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X-Ray Pecs posted:So Peter Hyams' career is doing unreasonably good knockoffs, right? I just finished Timecop and it's 100% a studio cashing in on Terminator 2 even down to a man getting partially frozen and broken but it's still pretty awesome. Weirdest thing is that it's probably one of the most 2017 movies possible, outside of The Dead Zone. A White Supremacist party, a President that's going to win through just using TV, closing the borders to make "America for Americans first," JCVD even cracks "maybe he'll calm down after the election." It's weirdly prescient in a little more specific way than a lot of Trump-predicting media has been. JCVD kicked some rear end, the fight scenes are really fun, and I like that Hyams DPs a lot of his own movies, Timecop looks great. I think Timecop was an adaptation of an obscure comic book. Hyams's son, Jonathan Hyams, directed the two really good Universal Soldier DTV sequels, and Peter Hyams was the cinematographer on one or both of them. Payndz posted:Timecop was dopey fun from the days when even third-division chunkheads like Van Damme and Seagal had decent amounts of resources put behind them. I miss the days of "high concept" action cinema. The ones I've got the most affection for are Nicolas Cage's trilogy of action movies he did immediately after he won his Oscar. I like Face/Off the best out of the three but The Rock (really more of a Sean Connery movie - one of the high points of his post-Untouchables career revival where he basically played "elderly James Bond" in all his movies) and Con Air have their moments.
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Dec 24, 2017 22:34
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Does anyone have any expectations at all for a) James Cameron returning to the Terminator franchise in some capacity; and b) Shane Black doing a new Predator movie next year?
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Dec 25, 2017 17:19
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I rewatched all four Lethal Weapons yesterday (because I want to make the most of my Christmas break before work starts back next week). While 3 and 4 aren't as good as 1 and 2, I think they maintain a really consistently high level of quality across all four. Is the TV series good? I've got to get into the TV series. One thing that occurred to me this time which never really had when I'd seen any of them previously is that, for some reason, they remind me a lot of Indiana Jones. I'm not sure why; it's not just Jeffrey Boam writing the second and third ones after he'd done Last Crusade, there's just a kind of je ne sais quoi to them that evokes Indiana Jones for me. Wheat Loaf fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Dec 28, 2017 |
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Dec 28, 2017 17:10
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Do they set it in the late 80s or is it in the present day? Does it adapt the plots of the movies at all or is it reusing the characters in a different setting?
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Dec 28, 2017 22:28
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I think the main weakness of Lethal Weapon or at least the thing that sets them apart from a lot of their contemporaries is that they don't tend to have really fun or memorable villains. There's not usually a whole lot to them. Even with an actor like Joss Ackland, the most memorable thing about Arjen Rudd is "DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITAAAAAYYYY!" at the very end of 2. For instance, for all that he's not exactly a credible physical match for Stallone, John Lithgow is still one of the most enjoyable parts of Cliffhanger. And Face/Off wouldn't be up to much if not for Nicolas Cage as Castor Troy and John Travolta as Nicolas Cage as Castor Troy.
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Dec 28, 2017 22:33
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Do we agree that Lethal Weapon is a better Christmas movie than Die Hard? 
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Dec 28, 2017 22:54
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Last Crusade is better than Raiders anyway. Does anyone have any action-adventure recommendations like Indiana Jones?
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Dec 28, 2017 23:21
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Aw, I love all those already (and the first Antonio Banderas Zorro movie - I can't believe that Zorro's hundredth anniversary is 2019 and nobody's doing a movie to celebrate). I was hoping there'd be more I hadn't heard of. The most recent one that occurs to me was Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, which was flawed but which I mostly liked. You know what would be really cool? A movie version of Crimson Skies. There was a TV show from the early 80s created by Donald P. Bellisario (I think it was his first follow-up to Magnum P.I.) called Tales of the Gold Monkey which aimed to cash in on the popularity of Raiders. From what I understand, it was a live-action version of TaleSpin with humans instead of Jungle Book characters. I've never seen it but it's been on my list for a while. Did anyone ever see The Phantom with Billy Zane? I believe it was Jeffrey Boam's last major screenplay before his death; it comes from the same era as all those early 90s superhero movies that wanted in on that Batman '89 money. It's not very good, but I think there's a really good movie in it somewhere.
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Dec 28, 2017 23:51
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I think Phantom (and the Shadow to an extent) is right on the line that divides Doc Savage style pulp adventure from superheroes and specifically Batman. One movie which might be in this wheelhouse, which was somewhat problematic but which I nonetheless enjoyed more than disliked was the Lone Ranger adaptation from a few years ago with Armie Hammer and Johnny Depp.
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Dec 29, 2017 00:01
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It's too bad Weir (or anyone) never made any more Aubrey-Maturin movies, especially since I believe the movie made a decent amount of money, was nominated for a bunch of Oscars and even won a few, the cast were all signed to do another one and they even bought the boat they used, but I've heard it's a miserable time trying to film on water.
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Dec 29, 2017 15:07
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X-Ray Pecs posted:The Adventures of Tintin is a loving blast, and it’s even directed by Spielberg! My brother's a big Tintin fan and he's had the dvd for years but I still haven't seen that. I've always been very keen on the opening credits for the animated series. Even just the first 20 seconds of it.
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Dec 29, 2017 15:29
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Payndz posted:It's also a bit problematic now as the star (Stephen Collins) has been exposed as a paedophile. He also appeared as Willard Decker in Star Trek: The Motion Picture and is best known as the dad from 7th Heaven.
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Dec 29, 2017 17:35
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Neo Rasa posted:The Phantom is so bad just because much of the cast (Billy Zane included) are sleepwalking through it for significant chunks of the movie. Billy Zane and Catherine Zeta-Jones' stunt people put in some good work though. I remember the posters for it looked really stupid and had that "SLAM EVIL!" slogan all over them. Somehow Phantom 2040 was way better. This poster, on the other hand, was pretty decent:  You're right it's main problem is that it's boring. There's one scene where Kristy Swanson is on a seaplane, looks out the window and sees Catherine Zeta-Jones's all-female crew of sky pirates bearing down on it, then it cuts away to Billy Zane in his Phantomcave, then cuts back to Kristy Swanson's seaplane already having been forced down offscreen and her being taken prisoner. Treat Williams is pretty fun as a kind of Gene Hackman Lex Luthor styled evil tycoon, though. If it had just been him as the villain, it might have been better, but they bring in all this stuff about the Singh Brotherhood from the comic strips who show up in the last 15 minutes and are disposed of rather ignominiously when Kristy Swanson and Catherine Zeta-Jones drop a net on them and their leader (who's played by Cary Hiroyuki-Tagawa) is killed when he goes to attack the Phantom with a sword, overcommits and somersaults into a pool of piranha fish like the stormtrooper Han Solo killed by fake-out in the Star Wars Holiday Special. I believe Boam later said that he and Joe Dante had co-written a script which was meant to play up the humour and basically parody the entire pulp adventure genre (about what you'd expect from the guy who did Gremlins and the guy who wrote two Lethal Weapon movies and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) but when it was actually made, they played it straight because they were still chasing after that Batman money. In spite of everything, I actually think it was a bit better than the Shadow (though neither of them were as good as Dick Tracy with Warren Beatty and Al Pacino, which I unabashedly love). The best pulp/adventure movies of the 90s (off the top of my head) were The Rocketeer and The Mask of Zorro. quote:Speaking of adventure movies like that, I never actually saw Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Does anyone here like that? I remember that article making the rounds here awhile ago about how it was a shame they were first to making a movie with that level of green screen and CG backdrops and stuff since it wasn't popular at the time but that's basically textbook how sci-fi/etc. movies are made today and how they got the cast they did because everyone starring in it was a true believer in the technology. I rewatched it recently and enjoyed it although it's a far from perfect movie; I really liked it when it came out because Crimson Skies: The High Road to Revenge was one of my favourite games in 2003/2004 and it was the closest I think we've ever gotten to that. Crimson Skies could be such a fun movie. The bad guy is a Nazi mad scientist who wants to destroy Chicago by using a gigantic zeppelin equipped with a machine that generates F5 tornadoes. Wheat Loaf fucked around with this message at 17:48 on Dec 29, 2017 |
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Dec 29, 2017 17:43
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Big Bad Voodoo Lou posted:The Mummy was 1999. I keep forgetting the Mummy even though I loved both of them when I was little. I've got to rewatch them sometime because I haven't seen them in ages. Definitely check out Zorro, though Phantom is pretty inessential. Movies in the same wheelhouse from around the same time period that I was super hyped but turned out to be very disappointing: Wild Wild West with Will Smith (which I never got to see in the cinema) and the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie (which I did). (The latter would be much better 10 years later when it was called Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows.)
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Dec 29, 2017 17:53
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Big Bad Voodoo Lou posted:If you wanted to like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen because you like the concept, characters, and setting, but it just wasn't that good of a movie, try watching Penny Dreadful. It's a very similar concept, but done much better, and meant for adults. Oh, I've seen Penny Dreadful. I like it a lot but I'm sort of disappointed that it's allegedly responsible for the plug being pulled on a putative TV adaptation of Anno Dracula. quote:Wild Wild West is one of the worst movies I've ever seen. And I never got around to seeing that second Sherlock Holmes movie. I think the second one is more of the same if you liked the first; it's pretty much "The Final Problem" with bits and pieces of "The Empty House". If you recall the scene in the first one where Holmes is in a boxing match and does that slow-motion analysis of how he'll finish the fight, there's a pretty cool bit at the end of the second one where he's facing down Moriarty and doing the same thing, then it goes over to Moriarty and he's doing it as well.
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Dec 29, 2017 18:11
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Maverick began its life as Wild, Wild West. Richard Donner was going to direct it, Mel Gibson was going to star as Jim West and Shane Black was going to write the script, but it fell through, so Donner and Gibson did Maverick instead. Black's script for Wild, Wild West is on the Internet but I haven't read any of it. Best Mel Gibson acting movie since 2000 was Chicken Run.
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Dec 29, 2017 18:49
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Payndz posted:All I can remember about Ecks Vs Sever now is that it was incredibly loving boring. The action was so slow and leaden that there wasn't a single even vaguely exciting moment in the whole thing. It's too bad because Lucy Liu could and should have been a big action star in the 2000s. I don't even mind those Charlie's Angels movies she was in and I think she's probably the best thing in them.
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Dec 30, 2017 12:46
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Since I never appreciated it when I was younger, when I rewatched Wild Wild West earlier this year I thought the whole bit where West and Loveless are swapping insults at each other where it amounts to "Haha, you're black!" and "Haha, you're disabled!" is the weirdest thing. I remember thinking, "This is like if Quentin Tarantino made a PG movie."
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Dec 30, 2017 13:34
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Payndz posted:Christ, didn't anyone tell the director "The Matrix was three years ago, man! Move on!" There's a lot of early 00s movies that realised the Matrix was a bit of a game changer and wanted to emulate it, but couldn't quite pull it off. The era when everybody wore a whole lot of black leather and it all seemed very dark and gloomy (I think the Blade movies kicked it off, even though the Matrix was a big contributor as well: see also the X-Men movies, the Resident Evil movies, the Underworld movies, to an extent stuff like Equilibrium, Ultraviolet, even the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen has thta kind of aesthetic).
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Dec 30, 2017 14:45
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Hey, I don't know if samurai movies count for this thread, but I recently tried the 1989 movie Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman recently after getting the DVD as part of a "5 movies for £20" deal at a local shop. I've not seen any other Zatoichi movies but I know the basic concept (mainly via Stan Sakai's parody of him in Usagi Yojimbo); I believe this one was the original actor's final go in the role. It starts off enjoyably enough - Zatoichi is released from prison and goes to visit an old friend, then finds the town overrun by rival yakuza gangs - but then it just gets really confusing. So many characters just vanish from the movie, there's all these byzantine machinations around people selling antique muskets to each other that have nothing to do with Zatoichi at all. Is this what the rest of the Zatoichi movies? If so, I'm not sure how they secured their reputation for greatness. If not, did I just make a bad choice and do Zatoichi fans consider this one of the weaker entries in the series?
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Dec 30, 2017 23:17
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Neo Rasa posted:Broadly, it's considered a lesser one by many fans, both for the reasons you mention and for Shintaro Katsu's noticeably not caring as much as he did during the old ones. Which of the older ones should I check out if I can find them?
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Dec 31, 2017 00:23
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Another movie I watched recently which really disappointed me was Machete Kills, which was a real letdown after I enjoyed the first one. I understand what Rodriguez was trying to do but it just didn't land for me.
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Dec 31, 2017 01:12
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LesterGroans posted:I didn't even care for the first Machete and it's still miles ahead of that lovely sequel. I think the original Machete works (for me, anyway) because Rodriguez decided he'd homage exploitation movies by making an exploitation movie. In the sequel, he tried to actively parody grindhouse movies and it just didn't work, I think because when you actually go back and watch some of those old movies, they're usually very earnest and they usually play things straight. I think Tarantino gets that; I don't think Tarantino movies that are homaging some element of grindhouse cinema tend to play any of it for laughs. I feel like Machete Kills was almost too self-aware and tongue in cheek for it to be effective as a parody. Edit: Aside from Desperado, I don't think Rodriguez has a great track record for sequels. Wheat Loaf fucked around with this message at 12:58 on Dec 31, 2017 |
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Dec 31, 2017 11:52
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Snowman_McK posted:There's no winking in Hobo, whereas Rodriguez always has to remind you that he's above the film, that he's smart enough to get it, and as a result the films (especially Machete Kills) really smack of insincerity and insecurity. I don't know how much of a problem that is in Rodriguez's movies in general; of those I've seen, it's only really been a problem with Machete Kills. I didn't think there was too much winking in, say, Desperado or Rodriguez's half of From Dusk Til Dawn. quote:It's amazing that even more than 20 years into Tarantino's career, so few of his imitators get why he works. He makes earnest films about pulp movie characters. They're either small scale stories of when things go wrong (like the Marvin story) or true, fundamental identity crises (like Jules in Pulp Fiction or the Bride in Kill Bill) And soon he'll be done. Is this Star Trek movie he's doing supposed to be the one he's going out on? He's got his Manson movie coming out, then there's a Star Trek movie, then is that it? Or will the Star Trek one not count and he'll still have one more after that?
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Jan 2, 2018 11:49
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I hope he does Kill Bill 3. I know he's gone back and forth on it for about 15 years at this point but it'd still be fun to see.
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Jan 2, 2018 20:18
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I've never seen Boondock Saints. I always thought it had something to do with the Aaron McGruder comic strip and cartoon The Boondocks.
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Jan 2, 2018 21:53
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It's in the quippy hitmen / heist gone wrong genre that was all the rage after Tarantino broke through, isn't it?
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Jan 2, 2018 21:57
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I've never felt entirely comfortable describing war movies or historical movies as action films, even if they have action in them. Maybe that's a strange hang-up of mine. I don't tend to mind most representations of violence in movies but when it's movies that are ostensibly based on real events that happened to real people, it's a bit uncomfortable to me. I've also never been a big Braveheart fan because I think Babe deserved the Oscars it won that year.
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Jan 4, 2018 10:01
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Question: is Top Gun an action movie? A while ago I watched a WatchMojo list video ranking the 10 greatest action directors (James Cameron was number one) and Tony Scott was on it, with both Top Gun and True Romance cited (but as far as I can recall, not The Last Boy Scout); I like the latter but it's not an action movie, while I don't think I've ever seen the former the whole way through.
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Jan 4, 2018 23:20
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Big Bad Voodoo Lou posted:The Last Boy Scout and True Romance are my favorite Tony Scott movies, although they have more to do with Shane Black, Tarantino, and the excellent casts in both. I'm not sure what my favourite of his would be. I like True Romance a lot, though as you say it's more because of the Tarantino screenplay, and I really like The Last Boy Scout even though it's not perfect (I imagine there's a world out there where it was Lethal Weapon 3 and Die Hard With a Vengeance was Lethal Weapon 5 ) and I remember enjoying Crimson Tide. I've never bothered to watch the remake of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three because the original one with Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw is basically perfect. Don't think I've even seen Beverly Hills Cop II, come to think of it (don't think I've seen any of the Beverly Hills Cop movies).What's the best John McTiernan movie outside Predator and Die Hard? I feel like it's got to be The Hunt for Red October but I think it's a pity Harrison Ford isn't in it (not because I dislike Alec Baldwin or anything). I like Patriot Games a lot more than Clear and Present Danger. Were any of the other Jack Ryan movies outside that original trilogy any good?
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Jan 5, 2018 00:28
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Top Gun had an enormous amount of influence on 80s action movies for a couple of years until Die Hard came out; you really should see it if only as a historical touchstone. What are the big "touchstone" action movies? There's the Sean Connery James Bond movies. 48 Hrs. must be one. Die Hard, obviously. The Matrix. Possibly The Bourne Identity?
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Jan 5, 2018 00:31
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Basebf555 posted:Enter the Dragon, Lethal Weapon, a bunch of Arnold movies, then more recently I'd throw Bad Boys and Rush Hour in that category, and then Fury Road, The Raid and it's sequel, and John Wick. I'm not 100% on Lethal Weapon. I think it's probably the best buddy cop action comedy movie (well, maybe Lethal Weapon 2 is better) but wouldn't stuff like 48 hrs. and even the first two Beverly Hills Cops be more "important" on those terms?
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Jan 5, 2018 00:56
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Sure, fair enough. Maybe it didn't do it first, but Lethal Weapon did it best so it's the one people remember.
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Jan 5, 2018 01:09
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I liked The Villainess a lot but thought the plot is a bit too byzantine for its own good.
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Jan 5, 2018 10:22
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Halloween Jack posted:Once you go back far enough, you gotta start counting Westerns and "adventure" films too. I'm not sure when "action" emerged as a genre, but Bullitt is one of the first I can think of. I'm reminded of something I'm not keen on: dvds that make old movies look like direct-to-video movies from 2007. I will give you some examples:       Blah. The dvd cover for Shaft is really dull when you remember how cool the poster looked: 
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Jan 5, 2018 17:08
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Neo Rasa posted:Regarding that Shaft cover, it's from a DVD/VHS re-issue of the entire series from when the new movie came out in 2000. This was a horrible time for movie covers because of that last mass produced wave of VHS tapes and early super mass produced wave of DVDs, many of them went that "just put a picture of the star on the cover" despite them having totally rad already existing posters or artwork. What's especially annoying is that I have Shaft on dvd in a proper dvd box, but I have Shaft's Big Score and Shaft In Africa... in snapcases.  quote:Speaking of influential or not, anyone who's seen Mad Max knows at the very end we see Max calmly walk towards the camera as an explosion happens in the background. I could have sworn we mentioned it in this thread but couldn't find it, what movie did that before Mad Max? I think there was only one specific one we could pick out. The earliest example I can find via a cursory Google search is a 1976 spaghetti western called Get Mean. The scene in question.
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Jan 5, 2018 17:20
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I'm watching Tango and Cash, which I haven't seen before. I want to like it but it's just not very good, is it? You know how there was a bit of chat upthread about how Boondock Saints is like the really bad take on Tarantino style quipping hitmen/heist gone wrong movies? This one feels like it's doing the same thing for buddy cop movies and action comedies. I understand its origins are that Stallone was offered Beverly Hills Cop but didn't like the script, so he rewrote it to remove all the humour/make all the humour really bad, then departed from the project and used his rewrite as the basis for Tango and Cash. It's exactly like "What if Lethal Weapon but not funny or charming?"  Jack Palance is fun in it, though. He's the saving grace of it. Edit: It would at least have been novel if they'd played up the "bad cop, worse cop" bit and just done it like Lethal Weapon if Riggs and Murtuagh were comically corrupt. Wheat Loaf fucked around with this message at 12:20 on Jan 7, 2018 |
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Jan 7, 2018 11:38
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I probably had it confused with Cobra. I think the most noteworthy thing about Tango and Cash is that it's the last movie released in the 1980s.
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Jan 8, 2018 15:53
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I thought I'd try the Lethal Weapon TV series; it's pretty good. One weird thing is that Damon Wayans is older than Danny Glover was when the original Lethal Weapon movie came out by 15 years but his Murtaugh still seems younger. 
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Jan 8, 2018 20:26
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This Lethal Weapon TV show has me thinking: Face/Off: The Series. If you made it today, it'd be 13 episodes redoing the plot of the movie; if you made it 10 years ago, every season would be 22 episodes and every episode would be about Sean Archer taking his face off and replacing it with the bad guy of the week's face as the ultimate deep cover, while he's trying to work out which bad guy of the week is Castor Troy, who took his face off at the end of the pilot episode and has been taking his face off on a weekly basis as the ultimate disguise.
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Jan 10, 2018 15:31
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