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Prince Myshkin posted:It half-forms ideas and has very obvious inspiration from John Wick, which is not a mark against it in this case since they share a screenwriter. Ultimately I wanted the movie to give me more about the nature of Hutch's program, training, background, so on, flesh out the world more the way the Wick movies do. Since that didn't happen Odenkirk had to do some heavy lifting, which thankfully he was up for. It's not so much taking inspiration from John Wick as it is the same script with a few nouns switched around, the same way 'Cellular' and 'Phone Booth were more or less the same film, or how the guy who wrote 'Death Wish' wrote like 4 other novels with the exact same plot. It was fun, but the bus fight scene was a head and shoulders better scene than everything else in the movie. That was genuinely fantastic. The rest was good but never hit that high again. Also, fun fact: the director was also the director (and one of the main stunt performers) of 'Hardcore Henry' the gimmick Russian POV film from a few years ago.
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Apr 19, 2021 04:16
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morestuff posted:Honestly I didn't even think it was that fun, everything just felt incredibly rote. The running gag with Odenkirk's monologues was the only bit that worked for me. Kind of a bummer Rote is actually a pretty good descriptor. A lot of it was by the numbers. Which is a shame, since the scenes where it found it's voice were loving great.
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Apr 19, 2021 04:45
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Stairmaster posted:The problem is the gunplay didn't plagarize john wick enough Or do anything of its own. There's lots of right ways to shoot (heh) a gunfight. Chad Stahelski, The Wachowskis, John Woo, Michael Mann, Johnnie To and Christopher McQuarrie just to name a few, have all found their own ways to do it. The finale shootout, with a few exceptions, felt like anyone could have directed it. RZA's sniper rifle fight was pretty loving cool, though.
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Apr 19, 2021 06:13
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Halloween Jack posted:I'm trying to think, like...what were the first Western action movies that had hand-to-hand fight choreography that is good enough to not read as comedy? There are a lot of great brawls and fist fights in old westerns. Don't know if that would qualify for you.
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Apr 26, 2021 03:10
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With the money from my first job, where i was paid 8 australian dollars an hour, i saved up and got the Hard Boiled DVD imported at my local 'cool dvd and music shop' for the obscene price of 56 dollars. An entire days wages. Of all the dumb things i've spent money on, that's the one i definitely got the most out of.
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May 7, 2021 09:42
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I really didn't like I Saw the Devil. There's an interesting premise in there. A sort of inversal of the usual slasher formula, but I thought it lost the plot long before the end. It's a movie where I end up wondering what it thinks it's saying. Or if it even is saying anything. It's extremely well made and a lot of it has stuck with me through, if nothing else, the sheer skill involved in making it, but I dislike it pretty strongly.
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May 9, 2021 09:29
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Grendels Dad posted:I would say it's about becomming a monster to fight monsters, but it has definitely got some parts that feel out of place. Like, the protagonist does sick kicks to beat up the proverbial monsters and that just doesn't really fit at first. I guess it's because you don't usually associate a descent into madness with martial arts. But he only loses because he isn't enough of a monster. He keeps letting the guy live long enough for him to turn the tables. there's probably some very clever video essay out there telling me why i'm wrong and I'll watch it and slap my head for not putting together, but on a single watch that was my take. The single shot knife battle in the car is really something else though. Snowman_McK fucked around with this message at 13:59 on May 9, 2021 |
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May 9, 2021 10:10
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Lurdiak posted:I remember this stephen king short story about a nerdy teacher who's wife is killed by a mobster when she was going to testify, and he goes through a ridiculous amount of physical training and learns to work road construction while hiding his grief just so he could set up a trap in the middle of the road to kill the guy. This is Blue Ruin, sort of, except without the training part. There was an Antonio Banderas vehicle with this plot. It also had Karl Urban.
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May 9, 2021 14:00
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Lumbermouth posted:It’s a really fascinating and gnarly watch, due in a large part to the protagonist being both really compelling and also pathetic. The scenes with his sister and the stark differences between how the two of them handled this tragedy were top notch. Jeremy Saulnier's gimmick seems to be 'action movies, but none of the people involved actually know how to fight' Green Room is Die Hard if John MaClane was several dumb teenagers and Blue Ruin is the Punisher as re-enacted by a William H Macy character. I really like his stuff, even Hold the Dark, and I hope he makes more.
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May 10, 2021 07:56
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The Lone Wolf and Cub movies are, genuinely, loving bizarre. I can't think of anything else that whiplashes so constantly. We move from arty shots of landscapes to exploitationy scenes of nudity and abuse right through to cartoonish violence and back again. Even the lead makes no loving sense. His weird body and strange double chin belies the fact that he's actually really convincing in the action scenes and clearly knows his way around a sword. Also, the films are laced with really careful historical research (the Eastern Eye DVDs always had a bunch of notes explaining the real life regions, people, events and phenomena in the film) but also contain utterly goofy poo poo like assassin monks hiding inside statues or people talking with a sword through their brain. They're worth watching because they're like nothing else. also, Shogun Assassin is the source of most of the samples in 'Liquid Swords' one of the best hip hop albums of all time. So see it to get those references if nothing else
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May 13, 2021 01:35
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dokmo posted:I'm no expert on japanese movies of the 70s but i've seen my share, and these movies do stand out for being so action oriented. This is my favorite period of japanese film because there was so much wild poo poo going on. Teruo Ishii and his imitators were making psychedelic and surreal erotic movies, you had your exploitationish girl boss pinky flicks, yakuza movies were moving into the modern age with more realistic portrayals of criminal life, and studios were still making samurai movies, but more violent. Thanks for this. Where should I start with Teruo Ishii? I've never heard of him. Basebf555 posted:Another good one to double feature with Virtuosity is Ricochet. It's a Denzel vs. absurd scenery chewing villain double feature. Is that the one where John Lithgow wears phone book body armour while weilding a spear in prison? Lithgow makes a surprisingly convincing villain given what he's most known for. Martman posted:I have the whole manga collection of Lone Wolf and Cub, I need to finally get around to watching the movies. The manga is just full of absurd, awesome, and stupid moments like when some witches (or something) attack the main dude in his sleep only to learn that his mastery of the blade and training of his body have allowed him to defend himself while still sleeping. My favourite was when he was in prison and got paddled (which was a punishment administrated by prisoners to other prisoners) and escaped by breaking one of the paddles in half and stabbing everyone. I need to reread it. It's got that same whiplash of poetical lyricism and goofy (very well drawn) violence. Snowman_McK fucked around with this message at 02:10 on May 14, 2021 |
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May 14, 2021 01:40
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mastershakeman posted:if you havent seen yakuza apoc you should. every 20 minutes or so it shifts gears in a very unpredictable way I loved the guy who played Mad Dog in the Raid wandering round as a student or hitchiker, but that's his cover and he's actually a badass. They pull the 'here he is, meek and unassuming...oh poo poo he just beat everyone up' switcharoo like four times. Also, they don't tie him to the plot till quite late, so there seems little reason for this student/hitchiker to be kicking the poo poo out of everyone for most of the movie. Yakuza Apocalypse is...interesting. I don't know if I'd say it's good, but it's definitely worth a watch.
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May 15, 2021 05:01
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NoneMoreNegative posted:You could put this quote at the top of every Miike DVD cover tbh. Except 13 Assassins, which is just straight up really good.
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May 15, 2021 09:45
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Lurdiak posted:So having just spent the weekend working on a future extreme bloodsport video game for the Toronto Game Jam, I decided to celebrate by watching the original Rollerball (1975) for the first time since I was a kid, and man, that movie does not hold up. The fake sport of Rollerball is super well thought out and realized, you can totally understand how it works, the arena looks like a real rink, the hits look brutal and exciting. Basically, any time they're actually playing Rollerball, the movie kicks rear end. I watched about the first twenty minutes and came, I think, to a similar conclusion. I can't really remember it because it is, as you say, kind of dull. I watched the to end of the match with the Japanese team. It is, surprisingly, a pretty well thought out sport for a completely made up one. You're right, it is thematically confused. It's a testament to how badly the red scare broke the American brain. Corporations, in our current world, thrive on the idea of individualism. The idea that one can make it, can succeed in this world, is a vindication of that system ("they/I did it, why can't you?") Someone like Jonathon would prove to the population that their system works. See, anyone can succeed! Billionaires, movie stars, youtubers, sports stars...they're all held up that way now. But collectivism, to an audience raised on being terrified of communism, makes a much better villain. Collectivism results in things like strikes, unions, collective bargaining, things that utterly undercut the power of a corporation and the accepted worldview that lets them succeed. It's a film that sets itself up on a fundamentally broken premise.
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May 18, 2021 05:43
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Wrath of Man isn't good. Somehow, Jason Statham going on a revenge spree against bank robbers is...kind of dull. I didn't mind the flashback structure. I thought it worked kind of well and it gives us more time with a very good cast, but Ritchie didn't know when to cut it out. The last heist in the film is, obviously, going to have a complex plan that, also obviously, goes off the rails. But, since they keep the gimmick of flashing back to the meeting, it's going off the rails as we're told how it was supposed to go. That could have worked, but it's not nearly tightly edited enough for that and instead the whole final sequence is kind of limp. What's truly unforgiveable, though, is that the action just isn't very good. They put the single best moment in the trailer and that seemed like the only good idea they had. Everything else is pedestrian shots of people shooting off camera. It's a real shame since it starts very, very promisingly.
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May 26, 2021 05:03
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Horizon Burning posted:yeah, wrath of man was surprisingly dull. the trailer sold a very different film. Oh, in one sense it's completely accurate. All the cool moments in the trailer that sold me on the film were in there. It's just that there was nothing else to like. They literally put every good shot in the trailer. I miss when Jason Statham would just make five cheap, dumb movies a year where he'd drive quickly, take his shirt off and fight people, and also one movie like Hummingbird, whatever the hell that was doing.
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May 27, 2021 02:02
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Shageletic posted:lol that stretch in the 80s when JAMAICAN GANGBANGERS were in every movie Ioan Grillo had a good chapter in one of his books explaining the conditions that lead to that dominating the imagination for that brief period.
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Jun 2, 2021 03:15
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Shageletic posted:what were the conditions, increasing amount of immigrants from the Caribbean? Sort of. Various Jamaican gangs who'd been fighting over Jamaica since forever ended up in the US and staked a claim, and they favoured extremely bloody and public displays of violence. The news got a hold of it and before you know it they're the new terror. It very closely parallels the story of MS-13's spot as the Media's gangsters du jour.
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Jun 3, 2021 05:01
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:I hope Donnie does everything he did in Flashpoint, only in a suit instead of a jacket. Flashpoint is so good. It really is the exact sweet spot between traditional kung fu stuff and MMA. I've not seen anyone else do it better since, though a couple of the Undisputed films come pretty drat close.
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Jun 5, 2021 09:43
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Xtreme ruled. It was the exact dumb 80s action movie logic (should we swarm him? No, lets enter in groups of three, letting him grab new improvised weapons each time) and it really, really loved killing people
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Jun 14, 2021 03:50
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Basebf555 posted:I was gonna say, that video seemed like it should be good enough to get those people actual work and/or allow them to sell a project to someone with the money to make a movie. There's real talent on display there. It reminded me of Rossatron's video on action. It's largely simple choreography, but executed really well and made to feel heavy.
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Jun 17, 2021 02:44
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MrBling posted:https://twitter.com/DEADLINE/status/1405571131516624909 I like that, of Hiroyuki Sanada's long, illustrious career in multiple countries across the world spanning decades, they choose those two to remind people who he is. I know why, but holy poo poo Westworld is bad. I say is. I haven't watched it since the second season.
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Jun 19, 2021 06:02
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Pillowpants posted:I just watched Nobody - my god this movie does John Wick almost as good as John wick It's not as good an action movie as John Wick and, action wise, it peaks after the bus ride, but it's a much better film. It's a more developed version of the "Badass violence as addiction/addict falling off the wagon" formula than Wick or the Equaliser. Bob Odenkirk has had one of the oddest careers. I rewatched it with my wife and loved it. I was a little cold on my first watch which I did alone. It's a film that needs to be watched with someone. Basebf555 posted:Wrath of Man was ok, not great but it also isn't really an action movie. It's more of a Heat-type crime thriller with a few action set pieces but the majority of it is Statham giving the evil eye to suspicious dudes. for most of its length, a fairly slow burn revenge film. But then it turns out his plan is just 'wait for stuff to happen.' On the day he simply improvises and does a really bad job, getting everyone else killed. I ended up feeling like the film was wasting my time. And the non linear structure was just wasted. Snowman_McK fucked around with this message at 01:18 on Jul 16, 2021 |
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Jul 16, 2021 01:15
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B-Rock452 posted:Gangs of London is available for purchase on streaming services now and man Gareth Evans shoots some really dynamic and awesome fight scenes. Hoping to get a chance to binge through it over the next few days but the first episode was really good. The first season sadly ends on a bit of a whimper and is more a trailer for the second season, but holy poo poo it is an absolute ride to get there. The attack on the traveller safe house (run by the wife from the old show 'Chef') is some of the most visceral action any one has shot in the last decade or so. It's so chaotic and organic but also comprehensible as a series of people making decisions.
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Jul 28, 2021 01:46
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It's also that taking a bit of consideration and grounding a characters actions tend to straight up make the action scenes better. Wick having to reload a lot helps set the rythmn for the gun fights. It feels more like a person moving through a space and doing things than someone in a blank void where mooks simply pop into existence to be shot. On that, I really wish Marvel would stop doing the scene where the henchmen, who have guns, just run at the hero to get karated because it's too hard to choreograph a fight where the hero moves from person to person. Black Widow had an especially bad example of this where Natasha is on a catwalk filled with baddies, but all of them are aiming their guns at the helicopter except for the one that's currently charging at her. It's a shame since the apartment fight is genuinely the first really good action scene the franchise has produced in ages.
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Jul 29, 2021 23:56
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mobby_6kl posted:I've seen a few Cyntha Rothrock movies so decided to watch Undefeatable just because it was mentioned a few pages back. The fights were decent I suppose, but everything else, yikes. Red Cliff has some absolutely amazing battle scenes. Incredibly over the top, like how a little kid thinks battles work, it's loving great.
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Aug 26, 2021 05:15
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Kate, the latest Netflix original, is a mixed bag. Mary Elizabeth Winstead is really good, it looks great and contains two genuinely outstanding action scenes (the fight in the restaurant and the one in the kitchen) otherwise it's a bog standard version of one of the two plots movies about assassins always have. The two good fights are really good though.
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Sep 13, 2021 03:29
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Jerkface posted:Its really good! I think it gets some props for having some interesting cinematography and shots in the movie rather than just lackadaisically working its way through the action cliches. Those 2 fights mentioned were hella good, and I think overall MEW does a great job in the action role. The plots a little whatever, but it doesn't matter the movie sells it! Oh yeah, I liked it. It's a solid 6 or 7 out of 10. Even the kid had grown on me by the end. There are some bits that really elevate it and I enjoyed playing 'spot the Takeshi Kitano/Takashi Miike collaborator' among the cast. I think the bits that are genuinely inspired make the bits that are pedestrian more annoying, because you can see that this was a team capable of something great. The genuinely incredible restaurant scene being followed up with the competent but standard alleyway shootout is a perfect example
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Sep 15, 2021 09:59
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Jerkface posted:Yea I'd be curious to know when the alley scene was added to the script, because I think its obvious a lot of care went into the restaurant and kitchen choreography. I'm pretty sure it was in the script from early on. It's a pretty key scene. However, it's shooting on either a much bigger set or possibly on location, so they're a bit more pressed for time. The two really good scenes are in enclosed spaces with small groups of actors. The key to a great scene often seems to simply be time.
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Sep 16, 2021 07:01
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Did anyone watch 'The Protege'? (Also called 'The Asset') It's a solid but unremarkable film except for one element. The main antagonist to Maggie Qs unstoppable super assassin is the 70 year old Michael Keaton. They've got to make him a legitimate, believable threat to Maggie Q and, unbelievably, they actually pull it off. I saw him in the credits and assumed he'd be the old, smug villain, but he's actually the fellow super assassin who can go toe to toe with the heroine. It's a very weird casting choice (It'd be like if Brian Cox was playing Karl Urban's role in the Bourne Supremacy) but they actually work around it incredibly well. I would legit watch a full length documentary on the various layers of trickery they used to make a 70 year old man look like a convincing badass.
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Sep 17, 2021 04:44
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CeeJee posted:Martin Campbell knows a thing or two about shooting good action and it looks like it was mostly shot in Bulgaria where there is a lot of experience as well in stunts. Look at this resume for Keaton's double: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1806796/ That is a hell of a resume. I broadly know all the tricks used, but seeing them used that way and it resulting in not just good trickery, but a couple of excellent fight scenes, is cool as gently caress. Grendels Dad posted:Obligatory editing magic: Thought it would be this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U58IdBjMeS4
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Sep 17, 2021 06:40
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Hirez posted:since not much posted lately, this come out Nov 5th Is the title a reference to some long take in the film or is that unrelated?
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Oct 20, 2021 01:13
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Hirez posted:on the other hand, arguably his best film*, Avengement was shot was in like 13 days total or whatever. Even more impressively, the last action scene, which is some of his best work and is a full five minutes long, was shot in two days.
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Oct 21, 2021 05:22
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Payndz posted:I have no idea what the gently caress is going on or who anyone is, but it seems to boil down to "Gandhi with bullet-time and people punching motorbikes." I will watch this movie every day until I die.
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Dec 9, 2021 11:54
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The second Unisol movie is clearly written by someone who goes insane through the writing process. I understand, since they've had to write the stupidest 'we need to go to a strip club' scene of any 90s action film and the most gratuitous "our pro wrestler played character needs to do some pro wrestling" scene. Also, they wrote themselves into a corner with how much stuff Goldberg's character survived so he just sort of explodes off screen after the main bad guy is dead, along with the actually rather large army of still active and functional unisols. Then Regeneration comes along and is the single most surprising good movie ever. The ten years later straight to DVD sequel to a sequel to a film that wasn't all that good to start with. Instead of a lovely cash in, it's a mediation on action films and how they interact with the real world.
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Dec 13, 2021 07:57
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Rob Schneider, who worked with him at least once, said that the best part was always being able to get good blow around him. Also, once, Van Damme was drunk/high as poo poo and got his rear end kicked by his bodyguard, Chuck Zito, who you may remember as the beefy mafia guy on OZ. Did we end up discussing One Shot? It's actually really solid and, against all loving odds and logic, a pretty thoughtful take on the war on terror. Or, at least, a lot more thoughtful than you could reasonably expect. It does kind of waste Ryan Phillipe though. I like Phillipe and have since 'The Way of the Gun.' If you haven't seen that, go do it now. It's the last really good 90s crime caper flick with a dope cast and one of the best shootouts ever in the finale.
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Dec 17, 2021 00:08
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Lumbermouth posted:It’s a movie that I’m still not sure that I like, but I definitely respect. All of the intense nihilism and unlikeable characters were deliberate choices on McQuarrie’s part as a reaction to the post-Pulp Fiction crime film. Definitely check out the commentary track if you haven’t before. A fun fact I know about it is that Benicio Del Toro cut a lot of his own dialogue. It's already a sparse, Mamety kind of script, but him and Phillipe communicate almost entirely in knowing glances and badass aphorisms. "There's always free cheese in a mouse trap" "I think a plan is just a list of things that don't happen" "You know what I'm gonna tell God when I see him? I'm gonna tell him I was framed" Such a loving good script. I'm glad McQuarrie found his niche as Tom Cruise's guy. I don't think he'll hurt for work ever again.
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Dec 20, 2021 00:33
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mastershakeman posted:I finally watched Chocolate , directed by the guy who did the tony jaa thai stuff, about an autistic chick who learns to fight watching jaa's movies Chocolate loving rules
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Dec 31, 2021 03:44
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dokmo posted:Osaka badass (a yakuza flick), deadball (a weird splatter comedy), death trance (closest to versus, I think: fantasy martial arts stuff) are the ones I remember. Death Trance is extremely similar to Versus in the sense of being a series of fight scenes loosely connected by a plot and outlandish characters. It's directed by Yuji Shimomura, who was the action director on Versus and the cut scene director on at least a couple of the Devil May Cry games.
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Jan 2, 2022 01:12
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POWELL CURES KIDS posted:
That's actually why I like them. I know it's silly. The people in it know it's silly. I don't need them to wink at me to let me know that they know that I know.
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Jan 17, 2022 08:56
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