Dave2112
Level of Cherry Feather
- Joined
- Apr 17, 2001
- Messages
- 10,292
- Points
- 0
For those times when you don't want to do any deep thinking and just want to see shit blow up, American cinema has brought us the action movie. Here's my personal Top Ten, feel free to add your own.
*******************************
10 - Enter the Dragon - Bruce Lee's most popular and arguably best flick. Many of the fight scenes took martial arts films out of the chop-socki bin and made them legit. A boon of karate enthusiasts ensued after the release of this film.
9 - Shaft - The original, not the remake. Another film that took a joke genre and made it serious, this time with the Blaxploitation films of the '70's. There was no one badder than Richard Roundtree, and he played the role like it was custom-made just for him. Lots of white guys lived in fear during the disco era...
8 - The One - Simply amazing fight scenes. The "Universe Jump" scenes were awesome as well, and getting to see Jet Li fight himself over and over was a cool concept. Probably the best of the modern rebirth of karate-type films.
7 - Blade II - Better than the first, with more attitude. Watch Blade's fight with the star-chucking motorcycle dudes and you'll see where they got the "burning bulding" fight choreography in Spiderman from. It's almost move-for-move. The scene where he's fighting the UV-suited vampires in his lair utilizes many techniques seen in The Matrix.
6 - Star Wars, Episode II: Attack of the Clones Not the best Star Wars film, but the best action film of the Star Wars saga. It's pretty much all-out from the word "go". From the explosion of the senator's ship on Coruscant through the Battle of Geonosis to the three individual lightsaber duels at the end, it's a non-stop barrage to the senses. The duel between Anakin and Dooku was sadly edited short, as it had great potential...but the duel between Dooku and Yoda more than made up for it. The battle of Geonosis itself was a true visual assault, if a bit over-done.
5 - First Blood - Perhaps Stallone's finest movie after Rocky, standing far outside of his "Yo....duh..." stuff. It brought home the plight of many vets into our heads, even if it was a bit far-fetched. Spawned several ridiculous sequels and made "Rambo" a household slang term for city-dwelling hunters "baggin' dee-uhs" in the mountains.
4 - From Dusk 'til Dawn - The best vampire movie made. Well, at least the goriest. Clooney had the best lines out of many of his films (I don't believe in vampires, either...but I believe my eyes, and what I saw was fuckin' vampires!) Even Harvey Keitel got to kick some ass. Quentin Tarantino plays the psycho brother to the T, but he's pretty creepy anyway. The scene where the band is playing on instruments made from dismembered bodies would have been ridiculous if it didn't fit the scenery so damn well, and who didn't want a codpiece like Sex Machine's? Plus, Clooney's tattoos were cool enough to make Darth Maul envious. Oh...Salma Hayek is almost naked throughout, pushing this from #5 to #4.
3 - Raiders of the Lost Ark - This film made Saturday matinee-type movies cool again. Indy was the epitome of smart-bad-cool. The first twenty minutes are worth the admission alone, and the scene where he shoots the would-be dueling swordsman remains the best scene out of any film...ever. Insidious traps, icky bugs and snakes, Nazis, tanks, horse chases and melting heads make this a film you can watch over and over and never get tired of. Harrison Ford's best role, he defined the reluctant hero...like when he's fighting the huge bald guy on the airstrip and puts his hands up like "yeah, yeah...gimmee a second, will ya?" You don't even see any other adventure-type-guys using bullwhips, because Indy has become such an identifiable icon. Here's looking forward to Indy IV.
2 - Die Hard - Again, the original. Bruce Willis's finest moment. Almost played like a disaster-movie. Alan Rickman cut his teeth here to create his "exasperated evil" style for Robin Hood's Sheriff of Nottingham (his best role, IMO). The hero's ingenuity and creativity took this out of the usual "victory through superior firepower" genre, although there was plenty of that ("Now I have a machine gun...Ho-Ho-Ho). The plot was actually pretty good, too...none of us figured out that it was a robbery and not a terrorist act until they wanted us to. Plausible and pretty funny at times, too. Willis gets the best line of his career..."Yippie-Ka-Yay Mutherfucker".
1 - Terminator 2: Judgement Day - The greatest action flick ever made. It seems obvious in hindsight, but we spent the first twenty minutes of T2 assuming that Schwartzenegger's Terminator is the bad-guy and Robert Patrick is the one sent back to stop him. James Cameron even gave him a cop uniform to complete the illusion. Linda Hamilton enjoyed her best role. She went from the soft, '80's cutesy victim to one buff bitch. Superb but often overlooked were her voice-overs...flat, painful and hopeless against an inevitable future. The scenes of nuclear fire rolling through a children's playground were more effective than seeing a city flattened. Ah-nold got two career-clinging catchphrases out of this one. (Hasta la Vista, Baby; I'll Be Back) He even showed a few moments of simple, effective humor. After being told not to kill anyone and then shooting an old guard in the knees: "He'll live." The morhping of the T-1000 into its many forms was a pioneering effect in its day, and still holds up very well against modern CGI. The new DVD version with deleted scenes spliced right into the movie (ala "Lord of the Rings") is an even better view, fleshing out several vague points. Arnold, big guns, bigger explosions, liquid bad-guys, a hot ass-kickin' babe, molten steel and the coolest bar-fight around, T2 ranks as my favorite action flick.
- Dave the Lifeless
*******************************
10 - Enter the Dragon - Bruce Lee's most popular and arguably best flick. Many of the fight scenes took martial arts films out of the chop-socki bin and made them legit. A boon of karate enthusiasts ensued after the release of this film.
9 - Shaft - The original, not the remake. Another film that took a joke genre and made it serious, this time with the Blaxploitation films of the '70's. There was no one badder than Richard Roundtree, and he played the role like it was custom-made just for him. Lots of white guys lived in fear during the disco era...
8 - The One - Simply amazing fight scenes. The "Universe Jump" scenes were awesome as well, and getting to see Jet Li fight himself over and over was a cool concept. Probably the best of the modern rebirth of karate-type films.
7 - Blade II - Better than the first, with more attitude. Watch Blade's fight with the star-chucking motorcycle dudes and you'll see where they got the "burning bulding" fight choreography in Spiderman from. It's almost move-for-move. The scene where he's fighting the UV-suited vampires in his lair utilizes many techniques seen in The Matrix.
6 - Star Wars, Episode II: Attack of the Clones Not the best Star Wars film, but the best action film of the Star Wars saga. It's pretty much all-out from the word "go". From the explosion of the senator's ship on Coruscant through the Battle of Geonosis to the three individual lightsaber duels at the end, it's a non-stop barrage to the senses. The duel between Anakin and Dooku was sadly edited short, as it had great potential...but the duel between Dooku and Yoda more than made up for it. The battle of Geonosis itself was a true visual assault, if a bit over-done.
5 - First Blood - Perhaps Stallone's finest movie after Rocky, standing far outside of his "Yo....duh..." stuff. It brought home the plight of many vets into our heads, even if it was a bit far-fetched. Spawned several ridiculous sequels and made "Rambo" a household slang term for city-dwelling hunters "baggin' dee-uhs" in the mountains.
4 - From Dusk 'til Dawn - The best vampire movie made. Well, at least the goriest. Clooney had the best lines out of many of his films (I don't believe in vampires, either...but I believe my eyes, and what I saw was fuckin' vampires!) Even Harvey Keitel got to kick some ass. Quentin Tarantino plays the psycho brother to the T, but he's pretty creepy anyway. The scene where the band is playing on instruments made from dismembered bodies would have been ridiculous if it didn't fit the scenery so damn well, and who didn't want a codpiece like Sex Machine's? Plus, Clooney's tattoos were cool enough to make Darth Maul envious. Oh...Salma Hayek is almost naked throughout, pushing this from #5 to #4.
3 - Raiders of the Lost Ark - This film made Saturday matinee-type movies cool again. Indy was the epitome of smart-bad-cool. The first twenty minutes are worth the admission alone, and the scene where he shoots the would-be dueling swordsman remains the best scene out of any film...ever. Insidious traps, icky bugs and snakes, Nazis, tanks, horse chases and melting heads make this a film you can watch over and over and never get tired of. Harrison Ford's best role, he defined the reluctant hero...like when he's fighting the huge bald guy on the airstrip and puts his hands up like "yeah, yeah...gimmee a second, will ya?" You don't even see any other adventure-type-guys using bullwhips, because Indy has become such an identifiable icon. Here's looking forward to Indy IV.
2 - Die Hard - Again, the original. Bruce Willis's finest moment. Almost played like a disaster-movie. Alan Rickman cut his teeth here to create his "exasperated evil" style for Robin Hood's Sheriff of Nottingham (his best role, IMO). The hero's ingenuity and creativity took this out of the usual "victory through superior firepower" genre, although there was plenty of that ("Now I have a machine gun...Ho-Ho-Ho). The plot was actually pretty good, too...none of us figured out that it was a robbery and not a terrorist act until they wanted us to. Plausible and pretty funny at times, too. Willis gets the best line of his career..."Yippie-Ka-Yay Mutherfucker".
1 - Terminator 2: Judgement Day - The greatest action flick ever made. It seems obvious in hindsight, but we spent the first twenty minutes of T2 assuming that Schwartzenegger's Terminator is the bad-guy and Robert Patrick is the one sent back to stop him. James Cameron even gave him a cop uniform to complete the illusion. Linda Hamilton enjoyed her best role. She went from the soft, '80's cutesy victim to one buff bitch. Superb but often overlooked were her voice-overs...flat, painful and hopeless against an inevitable future. The scenes of nuclear fire rolling through a children's playground were more effective than seeing a city flattened. Ah-nold got two career-clinging catchphrases out of this one. (Hasta la Vista, Baby; I'll Be Back) He even showed a few moments of simple, effective humor. After being told not to kill anyone and then shooting an old guard in the knees: "He'll live." The morhping of the T-1000 into its many forms was a pioneering effect in its day, and still holds up very well against modern CGI. The new DVD version with deleted scenes spliced right into the movie (ala "Lord of the Rings") is an even better view, fleshing out several vague points. Arnold, big guns, bigger explosions, liquid bad-guys, a hot ass-kickin' babe, molten steel and the coolest bar-fight around, T2 ranks as my favorite action flick.
- Dave the Lifeless
