What MOVIE(s) have you been....seeing? watching?

Well, now that we are getting down the Commando hole, we have to throw in the Delta Force's and the American Ninjas

No love for JCVD? Bloodsport is called out but for Bolo (not incorrectly)? Universal Soldier is under appreciated and has Dolph Lundgren. Hard Target is one of the best cinematic takes on “The Most Dangerous Game.”

Then again, JCVD has always been under appreciated. He was in that second- or third-tier of action heroes in the ‘80’s well behind Stallone and Schwarzenegger. People still treat him like that even though he has developed his craft and is probably a better and more interesting actor now then all of them except maybe Lundgren.

And I’m the first to mention Jason Statham? The first two Transporters and Cranks are straight classics.

Space Ghost wrote: Well, now that we are getting down the Commando hole, we have to throw in the Delta Force's and the American Ninjas

And you can't have American Ninjas without GYMKATA! Still waiting for the Criterion Collection to get to these classics.

Hey, I mentioned BLOODSPORT was hilarious. It has, perhaps, the best line reading I have ever seen, in which JCVD declares, "I just want to be the best that I can be!"

Now, you read that, and are thinking, "I just want to be the best that I can be!" This is wrong, no, with JVCD's somewhat obscure relationship with English, it becomes, "I just want to be the best that I can be!" It's a oner, and that this was the take that the editor went with says something really deep about the film.

Gymkata, starring Olympic Gold Medalist Kurt Thomas...directed by Robert Clouse (Enter the Dragon). Not a great film.

What about Blue Thunder, who are the Blue Thunder fans here?

Steven Segal is just awful. One of the guys in one of my gaming groups trained with him. There are stories. None of his movies are any good.

JVCD, I like him OK but his movies are terrible outside of Bloodsport and, of course, Timecop.

What are the other Michael Dudikoff films, I don’t even know. He did not get invited for be in the Expendables, ouch.

Ninja movies, we have to nod to Sho Kosugi. Especially Pray for Death when he flips over that truck.

Ninja III: The Domination. I’ll just leave that here.

No need to watch all of Gymkata, when this 2:00 clip covers the only memorable scene:



I vaguely remember seeing Blue Thunder in the theater.

Segal is awful. So is van Damme, though I am friends with a married couple that named their excitable dog Timecop.

I can't remember ever seeing a good movie with ninja in it.

Wow - trashy action films from the 80s and 90s! Some random comments.

My favourite JCVD film (without having seen JCVD) is Sudden Death. Powers Booth is a great villain and the script is very aware that its audience has seen action films in the past, so does its best to subvert expectations. I always feel it's been unfairly overlooked.

Sudden Death was directed by Peter Hyams (Outland, Capricorn One etc.) His son, John Hyams, directed two great last sequels to Universal Soldier - Universal Soldier: Regeneration and Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning . JVCD is the head of a cult of Universal Soldiers in the latter. The hero is played by Scott Adkins who's become a star of many a direct to video action film. These are very, very different films to what you'd expect - Day of Reckoning is almost an art film. Well worth checking out.

I also like a couple of Olivier Gruner films - a French martial artist who came to the US after JCVD and made not even a ripple, let alone a splash. Automatic (where he plays a Terminator type robot crippled by Asimov's three laws of robotics in a Die Hard situation) and Savage (which is just fun stupid new agey nonsense where he is a farmer who gets resurrected by ancient gods.)

Mark Dacascos's film Drive is worth seeking out - it's Steven Wang's attempt to make a Hong Kong action thriller in the US with a very low budget. He at least knows how to shoot fight scenes.

I watched far too many weekly video tapes during the 80s/90s...

I'm not going to argue that Seagal deserves more appreciation and by all accounts he is an absolute scum bag (there's a picture of him with his hand on the breast of a 16-year-old Katherine Heigl from their time together in Under Siege 2), but I did enjoy and would recommend the book Seagalogy by Vern. Published in 2008 and again revised and updated in 2012 before the aforementioned picture came out, Vern makes the argument that Seagal was an auteur who used what sway and ego he had to make the films he wanted to with the characters and themes that interested him, On Deadly Ground probably being the pre-eminent example. If nothing else, it's fascinating as an obsessive deep dive into something absolutely no one else cares about.

Shellhead wrote: I can't remember ever seeing a good movie with ninja in it.

Shellhead wrote:
I can't remember ever seeing a good movie with ninja in it.

Don't you have some ice dams to take care of...

C'mon, folks.

1970 Charger





1970 Challenger



ETA: There used to be one of these driving around town when I was a kid - the 1970 Superbird.



Back in the day, NASCAR raced real honest-to-God street cars (sort of, still needed roll cages and fuel cells), and to be race-legal, a car manufacturer had to make at least 1500 of them (Word of the Day: Homologation).

Still recovering from Capernaum , which was beautiful and haunting. Third Middle Eastern movie in the last two years that got deep under my skin after the claustrophobic In Syria and The Nile Hilton Incident , which has an awesome soundtrack.

Watched ANT-MAN AND THE WASP last night. Trying to keep Marvel-current, I suppose. It was just kind of... there. Paul Rudd still has some funny lines, I guess, as does Michael Peña. But it doesn't make any sense.


Streaming on Netflix.

Yeah, I totally felt the same way, Jeb.
It's funny how much ridiculous science one can take, and then one little thing can shatter all disbelief.

I saw Alita: Battle Angel, and I have so many thoughts. In brief, I enjoyed it. In many ways, it was the best possible movie it could have been while remaining true to its balls-out-nuts roots. But I have so many thoughts.

I have read all of the original series manga run, minus the two Motorball volumes, and obviously seen the film. Anything and everything regarding them from here on out is fair game.

First, how did they get three Oscar winners and another two Oscar nominees in front of the camera for this thing? I don't think any of this year's Best Picture nominees has as recognized a cast. Is there such a clamor to work with the director of The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl? Or do Oscars just attract Oscars as fellow winners fall into James Cameron's orbit? Or course, most of these performances are side characters or cameos, and we spend most of our time with Alita (yay!) and Hugo (enh). Rose Salazar as Alita was great. Full stop. She gave it her all under that mocap suit whether it was eating an orange for the first time, offering her heart to a boy days after meeting or dropping fools in motorball. Hugo though? He was just dull, a nice smile and supportive attitude. Nothing distinctive about him at all, which wouldn't be so bad if he weren't in so much of the movie.

I'm never going to claim the manga was some deep, nuanced work, but it was not without its powerfully affecting themes. Alita is afraid of a relationship with Hugo because it would take only the slightest lapse in concentration to accidentally murder him with her berserker body, but it's her cyborg body that keeps him alive when Zapan sets the hunter warriors against him. Just barely alluded to in the film even though all of those plot beats come up. Also, the division between the people of Iron City as human brains in artificial bodies and the people of Zalem as artificial brains in human bodies may still come up, but it won't have the same punch. Most of the people we see in Alita are pure human. Those with modifications are just some steampunk arm or leg. Compare this to the manga where some one cyborg is a face stapled onto a tv screen. I get that though. If you're going to slam that much CG into the film, it may as well just be animated. Not that we're going to see Chief Bigott take a circular saw to his head if we're going to keep that PG-13 rating.

So, like I've said, Alita is remarkably faithful to the first two volumes of the manga and even squeezes in some motorball. There are grind cutters, Ido's rocket hammer, an arm lodged in an eye, Zapan's face being cut off and Vector's human deliveries to Zalem (but no yellow overcoat?), but I really want to know what happens after the motorball arc that it looks to be the plot of the next film. By setting Desty Nova in Zalem and as the ultimate adversary from the time of the war with Mars, his character and place in the plot are fundamentally changed. He's not some eccentric scientist prowling Iron City. He's the puppetmaster. I don't know if they can even make an honest attempt at the last five manga volumes then. Zapan only goes kaiju at Nova's prodding, and Alita only joins the Tuned for the promise to hunt down Nova. So, yeah, I'm curious. Maybe they really didn't want to do Barjack as a samurai robot centaur zealot would be too much.

Go watch Alita to goose that box office, so I can find out what happens next.

Actually, I think the dude in the movie was too... handsome & hunky. Hugo was a wimpy boy (with slightly rotting hands). Part of what makes the relationship works in the manga is that this cute, all-powerful girl got teen crush on this nobody. That changes the dynamics considerably.

About the sequel: