Movies That Were Probably Made By a Spasm of Six Year-Olds on Acid: The Top 75 Action Films Poll Results Thread

yeah, it definitely faced a lot of commercial resistance for, y'know, not being much of an action movie (xpost)

yeah hurt locker is a small and mean Man Movie, a very atypical BP winner imo

Star Wars is great, but it didn't make my top 50. I think mostly due to going to the theatre to see the re-release of New Hope and being all fuck it I give up on this fucker.

true (shameless name-droppy story): after the first tiff press screening i went to the film's publicist office to try and book an interview with k-bigs and she was standing there in the hotel suite getting her hair done up by her pr rep. i told her i'd just been to the screening and she really nervously, charmingly, interrogated me on how it went.. "do you think people liked it??"

i struggled with the jedi question but i still think it, like temple of doom, has some pretty all-time stuff in it

― the jazz zinger (s1ocki), Monday, February 13, 2012 11:39 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

you know whats weird is that i didnt vote for any spielberg even though i consider him the greatest action director probably ever to live

that is weird!

not even ALWAYS?

lol

oh man, Die Hard With A Vengeance is such a great movie

^^^

'with a vengeance' probably the best action sequel suffix of all time, too

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v212/etienne_saint/conair2.png

#67 (TIE)

CON AIR

Simon West
1997
United States
(170 points, 6 votes, 1 first place)

This movie is both awful and great, I would rather watch it than pretty much any other 90s action movie.

― jon /via/ chi 2.0

man 97 was a fantastic year for movies

this isnt even the best action classic to come out that year i mean

chapelle is pimp in this but then everyone is p much amazing

― "what a great post" - some (Lamp)

I like the part where Steve Buscemi, infamous child killer, wanders around for a few minutes in the desert, amid the ruins of an abandoned airport, and stumbles upon a pigtailed toddler playing innocently in her back yard.

― Heady Snobbin (Pillbox)

Let Us Civilly Discuss Con Air

No, please? Because that movie involves Cage saying "Put the bunny down" like 8 times.

Although Cusack as the fast-talking city guy in the cream linen suit A+++.

Why yes, I did see this movie twice in the theater (for free) (in college), why do you ask?

con air's dreck but its fun. i like it because its one of those movies where the protagonists fists are registered as deadly weapons or whatever

every time Con Air is on TV my wife and i have the same argument about how she thinks it's hilarious and entertaining and i'm like nah this is just bad

yeah i think its real close to bad for me. i kinda view it similarly to The Rock, which also straddles the funbad line, but i think with more entertaining performances

oh fuck The Rock was not on my ballot! was it even nominated? for shame

Is that the Edward Norton Alcatraz one? I just watched that last year at some point. I don't think I like guns as much as martial arts, so it was not a bad way to spend a Sunday hangover but did not make my list.

I think you all mean "Academy Award-nominated film 'Con Air'"

For me, The Rock is on the 'fun' side, Con Air is on the 'bad' side.

I don't even know if Die Hard with a Vengeance is the third or fourth one. Is it the one that really got the ball rolling as Samuel L. Jackson as permanently angry character actor?

I like The Rock OK, think Con Air is execrable/risible, but not in a good way.

To be fair to The Rock, had I thought of it in time, I would have had to ask myself, "Does this go on the list? Hmm. Not today." which is more than I can say for Con Air.

i don't know anything about action movies but con air is so bad, y'all! sorry to be that asshole invading the thread.

Ultraviolet and Equilibrium aren't making this list, are they ;_;

wait a second, who gave con air a first place vote. i just noticed that!

equilibrium got on my shortlist but not the 50 but i think i regret that

If Con air is on, I will keep watching. Gathering of crudely individuated villains, always like that; quite thoroughly cast, there are actors I can watch everywhere; absurd huge crashy sequences. It's no Rock, though, no.

Con Air is packed with so many women/children in jeopardy gags. Will she get raped by the rapist? Will she get molested by the molester? Tune in and find out!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v212/etienne_saint/brandedtokill.jpg

#67 (TIE)

BRANDED TO KILL

Seijun Suzuki
1967
Japan
(170 points, 4 votes)

I just watched Branded to Kill last night and, jesus. I mean, hallucinatory. Crazy. I can't think of another movie I've seen recently -- and I've seen a lot of good movies recently -- where past a point I had no earthly idea what was going to happen next, and then what happened next always blew my brain apart. There are so many individual genius sequences in there, and they all kind of pile on top of each other. Goddam. I've heard about him for a while, but I guess I didn't really know wtf he was up to.

-- gypsy mothra

Branded to Kill is utterly great -- picked it up several years back and Sean from SF (who's doing well, last I checked) and I had a good time watching it and playing 'spot the moments where Tarantino bugged out.'

-- Ned Raggett

i love die hard 3 and only just now read this which sounds amazing:

An alternative ending to the one shown in the final movie was filmed with Jeremy Irons and Bruce Willis, set some time after the events in New York. It can be found on the special edition DVD. In this version it is presumed that the robbery succeeds, and that McClane was used as the scapegoat for everything that went wrong. He is fired from the NYPD after more than 20 years on the force and the FBI has even taken away his pension. Nevertheless he still manages to track Simon using the batch number on the bottle of aspirins and they meet in a cafe in Hungary.

In this version, Simon has double-crossed most of his accomplices, gotten the loot to a safe hiding place in Nova Scotia, and has the gold turned into statuettes of the Empire State Building in order to smuggle it out of the country; but he is still tracked down to his foreign hideaway (this version is very similar to Alec Guinness's situation in the British heist movie The Lavender Hill Mob made some 45 years earlier in which the stolen gold was turned into Eiffel Tower paperweights).

McClane is keen to take his problems out on Simon whom he invites to play a game called "McClane Says". This involves a form of Russian Roulette with a small Chinese rocket launcher that has had the sights removed, meaning it is impossible to determine which end is which. McClane then asks Simon some riddles similar to the ones he played in New York. When Simon gets a riddle wrong, McClane forces him at gunpoint to fire the launcher, which fires the rocket through Simon, killing him. Of course, McClane had been wearing a flak jacket (which was the answer to the final riddle: "What could he have brought to the meeting to save his life?"), so even if Simon had pointed the launcher the right way, it is likely that the relatively low-velocity rocket would not have caused McClane enough injury to prevent him from shooting Simon.

People who hate Con Air hate action movies.

maybe they just like good ones!

People who love Con Air will watch anything if it is on.

branded to kill's been on my need-to-see list for more than a decade, wtf am i waiting for

is Con Air the Dirty Dancing of action movies?

I don't...know. I genuinely like Dirty Dancing, so I want to say that it's not.

People who love Con Air will watch anything if it is on.

no wai, i will not watch eg armageddon or independence day

(Con Air my 24)

Independence Day is exactly the same type of movie as Con Air!

this next one will be the last one for at least awhile, gotta head in to work. will try to get 61-65 out around midday if i can.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v212/etienne_saint/assault13.jpg

#66

ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13

John Carpenter
1976
United States
(172 points, 7 votes)

the music, the creepy "silenced" bullets, the totally shocking ice cream scene, the fact that the plot is straightforward & scary (as opposed to the shitty twist the remake has--also the remake opening is so zzzzz, it's exactly the first 10 minutes of bruce willis's "hostage"! EXACTLY)... the weirdly unpretty '70s actors... the genuine tension... the fact that it's awesome!

― s1ocki (slutsky)

i don't hate the carpenter versh, but it's very 'film buff' in that it has zero 'content', kind of. i *like* that the new one has a (very stock) 'police corruption' story. i've thought about the remake a bit, and i've decided it's more hawksian, or explores the hawksian problematic(!), much more thoroughly than the '76. it's about the possibility of moral action. the central conflict: why should hawke protect the crims when the cops are in cahoots with them -- is sharp. i don't think carpenter aims for that.

but otoh i thought the first 10mins of the '05 one were skill. i haven't seen 'hostage'.

― N_RQ

Love it. Like "Night of the Living Dead" with a sense of humor.

Con Air was totally fun and watchable. Not sure why it didn't make my list.

Omar needs to do all film polls -- he picks great stills.

Stills in this thread are perfect so far.

(Though fittingly they should all be gifs)

Independence Day is exactly the same type of movie as Con Air!

nah! the cast is thinner, and there's less human-scale business.

or rather yes, it's the same type, but…

i omitted precinct cuz i havent seen it since i was like 13 and i tried to keep it to movies ive watched in the last 10 years, but there's a few other carpenters on my list.

wmc otm