There have been a lot of very dope action scenes this year – the church scene in Kingsman: The Secret Service, the fight between The Rock and Jason Statham in Furious 7, and basically everything in Mad Max: Fury Road, to name just a few. Basically, we’ve gotten some incredible action sequences this year. This …
Earlier this year, the much anticipated box office juggernaut Furious 7 was released, and proceeded to break box office records on it’s way to a whopping $1.5 billion worldwide gross. This was great news for two of the film’s stars, The Rock (Never Dwayne Johnson, just The Rock) and Vin Diesel. They had just …
There’s a scene just before the third act climax in Michael Bay’s magnum opus Bad Boys II where Marcus and Mike are about to head out on a suicide mission, against strict orders, to rescue Marcus’s sister/Mike’s girlfriend Syd. Suddenly, some SWAT members walk in and one says, “I don’t know you, but you look like you’re …
This past weekend, one of the most important and breakthrough-caliber events happened in the personal history of The Rock, even bigger than when he got into filmmaking and took the stage name “Dwayne Johnson” (I cannot verify this theory, just trust me though). The Rock’s disaster movie San Andreas was released, and it did something …
San Andreas is not a good movie. Let’s get this out of the way right up front. It is a colossal pile of total garbage. It is also a lot of fun. The filmmakers throw so much wholesale destruction at the audience it produces a giddy thrill every time skyscrapers fall like dominoes or the Golden Gate Bridge is destroyed by a tsunami.
“Ride or die.” Those words only appear a few times in the franchise – most famously out of Vin Diesel’s gravelly baritone in Fast & Furious 6 – but they have become the personal motto for how this franchise has continued, grown, succeeded and become greater with each film. Today, Furious 7, the latest in the …
In 2013, The Rock was named the highest grossing actor of the year with his films pulling in a combined $1.3 billion. Things were not always this great for The Rock though. When he first started out his initial run of action movies in search of action stardom, he didn’t have much luck. The Rundown and Walking Tall, while perfectly fine action films on their own, both underperformed at the box office. Then came Doom, which was either going to be his third strike or his home run. It ended up being the former, causing two things to happen – The Rock’s action career disintegrated for 6 more years, and the belief that video game adaptations are unsuccessful was bolstered.
Some years are just great for certain genres, and this year was a great one for action. All across the board were films within different subgenres stepping up and delivering great action set pieces and characters. Consider the shot on the revolving tank gun revealing the totality of carnage in Dawn of the Planet of …
This Friday will see the release of The Rock’s (None of this Dwayne Johnson nonsense, he’s The Rock) newest action tentpole Hercules, with him playing the historic hero. You’ve probably already made up your mind if you’re going to see this film or not, you’re not anxiously waiting on the fence. You probably haven’t given …
As much credit as we give to the 80s for canonizing overkill in action films, we don’t give enough recognition to the 90s for producing some of the most out-and-out insane premises to action films that you can’t make today. In the center of it all was Nicolas Cage. Cage has made a career out …
Michael Bay – excuse me, the proper title is 2-time Criterion Collection released Michael Bay – is like the Kenny Powers of directors. He favors excess and showboating over all forms of thoughtful nuance and subtlety, he isn’t afraid to sell himself out and abandon critical respectability for money and fame, and he doesn’t give …
The Criterion Collection has a pedigree that few other media distribution outlets can match. Widely respected for bringing consumers the highest possible quality editions of landmark, respected, and exemplary films, their only peer is perhaps the Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab (an audiophile-focused line of remastered classic albums), and the MFSL doesn’t have nearly the same …
The idea of a Michael Bay film being open to interpretive scrutiny is, quite frankly, so fanciful that it practically defies the laws of our known universe. As his champions are so fond of adamantly stating, his flicks are popcorn movies designed purely for entertainment and occasional pre-pubescent escapist wish fulfillment. But it is a …
Another year, another subpar Wrestlemania. The production, talent and sheer manpower that goes into producing a show of this magnitude is greatly admired and appreciated by all watching, and is rarely to fault for the eventual disappointment of the finished product. The competitors can’t take the entirety of the blame for a merely passable match, …
John Cena made it ten minutes into his promo before being hushed with “boring” chants, the crowd united against him despite his description of Washington DC as a house divided into “Cenacrats” and “Rockpublicans”. The Great One stopped by later in the evening and predictably scored a better reaction from the fans, but his segment …
“You’ve got 20 days left to pick a side,” said Cena to the Pittsburgh crowd, as part of his obligatory stand-and-point-at-the-Wrestlemania-sign promo. It’s a fair ask, especially if you’re placing money on the match; I’d encourage you all to bet life savings on John Cena defeating The Rock for the WWE Championship. Aside from gambling …
A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman; but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist. Louis Nizer In his indispensable film study text, Understanding Movies, Louis Gianetti held forth on …
Well it’s a new day and here is yet another montage, the second in two days. Lucky for us, it’s just as great. Yesterday we showed you A Brief History of Title Design. This time however, it’s the work of youtuber Hatinhand. He brings us a montage sequence of amazing movie ending spoilers. Overall there …