Matt’s Ten Favorite Action Movies (at this moment)

    While talking about Die Hard on the ITMODcast, Brad challenged me to come up with my top five action movie list.  I thought I’d expand that, and list ten of my favorite action movies.   I’d certainly say that Die Hard is awesome, and totally deserves a spot on the list.  But as I realized while watching it last week at the Alamo Drafthouse, I have very little experience with it; it’s not a film I’ve ‘lived’ with like some of these.  Of course, like any of these lists I make, the order (and even the inclusion) of films is subject to change depending on the day and my mood.

10.  The Matrix:  Its massive popularity and the disappointment with the sequels have probably combined to create a backlash against the movie.  But I still love it.  To say the very least, it was a game changer.  Though if that change was good or bad may still be up for debate.  I love the culmination of so many cyberpunk concepts into a kung-fu filled, effects laden action adventure.

9.  Desperado:  Here’s a movie that I had NO interest in ever seeing.  The trailers made it look like some pseudo-Brad Pitt romance with a bit of action thrown in.  No thank you.  But then a friend told me to put my preconceptions aside and give it a try.  The movie started up, Steve Buscemi starts telling his story of the ‘biggest Mexican’ he’d ever seen, and I was hooked.  Way over the top violence, lots of bent humor, and a sense of wild excitement.  It’s so danged much fun.

8.  Conan the Barbarian:  Not surprisingly, I have a couple Arnold movies on this list.  This is probably my favorite fantasy genre film, featuring some of my favorite scenes.  The final battle, in spite of only featuring a relative handful of horsemen, is one of the most epic things I’ve ever seen.  And the music.  Oh, the music.

7.  Fist of Legend:  No wire work, no crazy effects.  Just fists flying at mind blowing speed.  The movie that taught me Kung Fu flicks could be more than just bad dubbing and unintentional fun.  Jet Li was a revelation, the movie had surprising heart and soul, and the action is top notch.

6.  Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon:  A sweeping, martial arts period piece with some of the of the most pulse-pounding kung-fu I’ve ever seen.  Gorgeously shot, marvelously staged, and lushly crafted.  It’s not only an amazing action movie, it’s an amazing movie.

5.  Aliens:  Alien is one of the all time great horror films.  Aliens is one of the all time great action films.  Gone is the haunted house stalking, replaced by hoards of bugs eating a colorful team of wisecracking Colonial Marines.  This is, to my thinking, the peak of James Cameron.  He never even came close again.  But what a peak.  For all his bloated, soulless, time-sucks that came later, this movie remains a masterwork; untarnished.

4.  Escape from New York:  In the 80s, there was one thing people were pretty darned sure about, and that’s that the world was going to go right down the tubes.  This look forward into the corrupt police state of America circa 1997 is darned cool.  Snake is the Clint Eastwood channeling hero who goes into the prison world of New York City, where he has to save the President from the clutches of The Duke.  Lots of great supporting roles and a cool atmosphere make this one a classic.

3.  Commando:  Yup.  My fourth favorite movie of all time.  Yeah.  That’s right.  Obviously, the script is the strength of the film, but Arnold pounds the living crap out of a bunch of people, then cuts and shoots apart the entire army of an evil dictator all by himself, and all for the love of his daughter.  Let off some steam, don’t disturb my friend, and if you’re lucky, I’ll kill you last.

2.  Raiders of the Lost Ark:  Thrilling heroics and retro-fueled adventure are the name of the game in this, one of my all time favorite films (# 10, in fact) and one of my great cinematic influences (# 1 on that list).  Fistfights, foot chases, and that awesome truck fight.  It’s all the cliffhanger excitement of classic film crammed into one beautiful package.  Cool characters, cool story, and beautifully shot.  One of the greats.

1.  The Road Warrior: I’m a fan of the whole series, to be honest.  Yeah, I even like Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.  Actually, I love it.  But The Road Warrior (aka Mad Max 2) is a straight-up amazing film.  It’s gut punchingly savage, dark, depressing, and exciting as all heck.  The iconic final chase is a thing of beauty (so much so that they felt the need to directly lift it in Beyond Thunderdome), but the movie features several cool action scenes, not to mention a beautifully presented apocalyptic world, populated by interesting characters.  Like the best movies, I felt like it took pace within a much larger world.  While we’re watching the story of Max, I have no doubt that over the next hill, equally dramatic lives are being lived and snuffed out.

-Matthew J. Constantine

Another Two Fistfuls of Favorites! (Matt’s Picks)

    It’s that time of year again.  Brad and I put down in stone (blog) the next ten movies in our lists of all time favorite films.  (See my 1-10 here, and 11-20 here).  The further into the list I get, the more weird I feel about it.  Not bad.  Just weird.  Of course, picking favorite movies is like picking favorite children.  Still, some kids are better than others.  And dang it.  Where’s Citizen Kane?  2001?  Hard Ticket To Hawaii?  I love those movies.  Well, maybe in the next installment.

30.  Cat People:  “Look at that boat…Look at that boat.”  I’m not a kinky guy.  But this movie drips in kink and I love it.  John Heard plays a successful me (you know, if I ran the zoo, and all that), wrapped up with a very special kind of femme fatale.  Nastassja Kinski is that fatale, a sweet natured girl with giant eyes and deep naivete.  They’re a perfect match, except for one thing.  Beautiful, deliberately paced, and with plenty of time spent on character, this weird mystery takes more than one unexpected turn.  Not for the easily upset, it features some rather unusual ideas, none too few of them depicted on screen.

29.  In a Lonely Place:  I’ve been a Bogart fan since I was around 10, when we got a VCR at my house and saw Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon, and Key Largo on a VHS my dad had.  Bogie was so cool, so tough, and so beautifully ugly.  Over the next 25 years, I watched those three films many times, and slowly watched others in his filmography.  But it was In a Lonely Place that struck me like a bolt of lightening.  Like when I read Henry Rollins’s poem I Know You, I felt my heart and soul were being ripped out and shown to me in their raw form.  Here was a film where my favorite actor was playing me, or at least the version of me I’m most ashamed of, most scared of.  I think it’s his best performance, and though the ending is a bit sensationalist, the movie feels like a brutally honest piece of self assessment by a writer about being a writer.

28.  Zardoz: "I have seen the future and it does not work."  It doesn’t get a heck of a lot more British-weird than this 70s masterpiece of the bizarre.  Sean Connery plays an ubermensch uplifted from the shattered remnants of humanity who sneaks into a pampered paradise of bored immortals.  Everyone plays it straight, no matter how crazy it gets.  And it gets CRAZY.  Zardoz is not for everyone…Scratch that.  Zardoz is not for most.  But for those lucky few, this movie is like no other and it’s wonderful.

27.  The Creature from the Black Lagoon:  I saw this film at such an early point in my life that I only have the vaguest sense of when it was.  I couldn’t have been more than 5 or 6, and it would likely have been on the Creature Double Feature, seen at a friend’s house (they had cable, and got Channel 56 out of Boston).  I’m sure it wasn’t the first monster movie I saw, but it was the one that stuck with me, that made me a lover of the genre.  And it was my introduction to the Beauty and the Beast plot archetype, which has remained a favorite of mine ever since.

26.  Escape from New York:  Kurt Russell is a one eyed monster getting all up in the Big Apple’s prison hole.  Great cast, great score, lots of awesome action, and Snake Plissken, one of the most ridiculously tough tough guys of cinema.  I don’t think anyone but Russell could have pulled it off.

25.  An American Werewolf in London:  Like John Carpenter’s The Thing, I’d heard a lot of negative stuff about this movie before I rented it, but just minutes in and I loved the Hammer Horror vibe, the humor, and the surprising twists.  I laughed and jumped and marveled at the horror.  The effects are some of the best put to film, the cast is extremely charming, and the story wonderfully tragic.

24.  The Iron Giant:  The design and animation are excellent, but the story is the thing.  A lonely boy living in Cold War era Maine finds and befriends a giant robot from outer space.  It’s a good movie all around, but the ending.  Man, it gets me.  Superman indeed.  Niagara Falls.

23.  The Virgin Spring:  A beautifully filmed medieval story that straddles Ingmar Bergman’s symbolic and visceral sides comfortably.  It’s gut-punch brutal and lyrically mystical in turns.  A family’s love, the destruction of innocence, and the calculated vengeance of a grieving man.  This was the movie that made me a Bergman fan, and it’s a darned fine film.  Human ugliness displayed in a beautiful package.

22.  Coffy:  The rough, tough, and sexy Pam Grier shotguns her way through the criminal underworld as a one-woman war on corruption.  Reveling in the weird fashion and décor of the 70s, while slinging slang and splashing house-paint blood, it may not be the best Blaxploitation (Trouble Man, maybe?) or the best Pam Grier film (Jackie Brown), but it’s my favorite, and my go-to.  It’s the film that brought me to the genre, and the one I find myself popping in the DVD player most often.

21.  Alien:  A fantastic cast of characters, stunning production design, wonderfully slow then nightmarishly fast pacing, and one of the most beautiful creatures ever designed.  It’s a haunted house on a space ship.  It’s a creature feature.  It’s a pretty darned good slice-of-life science fiction film.  Everything about this film is top notch.  But I think it really comes down to the script and performances.  (See my detailed review here).

-Matthew J. Constantine

Brad's Week in Dork! (11/10/13-11/16/13)

I took it easy this week.  Nothing too exciting or revolutionary was consumed.  The best bits involved John Carpenter and everybody's favorite inmate.  I cranked out one new film from 2013 (too bad it was a meh), and our latest meeting of The Ultimate Justice League of Extraordinary Graphic Novel Book Club was a rip roaring success.  Still, I will have to do much better next week.  (Pssst...since this is going up several days late, I can tell you that next's week's entry is waaaaaaaay better.  Two words - Fantastic Fest!).

Ain't Them Bodies Saints:  Not quite Bonnie & Clyde or Badlands, this tale of outlaw romance is too one sided to claim kinship with superior films, but director David Lowery certainly seems intent on imposing Terrance Mallick's self-important lingering eye on the characters and setting.  After several years of incarceration, Casey Affleck escapes the state pen in a mad dash to reunite with his wife and daughter.  Rooney Mara hides too much emotion, and the question of her undying love for Affleck is more frustrating than compelling.  If I liked anything about this wannabe Texas Noir, it's the side players.  Ben Foster stretches beyond his usual rage fueled persona, and actually captures a sadsack with his portrayal of Deputy Wheeler, lost in the gaze of the equally lovelorn Mara.  And of course I love Keith Carradine playing a scumbag cowboy of yesteryear.  If the film actually took his point of view than maybe I would have given a damn about the plot.

Man of Steel:  There is so much that I love about this film - the birth of Kal-El, the destruction of Krypton, Russell Crowe's badass space daddy, and yes, the third act nonstop devastation of Metropolis.  But there is also so much that I hate about this film - Michael Shannon's screaming Zod, the nonstop shaky cam, and Pa Kent's desperate fear for his alien son.  Still, I was quick to snatch up the blu ray this week and it's looks gorgeous in high definition.  You will believe a man can fly.  Then I watched the Honest Trailer.  Yikes.  "...this is the reboot for you psycho."  The Screen Junkies have a special ability to cut to the quick of Blockbuster Idiocy, and their latest Man of Steel ribbing just might be the most brutally accurate attack yet.  Funny as hell too.  Man of Steel is not garbage, but it's also not The Dark Knight it so desperately want to be - Snyder certainly doesn't understand or appreciate the differences between DC Comics's flagship characters.  Which is not only a shame, but utterly pathetic when you think of how Marvel Studios seems to have cracked the nut of not just their Avengers, but the god damn Rocket Raccoon.  Madness.

Thor - The Dark World:  Coming off my Man of Steel rewatch, I'm even more impressed with the universe building going on at The House of Ideas.  This God of Thunder sequel certainly doesn't reach the heavens like The Avengers or even Iron Man 3, but I really appreciate the adventurous spirit of this science-fiction fantasy.  Space Ships and Lasers and Elves Oh My!  Marvel Studios doesn't seem interested in elevating the super hero genre, only in establishing it's comic book roots into the multiplexes.  Are the films as good as the funny pages?  Not yet.  But we're well on our way.

Escape From New York:  "You gonna kill me now, Snake?"  Kurt Russell does Clint Eastwood in yet another faux Western from John Carpenter, and its a masterpiece of 80s machismo.  Escape From New York manages to walk the line of camp and super cool TNT.  It's the 1990s.  America has gone to pot.  Manhattan has been transformed into a maximum security prison to house the very worst of its home grown scum.  Murderers, Rapists, Cab Drivers.  When Air Force One crash lands behind the walls, Lee Van Cleef's warden can think of only one thing to do - send in celebrity outlaw Snake Plissken to take down Isaac Hayes's overlord and retrieve POTUS.  Sure, that makes sense.  Everyone might think he's dead, but Kurt Russell's Snake is very much alive as he dispatches a cadre of freaks - my favorite being the shark toothed Frank Doubleday.  Man,  that dude is scary.  Escape From New York is packed with great supporting players like Harry Dead Stanton, Adrienne Barbeau, Ernest Borgnine, and Donald Pleasance.  None of them get terrible amounts of screen time, but all seem to take great pleasure in chewing the scenery.  "You're the Duke!  You're A Number Onnnnnnnnne!!!!!"  Seriously, if you've been watching movies for more than a decade than hopefully you already know the giddy joys of John Carpenter's Escape From New York.  Gosh, why they attempted to retread this script in LA is beyond me, but I'm ready for a proper sequel.

The Fog:  "Something did happen once."  That quote pretty much sums up my feelings for this Carpenter misstep.  I dig the opening campfire spook story, but the actual plot involving pirate ghosts in the mist is real dullsville.  Tom Atkins costars without his mustache and that's probably the first mistake in a string of them.  The other big one being the leading lady split between Adrienne Barbeaux's DJ Mama and Jaime Lee Curtis' mop-topped drifter.  The film never seems happy with its direction, jumping from scene to scene, and providing a kill when the filmmakers have no clue on what to do next.  Dean Cundey's cinematography is typically moody, and you can never hate on a John Carpenter score, but The Fog never finds its footing and none of the actors seem too bothered to be there.  Scream Factory goes all in with the blu ray, but all the special features in the world can't save this snooze.

Boxers & Saints by Gene Luen Yang:  Check out Matt's review for a little more depth, but I found this dueling graphic novel to be exceptional.  The first book follows China's Boxer Rebellion from the point of view of young Bao, a child who's fatherly hero worship is wrecked when Pop is horrendously beaten at the hands of "foreign devils."  Under the tutelage of Red Lantern Chu & Master Big Belly, Bao is possessed by the gods of China and leads a revolution against those that would enslave their land and culture.  What begins as a Kung Fu romp quickly turns to stomach churning genocide.  The second book, Saints, explores The Boxer Rebellion from the point of view of young Four-Girl.  A child cursed by her family by simply being alive.  Her quest for Devilhood and familial banishment eventually brings Four-Girl into the not-so-open arms of Christianity as well as the confused spirit of Joan of Arc.  Not the happiest of comic books, I was surprised to discover that everyone in our Graphic Novel Book Club loved the dueling stories...but not for the same reasons.  And as such, Boxers & Saints turned out to be one of our more successful discussions and I would recommend it to anyone looking beyond the capes & spandex of the four color form.

CBGB:  If you loved Randall Miller's Bottle Shock or Noble Son than you'll love this follow up.  The problem is that you didn't love either of those movies, you just thought they were o.k.  So is CBGB.  It's always fun to see Alan Rickman in a starring turn, and his Hilly Krystal is a fun bit of morose enthusiasm.  And I guess its cool to see Malin Akerman as Deborah Harry or Rupert Grint as Cheetah Chrome.  But if Punk music is more than just The Sex Pistols to you than you'll probably role your eyes a bunch during the film's run time.  Painfully slight, but not the worst way to kill 90 minutes.

--Brad

Matt’s Week in Dork! (8/11/13-8/18/13)

    A slow start finished big this week, with the ever amazing William Shatner.

Zardoz:  Certainly, Zardoz is not to everyone’s taste.  Possibly because it’s completely bonkers, features some surreally strange acting, wildly improbably turns of event, and Sean Connery running around in red swim-trunks bringing the gift of death to spaced-out psychic flower children while a bit of the ol’ Ludwig Van plays.  Zardoz is a 70s dystopian nightmare unlike any other.  The closest thing I could compare it to are a lot of those ultra-trippy sci-fi shows coming out in the UK at the time, of which Doctor Who was probably the most mainstream and easy to follow.

The Showoff: A borish oaf treats everyone like crap and can’t tell the truth.  Things go from bad to worse, and then they really get pathetic as he blusters his way through life, destroying everyone around him.  The film isn’t all that great, and the main character is bloody awful.  But Louise Brooks is pretty swell as one of the dames.

The Plastic Age:  It’s jocks versus nerds in this pre-sound college comedy that shows little has changed in a hundred years.  Everyone’s got dames and sports on the mind, and they’re all freaking out.  It’s all kinds of goofy, but an interesting look at a long standing subgenre of comedy.  Many of the archetypes are already in place before the first words were spoken.  And of course, it ends with The Big Game.

A Band Called Death:  The trailer for this documentary took hold of my brain.  But, to a degree, it also told the story of the film, so seeing the whole thing is a touch disappointing.  However, the film sizzles with the band’s musical energy.  It is an interesting family story, and of course, a revelation of an unknown band that played Punk before there was Punk.

Escape from New York:  In the crime ridden future of the 1990s, New York City has become the pit of hell everyone thought it was in the late 70s.  Into this comes an anti-hero for the ages, a bitter, gruff, one-eyed bastard who doesn’t much like The Man.  Great action, great score, cool setting, and a great cast of character actors playing colorful roles.  This is one of the coolest films to come out of the 80s.

    We started off ShatAttack with a couple episodes of Thriller (The Grim Reaper & The Hungry Glass.  Both are quite good, with Shatner getting to play both perp and victim.  Up next was an episode of The Fugitive (Strange in the Mirror), featuring more manic madness from the Shat (keep an eye out for Astronaut Dodge from Planet of the Apes!).  And then Alfred Hitchcock Presents (The Glass Eye & Mother May I Go Out to Swim?).  Then on to The Outer Limits with Cold Hands, Warm Heart.

    Day two of ShatAttack started with Escape from Planet Earth and William Shatner’s World Famous Cappuccino Muffins.  Mmm.  And we followed that up, obviously, by The Bastard, part of The Kent Chronicles.  And then it was on to ShatAttack favorite The Devil’s Rain.

Escape from Planet Earth:  No shock that this movie wasn’t very good.  It has a few funny gags, but is mostly about as obvious as it gets.  The jokes are pretty obvious and the ‘social commentary’ is ham fisted.  And I’m not sure, but I think the moral of the story was that being single is bad, being stupid is good, and being a housewife is all a woman should strive for.

The Bastard:  Part one of The Kent Chronicles, this details the life of a French murder-machine as he kills everyone who crosses him, often with their own weapons.  After being raped by a milk-maid, our hero goes on to get set upon by various roughians and thugs, who through either luck, or some grand and hidden methodology, he thwarts, mostly to their death.  Then he heads to America, where I don’t know, I guess he gets into freedom and stuff.  It’s a very forgettable made for TV film that’s entirely too long and very repetitive.  Also, many of the actors, especially Andrew Stevens, seem totally wrong for their parts.  Stevens’s accent comes and goes more than the tide.

The Devil’s Rain:  Over the years since I first saw this film, it has become something of a favorite of mine, at least when the William Shatner mood strikes.  It’s not good.  The ending doesn’t make much sense.  But it’s beautifully shot and has some good performances.  And I like all the weird family history it hints at but never does a very good job of explaining.  And then there’s the pudding poring finale capped with a nonsense ending to give it that final punch.

    Of course, then you’ve just got to throw in a Police Woman episode (Smack).  And then…we put in the amazing, the wondrous, the incomparable Impulse.  After that, we played Star Trek Scene It?  And then it was time for the main event.  Kingdom of the Spiders, the most amazingly…well, a movie.  Following that with Star Trek IV just seemed like the thing to do.  And the follow-up to that was the Star Trek episode A Piece of the Action.

Impulse:  “People like you ought to be ground up and made into dog food.”  I have come to the realization that Impulse is one of the greatest bad movies ever made.  From start to finish, it feels like a rollercoaster of awkward exchanges, poor choices, technical failings, and lack of continuity.  The ‘day for night’ shooting is among the worst outside of an Ed Wood movie.  The slow car murder, the Shatnerrific reactions, that awful little girl…Glorious.  No joke.  This is an absolute MUST see for any fan of cheese.

Kingdom of the Spiders:  Sadly not as genius as it should be, this does feature some great sleazy acting from Shatner and a fun, if poorly executed ending.  But the movie is slow, and the creatures ultimately not very scary (seriously, just get on a bike and you’re home free).  If you’re creeped out by spiders, this should be freaky.  If you’re not, it’s not quite campy enough, but it’s watchable with friends.

Star Trek IV:  One of the only Star Trek films to capture anything of the original series, this is also one of the most fun films of the whole franchise.  The first thing you’ll notices is that there’s no villain.  There’s nobody that needs to be punched or exploded at the end.  Like The Motion Picture, the film is more about identifying and figuring out a problem than it is about action.  If only the makers of the new films, or potential makers of a new TV series, would look at this movie and learn something.  No, that something isn’t ‘we should do time travel.

’

     After a raffle, those few who remained sat down to Big Bad Mama, the Roger Corman classic.  And we finished the evening off with a couple more original series episodes.

Big Bad Mama: This sleazy gangster film feels like a cheap attempt at capturing a taste of the Bonnie & Clyde pie.  It’s low budget and wonky, and it has dubious moral quality.  But it’s also got all kinds of 70s nudity (even Angie Dickinson).  Fun, but not especially good or memorable.

    Any week that involves a ShatAttack is a good week.  And this ended up being a really good week.

-Matt

Dork Art: Escape From New York

I'm about halfway through my Martin Scorsese-a-thon and I'm already thinking that John Carpenter is gonna be my next director obsession.  Having devoured They Live twice already this year, and thumping my car stereo with the Assault on Precinct 13 soundtrack, my brain is simply ready for his pop cowboy aesthetic.  Anyway, it's late at night and I just stumbled upon this kickass dork art from Big Ode Ideias.  Bravo sir, you gotta em all in there.

--Brad