Archive for the ‘Action’ Category
Tuesday, April 30th, 2013
THE KICK is a family friendly Thai martial arts movie from director Prachya Pinkaew (ONG BAK, TOM YUM GOONG, CHOCOLATE). It’s not as ridiculous as POWER KIDS (arguably that’s a bad thing) but way less cheesy and broad than MUAY THAI GIANT (definitely a good thing). It’s less gory than POWER KIDS but otherwise schews a little older, with a teen brother and sister getting alot of the focus.
Despite being a Thai production it’s about a Korean family who train and perform Tae Kwon Do. The father has alot of resentment about a loss at the Olympics long ago, just as he had to abandon his dream in order to raise a family. Because of this he puts alot of pressure on his family to train hard, especially his older son, who would rather pursue his dream of STEP UP style dancing. Dad doesn’t even want him to go to a big audition to be a dancer for “Dream Entertainment.” The poor kid has to make a deal to master the impossible “Tornado Kick” to even be allowed to pursue dancing at all. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: JiJa Yanin, Phetthai Vongkumlao, Prachya Pinkaew, Tae Kwon Do, Thai action
Posted in Action, Family, Martial Arts, Reviews | 28 Comments »
Monday, April 29th, 2013
You guys know I’ve always rooted for the movies carrying the prestigious WWE Films banner. I gave the rare rave review of their dumb slasher movie SEE NO EVIL (9% on Rotten Tomatoes), even got quoted by the producer on a commentary track. I wrote that the Triple-H/Parker Posey team in INSIDE OUT might be “this generation’s William Powell and Myrna Loy”. I loved THE MARINE 2 and labelled it one of the few DTV sequels superior to a theatrical original. They were starting to have a really good track record there.
Now I’m a little concerned because it seems like WWE Films is trying to get out of the making-WWE-films business. First they started picking up non-wrestling, independent features to distribute (THE DAY), then they put out two wide theatrical releases, DEAD MAN DOWN and THE CALL, that star Oscar nominees/winners instead of wrestlers. I mean I want to see both movies – they’re from pretty interesting directors, the first looks good and the other looks funny-bad – but I don’t like it. Yeah, so what if Cartoon Network has live action shows and MTV doesn’t play M anymore? Other people will make movies starring Halle Berry, I promise you. WWE should only have her in a buddy cop movie with The Undertaker.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Darren Shahlavi, Declan O'Brien, DTV, DTV sequels, Michael Eklund, Neal McDonough, Scott Wiper, WWE Films
Posted in Action, Reviews | 25 Comments »
Wednesday, April 24th, 2013
THE PACKAGE continues two DTV trends that I enjoy:
1. Stone Cold Steve Austin, possible heir to the DTV throne, co-starring with all the other icons of the DTV Action Era. This is his Dolph Lundgren movie. Previously he did his Michael Jai White movie TACTICAL FORCE, his Danny Trejo movie RECOIL and his Steven Seagal movie MAXIMUM CONVICTION. He’s still got to do a Van Damme, an Adkins and a Cuba Gooding Jr.
2. Dolph doing colorful supporting roles where he gets to goof around more. He also stole the show in ONE IN THE CHAMBER and THE EXPENDABLESes and I haven’t seen STASH HOUSE or SMALL APARTMENTS but I bet it’s true of those too. Maybe all these roles where he gets to experiment more will bring something new to him next time he’s the leading man again. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Darren Shahlavi, Derek Kolstad, Dolph Lundgren, DTV, Jerry Trimble, Jesse V. Johnson, Stone Cold Steve Austin
Posted in Action, Reviews | 24 Comments »
Tuesday, April 16th, 2013
This websight called Daily Grindhouse invited me to write for them recently, and I figured why not? I like days, I like grinding, I like houses. My new not-sure-how-regular-it-will-be-yet column, which goes under the working title of VERN’S PUNCH-QUEST, will be kind of like Slasher Search except I’ll be watching obscure b-action type stuff, mostly ones from the ’80s and ’90s that nobody’s recommended to me or anything, just ones that look cool or goofy. And hopefully some of them will turn out to be good.
For the first column I chose NIGHT OF THE WARRIOR starring Lorenzo Lamas. Click on the title to read it.
Tags: Ken Foree, Lorenzo Lamas, Thomas Ian Griffith, underground fighting
Posted in Action, Reviews | 10 Comments »
Tuesday, April 16th, 2013
So nice they named it twice for some reason? I actually was always curious to see what this BALLISTIC: ECKS VS. SEVER movie was all about, so those of you who voted it up in the SUGGESTIONS gave me that nudge I’ve been needing for years.
Antonio Banderas plays Jeremiah Ecks, an ex-FBI agent who went deep undercover and faked his death but also thought his wife was dead but she wasn’t but now he’s retired but they come to him and say his wife is actually alive and he should help them go after this kidnapper Sever (Lucy Liu) because she knows where his wife is. She took the son of innocent Talisa Soto (MORTAL KOMBAT) and rich asshole Gregg Henry (PAYBACK) and she keeps him in a big metal cage in a Batcave type underground lair but she seems to like him because she brings him cafeteria lunch trays loaded with good food like home made macaroni and cheese, Jello and Ding-Dongs, and he says “Thank you” politely. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alan B. McElroy, Antonio Banderas, Gregg Henry, Lucy Liu, Ray Park, Talisa Soto, video games
Posted in Action, Reviews, Videogame | 76 Comments »
Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013
BREAKING POINT is an early Bob Clark picture in sort of a DEATH WISH vein. DEATH WISH came out 2 years earlier. Bo Svenson (who had already been in WALKING TALL 2, and is my favorite Buford Pusser) plays Michael McBain, a regular guy who’s walking home with his stepson late one night when he sees two gangsters beating a man to death in an alley. He’s an honorable, manly kinda guy so he fearlessly goes over to tell them to cool it. But he’s too late to save the guy.
And being that that’s who he is, of course, he’s willing to identify the two guys who did it to the police. Or at least that’s the plan, but everybody starts saying he’s crazy to get involved. His wife, his sister, his sister’s fiancee – all of them think he should just stay out of it. So he gets second thoughts, and pretends he doesn’t remember anything. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bo Svenson, Bob Clark, judo, Robert Culp, Roger Swaybill, Stanley Mann, vigilante
Posted in Action, Reviews | 19 Comments »
Monday, April 1st, 2013
GI JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA was a stupid fucking movie from a shitty director. I loved it. It was just so un-self-consciously ludicrous that it was hard not to enjoy. Like a hyperactive little kid that you would never want to be a parent to but just seeing him jump around giggling for a minute makes you laugh.
The directionist was Stephen “THE MUMMY” Sommers, a veteran of loud, dumb, rhythm-less and weirdly low rent big budget summer blockbuster type movies. The guy couldn’t direct his way through a “DIRECTORS ONLY” door, but he’s excited enough about ninjas and funny masks and shit that he accidentally made a fun one. I would say he made RISE OF COBRA fun not so much through his talents as through a series of coincidences. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Adrianne Palicki, Arnold Vosloo, Bruce, Bruce Willis, Byung-hun Lee, Channing Tatum, DJ Cotrona, Elodie Yung, Jon M. Chu, Jonathan Pryce, Ray Park, Ray Stevenson, RZA, The Rock, Walton Goggins
Posted in Action, Bruce, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 96 Comments »
Sunday, March 24th, 2013
OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN is a watchable but instantly forgettable throwback to a subgenre I miss, the glossy ’90s studio action like IN THE LINE OF FIRE and UNDER SIEGE. I mean it’s not a studio movie – it was made by the until-recently-DTV sausage factory Millennium Films – but it sure seems legit with its respectable cast of Aaron Eckhart as the President, Ashley Judd as the First Lady, Academy Award winner Morgan Freeman as the Speaker of the House (a demotion from DEEP IMPACT), Academy Award nominee Angela Bassett as the Secret Service director, Academy Award winner Melissa Leo as the Secretary of Defense, Golden Globe winner Dylan McDermott as… some other type of White House guy. Lending whatever action movie credibility they can muster are 300’s Gerard Butler as the hero, PITCH BLACK’s Radha Mitchell as the hero’s wife, THE MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS’s Rick Yune as the villain, and PAPARAZZI’s Cole Hauser reprising his A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD role as Agent Who Gets Killed Early On. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Aaron Eckhart, Angela Bassett, Antoine Fuqua, Ashley Judd, Cole Hauser, Die Hard on a ____, Dylan McDermott, Gerard Butler, Melissa Leo, Millennium Films, Morgan Freeman, Radha Mitchell, Rick Yune, Robert Forster
Posted in Action, Reviews | 76 Comments »
Friday, March 22nd, 2013
How are you gonna get em back on JUDGE DREDD with Sylvester Stallone when they’ve seen DREDD with Karl Urban? The new version is lower budget and streamlined and way better. It’s dedicated to the purity of this fascist character and the ugly world he lives in, and doesn’t worry about commercial considerations. (And sure enough did not do well commercially.) The new version is cool because it’s just about this larger than life character on one day doing one job. The old one, of course, had to be the story of the biggest thing that ever happened to Judge Dredd. It has all the weaknesses of calculated blockbuster type filmmaking, and only some of the strengths.
But you know what, it’s pretty fun to watch. There’s alot of good shit in here anyway, especially at the beginning. It’s a little better than I remembered. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Armand Assante, Danny Cannon, Diane Lane, Ewan Bremner, James Remar, Joan Chen, Jurgen Prochnow, Max von Sydow, Michael De Luca, Rob Schneider, Scott Wilson, Steven E. de Souza, Sylvester Stallone, William Wisher Jr.
Posted in Action, Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 96 Comments »
Please join me to discuss the 1981 Cirio H. Santiago martial arts and boobs picture FIRECRACKER in this week’s installment of JOURNEY TO BATTLE ISLAND (formerly VERN’S PUNCH-QUEST) over on 
