Tuesday, November 03, 2009

20 Crap-tacular Action Flicks

Con Air | 20 Crap-tacular Action Flicks YOU Love | Photo 1 of 16 | EW.com: "To welcome ''G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra'' to DVD, we asked PopWatchers for their ''just bad enough to be awesome'' flicks -- ''Con Air,'' ''Wanted,'' and ''Starship Troopers'' made the cut."

I like this list for many reasons, particularly for #1.

7 comments:

Fred Blosser said...

I like LONG KISS GOODNIGHT (Geena Davis in a wet T-shirt), STARSHIP TROOPERS (Dina Meyer out of her T-shirt), and the Sedaris films. The others are pretty forgettable. WOLVERINE didn't make the list but it should have, and it includes the two Standard Action Movie cliches that drive me raving bonkers: 1) the hero screaming (either screaming wordlessly or screaming "Nooooo!") when a loved one is killed, and 2)the hero walking toward the camera as an explosion fireballs in the background.

Unknown said...

I like the first two you mentioned a lot, though I prefer to call Starship Troopers by the title Doogie Howser, S. S.. I also like Flash Gordon a lot.

Graham Powell said...

FLASH GORDON is terrific. I was happy to see that craptacular softcore snorefest RETURN TO SAVAGE BEACH made the list.

Rule of thumb: any group described as "the lovely ladies of..." will not be lovely, and will not be ladylike, but may very well be all or mostly naked.

Unknown said...

Which is nearly always your guarantee of quality!

Randy Johnson said...

I second Fred's picks for the same reason. Yours as well, Bill. I've always had a fondness for old Flash.

I also thought The Marine was decent. Plenty of action with things blowing up, It didn't pretend to be anything more than a couple of hours of enjoyment.

As Isaac Asimov once said about the first Star Wars movie, it's nice to just park your brains and enjoy yourself now and then.

Todd Mason said...

Well, Randy, I could do that with, say, THE HIDDEN...but not with STAR WARS. Not even when it came out, and I was 12.

I'd like to know why THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT is crap. Compared to most of the James Bond films, it's a model of pacing and plausibility. And pretty funny, too. Geena Davis improbably clothed in the "wet t-shirt" (actually slip) scene, but I imagine it was uncomfortable enough and the director being married to her probably didn' t feel the need to move toward verisimilituide, however much cheap thrill/aesthetic appreciation it might give us.

Meanwhile, Picky, picky, picky, as Pat Paulsen used to say, Graham. But, yes, no one says "Lovely ladies..." without being the kind of person who MONTY PYTHON loved to mock.

Mark Troy said...

I can't believe SNAKES ON A PLANE wasn't included. The lavatory smoke detector scene should be included in every pre-flight safety video.