Action Movie Fans
can watch
other genres in comfort.
Action Movie FREAKS will start shifting in their seats 10
minutes into a movie where nothing has crashed or been blown up
yet . . .
Action Movie Fans can quote
a few one-liners from a few
popular action movies.
"I'll be back!"
"Make My Day!" Action Movie
FREAKS
try to work
their favorite quotes into
conversation all the time!
"God has his tricks, but getting
[paper jams out of copiers],
that's one of mine.*"
Action Movie Fans have watched their favorite action
movies
a handful of times.
Action Movie
FREAKS can recite
the entire opening scene
word-for-word from at least 2 movies they're obsessed with!
"The
Hovitos are near, the poison is still fresh 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!"
You're an
Action Movie
FREAK!
*from
CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK "God has his tricks, but gettin' outta places no one else
can, that's one of mine."
Did you discount this movie? BIG MISTAKE!! After I saw
The Warrior's Way
it stayed in the back of my mind, but it wasn't until I tried to
write about it that I realized just how effectively this movie's
deceptively simple beauty and entertaining story line
showcase the
concept of YIN YANG . . .
Read more
A
Good Cause to Donate to . . .
Dec 2, 2010
ComicED, Inc. is a nonprofit focused on improving reading comprehension and
literacy rates among South Florida's youth. They provide easy and
inexpensive access to a large inventory of current comic books, back
issues, and graphic novels to youth members ages 8–18 by partnering
with local community centers and youth programs. You can volunteer
to join a reading group, or donate comics to inspire young minds. They
meet on Fridays from 10AM-12 noon.
The deadline for submissions to the
AllOuttaBubbleGum.com
Action 100 Project
has been extended to December 25th. You can submit 101 or just 10
or anything in between. Then you get to vote on them on this scale:
The All Outta
BubbleGum Rating System
1.0 = Epic Failure. Reserved For Irredeemable Shit Bombs.
2.0 = Might As Well Watch The Life Time Channel
3.0 = F.U.B.A.R.
4.0 = A Struggle Ensues To Not Commit Harri Karri
5.0 = Better Than A Kick In The Face With A Steel-Toe Army Boot
6.0 = The Goblet Is Half Full—But It Tastes Like DudeSweat
7.0 = Better Than Bad, It's Good
8.0 = Bona-Fide Bad-Ass
9.0 = Like An Afternoon Of Kicking Ass And Eating Cheeseburgers With
Stallone
10. = 150% Mother Fucker. Epic. The Personification Of Cool
A Rock-Solid Performance from Dwayne
Johnson
The movie opens on his bicep. He's in a jail cell
and pacing, about to be released from a 10-year sentence for being
the getaway driver for his brother's robbery gang. After a crazy
backwards-driving car chase where he easily out-maneuvered the
police (in a GTO) and the gang got away clean, they were all killed
by a group of men hired by someone who set them up and then stole
the money.
Johnson's character spends 10 years waiting to
get revenge for his brother's death. I won't give too many details
because it's not to be missed—Go see it (or you will wish you had).
A morality-focused movie that explores the cost of pain, "Faster"
gains speed after the warden conducts the exit interview. He tells
Johnson: "It's as if you were born to darkness in this place."
After watching the movie I would say he was born to darkness the
minute they took his brother's life. "You have any questions?"
he asks Johnson. "Where's the exit?"
Pacing
turns to jogging as Johnson leaves prison, a free man, and starts
off down the highway (they're in the middle of nowhere). After
being imprisoned, it must be an incredible feeling to have the
freedom and space to just run. He picks up a car, a P.I.
report, and a gun, and heads for the first victim on his list behind
the wheel of a 1971 Chevy Chevelle Malibu SS. The sound of
the car is all power, and the combination of the intensity of
Johnson's performance and the rumble of the engine makes it seem
like a bullet. He parks, and sets out across a busy street not
looking at traffic that has to screech to a stop to avoid hitting
him. There's just no slowing him down. He marches into an office and
with a single shot to the head, kills target #1.
And so it goes as Johnson goes down the list of the men responsible
for the death of his brother. Without giving away too much of the
plot, it comes down to the last victim, who was probably the least
responsible for what happened, and who is now a preacher. This
is a Revenge movie through and through and what it lacks in suspense
(you can guess where it's going), it more than makes up for with
this powerful performance by Johnson. Nobody can say he's not a
great actor after this. Yes, GREAT. All the pain and
power in his face pulls the air out of your lungs as you witness
what he goes through in his bitter journey for retribution . . . and
he just can't stop. There is a shot of a moth stuck to the headlight
of his car, wings flapping. Neither of them can get away from their
situation.
"We make our own heaven and hell while we're alive, every time we
cause pain, cause suffering."
Moon Bloodgood delivers this line and while she does, you can
see the pain pouring out of every pore of Johnson's body, as with
each killing, it's better, but it's also worse for him. It
culminates in
the scene where the preacher says he forgives him for what he is
about to do—You can see the moment his character's heart breaks in
Johnson's face. It's a stellar performance, subtly done, and yet
magnified by the power of his enormous screen presence and natural
charisma. You couldn't look away if you tried.
The dialogue:: ". . . to places you don't want
to go" brought to mind "The Rundown" when Johnson's
character talked about why he didn't like guns. No such qualms
here. There's a shot when he refills a revolver with 6 bullets with
one hand in one movement! The preacher is played by
Adewale
Akinnuoye-Agbaje. (He was LOST's Mr. Eko, also a preacher).
These two giants face each other in remarkable, emotional
performances you would not have expected when you paid the ticket
price for an action movie, but it delivers and this is a bonus.
Action movies need morality to be really good, otherwise 'What are
you fighting for'? The movie is everything you hoped it would
be, and more. Every performance is spot on.
Romancing The Stone
(remake 2011?) Nov
13, 2010
Who would have thought a
movie so cheesy and so 'romance novel' would have been so hugely
popular (the original 1984)? And who can forget the intro?
" . . . and stole my bible."
They were having so much fun with it and that fun was
contagious. It think it was perfectly cast and superbly acted.
How will the remake measure up when so much will depend on the
script and on casting? Seems like it's behind its time schedule
as there is no news about it on the web.
Just this (scroll way down).
As 'nice' as it is for men to have chicks
kick ass in a bikini like the Red Sonja gallery below and Lingerie
Football, there are LOTS of women who want to see strong women kick
ass as people, and not objects. Hence the popularity of
Ellen Ripley, and the one-handed shotgun-cocking
Sarah Connor, and I LOVED! the character Etain in
Centurion.
This is an idea whose time is way overdue.
Reading the intro. about the female warrior in the third
installment of the Dragon Tattoo books makes me want to see strong
women in Action movies more than ever. "Hollywood has missed a
significant chapter of cultural history here—or is this history
ideologically too difficult to deal with?" Also, I saw a
commercial recently that said "Every girl wants to be a Victoria's
Secret Model." NO. We don't! "That's
your fantasy!*" Mine involves being treated with
respect, and I'm prepared to beat the crap out of you to get it.
Clothed. As Denis Leary put it: :"I think you hear me knocking, and
I think I'm coming in." LOUD AND CLEAR: More strong women in
Action Movies!
There's a bigger audience for this than you can even imagine.
And I don't mean the non-threatening stick figure type girls like
Keira Knightly in Domino.
(*and that's my catchphrase!)
'Nice'
Red Sonja Gallery!
("nice" is also defined and wanton and dissolute)
FASTER
starring
THE ROCK coming 11/24
! Nov 9,
2010
This movie looks really great! Love the Chevelle. I keep
hearing Seann William Scott's voice from The Rundown saying
"So
angry!" (@ :33) OMG when The Rock crosses the street
without caring about traffic: BAD. ASS. (@ :26)
Sharing your
Comic Books
can Increase Literacy
Nov 8,
2010
How much did comic books increase your love of reading?
This local organization, Comic Ed.,
Inc. (comiced.org) is
focused on
improving reading comprehension and
literacy rates among South Florida's youth. They provide easy and
inexpensive access to a large inventory of current comic books, back
issues, and graphic novels to youth members ages 8–18 by partnering with
local community centers and youth programs.
You can volunteer to join a
reading group, or donate comics to inspire young minds. They meet on
Fridays from 10AM-12 noon.
How about an
Aging Action Stars
Reality Show?
Nov 4, 2010
I
tweeted that it would be funny to see a show about aging action movie
stars, and that it would have to be better than the Housewives of
anywhere!
"More ego! We need more ego."
Those shows are all scripted anyway, and people love
on-location stuff (making of), and outtakes. A real-life Tropic
Thunder. Make the stuntmen the heroes. Kinda like watching Steven
Seagal in Lawman with stunts. (Yes, that's JC Van
Damme as Jesus.)
Or have actors play Action Movie Heroes/Characters
based on caricatures of identifiable real life Actors.
I
love
Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt novels. Especially Inca Gold.
(That book is chock full of ultra cool stuff.) I wish somebody would use
the rappelling intro in an expedition movie. Even if it's typical and
been done (and happened in real life): Have an evil industrialist
type doing something damaging to the environment, growing drugs,
or hunting treasure in secret in South or Central America. Or,
something less overdone (excavating an ancient alien spaceship in
secret), and have his daughter be his polar opposite trying to save the
planet in the very place he's destroying/exploiting.
Then, have her father be kidnapped
or disappear, and even though they are estranged, she hires a team (an
Expendable team?) to come find him. He is reportedly captured
by a rarely seen commando unit who use
Indian-style traps, etc., and when the Expendables team arrives,
they find they have to be ultra-cautious and go old school to
fight the low-tech bad guys. Maybe they lose some of their gear, maybe
they can't use it for some reason, maybe they use it in creative ways.
Maybe the daughter doesn't want them blowing up the surroundings. People
LOVE the stuff that Rambo came up with on the fly. The wall
of mud (see
Bad Ass page) is possibly the coolest moment EVER in Action
movies. Exploding arrows! Plus the whole inventory of getting ready for
an extraction-type mission is so exciting. One day you're just normal,
the next you drop into some exotic location full of danger but armed
to the teeth (so Predator). (In Predators they skipped the
trap building—why?!. We want the 'boy scout' stuff. We like
resourcefulness. Anyone can pull a trigger. Show us what you can do with
'nothing'.)
People
also love treasure in movies and they want to be impressed by what
they see. The little gold heads in Raiders and in The
Rundownare not impressive enough, large enough or very valuable
looking. It has to be serious treasure like in The
Goonies, but not as ridiculously over the top as National
Treasure (that stuff was hidden away for centuries yet the had lots
of recognizable items that were not hidden). The look of the treasure in
Pirates of the Caribbean Curse of the Black Pearl was surprisingly
appropriate to the type of stuff (even though I thought the quantity was
crazy). (photo: "Gato del Diablo" from The Rundown).
Movies
do need to exaggerate but know when is too much. I have always wanted to
see the "Gold City" and solve the mystery of why it appeared gold but
the closest we've gotten is Disney's The Road To El Dorado. It
can't be easy to find, and it's got to be something clever to figure out
like its in a super overgrown/remote area and they use technology to
find it. The team goes in to get her father, but gets sidetracked with a
discovery that turns out not to be a sidetrack.
[The TV show LOST even used the
old wooden ship ("Black Rock") in the jungle from Inca Gold, but the
book's version had a great backstory.]
Keep it simple on the story line,
but have really good fighting tactics, cool gadgets, and something
incredible we've never seen before (even if its CGI, good CGI).
It has to walk a fine line between impressive and credible. Once it's so
over the top, it becomes ridiculous. Maybe her father could be
stealing/discovering something underneath Machu Picchu (you know
there's gotta be tunnels and stuff under there—plus the stories of UFO
sightings)or they could discover El Dorado is there. There is that "hitching
post of the sun" monument. Maybe a UFO landed on there. Think how golden
it would make things look if maybe the missing rooftops of the village
weren't wood, but made of gold to reflect the sun and shine a light up
to attract visitors from outer space (oooooh). Maybe use the Nazca lines
as a map/symbol for something underground. (Read the treasure
description in Inca Gold, Chapter 16, pages 182-186 (of the
paperback) (about 10 pages in). It starts: "I was thinking of the
lost treasure of Huascar. "
There
was a passage in another of Cussler's books (Atlantis Found last
page of Part 1, Chapter 1) where they are in Colorado and they uncover,
by ground scan, a perfectly-carved square room underground in what
they thought was solid stone. When I read that, it gave me
goosebumps. They could be looking for something else and discover
'whatever' by accident. They could hire the Expendables Team for
protection? It has to be dangerous as hell (in real life and otherwise)
to be somewhere so remote. But it just seems like there is a Gold City
out there somewhere overgrown and unseen even by satellite. One of the
coolest things about the Cussler books has to be using the latest
(projected near future) gadget being invented/developed. (Just wondering
why Google is blocking out the ocean on their satellite images? Are
they treasuring hunting? They could be using the visual appearance
of known wrecks in shallow waters to try to find other wrecks.)
There has to be a professor character (Whiner
maybe) who is valuable for knowledge and caution even if he's the
antithesis of brawny, but the rescue team has to be Muscles, Muscles,
and more Muscles. Give us some wrestlers! Triple H. Have the guys be so
big people say GOD DAMN! just looking at them:
Stallone, Terry Crews, Stone Cold, Triple H, The Rock, Batista, Dolph
Lundgren, Jet Li, Jason Statham, Randy Couture.
Kill off a couple guys! Have the team be different from each other
like characters in Predator or in a video game, and with specialized
skills. Use Jet Li's speed and smaller size for some special purpose. I
don't want to send my favorite Action Figures to be miserable in some
spider, ant, and worm-infested inhospitable location (fake it but do it
really well, and the rest do CGI). (That's the hitching post of the sun
in the inset.) . . . Anybody still reading?
I'm super psyched for
UNSTOPPABLE
Oct 23, 2010
'Cause it's
Tony Scott. "cause it's
Denzel. 'Cause it's
Mark Bomback
(He wrote
Race to Witch Mountain (which was a wild ride with awesome action, and which was more action movie
than kids' movie), and he wrote
Live Free or Die Hard (which had over-the-top action scenes and awesome
one-liners), and . . . 'Cause it's starring as "that guy"*
Chris Pine! He filled those unimaginably big shoes of the role of
Captain James T. Kirk with aplomb. (Strange word but doesn't it sound better
than "imperturbable self possession"?) *dialogue from LForDH
But . . . I'm psyched mostly 'cause they will wreck shit.
Lots of shit. Plow through shit, run over shit, hit shit, blow shit up! (Oorah!)
Get your wreck fix! Speaking of wrecks: What Action Movie FREAK didn't
love The Fugitive?!—Which may be the best-ever Chase movie, and which
earned big points for wrecking a real train!
RED
Oct 22, 2010
RED was great fun. Funny lines. Good action. Just
. . . no Action Figure
Sorry
Bruce, just a little too warm and fuzzy for me.Karl Urban did an awesome American accent. He reminded me a lot of
Roger Moore in Live and Let Die and the whole movie
seemed to borrow a lot from that classic: fast speedboat in
the river, the playing of the recording of the speech while they
sneak off into a secret liar, a hideout with a creative entrance
(very Bond), etc. The set-ups were a little too obvious, but they
had some fun with it, and it was enjoyable despite that. I wished
that the older characters/actors were more believable in those
roles. Sure, anyone can spin in a chair and shoot a gun, but not
anyone is so fast and accurate they can hit a moving target fired at
them, so, suspension of disbelief aside, they should have at least
gotten somebody whose hands didn't shake so obviously. I just think
you have to be more physical to do these things and sell it
well—Tougher—something
Stallone proves every day has nothing to do with age.
(Imagine if they had gone to visit someone older who was still in
good shape. Then, you would have thought: this guy's dangerous, he's
old but he's still a bad ass. There would have been some lethality
to the character, not so 'average'. We see average old every
day. We wanted to see super old people to make us feel invincible!)
Bruce Willis made a career on'Action average', and he
was good in this, but . . . meh!
The 100 Best Action Movies
Oct 2, 2010
Submitted my Top 100 Action Movies to AllOuttaBubbleGum.com's
Action 101 Project
There's still time to submit your list!
16 Blocks
300
48 Hours
A Force of One
Alien Resurrection
Aliens
Beverly Hills Cop
Black Hawk Down Born To Fight
Braddock: Missing in Action III
Broken Arrow
Casino Royale Centurion
Cobra
Commando
Conan The Barbarian
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Death Race 2000
Die Another Day
Die Hard
Die Hard: With A Vengeance Dirty Harry
District B13
Enter The Dragon
Face Off
Fast & Furious
First Blood
Gladiator
GoldenEye
Goldfinger
Hard to Kill
Heat (1986)
Heat (1995)
Hot Fuzz
Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom
Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade
Jackie Chan's First Strike
Kill Bill: Vol 1
Kung Fu Hustle
Léon aka The Professional
Live and Let Die
Live Free or Die Hard
Men In Black
Midnight Run
Mission: Impossible
Mission: Impossible 2
Mission: Impossible 3
Ninja Assassin
On Deadly Ground Ong Bak 2
Out for Justice
Pitch Black
Point of No Return
Predator
Quantum of Solace
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Rambo Rambo III
Rambo: First Blood Part II
Robocop
Romancing The Stone Romeo Must Die
Rush Hour
Smokey and The Bandit
Star Trek
Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan
Star Wars IV: A New Hope
Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back
Star Wars VI: Return of The Jedi
Starship Troopers
Stick
Superman
Superman Returns
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines The A-Team The Chronicles of Riddick The Expendables
The Fast and The Furious
The French Connection
The Fugitive
The Gauntlet
The Legend of Drunken Master
The Long Kiss Goodnight The Matrix
The Octagon
The Punisher (2004) The Rock
The Rundown
The Terminator The Transporter
They Live
To Live and Die in L.A.
Transporter 2
Transporter 3
True Lies
Under Siege
Walking Tall
X-Men
X-Men 2: X Men United
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
X-Men: The Last Stand
TAKERS
. . . Chris Brown is a Revelation! Sep 26, 2010 Had
to see it. I'm a T.I. fan, plus, it's a heist movie with
lots of good-looking sweaty mens! Idris Elba OMG. The acting
was remarkably good. The action was too. The only thing that could
have been better is if I didn't see almost everything coming, but
that didn't ruin it for me, it still kept my interest. I
would recommend it for the remarkable performances, for the foot
chase scene, the gun battles, the heist, the cute guys, the
wardrobe, the boys' toys, the explosions, and . . . you get
the idea. Yes you might guess what happens next, almost up
until the very end, but you're still in for a hell of a ride.@chrisbrown
could not have been better. I followed him as he raced
through the streets and thought, he had to have hurt himself
repeatedly. I was so into his performance, I lost the fact that he
was black (yes I said that). I felt the character's
run-for-your-life urgency that drove him from one mess into another.
Through the shooting confession, the betrayal, and then in an
unimaginably painful moment with his brother (another stellar
performance by Michael Ealy) it suddenly hit me, I no longer saw
color. I have always been aware of color. I will never forget this
movie or Chris Brown's performance in it, and I feel lucky to have
had that breakthrough revelation moment. I'm gonna see it
again!
It could all be summed up with this poster:
But then I wouldn't get to write about it, and where's the fun in that for me?
Robert, Robert, Robert . . . Where's the Beef?
I'm a little late in seeingMACHETE.
Yikes! So much GOOD and BAD in one Action Movie. I loved it and I
hated it.
Read why . . .
Hail to the NEW
KING of Action!
Sep 22, 2010
Thanks to
The Expendables
and the fact that he's still going strong and making Action movies,
I have moved Sylvester Stalloneto the top of my
BAD ASS List! Can't wait to see more from him, regardless of
who is in his next movie! I think it was impossible for The
Expendables to live up to expectations and all the hype, but I
enjoyed it nonetheless.
"The Best-Made Awful Movie"* Resident Evil: Afterlife Sep 14, 2010
Overall, the movie satisfies if you love the series, have low
expectations, $11 to waste, and nothing better to do. I failed only
on the low expectations. Mine were too high. I so wanted to
love
Resident Evil: Afterlife, I had hoped it would be the best of
the series. Instead, although it looks AMAZING, I was disappointed
overall because I found it copied, a lot. A lot. The
technical aspects of the movie are top notch, where it failed for me
is in the script. (I've talked about this before:C-G-Ay-Yi-Yi!) That said, Here's what I
liked and what I didn't.
TECHNICALLY SPEAKING
It was incredible to watch and we've become so jaded that it's
impressive that we can still be enthralled with the visual
theatrics. There were many very
cool things (but I felt like I had seen them all before):
>The intro with
airplane flying over L.A. in ruins has to be the coolest-ever
shot of that done-to-death concept. It takes your breath away for
about 3 seconds and is worth the ticket price alone.
>There was the super bad-ass-looking
tank
(which reminded me of Aliens) but
they never used it! That oh-so-impressively real looking sea
of zombies (just blew me away) plus the thought that they would
cut a bloody swath to the beach driving over them . . . and then
nothing! What a huge missed opportunity!
>The metal chest bugs (drug bugs) were also very
cool, even though they had something similar in 1984's
Runaway, and 2002's Minority Report (but those looked
more like something from 1999's The Matrix.
>Dar Robinson's backwards
shooting-while-falling real-life stunt (no cable!) first seen in
Stick
blew Action lovers away with the idea that someone would be so full
of hate, that even falling to their death they are shooting. This
was copied on green screen in
Matrix Reloaded but kicked up a notch when the Agent jumped out
after Trinity, both shooting while falling. Here the do it with
two Alices.
>Matrix Reloaded's
Neo vs. all the Agent Smiths—I know, if you have to have clones you
have to have clones, but, seen it. When it was just the two
Alices versus the control center, it was an incredibly great
fight scene, but I was not invested in it.
>John Carpenter's
The Thing's
dog splitting open (most disgusting thing I'd ever seen at the
time:1982)—here the dogs are gross looking enough but why have two
dog's head split open to reveal more teeth if they're just going to
stand there, tooth flaps waving and not attack?
Those are just a few of the things. I felt like I had seen it all
before. The underwater swim to weapons, the plane crash into a
mountain, the boat as a trap, the Hannibal Lechter-like jail cage in
a larger room, the slo-mo fight in water, the sunglasses toss, the
kicking a tray full of knives, the bad guy getting away over and
over . . .
SPECTACULAR YET DISAPPOINTING
Don't get me wrong, the opening is pretty spectacular but I wanted
to be invested. Even in a series where your audience has seen the
preceding movies, you have to do more setting up to invest them in
the main character's journey. The closer you got to the end, the
more holes there were in the plot. So many questions. First: They
survived that crash into the mountain!? Really?! Alaska has snow,
no, it's a beach and an empty field, now it's snow again. If they
can find a girl in the middle of nowhere and put a mind controlling
robot drug bug on her chest, how does she manage to get away and why
can't they find her again? What is she surviving on among a field
full of airplanes in Alaska? Don't start me on the ridiculousness of
the prison. If there is a guy in a jail, why do they need to watch
him? If the place is surrounded by zombies and you hear noises in
the wall, I would right away think: DIGGING! If a zombie got in
through that tunnel, why didn't they all get in? Why didn't they
just climb over the gate, or push slowly until it collapsed. At
times they stood really unsafely close to them. The whole prison
building thing was ridiculous! But DAMN, it sure was impressive to
look at.
I couldn't believe all the fighting that went on
with Albert Wesker, only to have Alice stab him in the head at close
range. Oops. He should have seen that coming, don't you think? Too
easy by a long shot. I haven't been that disappointed in an ending
since the werewolf and the vampire had a lame-ass fist fight
(despite all their special powers) at the end of Van Helsing.
So not
creative. It had no suspense for me and it played like a chapter,
not like a book.
The giant executioner Majini was the best
part of it for me. I wasn't impressed with the 3D. (If that's got to
carry a movie, the makers might as well forget it.) Of course,
everyone was waiting for the Majini's big hammer toss 3D moment, but
the rest of the 3D was just so-so. There was a gnarly kill in
Resident Evil: Afterlife 3-D but I won't spoil it for you. The
slo-mo seems a little overused and that makes it lose its
effectiveness for emphasis. The movie can't be faulted for
technical aspects, but it takes more than visual brilliance to make
a good film. You need a really good script that makes you give a
damn. Otherwise, it's just a magic show. It's a super cool,
ultra impressive, eminently watchable magic show, but as a movie,
meh.
**I have to agree with this statement
by
Matthew Munden (wish I'd said it)
"the best made awful movie to ever be released."
As much as I hoped RED SONJA was starting an action chick
trend back in 1985,
it
was not to be. I don't think Brigitte Nielsen was the right
woman for the job. She certainly had the stature (as evidenced by
this picture with Arnold) but she was kind of gangly and gawky, and
not blood thirsty at all. That role should have scared the shit out
of men. Now they are bringing Red Sonja back. I would have turned to
casting a Diva from the WWE, or a body builder, or
American GladiatorValerie "Siren" Waugaman (above). Instead, we're going to get
the infamous Rose
does-this-dress-make-my-butt-look-naked McGowan. As anyone
can see from this composite photo, while she may be beautiful, she's
no warrior. We have to stop waiting for men to figure out we want to
see physically strong women and do it ourselves. Strong women in
the business need to get busy busting some ass.
I want to be the one to do it!! ;) . . . Look out, here I come!
WONDER WOMAN is in production for 2013. It won't surprise me when
they cast someone too feminine for that as well, like Kim Kardashian
or
Sofia Vergara. Why not somebody strong like athlete Kyra
Gracie or Gladiator Gina "Crush" Carano? What I really want
to see is a strong old-er woman in The Expendables 2. And
not a scantily dressed bimbette. We're way overdue for a girl to be
"one of the guys" (translation: a person first, a woman second).
Some respect, dammit! We're coming to take it.
I've added a
FELLOW FREAKS
website list
to the footer. It's a collection of websites of equally
action-film-obsessed folks, or just interesting action- or
movie-related sites, and blogs I've run across.
The Menu was Under Construction . . . Sep 10, 2010
it's complete now
(with some "Coming Soon" items)
The whole site is ongoing and getting bigger. Please excuse the
glaring omissions (like Kill Bill, etc.).
Very excited about putting up my own Action-Movie
subgenres . . . again, patience please: More Coming
Soon!
I had such high hopes for THOR, I thought, WOW, Kenneth
Branagh's gonna do action, that could make Branagh cool. Stupid me,
it looks like drama, not action, Thor's not making Branagh cool,
Branagh's making an uncool Thor movie. It's supposed to be a comic
book not soap opera digest. Ooieeeee Without the mythic
figure, we don't care as much about the story. The larger-than-life
ness of the man and his strength comes first. Before this
turns into another
Anti-Scrawny rant, I'm going to post this picture (at right)
from the
article by Olivia Lichtenstein
entitled "As Hollywood's leading actors start looking eerily
similar, where are all the real men?" where she asks "Whatever
happened to testosterone?"It's alive but aging and starring
in
The Expendables. I don't get
the
Team Edward thing. Or Zac Efron. Being buff alone does
not make you attractive (Jackie Warner) or masculine (every
gay guy). Oh shut up. It's my blog.
I guess I'll just have to wait for the real THOR
movie starring an ex wrestler. Compared to this drawing,
Chris Hemsworth looks like Thor's 14-year-old nephew. Branagh
must be unclear on the SUPERhero part. Oooieeee.
Read that @TheSlyStallone is considering making
Bruce Willis the villain in Expendables II. Nooo. . .
We don't want to see John McClane play a villain. Have him
play to his strengths and come to the rescue.
And he tweeted: "I
am thinking what would be the most dangerous places in the world to set
the sequel?"
is a verified twitter account, and it seems from the tweets, it's
really him. He's cool enough to know it's cool to be on twitter.
He's comfortable enough with himself not to worry about his tweets.
I tweeted my
Rambo III commentary to him (not that he's following me, or
not that he'll read it . . . ) but like Judy Tenuta used to
say "It could happen!"
Here he is pictured with a tattoo of his wife from 2008.
After I saw this scene in
INCEPTION
I wanted to see real fights in a ROTATING cage! Took me back to
Mad Max Beyond THUNDERDOME*. You know it's just a matter of
time. Boxing with gloves was too "nice", now it's bare fisted and
bloody. Why not throw gravity in as a factor? Hey
MMA
World Extreme Cagefighting—how about it? If they won't do it in
real life, somebody please do it in a movie. The Action Movie Freak in
me is just waiting to see gravity used to increase the impact in a
punch. What's harder than punching someone in the face? Punching
someone who's falling into your punch. Like a
FIST-ON COLLISON (so maybe they would need gloves)! Rotating Cage Fights would give new meaning to
the phrase "GROUND and pound". Aaaah violence. LOL [*Although
they chickened out of using it, fighting with a chainsaw while on a
rubber band was a pretty awesome idea—for a movie—of course for a
movie.]
In the midst of all the excitement about the ultimate action movie
and the ultimate action cast ensemble (The
Expendables), I got to thinking about what I heard
Sylvester Stallone
say about putting Rocky to rest. No more Rocky movies—seems
only fitting the way the last one ended. What's left for Rocky
to do? A growing-old drama of him coaching a young contender to
honor the memory of "Mick" . . . no. Mickey's story was different.
Rocky became somebody. Which got me thinking about the cancellation
of the fifth Rambo movie. THIS intrigued me. Stallone is not
only this amazing
action figure, but he has the sensitivity, intelligence, and
talent to also touch on something everyone identifies with, such as
the underdog triumphing, righting an injustice, and/or being on the
side that needs a hero and doing something about it. With Rambo, he
went beyond just making really great movies and touched a nerve with
audiences on real-life issues.
The
first Rambo movie First Blood
called attention to how poorly Vietnam Vets were being treated when
they returned home.
Rambo: First Blood Part II focused on the
POW/MIA issue. The whole country was so torn up over the idea
that there might still be soldiers over there. (I remember the
bracelets we wore in junior high and how we checked the newspaper
for the name of the soldier on our bracelet. Check out this
moving blog post
for the history of the bracelets.) He portrayed our collective
desire to circumvent the bureaucracy and bullshit and just go rescue
some soldiers!
Rambo III
was a great example of the underdog (this time it's a country) and
an injustice. But what a tangled mess Afghanistan turned out to be.
It's no wonder Rambo was still far from home when Rambo (IV) came to
be.
With
Rambo (IV), Stallone delivered a blood-and-guts type of action
movie showing
the true brutality of war within the context of the
suffering of the people of Burma. The naďveté of the missionaries
seems to represent the ignorance of most Americans to the killing
that goes on in places like Burma all over the world. It was the
perfect backdrop to illustrate the war inside Rambo, and to watch
with horrid fascination as Rambo, the killing machine, is released
once again. There is something very satisfying about vengeance.
Whatever it cost Rambo (inside) to try to rescue those people, it
was enough to finally bring him back home to the States. Maybe it
was just the simple and sad truth that the killing may never stop.
As I watched Rambo walk the long driveway to his home stateside, I
couldn't help but think of the pain and suffering that kept a good
soldier away so long. He was able to leave it behind (at last), but
I still want to see him "come full circle" to being whole and
happy.
John J. Rambo
is 63. (Stallone is 64, same birthday :D July 6th). What would
fulfill him? What cause could Rambo take up now that he's back home
in
Arizona? Hmmmm . . . (It will be interesting to see
Machete with Rambo in mind.) I still want to see another
Rambo movie even if it's not action (biting my tongue). I hope
Stallone will find some way to show Rambo feeling accepted and
appreciated. If there is a fitting cause for Rambo to begin a new
life and close his chapter on killing, I would like to see it, even
if its a drama or a love story.
Women would LOVE to see Rambo in a love story. I can
dream—I'm a woman and this is my blog. Maybe he could be a father
figure to a family who has lost a son (or daughter) in "The
War on Terror" or deal with the cause of
homeless veterans. I think it would be so satisfying just to
see him being appreciated and treated with respect, and loved.
Wherever Stallone takes Rambo, with release of
The Expendables,
Stallone now stands alone in action movie superstardom as the
most beloved action figure of all time. Action movie freaks are
frothing at the mouth with anticipation. What a fucking BAD ASS to
pull off assembling a cast like this.
"Stallone! Fuck Yeah!"
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?
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.
No, it's not really an action movie, it's a Comedy with Action, but the opener is a
killer: A car crash so awesome I had to whistle out loud in
appreciation!
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. It's
really enjoyable.
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.
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 wondered whether or not 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 might 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 Riddickis 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 myAnti-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!
P.S. I suspect, in the end, that I love the first Predator so much,
I will buy it when I can afford to, just to own 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.
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.
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
Action ADVENTURE subgenre. 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.
I love Tom Cruise
and Cameron Diaz, and
Knight and Day was great fun and worth the ticket price,
but I am not going to review 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.
Back to Tom. Tom Cruise is nobody's fool and it was just
happiness that he jumped on Oprah's sofa. Why were all
the jealous haters tripping over that? He was smart to
pick this role in Knight and Day
of a likeable, quirky, polite, ultra-competent secret
agent. This role will be added to his overall "Cruisy-ness".
(If you didn't click on his name in either link above to
read my take on Tom, see what I mean
here.) Playing a nice, super-polite guy still
might not redeem him for some people. It does, however,
fit in nicely with the points I was trying to make below
about why I choose the movies I see.
Just a brief explanation: I see a lot less movies than I used to
beforeRealtors® 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'mNOT 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 (1982) because they snubbed E.T. and Stephen
Spielberg and gave the big two awards to Gandhi!
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 horrible. I am really glad to see
the reappearance of the bad-ass-team type of action movie: like
The 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 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 not be 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 Dammething for me).
• Killers NO THANKS
• The Last Airbender (I loved M. Night Shayalan
in the beginning. I loved what his sort-of-modern-Hitchcock
style, 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
did not go see the movie.)
YES!! 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 • CenturionGo
see it!
And I don't do this kind of work."
How crazy is it that
Van Damme 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.
If a movie isn't
really good, I don't want to spend the money to see it. "Rant"
at
AllOuttaBubbleGum.comgave 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!
SNO•CAPS! 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.
Today I was writing about
PREDATOR and 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 Aliensmovie! 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 it 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 then 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 showing 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 (that turned out to not be
true), so I hope we see how they use the differences to hunt their
prey (oh well). 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
leading man types too much and should cast "action figures" more.
Why was
Chris Hemsworthcast 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-superhero 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? 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. Leading men like 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 casting of the physically superb for super hero roles! We
want to see SEXY brawny beefcake! Jake got all beefed up for the
role, but his face is still wrong, and (sorry Jake) 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'son the same page with this . . .
action movie freak
Pacing
turns to jogging as Johnson leaves prison, a free man, and starts
off down the highway (they're in the middle of nowhere). After
being imprisoned, it must be an incredible feeling to have the
freedom and space to just run. He picks up a car, a P.I.
report, and a gun, and heads for the first victim on his list behind
the wheel of a 1971 Chevy Chevelle Malibu SS. The sound of
the car is all power, and the combination of the intensity of
Johnson's performance and the rumble of the engine makes it seem
like a bullet. He parks, and sets out across a busy street not
looking at traffic that has to screech to a stop to avoid hitting
him. There's just no slowing him down. He marches into an office and
with a single shot to the head, kills target #1.
n
the scene where the preacher says he forgives him for what he is
about to do—You can see the moment his character's heart breaks in
Johnson's face. It's a stellar performance, subtly done, and yet
magnified by the power of his enormous screen presence and natural
charisma. You couldn't look away if you tried.
Nov
13, 2010
I
tweeted that it would be funny to see a show about aging action movie
stars, and that it would have to be better than the Housewives of
anywhere! 
I
love
Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt novels. Especially Inca Gold.
(That book is chock full of ultra cool stuff.) I wish somebody would use
the rappelling intro in an expedition movie. Even if it's typical and
been done (and happened in real life): Have an evil industrialist
type doing something damaging to the environment, growing drugs,
or hunting treasure in secret in South or Central America. Or,
something less overdone (excavating an ancient alien spaceship in
secret), and have his daughter be his polar opposite trying to save the
planet in the very place he's destroying/exploiting. 
People
also love treasure in movies and they want to be impressed by what
they see. The little gold heads in Raiders and in The
Rundown
are not impressive enough, large enough or very valuable
looking. It has to be serious treasure like in The
Goonies, but not as ridiculously over the top as National
Treasure (that stuff was hidden away for centuries yet the had lots
of recognizable items that were not hidden). The look of the treasure in
Pirates of the Caribbean Curse of the Black Pearl was surprisingly
appropriate to the type of stuff (even though I thought the quantity was
crazy). (photo: "Gato del Diablo" from The Rundown).
Movies
do need to exaggerate but know when is too much. I have always wanted to
see the "Gold City" and solve the mystery of why it appeared gold but
the closest we've gotten is Disney's The Road To El Dorado. It
can't be easy to find, and it's got to be something clever to figure out
like its in a super overgrown/remote area and they use technology to
find it. The team goes in to get her father, but gets sidetracked with a
discovery that turns out not to be a sidetrack. 
There
was a passage in another of Cussler's books (Atlantis Found last
page of Part 1, Chapter 1) where they are in Colorado and they uncover,
by ground scan, a perfectly-carved square room underground in what
they thought was solid stone. When I read that, it gave me
goosebumps. They could be looking for something else and discover
'whatever' by accident. They could hire the Expendables Team for
protection? It has to be dangerous as hell (in real life and otherwise)
to be somewhere so remote. But it just seems like there is a Gold City
out there somewhere overgrown and unseen even by satellite. One of the
coolest things about the Cussler books has to be using the latest
(projected near future) gadget being invented/developed. (Just wondering
why Google is blocking out the ocean on their satellite images? Are
they treasuring hunting? They could be using the visual appearance
of known wrecks in shallow waters to try to find other wrecks.)
Sorry
Bruce, just a little too warm and fuzzy for me.
Had
to see it. I'm a T.I. fan, plus, it's a heist movie with
lots of good-looking sweaty mens! Idris Elba OMG. The acting
was remarkably good. The action was too. The only thing that could
have been better is if I didn't see almost everything coming, but
that didn't ruin it for me, it still kept my interest. I
would recommend it for the remarkable performances, for the foot
chase scene, the gun battles, the heist, the cute guys, the
wardrobe, the boys' toys, the explosions, and . . . you get
the idea. Yes you might guess what happens next, almost up
until the very end, but you're still in for a hell of a ride. 
it
was not to be. I don't think Brigitte Nielsen was the right
woman for the job. She certainly had the stature (as evidenced by
this picture with Arnold) but she was kind of gangly and gawky, and
not blood thirsty at all. That role should have scared the shit out
of men. Now they are bringing Red Sonja back. I would have turned to
casting a Diva from the WWE, or a body builder, or
American Gladiator
Valerie "Siren" Waugaman (above). Instead, we're going to get
the infamous Rose
does-this-dress-make-my-butt-look-naked McGowan. As anyone
can see from this composite photo, while she may be beautiful, she's
no warrior. We have to stop waiting for men to figure out we want to
see physically strong women and do it ourselves. Strong women in
the business need to get busy busting some ass.
I want to be the one to do it!! ;) . . . Look out, here I come!
At last!
The
first Rambo movie First Blood
called attention to how poorly Vietnam Vets were being treated when
they returned home.
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
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. 
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 (1982) because they snubbed E.T. and Stephen
Spielberg and gave the big two awards to Gandhi!
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.
If a movie isn't
really good, I don't want to spend the money to see it. "Rant"
at 
