Director Walter Hill still delivers great fight scenes; plus an Oscar party at Revel
While admitting this is damning with faint praise, Sylvester Stallone delivers a better aging action hero in Bullet to the Head than Arnold Schwarzenegger did in Last Stand.
Joining him in the Bullet over-the-hill gang is director Walter Hill, whose resume is dominated by tough guy movies, some of which he also wrote with his sparse style, including Hard Times, 48 Hrs., The Warriors, The Long Riders and Last Man Standing.
Bullet to the Head, based on a graphic novel with a screenplay by Alexandro Camon, delivers some of the best hand-to-hand and ax-to-ax combat scenes in recent cinematic history. Too many films today use a choppy ultra-close-up visual style for fight scenes that makes them hard to follow. In the big ax scene in Bullet to the Head, Stallone has a pretty amazing showdown with the primary thug, Keegan (Jason Momoa).
The story that leads up to the final confrontation is pretty standard tough guy/action movie 101 stuff, including the fact that our mismatched heroes, killer-for-hire Jimmy “Bobo” Bonomo (Stallone) and smart-phone obsessed cop Taylor Kwon (Sung Kang of Fast & Furious fame) are both looking for justice for murdered partners. Bonomo doesn’t care how he gets his revenge, and Kwon wants to stay within the law, which provides a surprisingly effective comedic edge to the story.
This isn’t a classic action film, but during a time of the year when film companies are dumping their leftovers on the market, it’s a decent genre entry and as noted, the fight scenes are worth the price of admission.
Oscar Viewing Party at Revel
The Academy Awards will be presented Sunday, Feb. 24, and since none of us have aisle seats at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood for the big night, Revel is throwing an Oscar viewing party at the Social. On Oscar night you can walk the red carpet at Revel for its “Hollywood’s Big Night at The Social” with specialty cocktails, commercial break trivia, and a Winners Pick Contest where one lucky movie buff wins an overnight stay.
After taking a break from movies to run the state of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger is back on the big screen in 'The Last Stand,' a fast-paced, excessively violent and mediocre action flick.
Watching Arnold Schwarzenegger run around as a way-over-the-hill action hero in The Last Stand got me thinking about who are the top action heroes in the movies these days. While I was looking for some of the younger stars, I had to include one veteran who can still pull off being a badass.
Now that the Academy Awards were announced yesterday (Jan. 10), moviegoers locally will finally get a chance to see two of the nominated films, the hunt for bin Laden in Zero Dark Thirty and the hunt for survivors after the horrifying 2004 tsunami in The Impossible.
I don’t like the term top movies of the year. Defining them as your favorite movies is more on point, but if you’re a film critic you are not supposed to whine about how movie taste is subjective, not objective.
Director Steven Soderbergh and his screenwriter Scott Z. Burns (Contagion, Bourne Ultimatum) were inspired to create Side Effects based on their fascination/revulsion with all the drug commercials on TV.
Your mindset regarding Oz the Great and Powerful is most likely shaped by your reaction to The Wizard of Oz, the film classic that was a staple on television for decades. Either you loved the original and were interested in exploring the wizard’s back-story, or you loved the original and were suspicious of any attempt to reboot a classic.
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