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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD
Sep 14, 2007

everything is yours

Wheat Loaf posted:

Has Forest Whitaker done many movies where he uses his martial arts? The only one that occurs to me off the top of my head is Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai, and an episode of Criminal Minds that acted as the in-series pilot for his short-lived spin-off where he's introduced stick-fighting.

Redbelt sequel NOW.

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Narzack
Sep 15, 2008

Fart City posted:

That first flick rules pretty hard. It's got some legit atmosphere to it, and is weird and grimy in a way that I really dig. The fight choreography ain't bad either, which is impressive considering the costumes the stuntpeople had to work with.

Casey Jones spending his nights hanging out in the trees in Central Park just to beat up rando perverts should be its own movie.

Oh, yeah, for sure. The fights are so good that until a few years ago, I didn't even make the connection that performers were fighting those giant rubber suits. Like, it never really registered.

Narzack fucked around with this message at 02:23 on Mar 26, 2018

Basebf555
Feb 29, 2008

The greatest sensual pleasure there is is to know the desires of another!

Fun Shoe
I watched Peckinpah's The Killer Elite the other day and I thought it was not very good at all. Am I a bad person? I feel like I failed by not liking this movie because it's Caan and Duvall playing CIA assassins and what's not to like? I found the actual story to be extremely boring.

Wheat Loaf
Feb 13, 2012

by FactsAreUseless

Basebf555 posted:

I watched Peckinpah's The Killer Elite the other day and I thought it was not very good at all. Am I a bad person? I feel like I failed by not liking this movie because it's Caan and Duvall playing CIA assassins and what's not to like? I found the actual story to be extremely boring.

I think that's the one Caan says he did because someone told him it would be great to be able to say, "I worked with Sam Peckinpah," and he wasn't really into it.

I've only ever seen two Peckinpah movies off the top of my head (The Wild Bunch, obviously, and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia - both very good in my book).

Basebf555
Feb 29, 2008

The greatest sensual pleasure there is is to know the desires of another!

Fun Shoe
Yea I've only seen The Wild Bunch, but it's great so I've been seeking out more Peckinpah. Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is the one I really want to track down but I haven't found it streaming anywhere yet.

Wheat Loaf
Feb 13, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Curiously, The Wild Bunch is one of the two dvds I own where you have to flip the disc halfway through to finish watching the movie (the other is Goodfellas, of all things).

Alfredo Garcia is an odd one. For the longest time I assumed it was a western just based on the title, but it's (presumably) set in the then-modern day of 1974. That said, it has the feel of a western in the same way Walter Hill said all of his movies were westerns at heart.

Basebf555
Feb 29, 2008

The greatest sensual pleasure there is is to know the desires of another!

Fun Shoe
As with most classic westerns, it's worth upgrading The Wild Bunch to blu ray. The scenery, the costumes, the sets, it all really pops in 1080p.

X-Ray Pecs
May 11, 2008

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The opening shootout of The Wild Bunch obliterated any other attempt at combat-is-chaos action filmmaking until Saving Private Ryan.

Basebf555
Feb 29, 2008

The greatest sensual pleasure there is is to know the desires of another!

Fun Shoe

X-Ray Pecs posted:

The opening shootout of The Wild Bunch obliterated any other attempt at combat-is-chaos action filmmaking until Saving Private Ryan.

Maybe Heat too. But the list of contenders would be very short.

FancyMike
May 7, 2007

The big battle in the middle of Ran is pretty chaotic. Also has a shot that I think is directly referenced in the opening of Saving Private Ryan. Or maybe it came from somewhere else I’m not especially well versed in shots of soldiers holding their own severed limbs

Basebf555
Feb 29, 2008

The greatest sensual pleasure there is is to know the desires of another!

Fun Shoe

FancyMike posted:

The big battle in the middle of Ran is pretty chaotic. Also has a shot that I think is directly referenced in the opening of Saving Private Ryan. Or maybe it came from somewhere else I’m not especially well versed in shots of soldiers holding their own severed limbs

No I'm almost certain that's where Spielberg got that from, he and Lucas were big fans of Kurosawa.

The choice to put music over all the chaotic fighting was genius though, you might think that would make it feel less chaotic but it actually does the opposite. No dialogue to pay attention to, just blood, bodies, and smoke.

FancyMike
May 7, 2007

Yeah keeping it to music also really emphasized how nightmarish it all was. It’s terrifying. And there seemed to be way more soldiers there than we were told there should be. That battle is so good

X-Ray Pecs
May 11, 2008

New York
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Ran owns, Kurosawa’s movies always looked good, but the colors in Ran are stunning, and that one scene before the final battle where the armies are hundred of yards apart are communicating just with hand signals, it’s unthinkable that Kurosawa was nearly blind at that point in his life.

Basebf555 posted:

No I'm almost certain that's where Spielberg got that from, he and Lucas were big fans of Kurosawa.

Weren’t they and Coppola basically responsible for funding his last few movies?

Basebf555
Feb 29, 2008

The greatest sensual pleasure there is is to know the desires of another!

Fun Shoe

X-Ray Pecs posted:

Weren’t they and Coppola basically responsible for funding his last few movies?

I don't know the specifics of who would be considered more or less responsible for the actual funding, but yea Kagemusha in particular would definitely not exist if a few successful American directors had not grown up loving Kurosawa's films.

As much as I love the earlier classics like Throne of Blood, Seven Samurai, and Hidden Fortress, I always wish we'd been given more Kurosawa in color. Very, very few directors have used color as effectively as he did.

Taintrunner
Apr 10, 2017

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

FancyMike posted:

Yeah keeping it to music also really emphasized how nightmarish it all was. It’s terrifying. And there seemed to be way more soldiers there than we were told there should be. That battle is so good

They do this really well with free jazz in Gundam Thunderbolt, if you're looking for a more modern (and somewhat anime) take:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kv2hCZHbn4

Wheat Loaf
Feb 13, 2012

by FactsAreUseless

Basebf555 posted:

As with most classic westerns, it's worth upgrading The Wild Bunch to blu ray. The scenery, the costumes, the sets, it all really pops in 1080p.

I don't own a Blu-ray player. In any event, I haven't actually seen most of the classic westerns. Mostly just the big names (I've seen all the Leone spaghetti westerns except for A Fistful of Dynamite) and even then only a fraction of them.

Megaman's Jockstrap
Jul 16, 2000

What a horrible thread to have a post.
Blu ray players are 40 bucks. Just saying.

Basebf555
Feb 29, 2008

The greatest sensual pleasure there is is to know the desires of another!

Fun Shoe
Not that it's really action movie, but being able to watch The Searchers on blu ray would probably be worth the price of the player alone.

Snowman_McK
Jan 31, 2010

Wheat Loaf posted:

I think that's the one Caan says he did because someone told him it would be great to be able to say, "I worked with Sam Peckinpah," and he wasn't really into it.

I've only ever seen two Peckinpah movies off the top of my head (The Wild Bunch, obviously, and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia - both very good in my book).

I think he was also super into coke.

It's a weird little film. Half of it is Caan displaying some really impressive physicality in the fight scenes (i seem to remember something about him being pretty legit) and the other half is Paulie from Rocky killing ninjas.

X-Ray Pecs posted:

The opening shootout of The Wild Bunch obliterated any other attempt at combat-is-chaos action filmmaking until Saving Private Ryan.

I rewatched it recently, and I think it might actually be the better shootout in the movie. Especially in the way it deliberately obfuscates what's going on and who's gotten shot. It breaks a lot of rules about spatial editing quite deliberately to communicate that no one really knows what's going on.

It's an inversion of the traditional, clean and neat western shootout.

FancyMike posted:

The big battle in the middle of Ran is pretty chaotic. Also has a shot that I think is directly referenced in the opening of Saving Private Ryan. Or maybe it came from somewhere else I’m not especially well versed in shots of soldiers holding their own severed limbs

It also got referenced in Gennedy Tartakovsky's Clone Wars cartoon, the amazing shot of Hidetora opening the window and suddenly seeing the battle is replicated with Yoda.

Nroo
Dec 31, 2007

FancyMike posted:

The big battle in the middle of Ran is pretty chaotic. Also has a shot that I think is directly referenced in the opening of Saving Private Ryan. Or maybe it came from somewhere else I’m not especially well versed in shots of soldiers holding their own severed limbs

That but also SPR gets a lot of its imagery from accounts in Stephen Ambrose's D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II:

ninjahedgehog
Feb 17, 2011

It's time to kick the tires and light the fires, Big Bird.


Basebf555 posted:

Maybe Heat too. But the list of contenders would be very short.

Does Heat count as an action movie? The downtown LA gunfight puts most action movies to shame and has one of my favorite script directions ever:

code:
There would be no, there was no, and there never is any, warning. 
Neil Hanna and Schwartz with 12-gauges OPEN FIRE. 
World War III ERUPTS.

Steen71
Apr 10, 2017

Fun Shoe

X-Ray Pecs posted:

Ran owns, Kurosawa’s movies always looked good, but the colors in Ran are stunning, and that one scene before the final battle where the armies are hundred of yards apart are communicating just with hand signals, it’s unthinkable that Kurosawa was nearly blind at that point in his life.

Blind? Are you sure you're not confusing him with someone else?

X-Ray Pecs
May 11, 2008

New York
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TV
Travel
~Good Times~

Basebf555 posted:

Not that it's really action movie, but being able to watch The Searchers on blu ray would probably be worth the price of the player alone.

I hadn’t seen any westerns beyond the Man with No Name trilogy when I last watched my Searchers blu, so I don’t think I “got” the movie proper, but holy poo poo that movie’s gorgeous, you’re totally correct.

Snowman_McK posted:

I think he was also super into coke.

I know Peckinpah loves his whiskey, I heard he was putting back 3-4 bottles a day while filming Cross of Iron. Or is “he” referring to Caan?

Steen71 posted:

Blind? Are you sure you're not confusing him with someone else?

I guess I am, I could have sworn I read that somewhere.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003

La morte non ha sesso

Snowman_McK posted:

It also got referenced in Gennedy Tartakovsky's Clone Wars cartoon, the amazing shot of Hidetora opening the window and suddenly seeing the battle is replicated with Yoda.

Star Wars is so stuffed with visual references to war and adventure films that it's really an achievement for the Clone Wars creators to be able to replicate its spirit. I've been watching it and I'm more impressed with it than with the prequel films, and I go to bat for the Star Wars prequels in a lot of ways.

It's also remarkably brutal for what's generally regarded as the kiddie sci-fi franchise, with people getting shot in the face and stuff.

Snowman_McK
Jan 31, 2010

X-Ray Pecs posted:

I know Peckinpah loves his whiskey, I heard he was putting back 3-4 bottles a day while filming Cross of Iron. Or is “he” referring to Caan?

I was referring the Caan, and yes, Peckinpah was famously an alcoholic. From the trivia section of 'Pat Garret and Billy the Kid'

"Sam Peckinpah's alcoholism was so advanced during the making of this film that he would have to start the day with a large tumbler of neat vodkas to stop his shakes. By mid afternoon, he would have moved onto grenadine. After that, he was too drunk to work. James Coburn recalled that Peckinpah was only really coherent for four hours a day."

From the same place

"Kris Kristofferson and Sam Peckinpah had several heated arguments during the making of the film, and others on the set often thought it would end up in a fight. Peckinpah, always very confrontational, wanted to fight Kristofferson but said that he feared Kristofferson, a former Army Airborne Ranger, would "kill him". Kristofferson answered, "Yeah, Sam, I think you're right". In spite of this, Peckinpah referred to Kristofferson as a "loving great guy" and said that working with him was "one of the greatest experiences of my life"."

A movie about Sam Peckinpah would be completely unbelievable.


Halloween Jack posted:

Star Wars is so stuffed with visual references to war and adventure films that it's really an achievement for the Clone Wars creators to be able to replicate its spirit. I've been watching it and I'm more impressed with it than with the prequel films, and I go to bat for the Star Wars prequels in a lot of ways.

It's also remarkably brutal for what's generally regarded as the kiddie sci-fi franchise, with people getting shot in the face and stuff.

There is a great energy to those cartoons. I've been trying to track them down in HD, but I'm not sure that even exists.

Wandle Cax
Dec 15, 2006
The clone wars series? You can get it on blu ray, I think amazon.co.uk would be your best best. It's a bit pricey though

e: oh you probably mean the 2d animated one. I forgot about that, nevermind

Wandle Cax fucked around with this message at 04:40 on Mar 29, 2018

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003

La morte non ha sesso

Neo Rasa posted:

Endgame, if you mean the one directed by Joe D'Amato that stars George Eastman, unfortunately sucks (I know I was also stunned that a movie from the directing/writing/acting duo that brought us Porno Holocaust is not good) because it's REALLY slow after a fun first act.
I saw Sergio Martino's 2019: After the Fall of New York and it was remarkably good...I enjoyed it as much as the Bronx Warriors films! It's pretty lazy about how it justifies getting the characters from Point A to Point B, but it's better paced than Castellari's films, with a fight scene like every 5 minutes.

A curious thing about this movie is that it has cyborgs being a thing, even though they're not all that important to the plot--but it came out a year before The Terminator. I suppose they were picking up inspiration from Blade Runner. Sci-fi exploitation movies in the 80s-90s is basically a continuum of picking up influence from The Warriors, Mad Max, Escape from New York, then The Terminator, plus a few others, so eventually you have post-apoc movies with a bunch of androids running around for some reason.

Although it has a totally different plot, Endgame feels like a shittier version of 2019. There's a lot of similarity in the concepts behind the costumes and sets--both feature rag-tag scavengers dodging fascist stormtroopers in a bombed-out city, and protagonists that are basically ripoffs of Snake Plissken. But Endgame has a ton of boring black-on-black-on-black costumes, worn by people standing around in dark brick buildings.


The female lead wears a wimple that looks like she strapped a little pillow to her head, for the entire movie, including a rape scene

In the second half of the movie, the movie totally gives up on its The Running Man style premise and becomes about trying to ferry some mutants across the desert where the evil government can't get them, and the costumes actually get worse. A bunch of sorta-medieval costumes that look like they must have been leftovers from a very cheap sword-and-sorcery movie. Lots of bikers with a carpet scrap draped on them and a studded leather hat. And the makeup on the evil mutants is really bad.

I also saw Turkey Shoot, and couldn't get through it. It's just really gross. It's weird to make a movie with Olivia Hussey, and a lot of gratuitous full-frontal nudity in gross situations, but none of it is Olivia Hussey.

Still haven't seen The Bronx Executioner or Fulci's Warriors of the Year 2072 (which has an absurd number of alternate titles). But I'm getting around to it.

Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 18:11 on Mar 30, 2018

Megaman's Jockstrap
Jul 16, 2000

What a horrible thread to have a post.
XXX: Return of Xander Cage

Man I enjoyed the hell out of this. They essentially Fast and Furious'd the franchise. Vin Diesel is a huge loving dork who moves like a lovely muppet and looks like an adult baby, yet the plot conspires to surround him with gorgeous women who want to have group sex with him. He's what every nerd wishes they could be at 15 and he never grew up. Donnie Yen is an arrogant prick who fights like he traded his soul for the ability to style on guys with his fists and feet. I fuckin' love this guy's shtick so I was on board from his very first scene, which features the three fundamentals of Donnie Yen: lightning fast strikes, near-invincibility, and "cool" posing. The rest of the cast is wasted, I'm sorry to say. Tony Jaa plays against type and I loved the concept of his happy-go-lucky dancing character but he barely gets to crush any skulls with his elbows. Michael Bisping seems ok but I'll always remember him as "poo poo-talker who had his soul forcibly separated from his body by the strong right hand of Dan Henderson". Everyone else is an "acting first, action second" type and so they all do pretty good job of portraying their characters and shooting/running/avoid getting crushed.

The set pieces are fairly good. There's a lot of chasing, a lot of large clocks counting down because Time is Running Out, a lot of fight cross-cutting to let every XXXer do their own thing in their own way. And some very silly stuff that happens spontaneously and goes unremarked-upon.

It's goofy nonsense and an absolute crowd-pandering movie and I loved it. The series has finally achieved it's potential and become a ensemble goofy rear end action movie with extreme-sports stuff in it. May they make many more. Bring on XXX 8: Too Cubed. (pun totally intentional)

Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Apr 2, 2018

Basebf555
Feb 29, 2008

The greatest sensual pleasure there is is to know the desires of another!

Fun Shoe

Megaman's Jockstrap posted:

XXX: Return of Xander Cage

Man I enjoyed the hell out of this. They essentially Fast and Furious'd the franchise. Vin Diesel is a huge loving dork who moves like a lovely muppet and looks like an adult baby, yet the plot conspires to surround him with gorgeous women who want to have group sex with him. He's what every nerd wishes they could be at 15 and he never grew up. Donnie Yen is an arrogant prick who fights like he traded his soul for the ability to style on guys with his fists and feet. I fuckin' love this guy's shtick so I was on board from his very first scene, which features the three fundamentals of Donnie Yen: lightning fast strikes, near-invincibility, and "cool" posing. The rest of the cast is wasted, I'm sorry to say. Tony Jaa plays against type and I loved the concept of his happy-go-lucky dancing character but he barely gets to crush any skulls with his elbows. Michael Bisping seems ok but I'll always remember him as "poo poo-talker who had his soul forcibly separated from his body by the strong right hand of Dan Henderson". Everyone else is an "acting first, action second" type and so they all do pretty good job of portraying their characters and shooting/running/avoid getting crushed.

The set pieces are fairly good. There's a lot of chasing, a lot of large clocks counting down because Time is Running Out, a lot of fight cross-cutting to let every XXXer do their own thing in their own way. And some very silly stuff that happens spontaneously and goes unremarked-upon.

It's goofy nonsense and an absolute crowd-pandering movie and I loved it. The series has finally achieved it's potential and become a ensemble goofy rear end action movie with extreme-sports stuff in it. May they make many more. Bring on XXX 8: Too Cubed. (pun totally intentional)

Hell yea, gently caress the haters.

GoodyTwoShoes
Oct 26, 2013

Megaman's Jockstrap posted:

XXX: Return of Xander Cage

They essentially Fast and Furious'd the franchise.

It's goofy nonsense and an absolute crowd-pandering movie and I loved it. The series has finally achieved it's potential and become a ensemble goofy rear end action movie with extreme-sports stuff in it. May they make many more. Bring on XXX 8: Too Cubed. (pun totally intentional)

I'm a bit leery of F&Fing, since VD has basically turned F&F8 into a live-action cartoon. . . but if they can rein in the cartoons and comic books, I'd love to see XXX launch some new action hero careers. All my old action heros are getting . . . 2Old2StoveUp.

Wandle Cax
Dec 15, 2006
I'm extremely easy to please when it comes to action movies of every kind but xXx:RoXC was so shittily made and completely and utterly missed the mark in every respect I was actually embarrassed that I saw it

Megaman's Jockstrap
Jul 16, 2000

What a horrible thread to have a post.
Well if you think the zero g fistfight in the crashing plane against the evil army guy with the power glove that ends with him being flushed down a toilet (figuratively) was lovely then I'm at a loss.

Basically I'm to the point where the action in a movie has to be incredibly well done or extremely novel and XXX@nd3r is the second one. It's a nice combination of 80s action-guy aesthetic and silly cartoon gags, I got no problem with that.

Sir Kodiak
May 14, 2007


There's a lot to like in XXX3, but Vin Diesel is just too loving old for the role. Reminiscent of Tom Cruise in The Mummy in that way.

X-Ray Pecs
May 11, 2008

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Leigh Wannell, star and co-writer of the original Saw, wrote and directed an action/horror revenge thriller about a guy almost literally becoming a fighting machine after getting an implant that allows him to walk again, and the red band trailer (:nws: for some gruesome violence) looks tight.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyB3Ovj1qh4

Tart Kitty
Dec 17, 2016

Oh, well, that's all water under the bridge, as I always say. Water under the bridge!

X-Ray Pecs posted:

Leigh Wannell, star and co-writer of the original Saw, wrote and directed an action/horror revenge thriller about a guy almost literally becoming a fighting machine after getting an implant that allows him to walk again, and the red band trailer (:nws: for some gruesome violence) looks tight.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyB3Ovj1qh4

This jumped up on my list big time right around the kitchen fight scene with the lead getting horrified at the violence his body doles out.

Plus, I was a big fan of The Invitation, so it’s nice to see Logan Marshall-Green getting some attention outside of being asked to sign Tom Hardy’s autograph on the steeet.

Narzack
Sep 15, 2008

Fart City posted:

This jumped up on my list big time right around the kitchen fight scene with the lead getting horrified at the violence his body doles out.

Plus, I was a big fan of The Invitation, so it’s nice to see Logan Marshall-Green getting some attention outside of being asked to sign Tom Hardy’s autograph on the steeet.

Yeah, man, this looks cool. Kinda like Death Sentence, future version. And, yeah, I totally thought this dude was Tom Hardy in Prometheus.

LesterGroans
Jun 9, 2009

It's funny...

You were so scary at night.
Logan Marshall-Green is very much a low-rent Tom Hardy, but he's done a lot of solid work lately. Prometheus, The Invitation, the TV show Quarry.

I'll always remember him as Ryan's brother from The O.C. though.

Narzack
Sep 15, 2008
His beard did half the heavy lifting for him in The Invitation

Megaman's Jockstrap
Jul 16, 2000

What a horrible thread to have a post.
I saw Atomic Blonde. It was ok. The intertwining of spycraft and the hardcore action wasn't as organic as in the Bourne movies, and I found the plot structure (with the flashbacks, the double denouement, and some of the editing) to make the relatively straightforward story a bit choppier than it needed to be without adding any real style to it. I really was impressed by the show that Charlize Theron put on. She was kickin' rear end!

Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 22:56 on Apr 4, 2018

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Wheat Loaf
Feb 13, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Recently saw both 48 Hrs. movies - the first one is obviously better but it felt a lot more like a Dirty Harry movie than I was expecting. It was good but it wasn't exactly "buddy cop action comedy" like it says on Wikipedia. The sequel was a bit humdrum. As I understand it, almost an entire hour was cut from its runtime, including most of the main villain's scenes.

I think watching these after I'd seen Lethal Weapon spoiled them for me; Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte just don't have the same chemistry as Mel Gibson and Danny Glover.

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