Action Archives -

GHOST IN THE CELL MOVIE REVIEW Let’s just get out of the way from the get-go that this is in no way beholden to the film that you almost certainly thought of when you saw the title was Ghost in the Cell. There’s no anime referencing here. Instead you get the modern master of Indonesian […]

A BETTER YESTERDAY – EP 6: MAKING SENSE OF NONSENSE Ross O’Brien talks with Bey Logan about mo lei tau—Cantonese “nonsense talking”—and how Stephen Chow turned it into the dominant Hong Kong film genre of the 1990s. Starting from the end of the heroic bloodshed cycle, they trace the shift from Chow Yun-fat’s rain-soaked hitmen […]

KICK ON MOVIE REVIEW After being kicked out of a club for fighting, a group of young party folks make a decision to go up the drug food chain and head to the 9th floor apartment of the son of a Russian gangster to acquire more ‘party favors’. Eden is in a relationship with Drew […]

MAYDAY MOVIE REVIEW Mayday is a retro 80’s-style buddy action-comedy set during the waning days of the Soviet Union. Ryan Reynolds plays Lt. Troy “Assassin” Kelly, a US Navy pilot assigned to a black ops spy mission over a remote Soviet facility. Unfortunately for Troy, his plane is shot down, and he finds himself stranded […]

HOPE MOVIE REVIEW South Korea’s film industry has been unpredictable and kind of amazing at points, especially with some of their genre offerings. One of the best giant monster films of the last 20 years, The Host, showed they know how to deliver rampaging beastie cinema. Now with Hope, another bizarre creature is wreaking death […]

ONSLAUGHT MOVIE REVIEW The director of You’re Next and The Guest goes back to the action/horror style of his earlier works with Onslaught. The film follows Celeste (Adria Arjona) a super pissed-off single mom and ex-marine now managing a rundown trailer park in the middle of nowhere. Who should interrupt this existence of creeping despair […]

A BETTER YESTERDAY – EP 5: THE KILLER’S CURSE The conversation series about the origins and evolution of Hong Kong action cinema culture continues! In this episode, Ross O’Brien sits down again with the Chronicler of Kung Fu Cinema Bey Logan in his Lantau lair to trace how Hong Kong’s post-kung fu boom birthed a […]

NORMAL MOVIE REVIEW A decade ago if you told me that Bob Odenkirk was going to have a rebirth as a brutal action movies star, I would have assumed you were talking about a Mr. Show sketch that I must have forgotten about. But here we are, first with the Nobody series, and now he […]

THE WRECKING CREW MOVIE REVIEW Abraham Maslow once said “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail”. These two brothers just vacated the home depot, and there was a sale on sledgehammers. Also, the hardware store was exploding! Amazon Prime […]

SHELTER MOVIE REVIEW There are three kinds of Jason Statham films. #1- Part of an ensemble cast of folks, pretty much always action-based, and more often than not a Guy Ritchie movie (Snatch, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Ghosts of Mars). #2 – Action with some comedy but usually batshit crazy cartoon stuff (Crank, […]

THE RIP MOVIE REVIEW When it comes to Hollywood power couples, there aren’t many that have stood the test of time or the pressures of the star machine better and longer than Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, and they’ve reunited once again in a tightly wound crime thriller directed by Joe Carnahan. The Rip unfolds […]

THE OLD GUARD 2 MOVIE REVIEW “And here we are, we’re the princes of the universe. Here we belong, fighting for survival. We’ve come to be the rulers of you all”-Freddie Mercury. Who knew that this one lyric would best describe the long awaited sequel to the smash hit The Old Guard on Netflix? Andy […]

HUNT THE WICKED MOVIE REVIEW Lewayne, Mike, and T.C. enter the One Of Us lair to square off against one another while discussing this new Chinese martial arts crime drama about a brilliant narcotics detective and a mysterious criminal mastermind, as they clash in a crime-ridden city. The cops are doing everything they can, while […]

HAVOC MOVIE REVIEW A good house is built on a solid foundation with primo materials and a foreman that knows that hard work and honest labor with no cut corners will create not just a home for one generation but a domicile for future generations. What if that foreman was a crooked, backstabbing politician whose […]

NOVOCAINE MOVIE REVIEW Full disclosure: This was our first experience seeing a film in 4DX, which are, as Beau puts it, massage chairs that kick the crap out of you. Some of us loved the experience. Some of us had to gag a few times. But either way, it definitely affected our experience of watching […]

CLEANER MOVIE REVIEW When Die Hard needs to Die Hard but in a new Die Hard that is a lot like Die Hard but not the exact same Die Hard, you would hope that Martin Campbell, director of Casino Royale, GoldenEye, and The Mask of Zorro, would be the right guy to Die Hard. Mike, […]

OLD GUY MOVIE REVIEW An old hitman is tasked to train a young up and comer in the action comedy Old Guy written by Greg Johnson and directed by Simon West. Danny Dolinski (Christoph Waltz) has busted so many caps into so many of his targets for so many years that he’s got chronic pain […]

LOVE HURTS MOVIE REVIEW It was so great to see the return of actor Ke Huy Quan in the sublime Everything Everywhere All At Once in 2022. Having retired from acting for a very long time, Quan is known to Americans for his roles as Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom […]

CARRY-ON MOVIE REVIEW Ethan Kopek (Taron Egerton) is living his best life. His beautiful girlfriend Nora (Sofia Carson) has just had a positive pregnancy test and she is slaying problems as a career girl. His best friend Jason (Sinqua Walls) encourages him to reach for that next rung on the corporate ladder. He and Nora […]

THE SHADOW STRAYS MOVIE REVIEW You like the John Wick movies? How about The Raid movies and a touch of Taken? Action. Violence. Extreme violence. And like, a Ninja Scroll amount of blood? The Shadow Strays might be exactly what you need to satisfy your masochist cinematic action itch. It certainly did for the One […]

DON’T MESS WITH GRANDMA MOVIE REVIEW There are a lot of home invasion films out there these days, some of ’em pretty scary and intense. That is NOT the vibe that Don’t Mess With Grandma (formerly Sunset Superstar) is going for. Michael Jai White plays Jasper, a gentle giant and a big Dio fan who […]

DEADPOOL AND WOLVERINE MOVIE REVIEW Deadpool is finally in the MCU for real. He made the cut. He gets his third movie. But this time he’s bringing Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine with him on an adventure to save their universes from the ‘sacred timeline’ wiping them out (re: the MCU). So, we gotta reference the Time […]

THE FALL GUY MOVIE REVIEW While the track record for adapting really old tv shows into feature films has been…mixed, to say the least, director David Leitch (Atomic Blonde, John Wick) taking on The Fall Guy, which centered around a Hollywood stuntman, seems like a match made in heaven. Ryan Gosling plays Colt Seavers, the […]

BOY KILLS WORLD MOVIE REVIEW Take one part chiseled action hero, one part post-apocalyptic ‘Running Man‘ wasteland, and the 3rd project Sharlto Copley has been in this year. What do you get? Boy Kills World starring our ever favorite Pennywise the clown, Bill Skarsgard! Skarsgard stars as Boy, a deaf-mute man riddled with grief and […]

MONKEY MAN MOVIE REVIEW Dev Patel has his directorial debut and co-writes and leads the cast of this new bloody revenge action film. He plays Kid, a scrappy pit fighter with the identity of “Monkey Man” who wears an ape mask and regularly takes the fall for cash at the hands of the fighting emcee […]