Jean-Claude Van Damme makes an appearance on the 101 Action Movies list with this martial arts classic. The film, based LOOSELY on a true story follows Frank Dux (JCVD), a military officer, who trained with Senzo Tanaka (Roy Chiao) after his own son died to pass on his martial arts style and philosophy. Going on…
Top Gun (1986) – Tony Scott
The 101 Action Movies brings this flag-waving American classic back into my life. With Tony Scott’s typical super colour-saturated framing, quick editing, fantastic rocking score, Lt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise), struggled to prove his the best of the best at the fighter pilot school known popularly as Top Gun. Tons has been said about…
Robocop (1987) – Paul Verhoeven
Yet another film I grew up with has found its way onto the 101 Sci-Fi Movies list. With it’s over the top violence and gore, Robocop is like a larger than life comic-book, that has done nothing but get better with age. Verhoeven pushes Detroit police officer Alex Murphy (Peter Weller) past the breaking point, as he…
Police Story (1985) – Jackie Chan
For this entry on the 101 Action Movies, Jackie Chan directs, stars, and choreographs in a no holds barred, knock-down stunt-filled flick. With an opening sequence that Bay stole for Bad Boys II, which sees a trio of vehicles busting their way through a shanty town, Chan keeps the action and the humor coming full…
Commando (1985) – Mark L. Lester
This entry on the 101 Action Movies list is just good fun, its loud, violent, and a lot of fun. It’s also a prime example of the generic action films of the 1980s. It’s rather simplistic in plot, but that doesn’t take anything away from one’s enjoyment of the film. John Matrix (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is…
Predator (1987) – John McTiernan
The 101 Sci-Fi Movies currently has me smack-dab in the middle of the 80s and I am loving it, especially when I get to revisit films that send me back down that nostalgia road. Predator does exactly that. I remember watching this John McTiernan film when it came out on the American Naval Base in…
The Newsroom S02E01 – First Thing We Do, Let’s Kill All The Lawyers
If you’ve been following the blog, you know that I was absolutely hooked on The Newsroom when it premiered last year, and then of course, lamented the fact that the season was over, and it was an interminable time until Season 2 began. I even went out and bought the entire series of the…
The Shaolin Temple (1982) – Xinyan Zhang
The 101 Action Movies brings me yet another awesome movie I had never seen, and features a very young Jet Li. Witnessing the murder of his father by an evil general who has rebelled against the emperor and installed himself as a the new ruler . Young Jue Yuan (Li) makes an escape and injured…
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) – Leonard Nimoy
The 101 Sci-Fi Movies brings me yet another personal fave, and the lightest of the Star Trek films to be made. Leonard Nimoy takes the director’s chair as well as helping on the story front to make a commentary on the society of our times (in this case 1986, though it’s still relevant if not more…
Pacific Rim (2013) – Guillermo del Toro
I’m still grinning. It’s not very often that so-called ‘Event’ blockbuster movies can completely take me in, and fewer still can lay claim to being an actual event. Del Toro’s new film, Pacific Rim, does just that. It geeked out the little kid in me, and totally pleased the grown-up film buff as well….
The Mind Reels 