Archive for the ‘Action’ Category
Wednesday, May 29th, 2013
ROUND 1, FIRST BOUT, BLOODSPORT SEQUELS VS. TEAM BOLO
“You’re a true warrior, Alex.”
The hero of the original BLOODSPORT, Frank Dux (played by the icon of tournament fighting movies, Jean-Claude Van Damme) trained in ninjitsu as a kid after stealing a valuable katana and then impressing its owner by having second thoughts and returning it. As an adult he’s in the Army, but goes AWOL to enter the dangerous underground Kumite tournament.
The replacement hero for the Van-Damme-less part 2, Alex Cardos (Daniel Bernhardt, the Swiss martial artist and model who had been in a Versace commercial with Van Damme) is also a dirty sword-stealer, but this guy does it as a grown man, has no regrets and doesn’t try to give it back. He goes to a party at Pat Morita’s house, steals the sword from upstairs and makes a lunch date with a lady he was flirting with named Janine (Lori Lynn Dickson) as he flees. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Daniel Bernhardt, Donald Gibb, James Hong, Nick Hill, Ong Soo Han, Pat Morita, Philip Tan, Ron Hall, The Super-Kumite
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews | 14 Comments »
Tuesday, May 28th, 2013
ROUND 1, FIRST BOUT, BLOODSPORT SEQUELS VS. TEAM BOLO
aka FINAL FIGHT
“Stop him! You mustn’t let him keep practicing martial arts! Please! Please! Ryu is not a fighter. He’s a warm and caring person!”
BLOODFIGHT is from Japanese director Shuji Goto (FIGHTING BLACK KINGS) and star Yasuaki Kurata (HEROES OF THE EAST, EASTERN CONDORS, FIST OF LEGEND) but it’s a Hong Kong production featuring Bolo Yeung and Simon Yam. I rented it on a triple feature called Great Martial Arts Movies, and it had a warning about the picture quality not being up to modern standards, so I expected the worst. But other than being cropped it looked fine.
I also thought it might be dubbed, and there’s not any dialogue for the first ten minutes or more, so I was in suspense. Turns out it’s one of the rare Hong Kong movies that was actually filmed in English. Some of the actors sound like they’re just repeating it phonetically, so it’s hard to understand some of it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bolo Yeung, Shuji Goto, Simon Yam, The Super-Kumite, Yasuaki Kurata
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews | 11 Comments »
Monday, May 27th, 2013
THE ISLAND I guess was Michael Bay’s big failure. He held his head high during his public shaming as the asshole who directed PEARL HARBOR, but this time he hit the type of bump that means more to him: he made a movie that didn’t make very much money. In the U.S. I guess it only made $36 million, which would be enough for his monthly Lamborghini allowance but doesn’t even cover a third of the shooting budget. For comparison, PEARL HARBOR made $75 million on its opening weekend.
Of course I’m coming to it eight years and three TRANSFORMERSes later having heard of its growing reputation as Michael Bay’s Not As Bad Movie. So when I was looking for a dumb summer blockbuster to get me in a summer movie mood it leapt off the video store shelf into my cold, reluctant embrace. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: clones, Djimon Hounsou, Ewan McGregor, Michael Bay, Michael Clarke Duncan, Scarlett Johansson, Steve Buscemi
Posted in Action, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 88 Comments »
Thursday, May 23rd, 2013
Ladies and gentlemen, the title is FURIOUS 6. They’ve been advertising it as FAST & FURIOUS 6, and every time I see that I think “if the last one was FAST FIVE then why can’t this be FURIOUS SIX?” Well, the actual movie says FURIOUS 6. And this is not the first time that the THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS series has come through for me. We’re family.
Director Justin Lin returns for his fourth and final installment, and I hope they gave him a hell of a gold watch. When he came along there was this one really enjoyable POINT BREAK ripoff and one ridiculous sequel and he had to follow up without the original cast or characters. The series was left for dead. But he did a great job with TOKYO DRIFT, then reunited Vin Diesel and Paul Walker for FAST AND FURIOUS, then brought back almost the entire team and added The Rock for FAST FIVE. With FURIOUS SIX he takes everything he learned from those movies and supercharges the engine and adds spoilers and shit. Having the whole team (minus Don Omar and Tego Calderon, plus Michelle Rodriguez) together isn’t a novelty the second time around, so to make up for that he kicks the action sequences into ridiculous new extremes. Which is saying alot in a FAST AND FURIOUS – have you seen these movies? (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Chris Morgan, Gina Carano, good part 6s, Joe Taslim, Jordana Brewster, Justin Lin, Luke Evans, Michelle Rodriguez, Paul Walker, Screen Actor's Guild Award Winner Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, Sung Kang, The Rock, Tyrese, Vin Diesel
Posted in Action, Reviews | 190 Comments »
Thursday, May 23rd, 2013
This week in my Daily Grindhouse column I check out STRANGLEHOLD, another Cirio H. Santiago picture. This one is from 1994 and stars Jerry Trimble, who you may know as the guy who fights Dolph in front of the welders in THE PACKAGE. It’s an UNDER SIEGE type scenario where delighted-with-himself terrorist Vernon Wells has taken over a chemical plant while Trimble was doing security for a visiting congresswoman.
Take a look.
Tags: Cirio H. Santiago, Jerry Trimble, Vernon Wells
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews | 8 Comments »
Wednesday, May 15th, 2013
Do you know about a female pro-wrestler from the ’80s called Magnificent Mimi, and if so did you know she wrote, produced and starred in a series of low budget action movies in the ’90s, and if so did you know that one of them was from the director of FORBIDDEN ZONE and SHRUNKEN HEADS? I didn’t know any of these things until recently. Mimi will be popping up again in a major series of reviews I’ve been working on that I’ll hopefully be ready to unveil next week. Until then read my review of STREETS OF RAGE over on Daily Grindhouse.
Tags: DTV, Mimi Lesseos, Richard Elfman
Posted in Action, Reviews | 9 Comments »
Saturday, May 11th, 2013
I didn’t post about this while I was out of town, so if you missed it:
I accidentally discovered a doozy of an only-on-VHS-Vietnam-vet-ex-boxing-champion-with-metal-hand-bones-sent-on-secret-mission-to-Hawaii-to-kill-Henry-Silva movie called FISTS OF STEEL. Not the best movie I’ve seen for this column so far, but definitely the craziest. Details on Daily Grindhouse.
Tags: Carlos Palomino, Hawaii, Henry Silva
Posted in Action, Musical, Mystery, Reviews | 6 Comments »
Wednesday, May 8th, 2013
BAND OF THE HAND is a beautiful combination of elements: underdog juvenile delinquent brotherhood, island survival, stoic badass mentorship, paramilitary vigilante revenge, Miami Vice style and attitude. I mean, literally, it’s the people who made Miami Vice. Michael Mann is the executive producer. Paul Michael Glaser, who is known for playing Starsky but also directed episodes of Miami Vice, is the director. IMDb trivia claims it was actually released theatrically after failing as a TV pilot, but I’m skeptical about that. It seems a little too awesome to have been made for TV. They would’ve had to go back and do reshoots for additional awesomeness.
I think this is Michael Mann’s version of a RED DAWN type teen action movie. It’s hoods vs. kingpins in Miami, great cast, show-offy camera moves and editing, moody atmosphere, restrained dialogue. And as the cover brags, it has a high grade ’80s pop soundtrack – “Broken Wings” by Mr. Mister, “Let’s Go Crazy” by Prince, a bunch of songs by some band called The Reds that also played on MANHUNTER – even a title song by Bob Dylan, somehow. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Danny Quinn, James Remar, John Cameron Mitchell, Lauren Holly, Laurence Fishburne, Leon, Miami, Michael Carmine, Michael Mann, Paul Calderon, Paul Michael Glaser, Stephen Lang
Posted in Action, Reviews | 30 Comments »
Tuesday, May 7th, 2013
I’ve enjoyed DEATH RACE 2000 a few times over the years, but not since before I found myself actually liking P.W.S. Anderson’s remabootquel DEATH REACE and its two DTV prequels by Roel Reine, so this was strange to revisit it again. The new DEATH RACE is a fun macho b-movie, the original DEATH RACE 2000 is a different animal. It’s colorful, satirical, goofy and off-handedly brutal. It’s as cheap as other Roger Corman productions, but less serious. It seems like the template for the tone of all the best Troma films, and they even borrowed the rules of the Death Race for use as a fun game for teens in THE TOXIC AVENGER. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: cars, David Carradine, Lewis Teague, Paul Bartel, Roger Corman, Sylvester Stallone
Posted in Action, Comedy/Laffs, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 53 Comments »
Tuesday, April 30th, 2013
Recently I re
alized I missed one of the early Isaac Florentine movies, a goofy John-Woo-inspired bank robber story starring Antonio Sabato Jr. (and Sr.), Shannon Lee, Amy Smart and Lochlyn Munro. So I reviewed it for my column on Daily Grindhouse, which is now called America’s Got Punching (formerly Journey to Battle Island).
Tags: Amy Smart, Antonio Sabato Jr., bank robbers, DTV, Isaac Florentine, Lochlyn Munro, Shannon Lee
Posted in Action, Reviews | 7 Comments »
