This week the world lost one of its great rock’n’roll composers. Jim Steinman is most notable as the man behind the bombastic, flamboyant style and operatic feel of Meat Loaf’s legendary Bat Out Of Hell […]
NEW IN ACTION: APRIL 2021
Action is alive and thriving. Here are just four of the many recent Action genre releases and reissues to bless our lives with pure destruction. Jiu Jitsu (2020) [added to Netflix] The trailer for this […]
OH, HO, IT’S MAGIC! THE DECEIPT OF KENNY HAMPSON IN ‘TERROR TRAIN’
“It wasn’t just a prank! Doc, he was sick!” Roger Spottiswoode is not a name on the lips of too many film fans these days. He’s no John Carpenter or David Cronenberg, and certainly no […]
BRAWL, BABY, BRAWL: ‘NOBODY’ ISN’T WHO YOU MIGHT THINK
Ah, the theaters are open once again. You know what that means: the kind of prices that make piracy an attractive option; popcorn so old it votes Republican; and jerks who talk so loudly you […]
BHYH: THE “ALL KILLER, NO FILLER” MIX
BUT HAVE YOU HEARD is our occasional music recommendation column in which we dare to dive into the murky depths of Spotify, Bandcamp, Soundcloud, YouTube (and more) to bring you our most choice audio selections, […]
MIXTAPE: INTO ACTION!
To cap off Action Week, brace yourselves for our turbo-charged Spotify playlist filled to the brim of rock, pop, and hip-hop tunes from and inspired by some of our favorite Action movies. And be sure […]
THE VISUAL AND COMEDIC ABSURDITY OF ‘TORQUE’
“Cars suck,” the not-so-hidden message in the opening scene of Joseph Kahn’s 2004 action piece Torque, presents itself with cocksure bravado via a super-stylized spinning street sign. The sequence, a late addition to the movie, […]
WELCOME TO AMERICA! ‘RUMBLE IN THE BRONX’ AS A MASTERCLASS IN CULTURAL FUSION
The 1994 movie Rumble in the Bronx, which launched Jackie Chan into international superstardom overnight, was the result of a carefully-planned effort to bring Jackie to Western audiences. Chan, already in his 40s at the […]
ESCAPIST CINEMA: WE CAN’T GET AWAY FROM ‘THE RUNNING MAN’
The following piece was finished early on Monday morning, not knowing the great Yaphet Kotto would be pronounced dead in just a matter of hours. While The Running Man is very clearly an Arnold vehicle start to […]
A SIX-PACK, MAGNUM .44, AND A KITTEN: IT’S ‘TRUCK TURNER’!
I’m not a big action film fan, but I love Blaxploitation films. I consider Shaft (1971), the opening chapter of a glorious trilogy of films, to be one of the greatest crime films of all […]
‘WELCOME TO SHERWOOD!’ THE ACTION OF YESTERYEAR IN ‘THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD’
In 2010, The Adventures of Robin Hood was named by The Guardian as 15th best in its roundup of the best 25 action and war movies of all time, coming in under Die Hard, but […]
ACTION: THE UNSPOKEN GENRE
For years, action movies have been dismissed by serious cinephiles as “big and dumb.” But what if they weren’t just that? In our new column Into Action, we aim to remind movie fans of the […]
UNCLARITY OF PURPOSE: THE NATURE OF COMEDY AND THE ENDURING APPEAL OF ‘PCU’ (1995)
“The strange thing about Political Correctness,” wrote Roger Ebert in his 1994 review of PCU, “is that it seems to have many opponents and no supporters. No one ever describes themselves as Politically Correct, and […]
THE (RETRO) FUTURE IS FANTASTIC! THE ‘SPACE: 1999’ MOVIES
Warp Factor examines overlooked or nearly-forgotten science-fiction artifacts from the recent past with a 21st Century perspective. In this inaugural entry, the journey of Space: 1999, from being an original TV production to becoming a […]
MAYBE THIS IS ABOUT: ‘CHANGE OF HABIT’
The night I watched Change of Habit was the third night in a row I had watched a movie involving nuns, none of which were The Nun. If you’re finding time for those Conjuring spinoffs, you should consider better decisions […]