Favorite Action Movies...
Nov. 4th, 2017 07:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatBeen thinking about this off and on for a bit now...what action movies do I enjoy the most?
This is a list of the ones that I enjoyed so much that I would watch a second or third or fourth time. We were discussing "Heat" at work, which is an all time favorite, starring Deniro and Pacino.
I tried to keep sci-fi, westerns, and horror films out of the list. Also historical epics like Lawrence of Arabia, which I don't really think of as an action/adventure film so much as a historical epic. It had slow bits. Or BladeRunner, which also doesn't quite strike me as an action adventure film. Nor does The Dark Knight or any of the comic book adaptations/super hero films which I really see as super hero/action films. But Rotten Tomatoes disagrees with me, apparently.
1. Heat by Michael Mann --stars, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Val Kilmer, which is an action/cop drama starring Robert Deniro as a criminal, and Pacino as the cop tracking him and trying to catch him. Think Serpico meets the Godfather.
2. Face-Off by John Woo -- An FBI agent goes through facial reconstruction surgery to go undercover as a terrorist, in order to infilterates his organization to convince the brother of the terrorist to tell him where a fatal bomb is being held. Meanwhile, the terrorist escapes and undergoes the same facial reconstruction surgery to masquerade as the FBI Agent. Travolta and Cage stare and they basically impersonate each other throughout the film.
3. Raiders of the Lost Arc by Stephen Spielberg and George Lucas starring Harrison Ford and Karen Allen, is an adventure tale about an archeologist trying to find the Lost Arc of the Covenant before the Nazi's do. It plays homage to, and to a degree satirizes classic film and television cliffhangers.
4. Die Hard by John McTiernan --starring Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman, and Bonnie Bedelia. about a NYC cop who travels to LA to make peace with his estranged wife and children, but instead runs into a hostage crisis/heist gone wrong at an LA skyscraper where his wife currently works, and his wife is one of the hostages. This was the film that made both Willis and Rickman's careers.
5. The Long Kiss Goodnight by Renny Harlin stars Geena Davis and Samuel L. Jackson, and is about a woman who has lost her memory and hires a PI to figure out who she is. Turns out she was a high priced assassin/international spy, and borderline sociopath in a former life. She gets her memory back and fights to get back to the new life she created sans memories, with Jackson in tow.
Hilarious in places and just pure fun, plus, it's great to watch Davis kick serious ass.
6. Top Gun by Tony Scott Stars Tom Cruise, Anthony Edwards, Tom Skerrit, Val Kilmer, and Kelly McGillis - and is about a cocky pilot with the naval academy who has to figure out how to lead a crew on a mission, without his ego getting in the way. A romantic film, that basically is known for it's musical track and helped propel Cruise's career.
7. The Killer by John Woo starring Chow Yun-Fat, Daniel Lee, and Sally Yeh. Chow plays the assassin Ah Jong, who accidentally damages the eyes of the singer Jennie (Sally Yeh) during a shootout. He later discovers that if Jennie does not undergo an expensive operation she will go blind. To get the money for Jennie, Ah Jong decides to perform one last hit. Woo was among the best in the action film genre.
8. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon by Ang Lee starring Chow Yun-Fat, Michelle Yeoh, Zhang Zhi and Chang Chen. It's a bit of Chinese fairy tale, with lots of amazing stunts. A beautiful film to watch if you like martial arts. "The film is set in the Qing Dynasty during the 43rd year (1778) of the reign of the Qianlong Emperor. Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun-fat) is an accomplished Wudang swordsman and Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh) is a female warrior and professional body guard. The death of Mu Bai's closest friend and Shu Lien's fiancé Meng Sizhao,[7] complicates these characters' feelings for one another. They are reconnected when Mu Bai, after choosing to relinquish the warrior lifestyle, asks Shu Lien to gift his sword "Green Destiny" to their friend Sir Te (Sihung Lung) in Beijing. Long ago, Mu Bai's master was murdered by Jade Fox (Cheng Pei-pei), a woman who sought to learn Wudang skills. Shu Lien meets with and stays in the compound of Sir Te where she also makes the acquaintance of Jen Yu who is the daughter of a rich and powerful Governor Yu and is about to get married."
9. Bullit by Peter Yates stars Steve McQueen, Peter Vaughn and Jacqueline Bisset. It's an action crime thriller, best known for the careening car chase sequence through San Franscico's streets.
10. Kill Bill Vol #1 and Vol #2 by Quentin Tarantino -- I thought about picking Pulp Fiction, but Kill Bill fits better, since it's non-stop action. It stars Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Lucy Liu, among others...and is about a furious bride who goes on vengeance spree after her groom and love is killed. Comments on, parodies, satirizes and pays homage to almost every kung fu, revenge, blaxplotation film out there.
11. The Guns of Navarone by John Lee Thompson -- a British/English epic adventure war film, starring Gregory Peck, David Niven, Anthony Quinn, James Darren, Irene Pappas, Anthony Quayle, and Stanley Baker. It's about an elite team that goes into Nazi Germany to destroy a seemingly impregnable fortress that destroys ships in the Agean Sea.
12. Skyfall by Sam Mendes -- a James Bond spy flick starring Daniel Craig, Dame Judi Dench and Javier Bardem. It's about the origins of Bond, and to a degree M, and deconstructs the entire Bond series.
13. Lethal Weapon by Richard Donner stars Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, as a cop suffering from severe PTSD and a cop who is on the verge of retirement and just had heart surgery. They fall flat into an insane case about a drug cartel that may or may not have been involved in killing Gibson's wife. If you love it, not to worry, first in a series. Plus they adapted a rather decent television series from the source material. Re-defined the buddy cop drama.
14. Romancing the Stone by Robert Zemeckis stars Kathleen Turner, Michael Douglas, and Danny Devito. It was the first of three movies the three stars ended up being in together. This one is about a romance novelist who travels to South America to save her sister. To do so, she has to find a priceless stone and deliver it to the crooks who took her sister. Along the way, she runs into a down-on-his luck mercernary, Douglas, who tries to romance the stone out from under her, but falls in love with her instead and has a change of heart. Pokes fun at the romance/adventure genre, but also pays homage to it.
15. Point Break by Kathryn Bigelow starring Kenu Reeves and Patrick Swayze. An FBI agent infilterates a high adrenaline surfing club in order to uncover a den of robbers posing as past presidents.
16. The Bourne Identity by Doug Liman starring Matt Damon, Franke Potente, Chris Cooper, Julia Stiles, and Brian Cox. It's about an uber-spy/assassin who has lost his memory and identity and has to figure out what is going on, while the government that created him is busy hunting him down.
Based on the Robert Ludlum thriller of the same name. Notable for the innovative chase scenes.
17. Nikita by Luc Besson starring Ann Parillaud. This is about a female assassin/covert spy who is taken from prison and turned into one off the grid by a covert ops team. She struggles with who she is, falls in love and tries to get away from the team that has recreated her. The movie resulted in two television adaptations, La Femme Nikita and Nikita. The original was a french film, written and directed by Luc Besson.
18. The French Connection by William Freidikin a crime action thriller starring Gene Hackman, Roy Schneider, and Fernando Rey, about two Narcoctics cops going after a foreign narcotics conspiracy. Famous for the car chase sequences.
19. Mad Max: Fury Road and Mad Max: Road Warrior -- both by George Miller, but starring different actors. The first has Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy in the leads, while the second stars Mel Gibson. It's a post-apocalyptic Australia and cars rule. Max is a former cop, and now Road Warrior. (I know this is sci-fi, but the film unlike various other sci-fi films is really just non-stop action.)
20. The Adventures of Robin Hood by Michael Curtis - 1938, starring Errol Flynn, Alan Hale, Olivia De Havilland, and Claude Raines. Classic swordplay.
This is a list of the ones that I enjoyed so much that I would watch a second or third or fourth time. We were discussing "Heat" at work, which is an all time favorite, starring Deniro and Pacino.
I tried to keep sci-fi, westerns, and horror films out of the list. Also historical epics like Lawrence of Arabia, which I don't really think of as an action/adventure film so much as a historical epic. It had slow bits. Or BladeRunner, which also doesn't quite strike me as an action adventure film. Nor does The Dark Knight or any of the comic book adaptations/super hero films which I really see as super hero/action films. But Rotten Tomatoes disagrees with me, apparently.
1. Heat by Michael Mann --stars, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Val Kilmer, which is an action/cop drama starring Robert Deniro as a criminal, and Pacino as the cop tracking him and trying to catch him. Think Serpico meets the Godfather.
2. Face-Off by John Woo -- An FBI agent goes through facial reconstruction surgery to go undercover as a terrorist, in order to infilterates his organization to convince the brother of the terrorist to tell him where a fatal bomb is being held. Meanwhile, the terrorist escapes and undergoes the same facial reconstruction surgery to masquerade as the FBI Agent. Travolta and Cage stare and they basically impersonate each other throughout the film.
3. Raiders of the Lost Arc by Stephen Spielberg and George Lucas starring Harrison Ford and Karen Allen, is an adventure tale about an archeologist trying to find the Lost Arc of the Covenant before the Nazi's do. It plays homage to, and to a degree satirizes classic film and television cliffhangers.
4. Die Hard by John McTiernan --starring Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman, and Bonnie Bedelia. about a NYC cop who travels to LA to make peace with his estranged wife and children, but instead runs into a hostage crisis/heist gone wrong at an LA skyscraper where his wife currently works, and his wife is one of the hostages. This was the film that made both Willis and Rickman's careers.
5. The Long Kiss Goodnight by Renny Harlin stars Geena Davis and Samuel L. Jackson, and is about a woman who has lost her memory and hires a PI to figure out who she is. Turns out she was a high priced assassin/international spy, and borderline sociopath in a former life. She gets her memory back and fights to get back to the new life she created sans memories, with Jackson in tow.
Hilarious in places and just pure fun, plus, it's great to watch Davis kick serious ass.
6. Top Gun by Tony Scott Stars Tom Cruise, Anthony Edwards, Tom Skerrit, Val Kilmer, and Kelly McGillis - and is about a cocky pilot with the naval academy who has to figure out how to lead a crew on a mission, without his ego getting in the way. A romantic film, that basically is known for it's musical track and helped propel Cruise's career.
7. The Killer by John Woo starring Chow Yun-Fat, Daniel Lee, and Sally Yeh. Chow plays the assassin Ah Jong, who accidentally damages the eyes of the singer Jennie (Sally Yeh) during a shootout. He later discovers that if Jennie does not undergo an expensive operation she will go blind. To get the money for Jennie, Ah Jong decides to perform one last hit. Woo was among the best in the action film genre.
8. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon by Ang Lee starring Chow Yun-Fat, Michelle Yeoh, Zhang Zhi and Chang Chen. It's a bit of Chinese fairy tale, with lots of amazing stunts. A beautiful film to watch if you like martial arts. "The film is set in the Qing Dynasty during the 43rd year (1778) of the reign of the Qianlong Emperor. Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun-fat) is an accomplished Wudang swordsman and Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh) is a female warrior and professional body guard. The death of Mu Bai's closest friend and Shu Lien's fiancé Meng Sizhao,[7] complicates these characters' feelings for one another. They are reconnected when Mu Bai, after choosing to relinquish the warrior lifestyle, asks Shu Lien to gift his sword "Green Destiny" to their friend Sir Te (Sihung Lung) in Beijing. Long ago, Mu Bai's master was murdered by Jade Fox (Cheng Pei-pei), a woman who sought to learn Wudang skills. Shu Lien meets with and stays in the compound of Sir Te where she also makes the acquaintance of Jen Yu who is the daughter of a rich and powerful Governor Yu and is about to get married."
9. Bullit by Peter Yates stars Steve McQueen, Peter Vaughn and Jacqueline Bisset. It's an action crime thriller, best known for the careening car chase sequence through San Franscico's streets.
10. Kill Bill Vol #1 and Vol #2 by Quentin Tarantino -- I thought about picking Pulp Fiction, but Kill Bill fits better, since it's non-stop action. It stars Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Lucy Liu, among others...and is about a furious bride who goes on vengeance spree after her groom and love is killed. Comments on, parodies, satirizes and pays homage to almost every kung fu, revenge, blaxplotation film out there.
11. The Guns of Navarone by John Lee Thompson -- a British/English epic adventure war film, starring Gregory Peck, David Niven, Anthony Quinn, James Darren, Irene Pappas, Anthony Quayle, and Stanley Baker. It's about an elite team that goes into Nazi Germany to destroy a seemingly impregnable fortress that destroys ships in the Agean Sea.
12. Skyfall by Sam Mendes -- a James Bond spy flick starring Daniel Craig, Dame Judi Dench and Javier Bardem. It's about the origins of Bond, and to a degree M, and deconstructs the entire Bond series.
13. Lethal Weapon by Richard Donner stars Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, as a cop suffering from severe PTSD and a cop who is on the verge of retirement and just had heart surgery. They fall flat into an insane case about a drug cartel that may or may not have been involved in killing Gibson's wife. If you love it, not to worry, first in a series. Plus they adapted a rather decent television series from the source material. Re-defined the buddy cop drama.
14. Romancing the Stone by Robert Zemeckis stars Kathleen Turner, Michael Douglas, and Danny Devito. It was the first of three movies the three stars ended up being in together. This one is about a romance novelist who travels to South America to save her sister. To do so, she has to find a priceless stone and deliver it to the crooks who took her sister. Along the way, she runs into a down-on-his luck mercernary, Douglas, who tries to romance the stone out from under her, but falls in love with her instead and has a change of heart. Pokes fun at the romance/adventure genre, but also pays homage to it.
15. Point Break by Kathryn Bigelow starring Kenu Reeves and Patrick Swayze. An FBI agent infilterates a high adrenaline surfing club in order to uncover a den of robbers posing as past presidents.
16. The Bourne Identity by Doug Liman starring Matt Damon, Franke Potente, Chris Cooper, Julia Stiles, and Brian Cox. It's about an uber-spy/assassin who has lost his memory and identity and has to figure out what is going on, while the government that created him is busy hunting him down.
Based on the Robert Ludlum thriller of the same name. Notable for the innovative chase scenes.
17. Nikita by Luc Besson starring Ann Parillaud. This is about a female assassin/covert spy who is taken from prison and turned into one off the grid by a covert ops team. She struggles with who she is, falls in love and tries to get away from the team that has recreated her. The movie resulted in two television adaptations, La Femme Nikita and Nikita. The original was a french film, written and directed by Luc Besson.
18. The French Connection by William Freidikin a crime action thriller starring Gene Hackman, Roy Schneider, and Fernando Rey, about two Narcoctics cops going after a foreign narcotics conspiracy. Famous for the car chase sequences.
19. Mad Max: Fury Road and Mad Max: Road Warrior -- both by George Miller, but starring different actors. The first has Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy in the leads, while the second stars Mel Gibson. It's a post-apocalyptic Australia and cars rule. Max is a former cop, and now Road Warrior. (I know this is sci-fi, but the film unlike various other sci-fi films is really just non-stop action.)
20. The Adventures of Robin Hood by Michael Curtis - 1938, starring Errol Flynn, Alan Hale, Olivia De Havilland, and Claude Raines. Classic swordplay.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-06 01:00 am (UTC)I liked Raiders okay, but not the sequels. I remember loving Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon but I don't recall anything else about it.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-06 01:09 am (UTC)Nikita, Guns of Navarone, Top Gun, Romancing the Stone, and French Connection aren't as violent. Two of those - French Connection and Nikita are rather brainy. Also the Adventures of Robin Hood -- not as violent and rather fun.
Mad Max films are violent. The worst of George Miller's genre is actually the first one, it's just gruesome. The calmest is weirdly Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, it's also in some respects the most positive of the group. The loudest is Mad Max: Fury Road, which is very violent, but still not as bad as Mad Max.
Agree on Raiders, I loved the first film (also saw it when I was a teenager, back in the 1980s, so that may have had an effect), but not the other films. The only other film that comes close to the first is Indiana Jones and the Holy Grail. But still nothing like the first, which was a bit of commentary on the old 1950s cliffhanger adventure pics.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-06 01:45 am (UTC)