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Lobok posted:Other than the ones you listed I'll add the final chase in Terminator 2. The one that leads into the smelting plant. It's short but it executes a few action beats really well, including the moment burned in my brain where the T-800 climbs up onto the semi's cab and fires point blank into the T-1000 (all practical stunt work). I loved that scene as a kid. There's a real feeling that the T800 is pissed off and is going out of his way to gently caress up the T1000. Teenage me was PUMPED watching that. Terminator 2 is full of masterful chases and action sequences. The music plays such a huge role, too. The bike scene in the storm drain when Arnie slips past the truck on the inside JUST making it, grabs John and the music swells... perfect. In fact, the music throughout the sequence from the mall to the final bike escape is just amazing and tells a story itself. Also the scene where the SWAT team shoot at Sarah and the music stops dead. Cameron has always been amazing at musical cues though. Aliens has the battle in the processing tower, the drums playing as they retreat, the crazy strings when the alien breaks through the window, the sudden stop for "eat this", etc. The dropship escape at the end... all amazing sequences blended with the music beautifully (which is especially impressive given the crazy timeframe and rehashed score). You can see his skill in Terminator 1 with the night club escape. Arnie leaping through the flames, punching the window out, being thrown clear. He's always had a great way of showing the flow of an action sequence.
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Mar 9, 2018 17:47
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Wheat Loaf posted:Re: James Cameron and chase scenes: I really like the big one in True Lies where Art Malik makes his getaway on a motorcycle and Arnold chases him on horseback. How could I forget True Lies?! Although my favourite scene from that film is Art Malik's face when Arnie appears beneath him in a Harrier jumpjet. It just captures the "am I seeing this poo poo?" moment perfectly
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Mar 9, 2018 18:18
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Narzack posted:I know it's not really an action movie, but I finally watched Unforgiven. Probably my second favorite Clint movie after Josey Wales. And, holy crap, he basically has the most cinematic face in all of filmdom. Anyone got opinions on the 2013 Japanese samurai version? I remember reading about it when it was coming out and thinking "holy poo poo!" but then I somehow forgot it even existed until now
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Oct 29, 2018 19:33
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Gene Labell is a huge bullshitter and Steven Seagal is a huge prick. That's how you find two dozen people who are willing to bend the truth a bit to humiliate a jerk. Gene Lebell is a loud braggart, but he's a physical beast even as an old man. Dude is like a pitbull crossed with a bear. I have no doubt that this story is possible (especially as it's a well known 'party trick' of Genes). The problem I have with the story is a stuntman simply doesn't pull this poo poo with the star of the movie and get away with it. Especially with an ego as fragile as Seagal. I think you're right in that there was probably some back stage dick waving, the pants making GBS threads story came up and people ran with it because Seagal is a collosal prick and old Gene loves a good yarn. But seriously.. even old man Gene would pull your head off
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Nov 7, 2019 08:47
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Shrimp or Shrimps posted:
I have loved this movie since I saw it as a kid in 1986 (vhs) and know every absurd line, scene, goof and bit of trivia. And it never dawned on me until this post how ridiculous it was that there was a rocket launcher in a gun shop. Seriously...
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Feb 5, 2020 17:02
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Franchescanado posted:I watched Best of the Best this weekend. While it's not a great movie, I enjoyed it a lot. Spoliers I love/hate this movie because it surprises me with how good it is and then shocks me when it's bad. Hammy acting aside, the characters feel like they have backstories, they interact well and the tournament really does work. The fighting was good (for the time) and none flashy. The characters had their own distinct styles too. Travis is a power house brawler, Tommy is a flashy technique ninja, Eric Roberts is 'dumb-tough', etc. Like you said, the bad guys are this scary, distant force but end up being human (despite the "killed my brother" cheeseball aspect). The tournament itself is great and avoids most of the Rocky cliches, and each main character gets their moment ("why are you counting them?"). As a kid I was amazed at the story not following the standard format with the ending and it was genuinely refreshing not to have a "plucky underdog wins despite it all" or a "loses bravely" moment. But the bad... hoh boy... Dafuq was with the annoying spiritual girl? Did she do anything apart from annoy James Earl-Jones' coach? And the yoga guy (hillariously) just gets his rear end kicked. And god, the 'emotional scenes' are bad. I know, I know... action movie, but... dear god. There were 4 movies (I brought the boxed set as it was cheaper than buying just the original). Watch the second one because the characters are still there, but it goes from sports story to standard action movie pretty quick. It's still cheeseball, it has awful family bits, but it has fun fights, has some of the original cast and those badass korean dudes make good on their promise  Avoid 3 and 4. Garbage. Although I seem to remember Tommy dressed as some kind of mascot spin kicking a fool in the head, but that's literally all I remember. Real straight-to-bargain-bin stuff
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Mar 18, 2020 10:05
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Olympic Mathlete posted:So I bought tickets last year for a showing of Aliens that's this Sunday. All other cinema chains have closed due to corona yet this one remains open. I took a look at the bookings and the joint is FULL because where else can you see this movie on a proper screen? Did IQs drop sharply while I was away? (I struggled so hard with the same decision because ALIENS IN A GODDAM CINEMA!!!, but... come on)
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Mar 18, 2020 14:12
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CeeJee posted:Supremacy is much better on a TV then in the cinema where it's a confusing mess. I wonder how much of the shakycam looked fantastic on the director's little monitor and in the editing room. I think there's a lot of truth in this. I've never had a problem with following the flow of the Bourne fights, but I only saw them on the small screen. I also wonder how much of the problem is actually bad editing/filmwork and how much is us wanting to see the fight in clearer detail? I've been frustrated at not being able to get to see the choreography from a wider angle to appreciate it more, but I've never thought "WTF is going on?". Whereas one of the Taken films (they all blend together for me) had a scene that was so choppy it actually took me out of the scene. As action fans we want to see the work that the actor put in, so it's annoying when it's chopped up and served in a frantic pace to suit the story telling rather than the spectacle. With a Jackie Chan film they know that we're not there for story or dramatic beats - we want to watch Jackie Chan do his thing and we want to see every moment of it, so we get a nice wide shot so we can kick back and say "holy gently caress, did you see that?!". Funnily enough, my favourite Jackie Chan scenes aren't the epic stunts or the crazy feats of athletisism, it's the little bits that chain together in one smooth shot that impress me. There's a scene in Mr Nice guy where he's fighting around some garden tools and does a crazy spring/flip thing that's a tiny part of the overall scene but thanks to the wide shot it actually triggered an argument among my friends ("no way that was real, he's got to be on wires!"). that would have been lost in modern film editing, or it could have been over-focused and lose the impressiveness of how casually such a crazy move was done. The Bourne films kind of fall between the genres where they want to be seen as dramas/thrillers rather than pure action, so the filming is geared more towards a dramatic audience than an action audience. While I'm watching thinking "drat, I really wanted to see that move from a better angle" my wife is watching and thinking "this is a desperate, fast fight for our hero". Short version - shakey cam and fast editing is the action movie version of a romantic love scene. As action fans we want porn.
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Sep 11, 2020 12:52
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:
Dude... let me be clear about how me and my friends watched Jackie Chan movies in the early 90s. - put on movie - talk poo poo and generally act like teenage assholes while the talking bits are on - see a fight scene start and say "here we go..." - alternate between saying "holy poo poo" and "laughing our asses off" - resume teenage assholeness when the fighting stops and talking starts Funny you mention Who Am I. I was so bored with that I literally forwarded through the whole film and the only part I remember is the rooftop fight. I should point out that I'm not some ADHD riddled kid who needs shiny things, but when I rent a Jackie Chan film I want to see him get his rear end kicked, nearly die on a roof and take out a bunch of guys using every item in the room. That said, when I watched The Foreigner I didn't apply this criteria because I knew from the trailer it was a more "serious" role and was genuinely intrigued to see how it would go. Neo Rasa posted:Batman Begins is a huge offender to me too. It's not even cut THAT badly or particularly hard to follow (and the staccato-ness of it matches how Batman is generally working by dropping in and out of sight and quickly taking out folks), but like, they were really talking up the keysi fighting method bullshit and how they put in a lot of work to use that with how Batman would work to make a unique fighting style and stuff and like, if you committed that much why would you not show it? This was actually an example I was thinking of. Thematically it makes sense and works extremely well, but I was left with blueballs at the thought of a method acting Christian Bale learning to beat the poo poo out of people and not actually showing it on screen.
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Sep 11, 2020 15:56
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:
No.
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Sep 11, 2020 17:52
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For the posters who are just starting their Van Damme journey - don't be fooled by one version of the box artwork for J.C.V.D It's an absolutely amazing film (seriously), but it's NOT an action movie. For some reason the cover on my DVD copy has a generic straight-to-DVD cover complete with giant floating Van Damme head and some building exploding. Also, don't watch it unless you're a serious Van Damme fan who grew up with his movies and knows his history of being a bit batshit because that movie really does tear JC open for all to see.
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Oct 1, 2020 12:28
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Long Tall Sally was an inspired choice there, for sure. I can't imagine it working with any other song. I play Long Tall Sally in my set on stage and you can always tell who the Predator fans are. I can literally see guys over 35 excitedly quoting the movie or calling themselves a sexual tyrannosaurus to their friends  I'll sometimes introduce the song as being "from the greatest story ever told"
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May 31, 2021 16:47
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Disposable Scud posted:The two good sequels remember that Van Damme is a reanimated solider. The Return has him not only acting like a completely normal dude but he's also a dad? I only watched this once waaaay back when it first came out and my only hazy memory of it is JCVD chilling around the Unisol factory like some kind of happy consultant, getting into a fight with one of them that goes out of control and saying "I can still take them one on one" like he somehow got over being a Vietnam soldier raised from the dead on the run from some government science black project and is now just a family guy working in a weird job
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Dec 15, 2021 17:50
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Grendels Dad posted:I would not be surprised to hear that JCVD was so drat high on that set that he wasn't really sure which movie this was even supposed to be. I actually didn't think of that, and he was indeed a coke monster in the 90s. If you grew up with Jean Claude in his prime, the J.C.V.D monologue just hit differently
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Dec 16, 2021 14:34
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Mantis42 posted:movie critics are morons in general but it's really pathetic how they were wrong about both last action hero and starship troopers basically back-to-back Last Action Hero was a weird one because it came at the very height of Arnold. Post T2 he was literally the biggest thing out there and reaching peak exposure. Stories of the film being advertised on the side of rockets going into space set it up for a fall as it was all so extravagant. It was a tonally weird film, too. Personally I love it and it gets so much right but you can't deny it's an uneven film. For me the problem was that the "action world" was too cartoony. For me the perfect level of self awareness in an Arnie film was True Lies. It was insane, violent, cool and tongue in cheek but it took itself JUST seriously enough that it didn't wink at the camera too much. Last Action Hero felt like a Loony Tunes cartoon in places. There was a literal cartoon cat character in there, actual steam came out of the police chief's ears and every joke was held up to the audience like it was saying "huh? huh?". This action world didn't actually feel like a world that would be an Arnold movie. Ironically, if they'd toned down the action world to True Lies levels it would be a perfect film. Charles Dance is amazing, some of the gags are perfect, the real world felt genuinely shocking after the action stuff, the sequence with meeting the real Arnold was perfect and even the kid wasn't as annoying as most child actors were at the time. I still giggle at the car chicken scene in the real world. The kid shouting "You are going to die!!" and there's no Hollywood angles, no fast editing. Just Arnold's car revving off and pummelling into the other car in an utterly real crash in the distance. Perfect moment and had me and a buddy crying with laughter for way longer than we should have been. For the record, the perfect Arnold movie is The Running Man and I will die on that hill
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Apr 18, 2022 11:25
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Gonz posted:The Running Man is tremendous. I was 9 when that film came out and I loved it. Yeah, even at 9 I thought the concept fell apart (how is this supposed to work live?) and spotted the silly things like the in-show credits being clips from the film still to come - but it was instrumental in making me question the world and the media, showing a kid how TV could be used to push whatever angle you wanted. An absolute classic 80s sci-fi soundtrack that still gives me chills, prime Jessie Ventura, memorable villains, a deep plot (for an Arnie film being watched by a 9 yearold) and so many amazing Arnold lines and a main bad guy who gets plenty of his own lines in. My favourite line in the movie isn't even an Arnold line. It's Killian. "I know you... you're the rear end in a top hat off TV" "Funny, I was thinking the same thing..."
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Apr 18, 2022 12:15
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Running Man is the first cinematic depiction of a Deepfake, isn't it? I guess Arnold as the Terminator mimicking Sarah Conner's mother, but that's only audio. The only other film I can think of is Rising Sun in the early 90s (where the Japanese may as well have been aliens with how they were portrayed). Running man had that whole "re-jig a few details to make Richards the bad guy in a major massacre" thing which my 9 yearold self was raging about. To a kid who was used to villains being plain evil blow-up-the-world types it was eye opening to see a gameshow host as a powerful enemy that simply held all the cards. Until "they're betting on Richards, for Christ's sake". "I can pick anyone I choose... and I choose Ben Richards" <leans into mic> "That boy's one mean motherfucker" Man, everyone remember's Arnie's lines, but there's so many classics from other characters. "Guess I'll go take some more steroids"
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Apr 18, 2022 15:55
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Neo Rasa posted:For real Richard Dawson was just the absolute best possible casting for that character. "Get me the Justice Department... Entertainment Division..."
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Apr 18, 2022 16:56
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Punkin Spunkin posted:The ones that just ended up being a blur of TOM CRUISE CLIMB BUILDING/PLANE IN FLIGHT, NOW WITH QUIPS!!!!! just didnt do it for me. This is how I feel. I love that there's still a major A list player in Hollywood doing real world stunts and I can't take away how incredible they are, but they're not the parts that impress me. Sure, Cruise climbing insane mountains, leaping over tall buildings and literally clinging to the side of a loving plane is mind blowing, but you know what impressed me the most? That scene where he escapes from being tied to a post by showing ridiculous core strength and effortlessly kicking his way up and over it. THAT scene made me say "holy poo poo!" more than whatever canyon jumping madness he's doing now. Also, the only villain I remember is MI:3 because PSH was genuinely scary Dog_Meat fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Jun 22, 2022 |
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Jun 21, 2022 17:01
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I can't remember which of the Craig Bond movies it was, but for me the best fight scene was the hotel room/balcony fight. Came out of nowhere, was quick, brutal and the finish really sells Bond as a cold killer assessing his surroundings while his opponent bleeds out in seconds.
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Jun 27, 2023 18:12
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Snowman_McK posted:
This really nails the problem with a lot of fight scenes, especially in mainstream movies. One of the reasons the old Indiana Jones movies were so good was because you saw a guy fighting for his life and Ford's expressions (and the editing) let you feel when he was out of his depth, spotted something to use, it failed, panic then gets lucky and is more surprised than anyone that it worked. Then the later films were "hey, watch this perfect cartoon character go through a choreographed dance" and it was boring. I've not really paid attention to the Marvel films (I kinda watched them all while doing something else), but there was a big difference between comic characters swinging on eachother in a boring, overwhelming slugfest in a CGI world and that fight in Winter Soldier where you saw Captain America being surprised by the knife flip, barely keeping up with the attacks and that ridiculously heavy flying knee into the car door (that missed) that made it actual feel like a fight. In fact, the only Marvel series I enjoyed was the Punisher, and that had a grounded brutality to the fights (ignoring the main character taking inhuman amounts of damage). There was a fight in a gym where he gets smashed and falls back, but as he falls he sees an opportunity to hit someone else on the way down. Little things like that make it more organic than "trained ninja folds up each opponent in succession" There's nothing wrong with using a fancy set of moves on screen, but it's a skill to make them look like they're being applied in a live situation where the opponent isn't complying
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Jun 29, 2023 11:25
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Shageletic posted:Did you like Daredevil? S1 was practically all of that. I liked it and found it refreshing, but when the Punisher got involved it kind of made DareDevil's style look overly flashy and a bit silly. But at the same time, it acknowledged that someone doing those moves would get knackered pretty quickly, so that was a plus. I thought the stairwell/hallway fight was impressive as it was so different for a TV show and really ambitious, but the Punisher prison fight did more for me. Not to mention the bathroom fight which was a perfect balance of direct brutality, adapting to the surroundings (pushing the girl out of the way, wrapping his belt around his wrist after learning from being stabbed before), switching targets as they become available and using the space around him to avoid being surrounded. All these little things that elevate it from "ninja dance battle". In fact, someone mentioned before about a film scene with someone's shooting being too perfect, but Punisher had an example "flawless multiple gun kills" done right. The alleyway scene where you see the 6 man group leader talking but Frank is already sizing up the targets and planning his move instead of engaging in the talk. When it's go time you see him execute his plan while moving his body and focusing on each target quickly but effectively. There was a similar (if more Hollywood) scene in Rambo (4th movie) on the boat where you see him sizing up the targets while trying to talk his way out and then unleashing a barrage of pre-planned pistol shots. It doesn't feel miraculous, it feels like "holy gently caress, this guy is a highly trained monster"
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Jun 29, 2023 13:23
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Rambo 4 talkSnowman_McK posted:It didn't even look good at the time. It's a very weird film. on the one hand, hundreds of people getting shot in half is a pretty good time. On the other, there's some impressively gratuitous and nasty violence directed towards civilians in the first half, including children getting bayoneted and babies thrown into fires spoilered just in case. Whoa... what version did I watch? I remember civilians being made to run through the rice fields full of landmines, women being auctioned off, summary executions, etc but I don't remember babies in fires or baynoted children . In terms of it holding up - I'm not sure you'll ever get the same "holy gently caress!" reaction to watching it in 2008, but at the time it was a refreshing change to have unapologetic war-is-hell violence that took Saving Private Ryan to near comic book excess levels. With all the massive CGI action films and over complicated set pieces saving the world, it was a breath of fresh air to see a small scale, small stakes no-bullshit bloodbath. Don't forget it wasn't long after Rock Balboa, too. Rocky had a similar history where he went from from "dramatic character piece" to "80s cartoon superhero meme" and was then brought back down to his roots years later. Seeing Rambo do a similar thing and recapturing the small, "personal war" feel of First Blood after the crazy "oiled chest machine gun guy" years felt right. And as someone said, the violence seems excessive and spiteful, but the whole film is a pressure cooker building up to a MASSIVE payoff. Like anything, looking back you can see elements of the rot that would lead to the awful poo poo-show that was Rambo 5, but at the time it was refreshingly dirty and great. Dog_Meat fucked around with this message at 08:47 on Jul 10, 2023 |
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Jul 10, 2023 08:44
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CelticPredator posted:I remember the fire baby. Some dude yeets a baby into the fire pit lol But it's not until we see the bad guy with a boy that the film finally unleashes Rambo. Genocide... rape... baby murder... wait... GAYNESS?!?!?! Lock and load...
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Jul 10, 2023 12:48
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