action
The Godzilla franchise has had a long and storied history, dating back to the original motion picture of 1954 directed by Ishirō Honda. Produced and distributed by famed Japanese film studio Toho, the original feature has spawned multiple franchise sequels over the years, from both its country of origin and the United States. Starting with the 1956 Japanese-American remake of Honda’s original feature from only two years prior, Godzilla, King of the Monsters!
The spy-next-door genre seems to be showing its age. The idea of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances fueled dozens of effective Hitchc*ck movies, several of them classics. There’s no reason, really, why it shouldn’t work as well now.
Over at our official Facebook page, we are currently posting daily film recommendations with each week being a different theme. This is a collection of those recommendations! This week’s theme is action films directed by women.
Walking out of the theater, all I could think about was how much I had enjoyed watching The Accountant. It had the right amount of action, comedic relief and character depth – specifically with the film’s main character, Christian Wolff. When it came time to sit and write about what I had seen, though, I found that this great movie may have been more lacking than I had initially thought.
Skiptrace (originally titled Jue Di Tao Wang) is a 2016 action-comedy film directed by Renny Harlin and starring Jackie Chan, Johnny Knoxville and Chinese actress Fan Bingbing. It is about a Hong Kong cop and an avid gambler that must team together, each for their own reasons, and take down the Chinese crime syndicate and its mysterious leader ‘The Matador’. It is a film that I, in all honesty, did not want to sit down and watch at first but did, due to unmentionable circumstances, and in my forced viewing of this easy-going and lighthearted film, I began to remember why Jackie Chan is one of the most beloved names in Hollywood.
Hollywood seems to be stuck in an age of remakes and sequels. Though original films do exist, they are never as popular or successful as the large-scale blockbusters, which are the only sure moneymakers for studios. Coming from this standpoint, it’s no surprise that Antoine Fuqua’s The Magnificent Seven exists.
Over at our official Facebook page, we are currently posting daily film recommendations with each week being a different theme.This week’s theme is the films of British cult director Alex Cox, and this article is a collection of those recommendations! The definition of the “cult movie” director, Alex Cox has had an incredibly interesting career, flirting with both studio and independent filmmaking – imprinting his own unique anarchic vision with each film he makes.
Straight off a win from the 2016 Drunken Film Festival in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, comes a quirky, well written short. Though bleak and serious in its setting, there are definitely lots of laughs here. Polterheist, written by David Gilbank and Paul Renhard, is an entertaining watch, with a nicely planned plot.
A largely-overlooked but critical element in an action film is its ability to tell a story with sound. Dialogue and musical score notwithstanding, sound cues and effects are incredible tools for storytelling in the genre; subtly adding depth and detail without ever compromising action or hogging screen-time. Given recent advances in the field of sound technology, filmmakers are even now using these techniques to great advantage in crafting critically-acclaimed action films.
The new Criterion Collection release of A Touch of Zen includes director King Hu’s own notes on the film. In these notes, Hu discusses a conversation he had with a Zen Buddhist who told him that Zen must be understood not through verbal explanation, but through an enlightening experience. Despite his renown as a director of wuxia films, Hu was neither a Buddhist nor a martial artist; but, he believed that capturing an experience of Zen would make for a strong film.
Since the inception of the Bourne franchise in 2002, the blockbuster as we know it has undergone a dramatic shift. Variety is limited as superhero films have taken over the industry. There are lingering alternatives like the Mission Impossible and Fast and Furious franchises, but the Bourne films have been the thinking man’s blockbusters since the series began.
Independence Day came out when I was 14. I was a huge X-Files fan (I did a school project on Area 51) and so thought it was pretty much the greatest film ever. It was also at this time that I began to fall in love with movies, and Independence Day was part of that trend of 90’s summer blockbusters that opened my eyes to what contemporary cinema meant to a lot of people.
Often shrugged off as a base form of entertainment, the action genre has carved out its place in the cinematic phalanx. Spy capers, heist films or just a good old-fashioned shoot ‘em up have all become, in some why or another, a part of our lives in the form of witty one-liners such as ‘I’ll be back,” Detective John McClane saving Christmas (twice) and The Rock being— The Rock. Memorable moments which have become ingrained in our memories.
The vast majority of video game films have failed for not respecting their source material, using them only as basic backdrops to put some hackneyed plot in place for a quick cash-grab. Various franchises like Tomb Raider and Prince of Persia have all failed because of this blatant apathy, and because those involved in their making didn’t care about how to integrate the art of making video games with the craft of making films. The less said about the absolute disasters that were the various video game films directed by talentless hack Uwe Boll, the better.
In all production tools of filmmaking, using sound effects is a fundamental factor in capturing a film’s escapist experience and the audience’s reactions. Although sound is not seen on-screen, it does play a crucial role in how films work, and in how it progresses narrative, develops characters and addresses significance. John Williams is an example of a composer whose work has established the importance of music within cinema, and how they play a fundamental role in the entire experience.