In no particular order, I'd probably pick Terminator 2, Die Hard, Robocop, The Dark Knight, Heat, Kill Bill 1+2, District 9, The Crow (been awhile since I've seen it though), Speed, and maybe John Wick.
There's probably quite a few I've missed out on, especially foreign action films.
What are your picks, either popular or obscure?
Mad Max Fury Road. Just never stops
Ong Bak is a stand out martial arts movie
13 Assassins. It's directed by Takashi Miike to give you an idea of what you're in for.
Terminator 2
Aliens if you want to count it as an action movie.
Die Hard.
Hot Fuzz
Django Unchained
The Raid. The movie that introduced "The Hallway Scene"
Hero
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
Dredd
Most of the Fast and Furious movies
Layer Cake
Red Cliff
Underworld
Baahubali
Dog Soldiers
I came in here to find The Raid because it's so goddamn good, probably my favourite action movie, but as Hallway Scenes go, isn't Oldboy earlier?
I love pacific rim. It crams in so much great Kaiju and real robot stuff.
The title music slaps too.
The music you hear everytime you try to walk through water
Quentin is a rich asshole but at least he knows who the actual bad guys are supposed to be in a fucking story
Holy shit, this looks amazing: https://youtu.be/HKN6FAKjFPU Would be a great movie night pick
4gib for a WEBrip! wtf is this a three hour long action movie? Check...yup. Time to break out the gummies.
Balls slow internet is my problem, 4gib movie is going to take me over night to download. I'll take your recommendation though and wait to watch it.
Two of my favorite action movies of all time, both by John Carpenter, are They Live and Big Trouble In Little China. I could watch both endlessly on repeat and still enjoy/get laughs/have fun.
Oh shit, I forgot about Carpenter when I typed up my list. Escape from New York was also pretty decent for its time imo.
It's a solid action movie for sure, Carpenter put out some great work in his time.
John Carpenter's Vampire$ is the same goofy, over the top kind of action movie but with vampires.
I think The 5th Element counts. I mean it's a lot of genres squished into one movie, but it IS a good action film, too.
rewatched it recently as i loved it a as a kid, @Spock never saw it before....so new joint adult opinion is cool world building and style, cringe bruce willis - mila 90s forced romance
Starship Troopers. Great movie, also great litmus test - be wary of anyone who says they hated the movie and preferred the book.
The Fugitive. Two mains are kind of libertarian ubermensch wet dreams, but it has a lot of great sequences (like history's most absurd bus crash) and the main theme slaps.
The only weird thing to me about the movie, and most Starship Troopers media in general, is how they turned arachnids into animals, when in the book they were smart as humans and used weapons.
I believe that's partly because the movie began as a sci-fi action film called something like "Bug Hunt at Outpost 42," and the book tie-in was added later.
I also think making the bugs look like inhuman monsters works better, because it takes the pressure off of the protagonists to try and reach out to them and communicate, instead of waging a genocidal war of extermination. The subtext implies that the bugs are indeed intelligent, but that possibility never even occurs to us, until it serves the narrative ("It's afraid!").
Starship Troopers. Great movie, also great litmus test - be wary of anyone who says they hated the movie and preferred the book.
Also be wary of anyone who loves the movie too much. Some Fash take it at face value.
Mad Max 2 and Fury Road.
OG Predator - the entire setup for the film, from opening titles, takes 15 minutes - in that time you know the who, the why. The what takes up the rest of the running time. Super-efficient film making. No 45 minute preamble introducing the villain and the heroes - just right into it.
The Bourne Ultimatum - casually comes along and pretty much changes spy action films forever and eats James Bond's lunch while doing it.
The Mission: Impossible films, notably Rogue Nation and Fallout. Cavill pumping his arms like he's literally loading his guns never gets old.
And Outland - High Noon in space with Sean Connery. Hugely underrated film I think, the ticking clock is expertly used.
I remembered loving Crank. Made the mistake of watching it again a couple months ago, it was fucking painful. Was on a Stathom binge so I re-watched the Transporter series too, happy to report they're just as much fun as I remember.
"Spy" with Statham and Melissa McCarthy is hilarious if you haven't seen it yet. Very self referential but also self deprecating from JS
Oh I do remember that being good but I missed it in my re-watch, thanks for the reminder.
The Good, the Bad and the Weird. It's a reimagining of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly set in 1930s Manchuria and has an equally awesome soundtrack
Hara-kiri
Gotta watch that one, people have told me to see it before.
If some samurai movies are "Make Japan Great Again," this is the "Japan Was Never Great" response.
Nice. I heard that about the film, that it tries to undue a lot of the fluff around samurai culture. It'll be the next movie I watch then.
Yeah - most of them are set in the 19th century and are mournful about it being a dying way of life. But this one's set at the very beginning of the period, and has the protagonist baldly state that "The thing we call samurai honor is nothing but a a facade." Hope you enjoy. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
The director, Masaki Kobayashi, was a Marxist. I think he quit the Communist Party after 1956 but his films stay on the left. The Human Condition is ten hours of proving that you can't change the system from within, his film about baseball is titled I Will Buy You, etc.
Bushido was made up in the 19th century by Christian missionaries iirc, real tales of samurai have them being pretty barbaric people who'd do shit like murder peasants for fun. Just like with any landed noble class in a hierarchy so I'd enjoy this film.
I think I'm remembering it right from this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5PJX1hdOPc
