To revisit True Romance nearly 25 years later is to be carried away by a rush of color and action and character, to gasp and to wince and to laugh oneself breathless.
While it flexes like an action movie, Predator is really a horror movie, one that follows a classic format: the hunter becomes the hunted.
On escaping a capsized boat, a burning building, or the Texas legislature.
My parents’ entire generation grew up with stories of Bata Živojinović. He was one of Yugoslavia’s most instantly recognizable film icons—perhaps the closest thing we ever had to a bona-fide action star.
In the largely forgotten Assassins, Sylvester Stallone plays the distillation of all his former characters and their desires.
By focusing Brazil on a character like Sam Lowry rather than the dashing Harry Tuttle, director Terry Gilliam makes a very deliberate choice to dissect and deflate the stereotypical image of the action hero.
"Such is the thrill of an expertly crafted action film like Emperor of the North—a forever wobbling balance between everything going just right, and everything going terribly wrong."
Speed is an indelible piece of modern American cinema, but if you tweak any one of its ingredients the entire recipe is changed.
Dunkirk tells its story through action: things happen, and the characters respond. It immerses—imprisons—you in your senses, restricting the world to your immediate surroundings and gut instincts.
Star Trek uniquely bridges and predicts the flow of sci-fi over the latter half of the 20th century.
David Mamet’s Bookworm (aka The Edge) on what it means to survive.