Movies That Were Probably Made By a Spasm of Six Year-Olds on Acid: The Top 75 Action Films Poll Results Thread

lol "pretty high standard" itt

xp to woof, one gis later: ummm ya, my bad. i guess it's been a really long time since i saw it :)

the rapey stuff in Showgirls is mostly surreal and nonsensical from what I remember, like it was bussed in from a completely different movie

The rape in Showgirls is horrific and played absolutely straight, it's a total whiplash of tonality. No idea how anybody could get satire out of that.

i'm also not a big face/off fan! everyone loves that movie. everyone on earth. it was better than broken arrow, but i still didn't dig it. face/off will do good in this poll. its such a fave for people.

I've seen the Killer twice on the big screen /braggin

haha please tell me "John Wooo" was a wonderful accident

dammit, seeing hk fare such as the killer is making me feel like time & tide won't show up. i mean i can try and convince myself tons of ppl voted for t&t, but i feel like the killer/john woo stuff is better known/liked here.

remember when HK cinema started to be a thing in the US among film nerd circles, and that realization that there was a whole other universe of action movies out there that nobody you knew had seen?

that kind of revelation is the one thing i kinda miss about pre-internet culture

I haven't seen most of these 80s/90s shoot-em-up movies with large-muscled men in them. Never seen any Terminator, only watched Predator for the 1st time last year (didn't care for). And my viewing is all in the last 10 years, so the childhood-era stuff doesn't have any totemic value for me. I probably love the HK stuff more than any other form.

lol, wooo

The Return of the WOOO!

DJ WOOO kid

McTiernan = those 3 and Hunt for Red October (and Last Action Hero!).

Cameron = Aliens and Terminator/T2. Interested to see if Avatar / True Lies / Titanic / Abyss place - I wouldn't be surprised if any of them do or don't.

Actually iirc the rape in Showgirls is central to the resolution of the plot: Nomi refuses to go along with the club's plan to pay her friend to be quiet about it, kicks the rapist in the balls repeatedly, and leaves Las Vegas, end of movie. It's like the one thing in the entire movie that Nomi isn't cynical about.

remember when HK cinema started to be a thing in the US among film nerd circles, and that realization that there was a whole other universe of action movies out there that nobody you knew had seen?

that kind of revelation is the one thing i kinda miss about pre-internet culture

^^^yes definitely. hit me hard at the time.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v212/etienne_saint/fifthel.jpg

#43

THE FIFTH ELEMENT

Luc Besson
1997
United States/France
(265 points, 10 votes)

I think it's funny, colorful, visually interesting, full of fun cartoonish characters and details, good with its action bits ... I suppose the ending is a bit cornball, but I'd say all that's really missing is painting Bjork blue to play the diva. It kinda reminds me of those "You Are an Intergalactic Spy" puzzle books I was talking about on some other thread a while back.

Am I missing some narrative issues here, or are people projecting some strange expectations onto this? E.g., speculating that the humor may be "unintentional" seems really off -- this spends like half of its time being a comedy! I mean, the monks are practically Three-Stooging it throughout!

― nabisco

well nabisco a bunch of things I don't like about it have already been cited as other people's favorite so I dunno how productive its gonna be for me to say that I have never enjoyed Bruce Willis's smug-but-lovable-asshole routine in anything ever, or that I find Chris Tucker's emasculated-black-man-freak character just gross, or that the dialogue is all by and large totally laughable ("Me Leloo - supreme being!"), or that Gary Oldman as a sci-fi southern gentleman is unconvincing (what's the point of making him southern, again?), or that the plot's central theme of "love saving the universe" doesn't interest me in any way....

In a larger sense, maybe its that I like my sci-fi films to have some content that reflects on the present in some unusual or illuminating way. This one is just empty - a lot of eye candy and self-conscious dialogue about how ridiculous all the eye candy is and that's pretty much it.

― Shakey Mo Collier

Mull - tee - pass

― zaxxon25

hahaha omg I'd forgotten about the WAR montage. This movie fucking rules.

― Curt1s Stephens

The Fifth Element

mool tee pass

leeloo dallas, multipass! still smth we say quite often with my friends

i always liked how clearly the moebius designs came through in 5E.

I would like Besson to be the winning director tbh! C'mon there's this and Le Femme Nikita already and Taken, plus Transporter, B-13, Kiss of the Dragon could still come up....

(Full disclosure: I saw Wasabi with Jean Reno over Christmas break. It's...it was a worse action movie than I expected, but more loveable overall. And funny, occasionally very funny.)

forgot leon laurel. and taken, transporter, b13, kiss of the dragon are movies producd by his company, europacorop, not ones he directed. but yeah he's good with good ol' dumb action flicks

aw, too low

xpost And the Gaultier costumes.

gah the scene where she googles WAR

i always liked how clearly the moebius designs came through in 5E.

this is the best thing about it. otoh I can just read the Incal, rather than sit through all the other irritating elements packed into 5E.

xp

love the fifth element. i suppose i 'get' why people dislike it but it's so big-hearted in a way and weird and energetic and colorful and has some kind of bizarre singular originality in its huge number of homages.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v212/etienne_saint/speed.jpg

#42

SPEED

Jan de Bont
1994
United States
(269 points, 10 votes)

i once had a dirty dream about keanu after 'speed' came out, and it was pretty awesome, so i don't care about his pudding brain (which i disagree with, btw).

― Rubyredd

(I hate True Lies so much, by the way, it's like the racism of ToD+the horrible misogyny of, um, something horribly misogynist all mushed together into an OTT shit-bomb. The scene with Arnold forcing JLC to strip to prove a point is all time low).

I think Besson's credited with writing some of them, though this is probably "... his name on the cheque".

Maybe The Lady will win the 2022 version of this poll!

:D

http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l32/reschlymk/multipass9ju.gif

Omar you're going so fast!

the bus that couldn't slow down.

Want to say I saw speed the same day as the OJ car chase.

I have never seen Speed!

ha yes, gaultier. orange rubber suspenders, always a hot look.

true story, i'm not a comics fan in the slightest but i did buy the first incal collection at a used bookstore why because it look intersting. so years later 5E comes out, and i'm like... hmm these spaceships and cities and stuff look pretty familiar.

xps

Which actor will have the most films place? Bruce? Arnold? Arnold, right?

fr ted milkfloat > Speed

I liked Chris Tucker in 5E.

fuck i should have voted for speed

xxxp

Harrison Ford maybe. Indy+Bladerunner+Fugitive+Star Wars, maybe Air Force One or the Jack Ryan movies even.

feel like "is Chris Tucker's character in 5E" racist/homophobic could be it's whole own thread

I'm just going to pretend the speed votes were a practical joke or a conspiracy or the equivalent of a third party protest vote.

speed is a great action movie

way better than the fifth element (and now it's scientifically proven)

I'm reading your words, but I'm still pretending.

Yeah Speed is terrific, u mad

I wonder where They Live falls on the Tuomas action/scifi continuum

hmm these spaceships and cities and stuff look pretty familiar.

yeah there's things that are lifted straight off the page. Heavy Metal did that too, 5E probably more successful tho.

xp

Omar you're going so fast!

― wolf kabob (ENBB)

if i post a film every ten min or less i won't explode

Speed's great, Sandra Bullock doing Evil Knievel jumps in a bus while bug eyed Dennis Hopper does his creepy psycho schtick. What's not to like?