Fourie, Hamilton Dhlamini, Jerry Mofokeng, Michael Matthews, Sean Drummond, Sesotho, South Africa, Vuyo Dabula, Xhosa, Zethu Dlomo
Posted in Reviews, Action, Western | 1 Comment »
Friday, April 12th, 2024
A great thing about action movies as opposed to some of the other genres I get excited about is that they often have a chance to sneak up on me. I had no inkling of a movie called MONKEY MAN coming until the trailer dropped just a couple of months ago. And then all the sudden that morning I knew that the actor Dev Patel (THE LAST AIRBENDER, THE GREEN KNIGHT) had practiced Taekwondo since he was ten years old, had competed in national and international competitions, and grew into a passionate fan of international action cinema, so now he was not only starring in a violent martial arts revenge movie set in India, but also making it his directorial debut. And I read that Netflix produced it but Jordan Peele saw it and convinced them to sell it to Universal so it could play theaters. (Later we learned that Netflix was trying to get rid of it because it kinda seemed like it was criticizing the current right wing regime in India and might complicate their business dealings. Embarrassing for them, good for us.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Adithi Kalkunte, Ashwini Kalsekar, Brahim Chab, Dev Patel, John Collee, Jordan Peele, Makrand Desphande, Paul Angunawela, Pitobash, revenge, Sharlto Copley, Sharone Meir, Sikandar Kher, Sobhita Dhulipala, Vipin Sharma, Zakir Hussain
Posted in Reviews, Action, Crime | 18 Comments »
