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Olympic Mathlete posted:Thread, I have to ask an important question. What are your thoughts on Shoot 'em Up? I haven't seen it in a long time, but what I remember most is how well conceived the action was. It came out during that period when super fast cuts were in fashion, when almost every action scene was a confusing mess, but this movie did a great job of establishing the spatial relationships between the characters. Can you imagine how unintelligible a scene like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9TkKFn6Tk8 would be if say Luc Besson made it?
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Apr 24, 2020 14:05
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Owen’s character from Shoot Em Up went to the same boarding school as Chev Chelios and you can’t convince me otherwise.
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Apr 24, 2020 16:14
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The director of Shoot 'Em Up was a guest speaker for a class when I was in school. He talked a lot about how important storyboarding is for action movies – he actually storyboarded the first 15 minutes before the film was even greenlit. He was super bitter about the Hollywood system, apparently he had been wanting to make Shoot 'Em Up for most of his career and had to subsist on making half a dozen romantic comedies because that was the only thing he could sell. And I can't remember why but he really hated Jay Roach for some reason
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Apr 24, 2020 21:17
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Almost Blue posted:The director of Shoot 'Em Up was a guest speaker for a class when I was in school. He talked a lot about how important storyboarding is for action movies – he actually storyboarded the first 15 minutes before the film was even greenlit. He was super bitter about the Hollywood system, apparently he had been wanting to make Shoot 'Em Up for most of his career and had to subsist on making half a dozen romantic comedies because that was the only thing he could sell. And I can't remember why but he really hated Jay Roach for some reason It's not really uncommon to use storyboards to pitch your film to studios/finance people.
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Apr 24, 2020 21:28
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Almost Blue posted:The director of Shoot 'Em Up was a guest speaker for a class when I was in school. He talked a lot about how important storyboarding is for action movies – he actually storyboarded the first 15 minutes before the film was even greenlit. He was super bitter about the Hollywood system, apparently he had been wanting to make Shoot 'Em Up for most of his career and had to subsist on making half a dozen romantic comedies because that was the only thing he could sell. And I can't remember why but he really hated Jay Roach for some reason 
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Apr 24, 2020 23:56
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I watched The Fast and The Furious 1-7 and I feel like I did myself a disservice by dismissing these movies as car guy poo poo that wouldn't be entertaining.
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Apr 25, 2020 02:24
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JBP posted:I watched The Fast and The Furious 1-7 and I feel like I did myself a disservice by dismissing these movies as car guy poo poo that wouldn't be entertaining. The "car guy" stuff is actually the weakest part. Not much of anything that they do bears any resemblance to actual racing or hot rodding. I do like how the Dodge Charger went from being Dom's dad's car that was so powerful that Dom was afraid of it to Dom's ride of choice.
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Apr 25, 2020 04:12
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Payndz posted:I just read the Wikipedia plot synopsis of Shoot Em Up director Michael Davis' movie Monster Man, and it's like someone describing a fever dream. Oh I've seen that! It was a long time ago but I remember it being pretty fun. I distinctly remember one of the main guys getting pinned to the floor under a skinned corpse with its eye hanging out or something similar. It was a gross, stupid movie but was at least funny with it.
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Apr 25, 2020 11:38
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My wife and I have been going through the older Jackie Chan movies and it is so frustrating that drunken master ii and Police Story 2 aren't available on Prime. Supercop and Project A are available though and both are a ton of fun
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Apr 25, 2020 16:29
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B-Rock452 posted:My wife and I have been going through the older Jackie Chan movies and it is so frustrating that drunken master ii and Police Story 2 aren't available on Prime. Supercop and Project A are available though and both are a ton of fun Police story 2 is on criterion, and they’re adding several other of his early films next month
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Apr 25, 2020 16:42
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B-Rock452 posted:My wife and I have been going through the older Jackie Chan movies and it is so frustrating that drunken master ii and Police Story 2 aren't available on Prime. Supercop and Project A are available though and both are a ton of fun What got me back into watching movies was the justwatch website/app. You add movies to your list over time, and then can hit a filter button to only show what's available per streaming service you have. Takes a lot of frustration out of it. Hoopla and kanopy are both free with library card, and most libraries are giving card codes out for anyone who wants one even if you aren't a resident. Hoopla has a LOT of asian action movies, probably as many as prime + Netflix combined. Sadly neither of the ones you're looking for are on any streaming besides police story 2 on criterion channel
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Apr 25, 2020 16:44
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DeimosRising posted:Police story 2 is on criterion, and they’re adding several other of his early films next month I legit didn't know the criterion channel was a thing so thank you for this. In action movie news we are watching Ip Man 4 tonight looking forward to some Yen/Adkins action.
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Apr 25, 2020 22:25
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I'm watching Extraction on Netflix right now and I don't know if it'll hold up, but the camera work during that whole "continous" chase sequence half an hour in is just 
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Apr 26, 2020 19:25
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This week I watched action movies that were released in 2020: Disturbing the Peace (2020) - 2/5 Not as bad as I was expecting, but not particularly good either. Guy Pearce is very good. The motivation for the overall plot of the movie is not explained particularly well, which is weird because the movie is only like 83 minutes outside of the credits and there are a lot of slow quiet scenes that drag it down. Action's a mixed bag. A lot of good looking environmental action like explosions and shootouts, but all the personal action is hidden behind cuts, especially the gunshots. The highlight is that there are several Home Alone-style trap killings. Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion's Revenge (2020) - 3.5/5 I am a big fan of the Warner Brothers Justice League, so getting to see that kind of animation but with extreme violence and gore was a real treat. The fights were very good in this one, and the script wasn't too bad. The plot is an equivalent of the original live action movie, but with more lore that the series seems to have built up in the meantime. As someone that hasn't kept up with the series since Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, it was a little much and held it down a bit. A few too many easter eggs. Spenser Confidential (2020) - 2/5, Netflix It is nearly impossible to tell where this film was shot/set, you really have to concentrate on the context clues in the movie. I enjoyed Winston Duke, Iliza Schlesinger, and two or three action sequences in this. That is not enough to make a movie worth almost two hours of your time. I would have liked it a lot more with 20 minutes trimmed out and one more good fight. The delivered product, though, was mostly air. Earth and Blood (2020) - 2/5, Netflix An eighty-minute film that was half-focused on action and half-focused on mood and tension. So you somehow end up with like 15 minutes of the runtime being people walking around a sawmill. The plot was pretty bad, but the sawmill violence was pretty good. It looked relatively artistic and cool but the core of the movie had nothing to it so it really needed to get to the action faster. Extraction (2020) - 4/5, Netflix Let stunt coordinators make action movies. The non-stunt parts of the movies don't matter and you end up with movies like this where there are so many good action sequences one after another that you end up with something really special. The plot of the movie is definitely extremely bad. But that's not what I'm here for. I'm here for stunts and fights and kills and people acting like badasses. And there is so much of that here. The body count is very high and the fights are designed and shot so well. Randeep Hooda is so cool, as is Golshifteh Farahani. After watching so many low- and mid-budget action movies recently, I almost forget the kind of quality you can get out of one with real money put into it. I'm here for more Sam Hargrave movies.
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Apr 26, 2020 20:36
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I apologise if I just couldn't find it but what's the threads take on 6 Underground? I started it and I see its pretty and well made but Ryan Reynolds annoys me now and I never heard it has anything in it compelling but I also don't know anyone who really likes action movies.
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Apr 26, 2020 20:39
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mcbexx posted:I'm watching Extraction on Netflix right now and I don't know if it'll hold up, but the camera work during that whole "continous" chase sequence half an hour in is just That "single" take is by far one of the best action sequences I've seen in a long time. I will say though, a soldier's neck being broken by Chris Hemsworth swinging another soldier around into the first is a high high high mark in it.
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Apr 26, 2020 20:43
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I am going to respectfully disagree. I liked the movie quite a bit, and liked that sequence. But I feel like that sequence was not helped at all by making it a fake single take shot—there were multiple moments when I was confused as to where everyone was in relation to each other, and cutting to a wider shot would have helped in these cases. Also one of the reasons to make such a long take is to increase the tension of sustained action, which it does, but the main reason is as kind of a technical dick waving move. But when the cuts are as obvious as they are in Extraction it takes away a lot of the impressiveness (compare to that scene in Atomic Blonde, where the cuts were hidden much more effectively). I still liked the scene and the whole movie, but was a little distracted by the showiness of faking a single take.
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Apr 26, 2020 20:57
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Cool to see extraction being discussed, my cousin was the line producer for it in Indonesia I think, so he's been posting on Facebook about location scouting for it for ages. I saw ads for it and wasn't sure if it was just due to his posts or if it was getting a big push
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Apr 26, 2020 21:45
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jojoinnit posted:I apologise if I just couldn't find it but what's the threads take on 6 Underground? I started it and I see its pretty and well made but Ryan Reynolds annoys me now and I never heard it has anything in it compelling but I also don't know anyone who really likes action movies. It is pure undiluted Michael Bay. Whether that is good or not is going to vary from person to person.
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Apr 26, 2020 22:07
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Alfred P. Pseudonym posted:It is pure undiluted Michael Bay. Whether that is good or not is going to vary from person to person. Yeah, this is pretty much it. I, myself, am a Ryan Reynolds fan, but he didn't really seem to do a lot with it. I think if you look at it a bit too hard, the implications of the plot are pretty horrifying, but it's colorful, loud, and stuff breaks pretty awesomely. Some pretty poo poo editing in the car chase hurts the opening, but what are you gonna do? The dialogue is basically vomit. Actors are poo poo. The carnage, however, is excellent.
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Apr 27, 2020 00:23
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I thought Extraction was a really good action movie. I liked it.
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Apr 27, 2020 00:40
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Alfred P. Pseudonym posted:It is pure undiluted Michael Bay. Whether that is good or not is going to vary from person to person. (And as someone who's been to Florence, the sequence's hatred and contempt for geography made my head hurt.)
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Apr 27, 2020 07:17
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The thing I remember most about 6 Underground is the parkour stuff. There was one scene where one of them is trying to escape an abandoned office building by parkouring all over the place and bouncing off stairs and balconies and all the usual stuff... but the regular goons with guns on foot were just keeping up with him by jogging though the building like normal people. I'm pretty sure it wasn't even a bit or anything. That and the entire plot revolving around bringing down some military dictator who they have a beef with because they don't give a drat about civilian casualties and collateral damage... despite the fact the protagonists clearly don't give a gently caress about civilian casualties and collateral damage. Also, you can't have the leader who comes up with all the plans, the mysterious billionarie funding your off--the-books organisation, the tech-genius gadget guy and the wisecracking sarcastic comedy relief all be the same person in a team of renegade operatives. That's how your ensemble cast ends up being Ryan Reynolds and 5 other people you don't remember or care about and you end up fleshing out the ranks with parkour guy and the like. It's the sort of film I'd leave on if I was channel hopping and came across it (not that that's a thing with Netflix). But I'd probably be watching it wishing I'd come across The Losers instead. Will def be checking out Extraction later this week. Gravy Jones fucked around with this message at 09:44 on Apr 27, 2020 |
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Apr 27, 2020 09:25
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6 Underground commits the ultimate sin for action movies, it becomes boring. A whole lot of action movies seem to have this problem these days. Another thing that is bugging me lately: John Wick has this problem of "filler" between actions, you know people waiting to do the next bit, and it is really noticeable. Especially after watching the Matrix again, drat that movie's choreography rocks. Mr Shiny Pants fucked around with this message at 13:25 on Apr 27, 2020 |
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Apr 27, 2020 13:22
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Gravy Jones posted:Also, you can't have the leader who comes up with all the plans, the mysterious billionarie funding your off--the-books organisation, the tech-genius gadget guy and the wisecracking sarcastic comedy relief all be the same person in a team of renegade operatives. That's how your ensemble cast ends up being Ryan Reynolds and 5 other people you don't remember or care about and you end up fleshing out the ranks with parkour guy and the like.
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Apr 27, 2020 15:22
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Gravy Jones posted:
Also, this. You get no sense of what he is, either. Like, is he supposed to be a nebbish kind of nerdy guy? Who suddenly does nusto unarmed takedowns of two dudes who have guns pointed at him? Where did that come from?
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Apr 27, 2020 15:53
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I decided to watch Extraction instead. Solid film, action felt like a blend of Bourne and Wick. No Ryan Reynolds to be seen, nobody quipping at all.
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Apr 27, 2020 16:07
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Extraction is basically proof positive that the guiding light for current action movies was The Raid. It heavily influenced Wick and Wick has now heavily influenced Extraction. Great to see.
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Apr 27, 2020 18:31
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I watched Extraction last night, it was pretty good but I have some thoughts: 1) The "one-take" scene was just alright to me. I don't mind they had to cheat the one-take thing with "hidden" cuts, that they don't really bother to try to hide much (sudden whip-pan out of nowhere! wonder why), there is no way to film such a sequence actually in one take so it's fine. My problem was similar scenes in other films, and I'm thinking of two scenes in Children of Men in particular that use the lack of cutting to create tension and put you in it. The camera in this one floated about so much, and more importantly, kept changing viewpoint character, that you never really settled into a point of view as you are switching from Tyler/Ovi, to Saju, to random cop, to Ovi, to Tyler/Ovi, to Saju...etc etc and it was much the same as if they were cutting between them, just they didn't cut, the camera made a physically impossible move and we were with the new viewpoint. And the crash/explosion that ends the sequence looks like poo poo.  2) The real stand out scene for me was the one not long after where Tyler beats the poo poo out of children. Doesn't kill them but it's so violent, he's just throwing them around and I had a good lol. 3) The white saviour thing. It's come up in a lot of reviews and I have mixed thoughts about it. I mean, it's there for sure, but at least it didn't do the thing where Tyler is the best example of the culture he's visiting. There is never interaction of that kind, he just kills the gently caress out of lots of brown people to save one, it's a bit uncomfortable imo. Especially as he mostly just ganks faceless mooks, who become disposable. Which is unfortunate as it's a white hero killing disposable brown people. My friend described it to me as "What if John Wick was Call of Duty?" and I think that's pretty accurate. Good action though. And I've been watching the Ip Man movies and why did nobody tell me Ip Man 2 was just Rocky IV? He even does the speech at the end and all the audience stands and claps because his name was Albert Einstein or whatever. Good to see Sammo though.
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Apr 28, 2020 07:55
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There isn't a white savior narrative. There's an Indian guy too and they both work together and they both get killed. Also the Indian guy is literally as good as the white guy is and fights him to a standstill. And they are literally both doing it for a kid. Whoever is doing that white savior read is doing very poor analysis. "A white guy in a foreign country is the protagonist in an action movie" is not automatically a white savior type. There has to be very specific things.
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Apr 28, 2020 18:43
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:There isn't a white savior narrative. There's an Indian guy too and they both work together and they both get killed. Also the Indian guy is literally as good as the white guy is and fights him to a standstill. And they are literally both doing it for a kid. Whoever is doing that white savior read is doing very poor analysis. "A white guy in a foreign country is the protagonist in an action movie" is not automatically a white savior type. There has to be very specific things. You're right in that it's not a white savior thing in the Dances with Wolves/Avatar sense, but some are defining white savior as just "white guy saves non-whites and learns a little lesson along the way" which does fit Extraction. I think that is a little broad, it basically fits Temple of Doom as well, or Man on Fire if Denzel was white, or insert action movie here. My reaction was more just how many people Thor murders on his way and by the end I was a little uncomfortable with it. Most of the action takes place in poor regions of Dhaka and there are civilians cowering out of the way. Near the end Hemsworth fires explosives and automatic weapon fire at a checkpoint that has civilian traffic going through it just as a diversion. Being a movie he doesn't get anyone other than bad guys, but it left me with a sour taste. Especially as you can read the "bad guys" as grown up versions of the Farhad kid, not evil but forced into this by the circumstances they grew up in and feel a little bad about the dudes our heroes shoot, knife and blow up. And I don't think having sidekicks of color changes that, because let's be honest, that's what Saju and Nik are.
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Apr 28, 2020 22:09
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The dude is not a sidekick, again he is a rival guy after the same goal and he *literally* fights the main character to a standstill and blazes through mooks just as effectively, that's not a sidekick that is a partner. He can't be beaten, he must be teamed up with. Exact same dynamic as Hard Boiled. Also Tyler doesn't learn any lesson at all, he is a drunk traumatized wreck who projects his own failings onto another little boy and tries to escape his misery through helping him extract (it's notable that he's only one part of the titular extraction at the end and is almost blown away by the sniper but is saved by his ally). What "lesson" does he learn? He is absolutely redeemed but it's not because he's better than all the natives, masters their own poo poo better than they are at it, leads them in some way, etc. You can't just say "ah a white guy is doing Action Movie Protagonist Things in a foreign country, another White Savior type". He doesn't speak the language, holds no currency, he is a foreign man and it's portrayed as a massive liability. His big break comes when another white guy expat shows up and "saves" him, only to immediately sell him out (he's literally saved by a kid). Extraction follows John Wick (who in turn follows the 80s actioneers) in having the hero just mow down mooks by the bushel and never has to worry about hurting civilians. The named characters get to be effective, the extras don't. They don't even shoot back most of the time, it's approaching Commando-level - they just put a layer of grit on it. The screaming poor Dhaka civilians at the margins are exactly the same types as the scared mall-goers running around pell-mell in Commando. They aren't going to get hurt, so don't be disturbed (be disturbed by the grotesque income inequality on display, not the violence - because only one of those two things is realistic).
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Apr 28, 2020 23:39
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hemsworth kicks the kids so hard they turn into full grown men on the impact shots
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Apr 28, 2020 23:46
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:He doesn't speak the language, holds no currency, he is a foreign man and it's portrayed as a massive liability. I see what you did here, and I wanted you to know I appreciated it.
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Apr 29, 2020 05:49
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dokmo posted:I am going to respectfully disagree. I liked the movie quite a bit, and liked that sequence. But I feel like that sequence was not helped at all by making it a fake single take shot—there were multiple moments when I was confused as to where everyone was in relation to each other, and cutting to a wider shot would have helped in these cases. Also one of the reasons to make such a long take is to increase the tension of sustained action, which it does, but the main reason is as kind of a technical dick waving move. But when the cuts are as obvious as they are in Extraction it takes away a lot of the impressiveness (compare to that scene in Atomic Blonde, where the cuts were hidden much more effectively). I still liked the scene and the whole movie, but was a little distracted by the showiness of faking a single take. There's a really blatant cheat in location in that sequence as well. More's the shame since it falls in between two of the coolest action beats. It also falls into that little trap that a lot of action scenes do. There's more than few instances of heavily armoured soldiers either losing their rifles or forgetting they've got them and just crash tackling the hero, who then gets to use a cool CQC thing to kill them. The Captain America movies are much worse on this, but its frustrating when clearly skilled action choreographers and performers forget the interstitial tissue of a scene.
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Apr 30, 2020 08:05
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Just wanted to drop in say over the last few days I re-watched all the Mission Impossible films (except MI:2) and man they’re good. I watched Ghost Protocol twice. Never noticed before that you can see the bad guy literally walking into the Kremlin just steps ahead of Ethan and Benji. Awesome movie.
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Apr 30, 2020 16:55
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Julius CSAR posted:Just wanted to drop in say over the last few days I re-watched all the Mission Impossible films (except MI:2) and man they’re good. I watched Ghost Protocol twice. Never noticed before that you can see the bad guy literally walking into the Kremlin just steps ahead of Ethan and Benji. Awesome movie. Ghost Protocol is as close to a perfect movie as I've ever seen and it's one of the only that I own physical media of. Brad Bird should have a much better live action career. All the MI's since 3 have been great action movies. 2 maybe, depending on your Woo feelings.
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Apr 30, 2020 17:17
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The shootout in the lab is really great, and the music Hans Zimmer did for the scene has all been one my favorite pieces of his https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3iAzdbg3mo
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Apr 30, 2020 19:29
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MI2 might be the worst MI but I feel its _the_ movie that turned Cruise into the adrenaline/stunt performer that he is today. So I don't skip it. To contribute have you guys seen The Final Master (2015)? It's one of my favs and I would describe it as knife ip man.
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May 1, 2020 11:52
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Action Movie Streaming Alert for May Jarhead 1-3 (Netflix, 3 stars Scott Adkins) Romeo Must Die (Netflix) Demolition Man (Hulu) Universal Soldier (Hulu) Broken Arrow (HBO) Commando (HBO) A few kung fu movies on Amazon Prime Tubi added, apparently, 144 action movies: https://www.justwatch.com/us/provider/tubi-tv/new/movies?genres=act Bulletproof Monk American Ninja 1-3 House of Flying Daggers Ong Bak 3
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May 1, 2020 12:51
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