Action Movie  FREAK

HOW TO TELL . ..
Are you a FREAK or just a Fan?

"The Hovitos are near, the poison is still fresh—3 days, they're following us . . . "

"They are an army, unlike any other, crusading across the stars toward . . . "

And if you can easily finish this entire quote: 
"I know what you're thinking, did he fire 6 shots, or only 5 . . . "
 

just admit it now, you're an Action Movie FREAK!
(That quote should be required memorization if you're going to call yourself an action movie freak!)

Action Movie Fans can stomach most movie violence.
Action Movie FREAKS will clap when the action reaches its gross-out best! Remember the incredible opening of Ninja Assassin . . . 
What's that? You didn't see "Ninja Assassin"? Then you're an action movie fan. Let's start again.

Remember the incredible opening of Ninja Assassin, which ended when the blood splatter becomes the title 

 

you knew it was coming, but you clapped anyway! (Yes, true >Action Movie FREAKS clap when the violence is really good like horror movie fans laugh when it gets really gross)  If, right about now, you're shaking your head or laughing, you're an Action Movie fan.
If you're all fired up . . . 
"HELL YEAH!"

"Welcome to the Jungle!"

RECENT ACTION MOVIES

The Expendables

Don't kick yourself later for not seeing it on the big screen! There was SOoo much anticipation for this movie . . .
I don't want to spoil anything while it's still in theaters—GO SEE IT—then check out my Expendables Movie Review. Seeing that cast together was worth the price of the ticket alone. Stallone had to deliver something worthy of bringing them all together . . . so did he? Is it good enough to support a sequel? Undoubtedly, but a lot of the draw will depend on the next cast. It still amazes me that he asked Jeanne Claude Van Damme and that he said no. And what was Kurt Russell thinking?! He was lucky to be asked as well. This movie looked to be the greatest "boys club" romp ever, how could any real action movie fan say no? 

The Other Guys

No, it's not an action movie, it's a COMEDY, but the opener is a killer: A car crash so awesome I had to whistle! The Rock and Samuel Jackson aren't in it for very long but surprisingly (yes surprisingly) Will Ferrell (cause I'm tired of him) and Mark Wahlberg carry this Buddy Movie and do it with enough comedy to keep you laughing all the way through (the script is an equal-opportunity offender). Wahlberg's a surprise as a loser wannabe playing against his bad boy image. He even seems to have a ounce or two of fat around the middle(!). Overall the movie is not a positive portrayal of the police force (ya think?), which I kind of thought it would be with The Rock and Sam Jackson for The Other Guys to look up to, but they come off as douchebag egomaniacs and idiots. The movie makes fun of everything we don't like about cops.

Predators

Finally! A return to the jungle. This movie was enjoyable but changing the structure just a little could have made it great. I was disappointed to come away feeling they used it as a money maker while giving props to the original just to capitalize on our love of the first movie. Had they set out to make a really great movie all on its own and not just try and figure out what we loved about the first and deliver on that . . . (sigh).  This movie was fun, and I know you can't compete with Arnold, but you can TRY. Adrien Brody no matter how buff, no matter how great an actor could never be an "Action Figure" and this was an Action Figure movie.
Check out my Predator | Predators comparison.

 

The A-Team  
"A" is for a big, satisfying Aaaaaaah!  The A-TEAM delivered Action with a capital "A" . . .

EXPENDABLES plus one
I've got my tickets!  Do you have yours?  I have tickets for the first 2 shows so I can see it back to back. If it's as great as I hope it's going to be, I want to see it every night next week. Check it out if you haven't already: Expendables The Movie.com. (Photoshopped this from a lobby display. Take the "Are You Expendable?" quiz, then put yourself in the photo at The Expendables website. Also they have t-shirts and official merchandise! )

 

August 13, 2010

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Are you watching ACTION PACK on AMC?
Wednesday nights are special for action movie fans: Check out AMC's dynamic duo Matt McCarthy and Nick Stevens on Action Pack this Wednesday for a Seagal double feature:  Out For Justice and On Deadly Ground. And follow Steven Seagal on twitter: @ssegalofficial.

Beefcake and Bottom Line Realities
I was going to see Predators in the theater one more time (paid to see it twice already) and then I thought, twice was enough, and I realized at that moment that I don't think I will buy the DVD. This surprised me. So, I took a trip to the video store instead of going to the movies. I wanted to get Event Horizon to write up why I thought it was sooo terrible, and of course, it's not for sale. I felt a little smug justification when I realized there is some truth to my action movie opinions (yay!): Bad action movies are no longer on the shelf; Good action movies are $7.99-$9.99; and Great action movies are still selling for $19.99, or more.

Action movies are either the kind I'm crazy about and buy the DVD and watch over and over, enjoying that same satisfying punch I felt the first time I saw it (Alien, Aliens, Predator, Die Hard, etc.),
OR the kind I liked in the theater but I'm not going to pay to buy the DVD because seeing it once (or twice) was enough. 

When I realized I would not buy the DVD of Predators, I understood why not. Ultimately what disappointed me in  Predators is what I wrote in the closing of my review: "they made it Good Enough, but I don't think they were shooting for GREAT". This really hit home when I thought about the bottom line, because even if it does well in the box office, I predict it won't do well in DVD sales. And I can tell you why not.  Before the movie came out, everyone (even Robert Rodriguez) was saying (me included) that Adrien Brody is no Arnold, but what that means to the movie is this: People will not love and identify with Adrien Brody the way they would with a more popular, beefier star. They could have made it all about the lead character but they chose to go another way, and that is going to cost them, literally.  So, it left me wondering: Did they just push it out hoping to make it good enough to get enough money by capitalizing on the popularity of the first movie? If so, that is really disappointing. I see now this movie could never have been as popular with someone like Adrien Brody in the lead despite my highest hopes to the contrary.  The Chronicles of Riddick is an example of the same kind of lead character who is an anti-hero who saves the day. However, Riddick with Vin Diesel shows that beefcake works even when the leader is not the typical hero (or not trying to be one). WE WANT BIG MEN as heroes in action movies. That is my bottom line!

I am thinking of boycotting THOR (read my Anti-Scrawny Rant) (sigh) because I waited so long for that movie and they cast Chris Hemsworth? WTF! Was Justin Bieber unwilling to die his hair blonde? MEN! We want men!!! If not buff 'roid monsters, then giant brawlers, or at least jocks with real muscles. We don't want actors who beef up for a role even if they are as impressive as Adrien Brody was in the last scene—to his credit—it's still not enough.  And no more pretty boys in rubber suits!

Predators GO SEE IT!
I could hardly wait to see it.
If you haven't yet, don't click on the link above—Go see it first :D!  

Love this international release poster.

Aaaydryn Brrody's no Euuwan MaGrrreygga  

Just 3 days and counting . . . to midnight July 8th-GOT MY TICKET!

Yes, I know how to spell Adrien Brody and Ewan McGregor. I was just havin' a wee bit o' fun with it. I am so psyched for PREDATORS! The only good thing about Adrien Brody being in Predators will be watching them kill him. Please let them kill him, first. LOL  LOVE the who-dies-next Monster genre. Aaah, Adrien Brody. The Halle-Berry-kissing fool.

I saw him in Splice—He was okay. His wardrobe kept me laughing, but that's not his fault. I SO want to like him in Predators because I don't want him to ruin it for me (see my Anti-Scrawny Rant below). I sure hope he's up to it.  I'm thinking either Don't-call-me Larry Fishburne or Danny "The Mayor" Trejo will be the last man standing. Danny Trejo is awesome! Wondering how much of a cult classic Machete will be. (Hope there are some just awesome kills.) He looks a liiittle bit oh-shit terrified here (its in the eyebrows) even though he's holding what Robert Rodriguez called "double uzis" (MP5Ks). Gotta love the Navajo-looking straps hanging down.

As big as the guy in the video below is, he appears to be struggling to hold on—gives you some idea of what it would be like to try to hold and fire two of these.

I would, of course, like it to be the girl (cause I'm a girl) (the only girl, "Isabelle" played by Alice Braga) as the last 'man' standing. I liked her in Repo Man. Plus, the girl was one of the few to make it out alive in PREDATOR.
 

Knight and Day  (A Case For Casting Unknowns)

I love Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz, and Knight and Day was great fun and worth the ticket price, but not worth reviewing in detail as an action movie. It is, however, a great opportunity to make a case for casting unknowns. About halfway through the movie, I thought that this movie would have been a great vehicle to make the careers of two new, younger stars, but with Cruise and Diaz, they were just a little too old and too recognizable (for me) for it to be as enjoyably fun and romantic as I think it could have been.

That may be an age bias on my part, but the attractiveness of youth is a reproductive fact. We don't feel attracted to aging stars like we do fresh faces, and consequently, I wasn't really buying the romance. That seems harsh considering how good looking they both still are (and always will be), but maybe it was just something personal that I see they are either on top of the hill, or just over it. Plus, they are SO well known that I couldn't get past their fame and all the pre-movie TV coverage of . . . "Tom and Cameron are such great friends and Katie was on the set and blah blah blah". I think if someone has to say on TV that it's great that Cameron and Tom "can still do" this, that proves my point.

I realize my wishing this movie starred unknowns is also partly a negative reflection on Cruise and Diaz's acting abilities, like maybe I should have walked away wondering if they really fell in love on the movie set in real life. So be it, and I am not unaware that people go to see movies because they want to see Tom Cruise paired with Cameron Diaz (or Tom Hanks with Meg Ryan or whoever), and that these stars bring people to movies they might not otherwise see.  And yet . . .

It brought to mind the casting of Julie Roberts in Something to Talk About (Callie Khouri's second script—She won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for Thelma and Louise, her first script!). I love Julia Roberts too (how could you not with that smile?!) but I don't think of her as the type of Southern woman that script was written about and yes, she is an Actress, but maybe in that role she just didn't sell me. I was super disappointed after the movie because I so loved the script and thought it was tragically under-appreciated by being a Julia Roberts vehicle. 

I can see where stars pick scripts to further their careers/personas because I believe we attribute the sum total of their roles to what we imagine is their real-life personalities (more about that in my discussion of Tom Cruise as an Action Movie Bad Ass), but in this movie, had it been cast with an unknown, more authentically Southern sounding and acting star, it would have, should have been more like a glimpse into the life of a real person than watching Julia 'play Southern'. I say that because I lived in the South and I felt like I knew that girl, and the way Julia Roberts played her the spark was missing!  With the right unknown actress cast, the scene where she confronts the women in the meeting could have been Oscar-winning-Best-Actress performance material.

I guess, as a writer, I'm feeling protective of the material and not thinking about the bottom line, and the way I think they cast movies: "Who can we put in this to get people to see it?" I just think the material should come first, not the stars, and that upon finishing the last page of a script, someone should be able to tell that the movie would be better with an unknown. I really feel the loss for Callie. Such an amazing character journey! When Grace King Bichon stands up for herself, it could have resonated with all women, instead it was just Julia.

Movie-Watching Economics

Just a brief explanation: I see a lot less movies than I used to before Realtors® with their greedy spin ran the economy into the ground (I live in Miami). I'm also discovering that either I'm getting impatient in general, or more discerning. If I had more free time and the tickets prices were lower, I think the amount of movies I dislike would definitely double-LOL! At the price movies are now, I go on Saturday mornings for the discount unless I really want to see it opening night on the largest screen possible. Lately, I'm missing so many hyped-up movies, I'm feeling guilty to the point where I've decided I have to defend myself, and chalk it up to personal preferences.  So here it is . . .

Kids' Stuff
I keep hearing about how great The (new) Karate Kid is and I love Jackie Chan but . . .   I have to say I'm NOT A FAN of action movies with a kid in the lead (?!) or helping out.  I hated "Short Round", and it STILL pisses me off that the kid in Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace was so young the goggles didn't even fit right so he could see, and yet we were supposed to suspend disbelief that he could win that race—Even my belief in the Force wasn't enough to pull that off!  An actor only a year older would have sold it. I would blame Jake Lloyd, but he was just a kid, and that's my point.  I feel required to see any (Bruce Willis or) Nicolas Cage movies, no matter what, but I feel like The Sorcerer's Apprentice will surely suck. Hope I'm wrong.

CG Ay-Yi-Yi!
I am also NOT A FAN of CGI where it's ridiculous to the point that it ruins the movie as it did in Pirates of The Caribbean: At Worst End (World's). That whirlpool was real looking, but the fight on the spar was just so long it was silly! There's no way they wouldn't have fallen. Seems like sometimes they don't know where to stop or when to edit. Just because they can produce an incredible effect, doesn't mean 10 minutes of it instead of thirty seconds it necessarily adds anything to the movie. 

Special effects, no matter if they are oh-my-god-you-can't-miss-this-movie incredible, just aren't enough by themselves. As much as I was looking forward to getting that Jason and the Argonauts feeling from Clash of the Titans, in the end I skipped it.

I also skipped Transformers 2, Iron Man 2, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, and may end up skipping Tron: Legacy (aka "The Dude Rides") just because of Jeff Bridges and his stupid open-mouthed blank expression that worked so well in The Coen Brothers masterpiece study of passivity v. aggression, The Big Lebowski, but which has bothered me in every movie of his after it never left his face in Arlington Road.  Ah, who am I kidding? TRON was soooo cool at the time and helped interest in video games explode. I had "Pac wrist" and spent $50 a week in video game arcades. I have to go see what they did with it.  Honestly though, the father/son casting WAY high in annoyance factor! The son's voice, in real life, yikes. I thought Jeff Bridges was bad until I heard Garrett Hedlund. I hope it doesn't pull me out of the suspension of disbelief. Looks WAY COOL!

Although the greatest case for the CGI not justifying the movie has to be Avatar, it's almost as if when the special effects are that great, you have to go see it and you have to say it was good. I say Oh hell no! Visually stunning wasn't enough to outweigh a simplistic story ("unobtanium"?—who still thinks they were clever for making up that name?!), two-dimensional characters, and a lack of editing that pulled the film down and made it drag (they could have cut so much out). There's an Emperor's New Clothes element to saying anything bad about Avatar. I didn't want to see it because I knew it could never live up to the hype, but it's almost like you can't miss seeing it without people disregarding you as crazy, and yet when I came out of it, I knew I was right. As visually dazzling as it was, it wasn't a good enough movie to 'sit through' twice. I refuse to jump on the that-was-a-great-movie bandwagon. As a movie, and not just a special-effects vehicle, it was just okay. I think it was creative to take all that underwater stuff and put it on land. I cannot fault the effects, they blew me away. I wanted to love it and go see it again and again and get lost in the world of the blue monkeys, but it was not fun enough and way too long.

I have to say that if they had given the Best Director or Best Picture Oscar to James Cameron, I'd have stopping watching the Academy Awards. THANK GOD they gave it to Kathryn Bigelow and The Hurt Locker! [It almost makes up for the last time I stopped watching because they snubbed E.T. and Stephen Spielberg and gave the big two awards to Ghandi! Almost.]  I think we may be well into CGI just for CGI sake. It sure seems like we're well into 3D for the sake of higher ticket prices. Neither of these things will make me see a movie.

Comic Relief
And . . . as much as I am a fan of comic books (I even like Aquaman), just because a movie is based on a comic book doesn't mean I'm going to see it either. The critics seemed to slather Kick-Ass in drool, but I was so bored, I walked out. I haven't walked out of a movie since I can remember . . . I even sat through The Marine though I was itching to leave. I also skipped Watchmen. I like Josh Brolin so I wanted to see Jonah Hex, but since it's only 1:20 it has to suck. I have this stupid idea that anything under 1:31 isn't worth seeing (just my years of judging movies by run times). I don't feel it's time enough to get invested and then resolve things in a satisfying way. Either they don't have enough build up or they've rushed the ending. I hate it when the beginning is great, then bam! it's over when you wanted to see it played out. (It's like a chick flick with no wedding! Hello Pride and Prejudice! Why do you think the mini series was so popular? Double wedding!! How do you leave that out? Wait, my panties are in a wad and this was supposed to be an action movie rant.)

Team Work
I love the trash-talking bravado of the action movie bad ass, but even the promise of too much of that from The Losers wasn't enough to get me to spend $6 because I read it was downright horriblee. I am really glad to see the reappearance of the bad-ass-team type of action movie: EXPENDABLES, The "A" Team  got the job done.

So what did I pay to see?
•Pan-bore-um (Pandorum) Yikes, the plot! I'm a sucker for space movies.
•Surrogates Zzzz like Zombieland. Too much story, not enough action.
•The Crazies Gross and violent in the BEST way.
•Splice I called it Sex with the sea monkeys. It was more disturbing on a parenting level than a genetic one.
•The Book of Eli First, let me just say: Denzel! ("Women love them some Denzel" SPIKE LEE) It had some really great action/explosions/gun fights but Denzel was a little stiff—but, that could be attributed to him (spoiler alert) playing blind, which you don't find out until the end.
•Robin Hood I had too-high hopes for the subject matter.
•Edge of Darkness I hated to give Mel Gibson a penny but it looked old-fashioned-Dirty-Harry-type good, and it was. It was surprisingly not quite that predictable. It did not redeem him, however. 
•Cop Out was pleasantly surprisingly better than expected thanks to Tracey Morgan.
•Knight and Day was fun and worth the ticket price but not worth reviewing in detail. Read more above.

No Thanks . . .
With apologies to all the kind folks who spent their talents, time, and money making them, these movies seemed like they would/will be not worth my time or the ticket price:
•Green Zone (not sold on Matt Damon as an action star and don't like the Bourne series either),
•Legion (angels?!)
•Salt (not a fan of Angelina Jolie as an action star either—and thankfully, i'm not alone in this, which is a relief because people will assume I don't like her because she's prettier than me. (She's prettier than everyone!) The guys at AllOuttaBubbleGum.com don't like her as an action star either (must be the Van Damme thing for me)
•Killers NO THANKS
•The Last Airbender (I loved M. Night Shayalan in the beginning. I loved what his sort-of-modern-Hitchcock target but The Village killed him for me.)
•The Other Guys God, I so want to like this but, WILL FERREL! Enough Ferrel. OMG I even went to see Step Brothers. NO Will, we do not want to see your balls. PLEASE keep your clothes on. I love so much of his work "glass case of emotion", but get over yourself! Will overkill. He's starting to be the same annoying self in everything. I hate them for putting him in Land of the Lost! I loved that show. (NO, I didn't see it.)

YES PLEASE!! Pretty please with cherries on top!
My hopes for the summer are already exceeded with the release of The Expendables! Add Predators to that, and I'm HAPPY. The rest is gravy! I hope to see:
•Inception
•The American
•A Woman A Gun And A Noodle Shop
•Machete
•Resident Evil: Afterlife
•Unstoppable

Luckily for me, I already these as-yet-unreleased action movies at ActionFest:
•Operation Endgame Great cast but insufficient plot
•Valhalla Rising I will try again to see it for Mads Mikkelsen
•Centurion Go see it!

And I don't do this kind of work."

How crazy is it that Van Dummy and Kurt Russell turned down an opportunity to be in The Expendables? If they think they're too cool, they're sadly mistaken. Being in The Expendables is like the ultra-action-movie-superstars club. It's an honor just to be asked!! How do you say no? I have to say that if they said No, then they don't deserve to be that cool! I'm so psyched that Terry Crews is in it.
I love him in Everybody Hates Chris!

Every Action Movie Freak would love to cast GEARS OF WAR.

Movie Chains are PRICE GOUGING!

If a movie isn't really good, I don't want to spend the money to see it. Rant at  AllOuttaBubbleGum.com gave Iron Man 2 only a 6 out of 10.  I hear everyone says just the last half hour is good. Yes, I like Robert Downey Jr., but that's not enough to pay $11 for 2 hours. I guess if it was 7 stars, I think there's a possibility I might think it was 8 or 9, but 6—pass. There's way too many movies that aren't worth the $11.  If movies were $5 all the time, I would see almost all of them. I just don't get why they price them SO high. The snacks are insanely priced. If they were cheap, everyone would eat like crazy because people love that food. But COME ON, $4 for a small popcorn?! What is it, 5 cents worth of popcorn? If people aren't going to the movies, they should try a price rollback and see how many people come and how much they eat.  One thing I won't eat: Sunmaid Milk Chocolate raisins—they're DISGUSTING. That 'stuff' is not chocolate. GOOBERS! RAISINETS! SNOCAPS! We must have the classics. And, how do you expect us not to feel ripped off when the soda is 2x the price that it is at fast food places? If they can make a profit at that price, what's your excuse for gouging us?!  It just creates ill will.

Anti-Scrawny RANT

I try not to be negative. I do! I want the site to be about the good stuff. So I started this blog to get rid of some of the perhaps sometimes negative but hopefully funny thoughts I have on various things I don't want to feature in the site.

Today, I  was working on writing about PREDATOR and I'm looking forward to PREDATORS (how could one not be?), but I remembered when I heard Adrian Brody was in it as some kind of bad ass, I couldn't help but remember my reaction when I heard someone put Winona Ryder in an Aliens movie! Really the last person, okay, well Woody Allen would be the last person I would expect to see in an Aliens movie, but Winona Ryder? Turned out that was pretty funny casting considering her role. Yes, Winona Ryder, because apparently she is the look to reproduce as android pleasure girl named "Call".  

So I hear Adrian Brody beefed up for PREDATORS. Good! Because he was the scrawniest thing since that "Brilliantine stick insect" Remington Steele (phrase from Fawlty Towers). I thought he ruined every movie I saw him in: The Affair Of The Necklace, The Village, and King Kong. Yes I know he won the Oscar for The Pianist, but I didn't see the Pianist, I didn't see anything else he won awards for either: Restaurant, Love The Hard Way, or Cadillac Records. So he's my one misgiving about PREDATORS. When I look at the trailer and see "the most dangerous killers on the planet", I think, okay, with training and weapons anyone can be dangerous, or with a warped mind, doesn't matter what they look like, doesn't have to be the mostly-all-G.I.Joe-types casting that PREDATOR was in order to work, but that certainly was one of the coolest things about it. They better do a damn good job of showingg why these guys are dangerous before they off them one by one in hopefully apropos and interesting ways. (Robert Rodriguez says he is also developing the characters of the different predators, so I hope we see how they use the differences in their prey to hunt them.) Also I think it would be more satisfying if we know the strengths of both hunter and prey so we can appreciate the method of their demise—if they capitalized on their weaknesses, or how they won or failed. 

So getting back to the Scrawny rant . . . I think action movies use "actors" too much and should cast "action figures" more. Why was Chris Hemsworth cast as THOR instead of Triple H? Hemsworth can't wield a mighty hammer! Is anybody out there reading a THOR comic book and thinking Chris Hemsworth?  Hell NO!!  There are real comic-book-super-hero types in life (that is why wrestling is so popular: we feel invincible watching them), please start casting them!

 (In closing I have to add this: Jake Gyllenhaal as The Prince of Persia?! Aw C'mon!!!!! NOooooo! What's next Spencer Pratt as Aquaman? LMAO! I loved Aquaman so much as a kid growing up swimming all day long in the Bahamas, but even I recognize the character's lameness (Brad Pitt, Paul Walker, Casper Van Dien, or pretty much any blonde actor would be perfect—that says it all).  Still, I wish there was more lameness recognition in casting the physically superb super heroes! We want to see SEXY brawny beefcake! Jake got all beefed up for the role, but his face is wrong and he's not sexy. Doesn't it look like they stuck the wrong head on that body? John Abraham would have been perfect!  Can't believe they used a 'blonde' American actor for that role. KevJumba's on the same page with this..

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