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Rewatching Predator films for first time not on a tv channel. Predator 1 still so good. The cast is just full of personalities (and as iasip puts it, mass). There's a touch of 80s politics as the squad attacks the guerrillas camp causing massive explosions before a cia conspiracy is hinted at. But all of that disappears as it becomes a slasher film. Arnie vs predator is just peak stuff. Predator 2 is just wild stuff and very fun. I hadn't watched this in over a decade now and forgot how packed it is with action. Within minutes of starting the movie is right to a big shootout. It's a sweaty La police vs gangs movie, and then with a predator/govt conspiracy. There's kind of this funny effect where every time the police go to stop a crime, a whole lot of people are killed and it's just that drat predators fault once again. Predator cast isn't as memorable as 1, but it's not bad. Paxton and Busey are having a great time, and Glover mostly works as this experienced (but not too old!) cop will play some tricks to win. I think it only stops working in the last 10 minutes where Glover somehow pushes the predator off a building and then very slowly chases the predator before a final duel in the ship. Glover just doesn't have the same physical presence at the end. Lots of new tools in 2: spears, net guns, super sharp disc, new med stuff, new vision modes.
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Feb 25, 2024 15:12
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Bill Paxton’s poo poo-eating grin is something that is really missing from today’s movies. Miss that guy.
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Feb 25, 2024 16:23
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“Lieutenant! Luck is my specialty!”
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Feb 25, 2024 17:50
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Alexander Hamilton posted:Bill Paxton’s poo poo-eating grin is something that is really missing from today’s movies. Miss that guy. He was one of a kind
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Feb 25, 2024 20:33
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Gareth Edwards (Monsters, Godzilla, Rogue One, The Creator) is on the couch for Corridor Crew's Visual FX Artists React. Haven't watched it, yet, but this is a pretty big score for the guys. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWjayZ3U4TQ
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Feb 26, 2024 01:53
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Predator 2 was not only pretty racist (in the grand tradition of a Death Wish type movie tbf) but not really entertaining to me. It felt like it wanted to be Robocop 2 but was nowhere near insane and spectacular enough. Like I wish it were more wild and stupid if anything. I stopped there... supposedly "The Predator" is worse, which is hard to believe. talk about true horror.
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Feb 26, 2024 02:07
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Subway scene and the meat house are both solid set pieces in predator 2. Though again Glover and cops show up and then there's lots of bodies again because of some invisible predator. I got Predators and the Predator in the set also to watch but not that interested in either. At least Prey is out there.
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Feb 26, 2024 02:35
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I love The Predator, just a wonderful big budget B-movie romp with classically quirky characters and stuff. Underrated as hell for me. By the minds that gave us Monster Squad. I also find Predator 2 to be maybe my third fav in the series. The magic of movies. I wonder if Siskel & Ebert ranked these franchises.
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Feb 26, 2024 03:02
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My buddy and I were talking about the latest Jacob Geller video essay and the issue of appropriation in the context of rear end-beating movies came up. Apparently back when Sifu (amazing game, btw) came out there was some Discourse about how an Asian-pastiche game made by a predominantly White French studio rubbed some people the wrong way. The (IMO reasonable) counter-point being that it's really a homage to martial arts movies, not real asian culture; and while martial arts cinema is inextricably linked with the asian cultures it arose from but it'd be like getting mad that a spaghetti Western isn't an accurate portrayal of frontier life. Anyway this got me thinking about movies about punching dudes and what would be the Western contributions to the canon of movies about punching real good, in the same vein that media like Sifu lovingly references the Raid and Old Boy. What say you, action thread? What Western movies/media do you think future media will reference the same way we mark out over a side view long shot of a green hallway?
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Feb 26, 2024 03:37
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It's probably just due to my age when they came out,but I immediately thought of neo v Morpheus, Darth maul, and Bourne identity. Then I realized those are all as old or older than Old Boy and surely something must have come out since then that's a defining fisticuff scene. But other than this, which I bet isn't remembered well, I'm stumped  Wick's impact was the gunfighting with the judo, not the judo itself. Maybe Nobody's bus fight or Theron's long take in Atomic Blonde, but were those seen by many people? trevorreznik fucked around with this message at 03:50 on Feb 26, 2024 |
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Feb 26, 2024 03:48
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Goddammit it why did I completely space the existence of the Matrix
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Feb 26, 2024 03:50
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Xand_Man posted:Goddammit it why did I completely space the existence of the Matrix I'm a little annoyed that I thought Hollywood punching and instantly saw Neo in my head because that was 25 drat years ago. Imagine asking a question like that in 1999 and the instant answer would be saying, oh, of course, the famous top of train fight in Emperor of the North between Marvin and Borgnine, nothing else has really had an impact since. Action really is undervalued in Hollywood and it's frustrating considering the lasting impact on viewers. trevorreznik fucked around with this message at 03:55 on Feb 26, 2024 |
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Feb 26, 2024 03:53
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Xand_Man posted:Goddammit it why did I completely space the existence of the Matrix Many people are saying this
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Feb 26, 2024 04:07
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Obviously the bathroom fight in the Schwarzenegger True Lies inspired the bathhouse fight in Eastern Promises
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Feb 26, 2024 05:49
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trevorreznik posted:Action really is undervalued in Hollywood and it's frustrating considering the lasting impact on viewers. Hollywood action exists mainly to produce character moments and story beats, most other people make action for action's sake, which is why most non American movies have a specialist action director to film the action sequences and Hollywood movies don't. If you, like me, care more about how good the action is than how good it makes the character look, then you will be disappointed by most Hollywood action. That's my theory.
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Feb 26, 2024 13:17
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dokmo posted:Hollywood action exists mainly to produce character moments and story beats, most other people make action for action's sake, which is why most non American movies have a specialist action director to film the action sequences and Hollywood movies don't. If you, like me, care more about how good the action is than how good it makes the character look, then you will be disappointed by most Hollywood action. That's my theory. I don't quite agree. Xand_Man was asking specifically about melee fighting / martial arts and the West is lacking in iconic stuff for that but it's good for overall action or adventure scenes. As far as recent Western contributions to the canon of movies about punching real good, that's tough. Does it have to be live action, or with real people? Don't know why this was my first thought but Hulk doing his best Bamm-Bamm impression on Loki in The Avengers is a move everyone would recognize.
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Feb 26, 2024 16:09
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Lobok posted:I don't quite agree. Xand_Man was asking specifically about melee fighting / martial arts and the West is lacking in iconic stuff for that but it's good for overall action or adventure scenes. That's a real good example. I couldn't think of much for comic movies. There's bits of stuff in Winter Soldier but nothing really Iconic. I was trying to picture the best hand to hand fights in the big franchises - M:I, Fast & Furious, marvel, etc. and mostly coming up blank. Do hunger games, divergent, Harry potter, any of those other teen targeted movies have anything that resonates and I'm just unaware of? The crazy thing though is even with Loki or Hobbs vs Dom in fast five, those were over a decade ago! And the audiences will absolutely enjoy fisticuffs , see EEAAO's success, albeit from a pretty outsider group of directors/actors to Hollywood. I think the appreciation and demand is there, it's just not being met. The honest answer might be Extraction's hand to hand stuff in the apartment building, I can see that building a legendary reputation since it has a big star doing a lot of great stuff.
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Feb 26, 2024 16:27
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It's actually kinda tough to find unique contributions that Hollywood has made to martial arts, because they tend to just coopt that stuff from other countries and/or bring in international performers. Like, obviously The Matrix was innovative in terms of how it combined the kung fu with the sci-fi premise, but it's still choreography from the mind of Yuen Woo-Ping. The most Iconic American fight scene I can think of is Roddy Piper vs. Keith David from They Live. You don't get a much more American fight scene than that one. Talking about Fast and Furious though, I think my favorite fight in the whole series is a very quick but realistic fight between Dom and Brian, after Dom finds out that Brian was working Lettie as a CI. I just love how they give Brian the MMA defensive moves where he's on the ground trying to not get his head bashed in and he's able to catch Dom in an armbar because of his over-aggressiveness. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-gebDSBFkY Basebf555 fucked around with this message at 16:43 on Feb 26, 2024 |
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Feb 26, 2024 16:40
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Road House is the epitome of action movies, fight scenes, and filmmaking in general.
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Feb 26, 2024 16:50
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Basebf555 posted:Talking about Fast and Furious though, I think my favorite fight in the whole series is a very quick but realistic fight between Dom and Brian, after Dom finds out that Brian was working Lettie as a CI. I just love how they give Brian the MMA defensive moves where he's on the ground trying to not get his head bashed in and he's able to catch Dom in an armbar because of his over-aggressiveness. I can see it in my head now that you've said it but before that the only move that comes to mind from the F&F series is in #6 on the plane when Dom lifts up the big guy and Hobbs jumps to do a flying clothesline knockout on him. But that's not really famous enough to count. And I'm not sure it even deserves the credit because I'm assuming that move is actually from wrestling.
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Feb 26, 2024 18:05
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WoodrowSkillson posted:Road House is the epitome of action movies, fight scenes, and filmmaking in general. The genre needs more warrior-poets. But Patrick Swayze was a one-of-a-kind pick this genre. He sold that sort of character perfectly.
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Feb 26, 2024 18:16
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Swayze brings the same quality to Point Break where it's like "yea this guy does karate kicks, makes total sense somehow, he seems like a guy who would do karate kicks".
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Feb 26, 2024 18:30
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Indiana Jones movies have great fights, although they still mostly serve as characterization as opposed to action for action's sake. Indy's fight against the big Nazi by the plane in Raiders is iconic, I'd say.
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Feb 26, 2024 18:51
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Indy fights are definitely in line with those classic Hollywood brawls where guys would tumble backwards over tables and throw their whole body into haymakers. I always thought Ford's fighting style owed something to Robert Conrad's Jim West: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzpvzsDzSq8
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Feb 26, 2024 18:57
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It's not massive-budget Hollywood, but the fight scene from Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning in the sports equipment store is sweet as hell.
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Feb 26, 2024 19:16
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Where do I go with that series btw? Can someone give me a quick rundown on what needs to be seen and skipped cuz I saw the Van Damme original a while back and thought it was solid. I think it's a fair thesis on the fact that the only thing the United States really recycles is war criminals.
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Feb 26, 2024 19:20
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Hollywood certainly makes (or at least made) plenty of movies with "action for action's sake," it's just that that's rarely hand-to-hand combat except in e.g. boxing movies. It's more about the set-pieces than the choreography itself. Also, foot chases. Foot chases have been very common in action movies for as long as action movies has existed, but in the 2000s we decided that "moving your body quickly while in a city" is now called "parkour." My favourite parkour movie La via della droga (dir. Castellari, 1977).
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Feb 26, 2024 19:23
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Punkin Spunkin posted:Where do I go with that series btw? Can someone give me a quick rundown on what needs to be seen and skipped cuz I saw the Van Damme original a while back and thought it was solid. I think it's a fair thesis on the fact that the only thing the United States really recycles is war criminals. My feeling is that you can skip 2 and 3, then jump back in with Universal Soldier: The Return, and watch the last three(The Return, Regeneration, and Day of Reckoning). Although none of them really are at the level of Day of Reckoning because Scott Adkins elevates the whole thing. There are probably people who'd say just skip right to Day of Reckoning and they not completely wrong, but if I remember correctly Day of Reckoning does have some leftover plot stuff going on from Regeneration.
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Feb 26, 2024 19:26
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Basebf555 posted:There are probably people who'd say just skip right to Day of Reckoning and they not completely wrong, but if I remember correctly Day of Reckoning does have some leftover plot stuff going on from Regeneration. Regeneration is definitely worth watching for the franchise's incredible tonal shift. I can't watch this fully until later, but it seems maybe relevant to the current discussion about many modern action sequences feeling refined into staleness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKl-K1qRGDc
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Feb 26, 2024 19:41
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Alexander Hamilton posted:Indiana Jones movies have great fights, although they still mostly serve as characterization as opposed to action for action's sake. Indy's fight against the big Nazi by the plane in Raiders is iconic, I'd say. And what's frustrating is we can't manage to get those kind of great fights anymore. I don't care what type of fighting style it is. I think Hollywood is somehow embarrassed to have someone just punch a guy even though superheroes are everywhere. I definitely need to watch the video above, because it's hard to understand why we had super memorable early Connery fights in From Russia With Love & Goldfinger, and then the expertly choreographed Daniel Craig stuff is just incredibly forgettable. Like did Chris Pratt ever throw a punch in the Jurassic movies? He should have , and if he did, it should have been more memorable. Heck, the last memorable fight scene I can think of with A-listers is probably the Last Duel which was mostly them just rolling around but with a fantastic setup. edit: Right at the outset of this video he does a good job showing visual examples of how a lot of these movies seem filmed the same way. And I think that's why the boxing in Baby Assassins, Kenshin swordfighting, or some of the Indian hero spectacle style stands out. trevorreznik fucked around with this message at 22:28 on Feb 26, 2024 |
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Feb 26, 2024 22:08
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Maybe not embarrassment. I think it's probably more like going for spectacle and novelty. Two dudes punching each other can be cool obviously, but it's also cheap. For Bond specifically, audiences expect way more than fisticuffs. I can see two dudes punching each other at a hockey game but at a hockey game I'm not going to see laser cars jumping out of skyscrapers to catch atomic cruise missiles in the bonnet (well, I did once, and it was a bad idea to drop acid before going).
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Feb 26, 2024 22:35
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That actually brings up that the Bourne movies are fairly iconic in that they inspired about a decade of forgettable fight scenes in their wake.
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Feb 26, 2024 22:36
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Alexander Hamilton posted:That actually brings up that the Bourne movies are fairly iconic in that they inspired about a decade of forgettable fight scenes in their wake. Yep, it's why I put those movies up with there with the Matrix. They're iconic for better or worse. And without ragging on them too hard, as Jacobus showed in his Righting Wrong fight breakdown, having really quick cuts is fine - it's all in the editing/coverage style of shooting.
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Feb 26, 2024 22:41
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Alexander Hamilton posted:That actually brings up that the Bourne movies are fairly iconic in that they inspired about a decade of forgettable fight scenes in their wake. It's funny because I don't think they're iconic anymore. Like in the true definition of iconic. There's not one specifc thing to recognize like the original start of this convo was searching for. At the time you could have seen a shakey-cam CQC scene and been like yep, Bourne, but now you wouldn't know if a movie did that if it was referencing Bourne specifically or just being in that style in general. I think we even talked about it in this thread at some point, how the strength and weakness of the fighting in Bourne is that you're kind of letting it wash over you rather than getting each. distinct. move. into a move. It has very little or none of the kind of the things that something like the Matrix had, that are instantly recognizable as *only* being from the Matrix, like how a thousand hacks all thought they were being hilarious by putting Trinity's hangtime kick in their movies.
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Feb 26, 2024 22:48
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Hollywood movies don't lack punches, they just lack the basic choreography and cinematography where you can see someone throw a punch and someone take a punch in the same shot.
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Feb 26, 2024 22:56
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Halloween Jack posted:Hollywood movies don't lack punches, they just lack the basic choreography and cinematography where you can see someone throw a punch and someone take a punch in the same shot. I just don't think that's true. I think the issue is that the heroes of American cinema mow down mooks in competently edited fights, but they don't resonate because they don't tie into the rest of the movie (as that nicely done video points out, partly due to second unit directors) and are almost never against the antagonist. It's why I think the Last Duel is a good example of doing things right. Imagine if the Raid finale was against a mastermind guy instead of Mad Dog, for instance. It doesn't have to always be a fistfight at the end (wick 1 suffers from this) but there's a tough balance to find. All the big English language franchises are cars/spy stuff/superhero powers for the finale. But that's just a separate complaint, since it's not like Old Boy ends with a big fight either.
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Feb 26, 2024 23:07
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Just watched Code of Silence. It's is a decent action film full of "Hey it's that guy !" Character Actors but it is let down by the fact that it stars Chuck Norris. And while Chuck is quite good at kicking he is a very bad actor and about as charismatic as a bag full of doorknobs so he's just this weird void in a film full of much better actors. Still a fairly solid film and like a lot of films of that era it's wonderfully crusty and sweaty and all the locations feel rundown which adds to the grittiness.
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Feb 27, 2024 00:09
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FreudianSlippers posted:Just watched Code of Silence. It's is a decent action film full of "Hey it's that guy !" Character Actors but it is let down by the fact that it stars Chuck Norris. And while Chuck is quite good at kicking he is a very bad actor and about as charismatic as a bag full of doorknobs so he's just this weird void in a film full of much better actors. It's one of my favorite 80s Chicago movies. Don't rag on Chuck Norris - they gave him an on screen partner with even worse screen presence!! (the awful robot). Doesn't hurt to have the fantastic dive from the top of the L into the river.
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Feb 27, 2024 00:21
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There's been alot of good action on TV shows. I'd say Daredevil's first season hallway fight was iconic. I do remember talking about it with strangers so that's gotta count for something
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Feb 27, 2024 00:36
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Shageletic posted:There's been alot of good action on TV shows. I'd say Daredevil's first season hallway fight was iconic. I do remember talking about it with strangers so that's gotta count for something Definitely was, though it has to share with Oldboy.
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Feb 27, 2024 01:11
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