Archive for the ‘Action’ Category
Tuesday, August 19th, 2014
We’ve all noticed by now that Sylvester Stallone has been trying to settle on the magic EXPENDABLES casting formula. The action icons (Dolph, Wesley, Arnold, Bruce, Jet) are surrounded by a protective layer of athletes (Couture, Austin, Ortiz, Rousey) and youths. For EXPENDABLES 2 he plucked young Liam Thorsbrother from the HUNGER GAMESes, and now EXPENDABLES 3 picked up Kellan Lutz from the TWILIGHTs. I didn’t really know who that was so I was pleasantly surprised when I looked him up and found out he has legitimate b-action experience. He did the sword and sandal ones like IMMORTALS and RENNY HARLIN’S LEGEND OF HERCULES, but also one called JAVA HEAT where he’s an American cop trying to catch a terrorist in Indonesia. And the terrorist is Mickey Rourke.
I should probly check that one out, but when I decided I needed to choose my first Lutz for EX3 supplemental viewing I chose the DTV death match picture ARENA, because I’d come close to renting it before anyway. You know how I am. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Daniel Dae Kim, death matches, Derek Mears, DTV, James Remar, Johnny Messner, Katia Winter, Kellan Lutz, Samuel L. Jackson, Tony Giglio
Posted in Action, Reviews | 12 Comments »
Monday, August 18th, 2014
THE EXPENDABLES 3 is another Expendables movie, like any other. It’s got a cast that indicates it should be the ultimate action movie, but ends up being penultimate at best. It’s a weird mix of satisfying appearance of favorite faces and tropes and disappointing execution of these elements. I call that feeling satisppointment, or expendablation. Just like the others I enjoyed it, but with a nagging feeling that this should be something actually great.
But the first stretch had me thinking it might blow the other ones out of the water. It opens mid-mission as our old Expendapals Barney (Sylvester Stallone), Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), Gunner (Dolph Lundgren) and Toll Road (Randy Couture) are in a chopper chasing after a Russian prison transfer train to bust out an original team member who’s been locked up for 8 years. That prisoner is none other than Wesley The Daywalker Snipes as “Doctor Death,” and it’s an excellent welcome home party for the man. He’s got a crazy beard and hair and a spaced out look in his eye, and instead of going with the rescue party he runs across the train, does a slide and a bunch of acrobatics, kills a bunch of his captors and causes the train to crash into the bastard in charge. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Antonio Banderas, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dolph Lundgren, Harrison Ford, J.J. Perry, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Kellan Lutz, Kelsey Grammer, Mel Gibson, Patrick Hughes, Randy Couture, Robert Davi, Ronda Rousey, Sylvester Stallone, Terry Crewes, Wesley Snipes
Posted in Action, Reviews | 131 Comments »
Thursday, August 14th, 2014
Wait a minute, there’s a movie that’s Jet Li vs. Jason Statham that I never bothered to watch? How can this happen? Well, I remember I was excited for it when it came out but then everybody said it sucked, and I’ve seen enough generic movies of this type (Statham vs. Snipes in CHAOS) to fear sitting through another boring, lifeless slog that wastes my favorite action stars. Fortunately I think I waited just the right amount of time because while I’d agree it isn’t a proper use of Jet Li that’s not really a crushing surprise anymore, and WAR is more watchable, more of a real movie than what I’d always pictured.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Corey Yuen, Devon Aoki, Jason Statham, Jet Li, John Lone, Kane Kosugi, Philip G. Atwell, Pierre Morel, Ryo Ishibashi, Saul Rubinek, Sung Kang
Posted in Action, Reviews | 42 Comments »
Monday, August 11th, 2014
CHERRY 2000 is a quirky post-apocalyptic adventure, one with a cool sci-fi western premise and alot of underlying oddness and satirical observation about life in the ’80s. The action is slightly stilted, and I think director Steve De Jarnatt (who followed this up with the pre-apocalyptic MIRACLE MILE) is more comfortable doing funny twists on the genre than sincerely following its tropes, but I also think there is a good faith effort to deliver the goods. There are lots of machine guns and blowtorches, some explosions, some great stunts involving a car hanging from a crane. When the weinery yuppie protagonist decides to man up he does it by setting fire to a bunch of cars and rigging an explosion that knocks over Tim Thomerson and swarms him with bees. Not bad. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Basil Poledouris, Ben Johnson, Brion James, David Andrews, Lloyd Fonvielle, Melanie Griffith, Michael Almereyda, Pamela Gidley, post-apocalypse, Robert Z'Dar, robots, Steve De Jarnatt, Tim Thomerson
Posted in Action, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 14 Comments »
Thursday, August 7th, 2014
“A mercenary that gives a fuck. Great.”
Sometimes I watch a movie that’s hard to even squeeze a review out of. I could do a consumer reports type deal telling you the plot and that it’s boring and mediocre, but I wouldn’t have much of the ol’ insight to offer. Usually if I feel that way I just don’t bother writing anything. This one is borderline, but I’m gonna try to tough it out because I consider it historically important: it’s the directorial debut of Olivier Gruner.
Ah shit, now I looked it up and this is his third movie as a director. So it’s not even a milestone or anything. Why did I watch the whole thing?
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: DTV, Eric Roberts, Olivier Gruner
Posted in Action, Reviews | 29 Comments »
Thursday, July 31st, 2014
LUCY is the new movie by Luc Besson and his first directorial work since… THE MESSENGER? … to be noticed much in the U.S. He had supposedly retired from directing after ANGEL-A in 2005, but then he made another one of those ARTHUR children’s movies and by 2010 he was doing THE EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURES OF ADELE BLANC-SEC (which I liked) and fuck it, he was still a director. Last year he did THE FAMILY with Robert DeNiro and Michelle Pfeiffer (which I, like most Americans, haven’t gotten around to yet) but now all the sudden he has this LUCY and it’s a big hit, opening much bigger than The Rock’s HERCULES even though that one is PG-13. (There actually was a point early in LUCY where I thought to myself “Oh good, they do still make R-rated movies.”)
Scarlett Johansson plays the titlogical Lucy, a student in Taiwan when her douchebag boyfriend of one week (a Donal-Logue-at-a-rave type dude with a shitty cowboy hat and yellow-tinted glasses) gets her involved against her will with some ruthless gangsters led by Choi Min-sik (OLDBOY). She doesn’t speak the language so she barely knows what’s going on by the time she has a bag of experimental drugs (actually blue pop rocks I think) sewn into her belly for clandestine transport.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Choi Min-sik, Luc Besson, Morgan Freeman, Scarlett Johansson
Posted in Action, Crime, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 46 Comments »
Tuesday, July 29th, 2014
I don’t know what you people are thinking not wanting to see a new Hercules movie starring Dwayne T.R. Johnson. The motherfucker grew a beard and wore a lion on his head and somehow increased his workout from what it was before, and yet the world acts like there’s nothing to see here. Here we have a movie star who we have all anointed an icon, an actor who combines the charm of George Clooney with the cartoonish physicality of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has entertained us many times but who still hasn’t quite found that great movie vehicle he deserves. And he has decided to use his impossibly giant muscles to lift up the sorely missed genre of the macho sword and sandal b-movie. Just on principle people like us should be taking time off work to see this thing, but all my friends, people I work alongside, who I admire and respect, just respond to the existence of HERCULES with a “ho hum” or a “ha ha.”
Yeah, I know the reason. With everything going on in Gaza right now, and in Russia and the Ukraine, it’s hard to really put our minds on something so trivial nah just fucking with you it’s because this was directed by Brett Ratner.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Aksel Hennie, Brett Ratner, Ingrid Bolso Berdal, John Hurt, Joseph Fiennes, Rufus Sewell, The Rock
Posted in Action, Fantasy/Swords, Reviews | 31 Comments »
Monday, July 21st, 2014
I never watched SPEED 2 before. When I decided the day had come I actually got excited about it for a minute. Wait, so there’s a studio blockbuster in the DIE HARD or UNDER SIEGE type of subgenre that I haven’t seen? What was I waiting for? I mean, I know it was almost unanimously hated, and that it was an early example of the PG-13-sequel-to-R-rated-action-movie, but when has that stopped me before? I am an individual with an open mind and an open heart. I am ready to welcome SPEED 2 into the hospitality of my mental space.
I thought. But the mob was right on this one. SPEED 2 is pretty sucky. It’s the SPEED 2 of SPEED sequels.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Die Hard on a ____, Glenn Plummer, Jan de Bont, Jason Patric, Joe Morton, Sandra Bullock, Willem Dafoe
Posted in Action, Reviews | 35 Comments »
Thursday, July 17th, 2014
Do you guys know about SPEED? It’s like GRAND PIANO with a bus! An L.A. public bus that requires the very precise driving of not going below 50 mph or it will blow up. Even if it went through a school zone it could not slow down to avoid crunching the little ones under its wheels. That’s fucked up! I mean they don’t run into that problem in the movie but jesus, bad guy mastermind, think of the children.
It’s no mystery to us, this is the work of bomber-for-ransom Dennis Hopper (TICKER), who in a pre-bus sequence tries a similar job on an elevator full of Patrick Bateman types, but is foiled by Jeff Daniels (BLOOD WORK) and his young gum-chewing sidekick Keanu Reeves (MAN OF TAI CHI). This was after POINT BREAK but before THE MATRIX, so Keanu as the lead in a big action movie was still a new notion to the world. But what are you gonna do, the Jeff Daniels character gets shot and taken off the streets, it’s just not in the cards for it to be a kickass Jeff Daniels vehicle. I’m sorry.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alan Ruck, Dennis Hopper, Die Hard on a ____, Glenn Plummer, Graham Yost, Jan de Bont, Jeff Daniels, Joe Morton, Joss Whedon, Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock
Posted in Action, Reviews | 39 Comments »
Monday, July 7th, 2014
I saw this old issue of Asian Trash Cinema that had an interview with Ching Siu-Tung, veteran martial arts choreographer, prolific wire-fu practicioner, Jackie Chan Chinese Opera schoolmate, and director of Steven Seagal’s weirdest movie (BELLY OF THE BEAST). Of course the interview covered alot of his most legendary work: he directed the SWORDSMAN trilogy, EXECUTIONERS and NAKED WEAPON, he was stunt coordinator for A BETTER TOMORROW II and action director for HERO. But I was even more interested in the weird little tidbits I’d never heard about his brief flirtations with Hollywood after THE MATRIX exploded and Yuen Woo Ping was all booked up.
The craziest one was a story about “the director and producer” of SPIDER-MAN coming to Ching, unhappy with how their action scenes were coming out, and wanting him to redo them. Of course it never ended up happening, he seems unclear why and doesn’t go into details. But it’s an intriguing story. Raimi was always up on the Hong Kong guys, he executive produced HARD TARGET after all. It makes sense he would know about the top wire-fighting guy and think of him for a movie about a guy swinging on webs.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Billy Zane, Bren Foster, Byron Mann, Ching Siu-Tung, Dominic Purcell, Jefery Levy
Posted in Action, Fantasy/Swords, Reviews | 12 Comments »
