Edge of Tomorrow is hardly the first enjoyable Cruise flick... Collateral anyone? Hell even Minority Report was pretty damn good.

Brad Pitt early on was a well talked about and successful "heartthrob" but Se7en was Pitt's defining role. With Fight Club it broke him into a younger generation, more of a mass appeal, it was the icing on Pitt's name after Se7en.

I'm assuming acid means after his fallout with the couch jumping and Scientology, not that Tom Cruise hasn't ever done a enjoyable movie.

Ghost Protocol is great. Wasn't much a fan of Collateral, imo Jamie Foxx was a silly protagonist and the story meandered with a limp ending, also visually I hated that it was shot on digital camera with a 360 degree shutter.

Still, you have to admit Cruise's performance did a good job of breaking him out of his typical goody-two-shoes mould.

I really liked Collateral all around. It's been a while since I've seen it but Valkyrie was pretty decent too.

Usually having Tom Cruise starring makes me just put the movie aside. I still haven't picked up Collateral in full due to that. Seen bits and not been too impressed to give it a proper whirl. Going further back in time, I really liked Eyes Wide Shut, but of course, that's much more due to Kubrick than anything else. He was tolerable in Oblivion and Edge of Tomorrow, even good in the former, but the generic writing in the resolution of both movies rather flattened the effect.

Agreed. The marketing team failed big time in conveying that however, which definitely contributed to it's disappointing return at the box office. The trailer made EoT out to be a usual unstoppable semi-superhero role, when in the movie Tom Cruise is dislikeable, weak, ignorant, incredibly cowardly and shit scared. Moreover it seems even here some film buffs have actively avoided watching it despite it receiving good word of mouth. Not sure if that's Tom Cruise fatigue, generally disliking the guy or missing the train. Anyway it's getting a potentially great sequel so it ain't all bad.

Oblivion was mostly 'OK' because the plot was stretched too thin with bog standard characters and it all essentially resting on the reveals. Nice too look at, that's about it.

I didn't mean to insinuate that Cruise was worthless prior to Edge of Tomorrow (it's hard not to love Top Gun and there's undeniable classics peppered around), but there was both the major post-couch backlash to taint his legacy as well as the stink of Jerry Maguire that followed him for years. Not that Jerry Maguire is a bad movie, but it's saccharine rom-com stuff when it doesn't involve Cuba Gooding Jr. It's not like Matthew McConaughey's trajectory (start promising, plateau with mid-grade fare, stick to formulaic rom-com garbage, then bring back the goods).

I watched No Tears for the Dead last night, and it made me think of Korean cinema and how it's the perfect midway point between Hollywood and Japan. There are undeniably incredible moments in the film, both the action scenes and part of the story, but there are also odd narrative choices that feel like they should mean more than they actually do. I can see this getting a low budget American remake within the next few years, not unlike Thailand's 13: Game of Death (remade, with the same writer, as 13 Sins), and having some of the story points built up slightly better, but if you're looking for a tense thriller with some incredible scenes of bloodshed? Hey, you can do a whole lot worse. 6.5/10

He was great in Magnolia.

Dude murders 50 guys because of a dog? That's basically the definition of a stupid plot point, taking the old "they murdered my wife/partner/dad" to ridiculous levels.

EDIT: i just remembered the assassin bar. There is a bar for assassins in this movie and you guys are trying to tell me it isn't stupid as fuck.



I'm not though. Not only, at least. Mad Max is gritty and intense as fuck and as far away from a B movie as possible.

I don't remember much about Edge of Tomorrow except being really bored and unimpressed. I didn't know it was generally seen in so positive light as here, I genuinely thought everyone agreed it was just another run of the mill flick. I watched both movies together with somebody else who also thought they were crap, I remember we almost couldn't finish John Wick because it was so bad. I guess I have to watch both this and John Wick again, if for nothing else to formulate some concrete thoughts about why they suck.

Yeah, I just was not captivated or moved by the character at all - was a very dull character to me and I just found the whole 'hitman comes back from retirement' thing hacky and cliche, with no real interesting hook to pull me into the story. Keanu Reeves was absolutely awful in the role, too, maybe worse than usual.

Dude murders 50 guys because 47 of them stood in his way of the 3 he wanted. He wanted them because they took away the last gift his dead wife gave him. I'm not going to try to send up John Wick as some emotional powerhouse of a story, it's just a cool little action flick, but if you don't understand why somebody grieving could fly off the handle over a gift somebody gave them...

Given that there are businesses which are used as fronts for illegal activity in the real world, this one's a reach.

...have you seen any of the other movies in the series? They're all B movies. Fury Road is a B movie and that it was as big a hit as it was surprised virtually everybody. Some of the most entertaining and important movies of the past can be considered B movies.

If you don't like them then you don't like them, but since you've had few kind words on the action flicks recommended to you, what kind do you enjoy the most? It's easier to draw up a list of rec's if we know what you hold in high regard.


To each their own, but I wouldn't put that anywhere near the bottom of Reeves' character list. I found Wick more compelling than Neo, for example (and the movie better in every single way).

The original trilogy are totally B-movies (and at least the first two are really good!), though Fury Road felt way too polished/modern and whatnot to me - not that it really matters I suppose. Pretty good movie though!

As for recommending Empyreal movies, I'm not sure if he and I have agreed on a single flick so I probably best stick this one out hahaha.

Not me they are recommending to, man.

Re: John Wick, eh, I haven't seen the Matrix in over a decade. I think good characters in movies are a combination of writing and an actor who can convey a unique sense of humanity and personality. Bruce Willis did it right in Die Hard. Tom Hardy in the new Mad Max, while he didn't have a wealth of depth to his character, worked because the focus was more on the story and Hardy was just so cool that you didn't care. With Reeves as Wick, it was irritatingly bad acting coupled with a character I've seen a thousand times before and with a journey that wasn't particularly compelling.

^Oops, was looking at the wrong quote.

Fury Road and Thunderdome B-movies? How do you figure that?

Not in the exact literal sense but aesthetically, design wise, character wise and plot wise they are b-movies. And I'd put The Raid in there too. I think Anders is looking for a b-grade balls-to-the-wall mentality in the movies he's looking for yet he's (unaware?) that's what his tastes cater to (John Wick being the exception).

Neo was such a blank confused character (especially in the sequels), Thomas Anderson on the otherhand had a certain sarcastic/playful wit about him. I like John Wick and wholly prefer it to The Matrix but I don't think Wick was an exceptional or far better character.

The new "black and chrome" version of Fury Road is definitely an improvement over the theatrical version. The CGI blends in a lot better and the lack of colour makes it feel a lot grittier and more authentic.

I guess it's best to agree to disagree then, because in my world it's beyond ridiculous to want to murder people for a dog, especially 50 fucking guys. Especially with the One Last Job, You Murdered My Wife/Dad/Partner -kinda plot thrown in as well.

And as Empyreal says, you don't care at all about the character of John Wick or his motivations and all that, because clearly -they- didn't care. Why bother at all then?



You don't understand. It's not a "front". It's a bar, a hotel even, where assassins hang out, drink or stay, and where killing in the hotel is against the rules which is a rule they need because everyone who stays there kill people for money. I watched a few clips on youtube and read an article or two because I don't remember much from the movie, but it's literally a bar only for assassins. And you have to pay with goddamn gold coins to come in, because why the fuck not, at this point we just don't care about anything anymore. You're the one reaching here trying to make it out as a run of the mill plot point about criminals using legal companies to front their illegal activity, but it's a bar for hitmen where they pay in solid gold colds.

Again, tastes can differ, you can like a scene or plot point or not, or say it's not important to your enjoyment of the movie, but I hope at least you can see why some people, like me (and the friend I watched it with back when), could think it is really stupid, silly and ridiculous?




I'm not talking about Mad Max in general. I'm talking about the big international hit with two goddamn megastars in it and a 150 million dollar budget, which is not a B movie in any shape or form.



As I started out with when I first asked for action movies, The Raid 1-2, Dredd, Hardcore Henry, Mad Max Fury Road. Then we mentioned a few other cool flicks in between the long list of stuff I didn't like, like Lockout or Pacific Rim (though it's not really the style I ideally prefer).

I legitimately think the underworld caste system they devised is the best part of the movie. It is ridiculous, but it's believably ridiculous since, again, there are real world situations to compare it to. It's no different than watching a sci-fi movie where the currency is "credits" and not modern legal tender.

I completely understand why thinking "man goes on revenge for his dog" is stupid, silly, and ridiculous, but that's also boiling it down to ignore the actual motivation behind it (man struggling with grief returns to the life he left behind).

As volute pointed out, the aesthetic was total b-movie glory. It just happened to actually get a budget since the big hits nowadays are b-movie concepts with bigger budgets. There's not much difference between the world choices in Fury Road and Turbo Kid, for example.

Let's try some other rec's...
16 Blocks (2006) - Overlooked/underrated action flick about police corruption directed by Richard Donner (he of Lethal Weapon fame). Bruce Willis as a soon-to-retire detective charged with protecting a murder witness from the corrupt cops trying to silence him.
Everly (2014) - This is one I've heard only minor rumblings about, but it's Salma Hayek as a MILF gunning down mobsters for trying to kill her family. That's at least worth a consideration.
The Prodigy (2005) - Mediocre acting aside, this boasts some of the more realistic action sequences I've seen. A deranged hitman targets a low-level mob enforcer as his successor, forcing him into a deadly game of cat-and-mouse.
Battle Royale (2000) - To curb the ever-growing trend of youthful crime and violence, the Japanese government institutes an annual lottery game where the "winners" (all students) must fight each other to the death. Watch the theatrical cut, as the director's cut is bloated with poorly thought out character building that ruins the pacing.
City of God (2002) - More a chronicle of gang violence in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, there's plenty of grime and action to go around.
District 13 (2004) - Remade in the US as Brick Mansions, it's basically a French remake of Escape From New York that substitutes the goofy characters with stylistic violence and oddly incredible parkour stunts.

Ha, City of God is my favorite movie. I never thought of it as an action film though. It's more of a somber drama. I've been meaning to watch it again soon.

Man you guys are arguing about John Wick for all the wrong reasons, if you ask me. Who cares about the dog revenge plot or the gold coins or even Keanu's acting? That movie failed because the "guy goes into rooms and shoots all of the bad guys in the head very efficiently" is the plot of a a Call of Duty addict's masturbation fantasy, not an action movie worth watching.

chaossphere....I dunno, man. I loved Fury Road quite a bit and thought about watching that Black and Chrome edition because it was in theaters here, but i really felt like the color added a lot to the movie so if there weren't new scenes or edits other than the color filter I just didn't really think it'd be worth seeing in theaters for a third time. I'll watch that version at home and see what I think, but I'm going in a skeptic.

You just described every action movie ever with that one. It's also hardly a failure with an RT rating of 85%, MetaCritic of 68, IMDB rating of 7.1, box office gross of $86 million (off a budget of $20 million), and a very anticipated sequel that's about to hit theaters. By any sort of metric beyond personal taste, the word "fail" is not applicable.

Now let me tell you why [insert acclaimed movie that made all the money] sucks.

Personal taste is the chief thing that matters when talking about a movie. Sure it's great that it got all those accolades and got high scores and a lot of people like it. Doesn't mean I have to respect, acknowledge or take that into account - there's nothing really objective about a film's quality and I doubt iamntbatman was trying to say it was a literal failure so much as he thought it was a shitty story.

I wouldn't say it's every action movie ever either. I prefer ones where there's a lot more story beats and other things going on to spice up the action. Drive is a pretty similar film in some ways and I liked that loads better as it had a much more interesting background story to the crazy action.

Oh sorry, I forgot to speak in only objective terms about critical consensus and box office success and to leave all of my own personal, subjective opinions at the door. I forgot that this was a thread about film profitability rather than a thread about what we think about movies.

Yeah, I thought it was a bland, uninteresting movie, and largely failed to deliver on the hype it had received from people who I thought liked it because we had similar ideas about what makes for a good action movie. John Wick was not, for me, a good action movie. If all you have to counter that are IMDB scores and shit like that, I'm not really sure what to say to you.

To add to what Empyreal said, when I really dig into an action movie, what I want is *stylized* action. The action in John Wick was essentially only stylized by virtue of the admittedly cool way it was shot, but what happens on screen is basically "realistic" in the sense that a guy who is super talented with pistols could probably have done that stuff. That's just not interesting to me. I want my action movies to be larger than life in some way, and John Wick didn't do that at all.

I want my action movies to be smaller than life, which is why I loved Osmosis Jones.

Osmosis Jones was pretty awesome when I was a kid.

Also has one of the funniest lines ever delivered:

http://cdn1.anyclip.com/zTo442nt7h4mn.mp4

Personal taste is all that ultimately matters when discussing any work of art, but there's a difference between saying "this is a failure" and "this is not my taste." One asserts objectivity while the other admits subjectivity.


Yet it can still be ground down to a basic structure of "man commits violent acts as retribution." That's what I was trying to get at. Every action movie ever made can be boiled down to some form of redemptive violence, the most common being "man guns people down for revenge."


See initial line to this post.

That's our divide. I grew up with Arnold and Stallone firing off machine guns that never ran out of ammo, JCVD spin kicking people three times his size into wood chippers, and Gibson jumping away from explosions with nary a burnt hair. I like to find the balance between stylized action and realistic violence, so John Wick is right up my alley.

And yeah, Osmosis Jones didn't deserve the shit it got, nor do I think it would have been as derided were it not for the live action performances. Although I do like the verbal exchange between Bill Murray and Chris Elliot over whether or not beer qualifies as a fluid.

Wait... people don't like Osmosis Jones? Man that was a childhood favorite of mine and I feel like if I watched it today it'd still hold up just fine. A super creative idea that (to my memory) doesn't treat kids like idiots plus it stars Chris Rock and Bill Murray? That's basically fail-proof.

Exactly this. I'd point out that Empyreal isn't doing this for others to note, his comments never come across as vitriol even when he disagrees with me about Candyman.
Same here, I grew up with Commando and Rambo - where blowing up a town and killing hundreds of heavily armed men was a breeze. And while I appreciate and enjoy videogame-esque movies where ammo never runs out and death defying acts are a plenty, I can also appreciate and enjoy something like Blue Ruin where it's awkward as fuck and feels real.

Yo, Osmosis Jones is fucking legit.

Any horror fans here seen Lowlife (2012)?

Re-watched Mystic River. I liked the first act but after the girl's death discovery the movie just crawls along with several unnecessary extended scenes. Sharp contrast in editing after the discovery too. Honestly hated the ending, felt it was really far fetched and dumb. Think they were trying to Usual Suspects the audience, except the script wasn't smart enough to elude to that beyond a tiny hair and a character portrayal that didn't equal as such on even a minute level. Tim Robbins' character is so insanely and irrationally stupid yet capable of casually fucking with the police and why would he do that if there's a murder that needs to be solved? Made little to no sense and I would not recommend.

I thought the movie of that was really good, but the book is absolutely stunning and actually my favorite book. The way the characters are written and the drama intersects and goes much deeper than the movie is just a thing of beauty. Real work of art.

acid_bukkake, I don't think we'll ever see eye to eye on John Wick or what constitutes a B-movie, so lets look at your other rec's.



Watched 16 Blocks back in the day and didn't like it much.

Everly looks ridiculous and stupid with a small chance of awesomeness and I might watch it when drunk some day.

The Prodigy trailer has a Saw-like quality to it, but I read a few good reviews and it seems really intense/brutal. Will check it out, thanks.

Battle Royale is a classic and I actually watched it with my girlfriend fairly recently. Wouldn't call it an action movies though, or, it's not the action that's it's main draw, but it's fucked upness.

City of God is an amazing drama, but very far from an action movie I would think.

District 13's action/violence looks, as you say, a bit too stylized for my tastes, and I never was a fan of the parkour action movies, but the trailer is non stop, so I might check it out.

Watched a couple of movies this weekend.

Midnight Special was pretty interesting, kinda reminded me of movies like 10 Cloverfield Lane where there's a pretty jarring shift in tone toward the end. Basically it's just this sorta weird mystery with sci-fi leanings, kind of an X-Files feel to it (only with more focus on the people the FBI would be investigating, rather than the FBI agents themselves) but toward the end it gets pretty Steven Spielbergy. I don't think I really loved the ending of it, but it's one of those movies where it's hard to imagine a more tonally consistent ending that would have left the audience satisfied.

I also just watched Spectral, which is basically a Sci-Fi (sorry, SyFy) Original Movie except it's on Netflix so it had higher production values. Basically it's like a Predator or Aliens type of movie only way less cool than either of those. Essentially what Call of Duty 6: Modern Black Ops Delta Force Modern Warfare Division is to the original Duke Nukem, this movie is to Predator or Aliens. Modern, flashy, "realistic" in a lame way, totally lacking in charisma. Kind of strange to consider how successful many Netflix TV shows have been, but I can't really think of a single Netflix Original Movie that has been worth sitting through.

I still haven't watched Spectral yet, but I noticed the same pattern of the series being better than the movies. Mercy almost put me to sleep, I Am the Pretty Thing... was better than Mercy but still not totally successful, and ARQ despite its solid IMDB score didn't add much to the "keep repeating the same day" subgenre.

I'm sure the book is much better, rather than the movie which I believe wasn't near as good because of Clint Eastwood's directing. On the topic of books to screen, I felt the book of American Psycho was inferior to the movie. I felt Mary Harron accurately took snapshots of the book while omitting the insanely tedious to read sections. Her direction made it less about the underlying relishing for the yuppie scene Bret Easton Ellis obvious had, and illustrating the mundane "perks" and superficiality in more of a black comedic way.

I probably should get around to seeing that little Rogue One movie, but on the otherhand I'm happy I haven't endured a crowded cinema.

Sometimes being in a crowded theater is a really good thing, like in The Force Awakens or Godzilla where the audience is reacting to everything going on onscreen and clearly loving it. A good horror movie is enhanced by a good crowd, if you ask me. Also, when the trailer for Krampus came on before whatever movie I saw it in front of and the whole audience just died laughing at how dumb it looked.