I am nearing a new follower milestone here on Twitter. It has been a long time (almost 2 years) since I did an introductory thread about who I am & what I'm about. So, please indulge me while I share some links to my work over that time period. Thank you all for your support! 1/
The kids of TikTok has discovered Hiroyuki Sanada and put together this neat “through the years” video. Again, it’s wonderful to see him get appreciated while he’s still performing at the highest levels.
The battle to reclaim every garbage film someone loves just because they saw it as a child is a sad never-ending one. Some stuff just isn’t good …and that is okay. Not every soulless piece of studio output designed to sell tacos and soundtrack CDs is some unrecognized genius.
what the liberal media won't tell you is that godzilla (1998) is a misunderstood masterpiece. this is roland emmerich at the top of his game, delivering one the most mejestic, heartfelt blockbusters of the 90s and a beautiful tribute to monster movies of cinema's golden age.
Years later & I still see people wondering what the point of Henry Cavill “loading his arms” during a fight in “Mission Impossible: Fallout” was. Just a wonderful example of how people have forgotten how to watch movies. Some stuff exists simply because it looks cool. That’s it.
People trying to make sense out of the Mad Max timeline are missing the point. It’s myth. Tales told ‘round the camp fire, “No, shit there I was, mate. Thinkin’ my goose was cooked. And then, I hear it… the roar of the engine. The last of the V-8 Interceptors…” THAT’s Mad Max.
One of the many reasons that the “Mad Max” franchise continues to resonate with me. Is it’s the one genre series that had a ton of pretty positive disability representation that doesn’t feel the need to make the disabled “magical.”
Nothing is more telling to me of the how the current streaming model is a black hole than the fact that Arnold Schwarzenegger’s new project dropped on Netflix today & I have seen zero chatter about it among the action fan circles I run in. New Arnold content should be an event.
It's a bummer that the film which arguably utilizes Jon Hamm the best is one that is built around two other performers I'd rather avoid. Also, it has a *really* dumb title. Somebody get Jon in a Michael Mann crime movie.
All this Alan Moore business has caused this bit from his appearance on The Simpsons to be stuck in my head the past two days. This is the guy those freaks are so mad at?! Could never be me. I’d just imagine him singing his little song and all would be forgiven.
Since I saw multiple people tweet about this movie last night, I just wanted to inform you all that HBO Max has added “Strange Days” in HD. It rules. It’s been hard to find the last few years. And you should watch it. Start the new year off right.
John Woo revealed that he refuses to watch superhero movies, and instead opts for “real” films by directors like Martin Scorsese.
"I like old-fashioned movies, you know? Real cinema. There aren’t many movies like that lately.”
There are some quote tweets to this talking about how what is pictured here is meant to be horrific deformity. Which is telling on how they see disability & the people who experience it. Life, as time goes on, won’t be kind to the people who only see horror & cruelty here (1/2)
One of the many reasons that the “Mad Max” franchise continues to resonate with me. Is it’s the one genre series that had a ton of pretty positive disability representation that doesn’t feel the need to make the disabled “magical.”
John Woo is as responsible for the modern day visual language of action cinema as Akira Kurosawa. Some people today just don’t realize what a seismic shift his simple idea of “what if we filmed gun pictures in the same manner we do martial arts ones?”caused in action filmmaking.
So, I saw the Red One trailer & was left thinking about how a month ago I had people in my replies trying to tell me that Chris Evans was better than Chris Pine& this guy. Evans wishes he had a performance as interesting in him as those 2 handsome weirdos
All the Furiosa buzz got me thinking about this tweet again. Possibly my favorite post I’ve dropped on this app. One that I probably should have saved and turned into a fully-forms piece. Oh well.
People trying to make sense out of the Mad Max timeline are missing the point. It’s myth. Tales told ‘round the camp fire, “No, shit there I was, mate. Thinkin’ my goose was cooked. And then, I hear it… the roar of the engine. The last of the V-8 Interceptors…” THAT’s Mad Max.
Hey! Fans of RRR & SS Rajamouli, big news! Netflix now has the director’s 2012 masterpiece EEGA available to stream uncut & in its original language! It’s one of the most unique action films you’ll ever see! A man is murdered, reincarnated as a fly, & then must take revenge!
#RRR
Ya know, in retrospect, “Batgirl” probably would have done better theatrically than “The Flash.” You have massive brand recognition, Keaton as Batsy, directors coming off a critically & commercially successful blockbuster. Plus, the cultural aspect would have been in its favor.
Really ties in with that thread I did this morning on disability representation in Mad Max. You can tell George Miller has a lot of genuine empathy for the disabled.
You know, I have never seen the original “Miami Vice.” Maybe I should fix that? Is it available unedited to stream anywhere? This clip is 1000% my jam.
You either vibe with modern day exploitation films or you don’t I guess. But that is 1000% what “Sicario 2” is. The first film is literally about how morality has no place in that world & the sequel dives head first into that. What the OP is bristling at is entirely intentional.
It’s the only Mad Max film to debut at
#1
. George Miller has never made any Max film that felt like the one before. In 5 years or less, it’ll be just as loved as the rest. Time is a flat circle and goddamn is this not a place populated with serious people.
George Miller’s “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” is sick with bad CGI. Its glossy desert backdrop and unrealistic effects are hard to swallow for fans of the early “Mad Max” films, which featured the real, terrifying desert outback.
Name a fight scene you would rate 10/10.
Joe Taslim vs Everyone (The Night Comes for Us)
Note: This is only a taste. Watch the whole scene (and the entire film- it’s a masterpiece) via Netflix.
On a long enough time line, *everyone* becomes disabled. Some just don’t have to wait as long. The positivity & grace in this harsh truth comes from how that disabled life is lived & represented. “Mad Max” is ultimately a hopeful, humanistic series. (2/2)
It is really nice to me that after all these years, everyone has come around to the fact that Hiroyuki Sanada is awesome. You love to see it but I wish it hadn’t taken so long.
The coyote scene from “Collateral” instantly hits upon the feeling of isolation and ensuing alienation that modern urban living creates in us. That sense of being surrounded by a pulsating, active world, yet feeling totally alone and unmoored.
This shit went on for *days.* I had people in my regular every day life who I didn’t even know that well come tell me they saw this tweet. Also, this tweet made a lot of really strange, sad people very mad for some ungodly reason.
Even Max is living with a serious physical impairment. So often in genre stories like this, the idea of the disabled is completely ignored or worse, treated as a burden & liability. Mad Max is one of the very few that think to address it head on & show people living & coping.
Well this is upsetting, S.S. Rajamouli’s Epic “RRR” has been uploaded to Netflix w/ *only* the Hindi language dub. This is a S. Indian Telugu-language film. There is not even a Tamil-language audio track which would be closer. This is like posting a Jackie Chan film in Taiwanese.
The reappraisal of David Ayer’s “Sabotage” I’ve seen on Twitter lately makes me happy. I have been a defender of it since day 1. Unapologetically scuzzy & deeply mean-spirited. I’ve said it before & I’ll say it again; it’s “dirtbag Predator.” The fact that it exists at all rules.
Martial artist and actress Rina Takeda (“High Kick Girl” & “Dead Sushi”) recreates a section of the fight scene between Jet Li and Yasuaki Kurata from the classic 1994 Hong Kong film “Fist of Legend.” (Clip taken from her personal FB page)
When people say they are nostalgic for Blockbuster. Most aren’t actually saying they miss that specific brand. They miss the act of going to a video store. That’s all. History flattens nuance. To act haughty in response is missing the point & outing yourself as a pedantic jerkoff
Anyone who loves Jason Statham as an action star owes a big thank you to Corey Yuen. Without Yuen’s guidance and influence, Stath would be just another British character actor.
Watching Michael Bay’s “The Rock” for the first time in close to 20 years. It’s funny, I remember how badly criticized the fast cuts were at the time. Looking at it now though, its visual approach feels almost classical. What a picture. We didn’t realize how good we had it.
@JCPxDESIGNS
Julie is also married to equally jacked Fantasy artist Boris Vallejo. A legit power couple. My best friend in college got to study art under them. They are very cool people.
If you’ve followed me for a while, you know I love Nic Cage. The guy does work a lot though. That can make it hard to figure out which of his recent flicks are worth the effort to see. Well, “Sympathy for the Devil” is one of those. Gorgeous, mean, & utterly coked out. Loved it.
Years of Comic Book universe movies and Star Wars prequels/sequels/side-quels have seriously messed with people’s heads in ways that don’t seem reversible when comes to how stories are consumed.
Do you ever think about the dogshit movies you drug your parents to see as a child because they loved you & didn’t have the heart to tell you that you were a dumb kid with awful taste? I made my poor dad go to the movies to see both “Howard the Duck” *&* “No Holds Barred.” Brutal
If you enjoy HK comedy, Richard Ng was a titan. If you are a fan of 80s Jackie/Sammo/Biao, he was a familiar face that made you smile. He lived a long life & worked consistently up until just this last year. He was blessed. As are we by the wonderful legacy he leaves behind. RIP.
Very sad to hear about the passing of Richard Ng (1939-2023). Comedy legend and well loved from Carry on Pickpocket, the Lucky Stars films, Millionaire’s Express and many more. Thoughts are with his friends and family
"Some 35mm films shouldn't be remastered in 4k because I personally preferred it when they looked like muddled garbage" is such a monumentally stupid take.
I have watched “Sisu,” “Evil Dead Rise,” and “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” this weekend. Boy, am I surprised by which one of these I liked the most and which one the least. Didn’t see that coming.
Dev Patel wants you to watch some South Korean action films before seeing his new movie, “Monkey Man.” And I have made my return to
@Polygon
to help lead you in that journey. Please give my brief guide a read & share it around to your action-loving pals!
Happy birthday to martial arts superstar Donnie Yen! Here he is showing off his elite-level moves in the opening of 1985’s “Mismatched Couples” directed by the equally legendary Yuen Woo-Ping.
People who complain about old movies being boring never give them a chance. If they did, they would discover how timelessly entertaining a lot of it is.
🧵It’s John Carpenter’s birthday. He is 76 years young today! And to mark this occasion I want to share a small JC story. I met him while he was doing promotional work for “The Ward.” I couldn’t help but tell him how excited I was that he was back filmmaking. (1/
The original “Mad Max” is a stone cold, bonafide, genre classic and I am utterly disappointed to read that some of you skip over it and go straight to “Mad Max 2” (aka “The Road Warrior”).
Just watched the “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” trailer… and I’m more convinced than ever that there is no way the directors’ “Batgirl” film could have been unreleasable. These guys got the sauce.
@jebrennt
It allows you to fire a smaller caliber gun rapidly. In this scenario he does this for two reasons A) He wants the guy *really* dead and B) to make it unclear how many shooters there were and how skilled those shooters may or may not have been.
The funniest thing about “The Crow” (2024), that goes uncommented on, is that Eric gets his signature weapon from his loser martial movie-obsessed friend’s apt. So, he’s being mopey & doing all these kills with a mall katana. Real unintentional “I studied the blade” goofiness.
We used to be a proper country… where an absolutely smoking Carla Gugino could free a multi-dimensional serial killing Jet Li from prison with a live rat bomb all set to the dulcet tones of a man screaming into a mic like a Macaque monkey over nu-metal riffs. “The One” = Cinema.
The great Nic Cage turns 59 today. If you want to celebrate his birthday you have a lot of great films to choose from but my recommendation is the underrated collaboration he did w/ Scorsese, “Bringing Out the Dead.” It’s the hopeful, humanistic fraternal twin to “Taxi Driver.”
It’s criminal to me that in 2023, we still don’t have an uncut, high-def home video release of “Shaolin Soccer.” It’s damn near a perfect comedy and a good gateway into Chinese film fandom.
Most cinephiles really aren’t ready for this conversation. They are very quick to assign an almost-wholly imagined haughty “importance” to a film scene, based out of nothing but pure exoticism, that was in reality always aiming to be populist entertainment.
The problem with trying to elevate Hong Kong cinema in this really insular, highrbrow cinephile kind of way, ignoring its inherent rampant commercialism and working-class audience, is you end up making the career of someone like Maggie Cheung much less impressive than it is.
An excerpt from an old interview with John Carpenter talking about laserdiscs. He actually name checks John Woo’s “Hard Boiled” while doing so. Pretty cool.
Heads up! “Pathaan” hits Prime next Weds. Also that same day, Veronica Ngo’s “Furies” drops on Netflix. With “John Wick Chapter 4” two days later *and* the latest collab from Diaz Espinoza/Zaror, “Fist of the Condor” coming to Hi-yah 3 weeks after. Great times for action nerds!
Ray Stevenson has passed away suddenly at the age of 58. I’m not even sure I can articulate how tragic that is. Just an unbelievable screen presence. The world is worse off with out that titan roaring on the big screen.
Every time I watch Mamet’s “Spartan” (2004). I have a moment where I have to stop & consider that this may be the most badass film ever made. I have no idea why the “Collateral”/“Heat”/“Miami Vice” Stan subset of Twitter isn’t equally as obsessed w/this lean, vicious work of art.
With Winona Ryder being all over the place lately doing PR and Keanu Reeves just celebrating the big 6-0, I think more people should check out their misanthropic take on the romantic comedy, “Destination Wedding.” It’s a solid little movie that any fan of theirs should enjoy
Cobra isn't exactly the best movie ever made but it sure is pretty. so much texture, color, backlighting, neon, inexplicable fog (my favorite). just looks incredible
Man, physical media is great. I may only ever watch it 5 to 10 more times in my lifetime. But I find it oddly reassuring that when I want to see “Jaws” again— it’s there waiting for me on my shelf. Tangible and not fully beholden to fickle whims of media conglomerates.
one of my least favorite quirks of the current streaming era is half the time you search for a movie you think you have access to but turns out you can’t watch it w/o an add-on. jaws is on prime! oh sorry no it’s on prime with starz for $2.99 extra. sorry for being fucking stupid
Complaining that John Wick has made current day action worse is a bizarre take by itself but then to hold up “Die Hard” as your shining example of how it should be is, frankly, moronic. “Die Hard” led to a trend that produced copycats of varying quality for literal decades 1/
DIE HARD has zero one-takes, never dangled Bruce Willis off of a real skyscraper and spends far more time on character work than hand-to-hand combat/shootouts and it’s handily more engaging, thrilling and ultimately satisfying than any action flick from the past 10 years.
Say what you want about Netflix but I appreciate how committed they are to women-fronted action films. I haven’t counted them all but there are *a lot* of them as site exclusives.
If you saw John Wick Chapter 4, then you know Donnie Yen’s blind hitman “Caine” was a major highlight that leaves you wanting more.
@Polygon
today has a piece from myself all about the origins & influence of “the blind swordsman” in genre entertainment-
Film Twitter is big on picking sides. Lately, it’s which recent movie is the better “gateway” into martial arts films: “Shang Chi” or “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” Both are good/great in their own way but I’m going to plant my flag with a true indie- “The Paper Tigers”
So, I watched “Renfield” and it’s not great except for Nicolas Cage (the movie should have focused on him) but… why is this more of a “Mortal Kombat” film than the *actual* “Mortal Kombat” film from 2021? I’m serious. The way it depicts violence has a very specific aesthetic.