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Good, Bad Action Movies

19 Jul 2009

There never seems to be enough time to do anything these days; and blogging keeps falling to the bottom of the priority list.

Work has been… odd to say the least. There have been a lot of organization changes in the last month. This all leads to uncertainty for everyone as to what product they will be working on next. There are some great opprotunities career-wise, but they don’t sound like fun. There are also some fun sounding opportunities, but they won’t necessarily be good career-wise. I guess we will all just have to wait and see what happens.

We’ve been watching some movies lately. It has actually been quite a while since we spent much time watching movies. Generally we stick to the longer, more involved, plotlines of good television shows. (Speaking of which Torchwood - Children of Earth was absolutely fantastic and you should go watch it right now if you haven’t already seen it.)

However we have managed to have a run of good luck with some quirky, yet excellent, smaller films. In no particular order:

Franklyn (IMDb) - An interesting split narrative. Essentially one story is taking place simulatneously in two different realties and time periods. Pulled off quite well.

The Fall (IMDb) - This one is by the director of The Cell. I’m not sure I need to say too much more. The bulk of the film is a story told by an injured stuntman told to a little girl as seen through her imagination. It is well crafted and well acted. I’m not sure how the world managed to miss this film.

The Science of Sleep (IMDb) - A quirky french film about a man who often gets reality and his dreams mixed up; and how that complicates both his work and his personal life.

After watching those movies, which were all basically independent films, I started thinking more about all of the movies made around the world that don’t make it to North America. I miss the days of my youth when so many of the Asian action movies would make there way here.

So, I started looking around for some Top 10 lists for various countries. Japan, Korea, France, even good ol’ Canada. And much to my delight I discovered that martial arts action movies (which have slowly been dying out in North America) are still very much alive over seas. Just to be clear, I’m not talking about epics like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (IMDb) or John Woo’s latest Red Cliff (IMDb). I’m talking about campy, over the top action like Crows Zero (IMDb) and Marine Boy (IMDb); or what people like myself would call “fun” movies.

Along the way I found some pretty cool sites for Asian movie reviews such as:

It is indeed good to know that there are still good, bad action movies being made out there. Even if I do have to watch them with subtitles.

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