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

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#27

BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA

John Carpenter
1986
United States
(354 points, 12 votes, 1 first place)

this movie rules. total classic.

― chaki

this is one of the best movies of all time. this thread needs to be overrun with great quotes from this great movie.

― f. hazel

this movie was so much better on re-viewing it than i thought it would be! the whole premise that the sidekick is the actual hero is so great and something i probably was completely oblivious to when i saw it as a kid!

― s1ocki

I really feel like BTiLC deserves respect as a genuinely good film! There's probably some really good detailed defense of the Carpenter aesthetic out there, but it seems to me that a lot of what could be perceived as bad about this and other films of his is really in the service of art. I don't know if it's Camp, but it's something akin to it, right?

― Dan I.

BIG TROUBLE in little china: C/D?

Yeeeees.

I LOVE THIS MOVIE

Yes, it's great. And fun.

And awesome.

Also 80's Kurt Russell <3

My mind and my spirit are going North and South.

total nonstop classic

no I mean black blood of the earth

^yes!

if we're not back by dawn... call the president

love big trouble, one of two carpenters i voted for. i always wrote it off when i was younger but i remember when i finally saw it i was amazed at how lively and creative it is, and how it did a lot of things i totally didnt expect

VG - yes to 80s KR tho the hottest is def this 80s KR imo.

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#26

THE DARK KNIGHT

Christopher Nolan
2008
United States
(355 points, 13 votes)

I thought it was an okay film, but by no means a great one (speaking as someone who has no strong feelings either way about the superhero genre). Plot was an incoherent string of implausible schemes; Dent/Two-Face was a pointless character who contributed nothing more than a nice piece of gross-out SPFX; Bale as Wayne was okay, Bale as Batman was laughable; fight scenes were inept and far too plentiful; the oppressive brutality and seriousness made the comic-book contrivances seem glaringly ridiculous; and the last hour was a slog. The film does raise some interesting philosophical and political questions, and a lot of the acting was top-notch (fine work from the supporting players and a star turn from Ledger), but that's all I got out of it. Want to see it again, but mostly 'cuz I'm sure I must have missed something.

Felt the same way about the LotR movies, though, so maybe it's just that I don't like fun.

― contenderizer

this movie is way too long but it has some pretty awesome stuff, i really liked heath ledger as the joker--definitely brings something new to the role, this sort of oopsy little-boy-ness that is deeply creepy. some pretty good set pieces though if it does get way too self-serious by the end. i dug it mostly!

― s1ocki

i think this movie is great -- yah a little long but it didnt get in the way -- and i think that s1ocki's concern about it getting 'self serious' at the end actually works in its favor, it feels like a comic book in the same way we talked about casino royale being good because it had long boring parts like a book, lolz

its better than batman begins by a lot, first scene is an incredible opener too -- one of my favorite movies this year. id be surprised if AW wasnt feeling it after watching it but then what do i know

― K DEF FROM REAL LIVE (deej)

Batman carries on beginning in ... The Dark Knight

RE: BTILC - as a kid I had nightmares about the old dude w/ beams of light shooting out of his eyes & mouth, and also the underwater scene with the chains o corpse parts.. having the nightmares only made me want to watch it more, though!

such a badass flick

the dark knight ownes

though i still lol when i think of 'juggaloker' - coined by tuomas i think

omg beardo Kurt for LIFE, enbb otm

Watched TDK again recently, and I know it's hardly challops, but Jesus Christ every second Heathe Ledger is onscreen is amazing. He really got the core thing about the Joker - that if you're in a room with him, you're probably thinking that you'll probably die.

On a second viewing the scene where we learn that sometimes the truth we need to hear, we can only hear from a Terrifying Big Black Man kind of jumped out as a mistake, but that and the voice is pretty much it on the cons column.

I like the Dark Knight but as an "action movie" it's pretty bad

Yeah like Die Hard, it's basically a gravity movie.

it's definitely too long.

Yeah I don't know where I put Tdk but it's not high on my action movie list. I love it, but it's no Big Trouble in Little China

the phone sonar crap at the end was so ill conceived it kind of ruined what should have been a really cool climax

whats a 'gravity movie'

One where the central conflict is resolved by gravity, duh.

pencil scene is utterly classic still & always

We really shook the pillars of heaven, didn't we, Wang?

Yes you did. Yes you did. GOD BLESS YOU KURT RUSSELL & JOHN CARPENTER

"vertigo" is the classic gravity movie

though i still lol when i think of 'juggaloker' - coined by tuomas i think

coined by Violent J!

:0

this is a movie w/ the pencil scene, a dude w/ plastic explosives messily sutured into his viscera & Aaron Eckhert's oozy half-face - that somehow Nolan etc. managed to skate through w/ a PG-13 rating is just messed up.

honestly i was mesmerised by Heath Ledger in this, still find it incredible that it's even him under the make-up. the bit where he has Brian the fake-Batman tied up and shouts "LOOK! AT! ME!" was the most frightened i'd been by a villain since at least 'Se7en'.

easy to forget because of its ubiquity, but dark knight is a pretty intense movie. I always think of the grown woman sitting next to me in the theater covering her face with her hands during the scene with gordon's son (and no I don't think she was a film critic).

heath ledger was really very good in this

dying @ gravity movie

I thought HL was great in it iirc but I only saw it once in the theater. It's not that I didn't like it but I never felt the need to watch it again.

I still don't get what a gravity movie is?

Oh wait, nevermind. I see now.

"It's all in the reflexes"

i watched To Live and Die in LA for the first time two nights ago after getting stoked on it from the voting thread. i watched it back-to-back with Altman's California Split for a dope yin/yang double feature of 70s/80s slimy LA awesomeness. Watch it alongside friedkin's Cruising for westcoat/eastcoast "good cop gets scummy to save the day" bookends.

pretty sure i have seen every scene in The Matrix just from living in a college dormitory 1998-2000 but have never watched it all the way through. its def a movie that had to be made but its never interested me and i feel like its done so much more harm than good.

Empire Strikes Back has always been my favorite star wars. Just so dark and beautiful.

only seen Bourne Supremacy, really need to see the first two!!!

have never seen The Warriors or Big Trouble in Little China!!!!!

i feel like its done so much more harm than good.

oh ffs

I assumed a gravity movie referred to something like Taken with Liam Neeson, where there isn't any real plot per se, it's just something really heavy being dropped from a great height and smashing through everything beneath it until it is lodged firmly in the earth or explodes. Roll credits.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D03E9kUTTtQ

oh man, saw TDK originally in a theater with my ex who was really squeamish/emotional about screen violence and daaaaamn this movie

i feel like its done so much more harm than good.

'bullet time' was the Eddie Vedder Vocal Style of 2000s action cinema

hah, I like that definition! Death Wish, Oldboy, maybe Kill Bill vol 1?

gr080!!! YOU NEED TO SEE BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA. u/k.

yeah that's such a gr80 movie

You really, really need to see Big Trouble in Little China. Like, now. Or tonight, whatever.