Park Chan-wook’s neo-noir revenge thriller Oldboy is a must-see for fans of fight choreography for its iconic hallway sequence alone. The story at large follows a falsely imprisoned man’s attempts to figure out who got him locked up, but in one particularly brutal scene, he takes on a legion of henchmen alone in a hall
In the timeless, iconic story of King Kong , explorers capture a gigantic ape living on an uncharted island and take it back to New York to turn it into a glorified circus act. In one of film history’s most memorable climaxes, Kong escapes from captivity and scales the Empire State Build
Spielberg’s biopic of notorious con artist Frank Abagnale, Jr. opens with real footage from his appearance on the game show To Tell the Truth . Leonardo DiCaprio is inserted into the footage, but everyone else featured is from the actual show from 1977. Opening a movie in 4:3 aspect ratio with footage from a ‘70s game show was an unexpected and inspired move by Spielb
From high-octane car chases to visceral shootouts, there are a bunch of different ways to thrill audiences in an action movie. One of the most fun aspects of the genre is fight choreography. If it’s staged, shot, and edited just right, brutal hand-to-hand combat can make for some intense action sequen
Spielberg’s WWII epic Saving Private Ryan , the one that induced PTSD attacks in war veterans, opens and closes with the same image: an American flag, blowing in the wind, color-graded with a very bleak, washed-out palette. Some critics have called these shots contradictory to the movie’s message. Saving Private Ryan is poised as an unpatriotic, anti-war film, yet it’s impossible to see the American flag as anything other than patriotic. The desaturated colors could be seen as Spielberg having his cake and eating it,
It’s appropriate that the movie begins with a pan down from the night sky, filled with stars, that settles on a familiar forest landscape. It symbolizes E.T.’s arrival on Earth from up there. It also straps us in for a movie that brings science-fiction concepts to our doors
With the masterfully simplistic premise of an elite squad infiltrating a high-rise controlled by a drug kingpin, Gareth Evans kept the focus of The Raid solely on the action. There’s no exposition or unnecessary subplots, just an all-out war between cops and cro
Indy faces all kinds of booby traps on his way out of the golden idol’s temple home in the opening scene of Raiders , making it one of the best adventure movies of all time . Just in case the walls falling down, the bottomless pit, and the arrows shooting out from every direction didn’t kill the intruder, the temple’s designers also installed a giant boulder to chase them
The Sharpshooter stands out among the crowd because while they are using long-range weapons, it's less about bullets for this character and more about slicing and dicing. The sharpshooter will eventually be able to equip attacks like "Bladestorm" and "Arrow Wave." As is the case with all of these classes, Lost Ark Patch notes Ark offers many roads to go d
One of the most renowned and influential works of world cinema, Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is notable for its delightfully unrealistic fight choreography. The movie’s gloriously cinematic fight scenes have martial artists floating through trees with the lightness of a baller
Set at the height of the Great Depression, Walter Hill’s gritty, stylish directorial debut Hard Times stars Charles Bronson as Chaney, a bare-knuckle boxer who rises through the underground fighting scene with the help of a hustler named Speed, played by James Cob
Indiana Jones might travel all around the world for ancient artifacts, but the character was created in Hawaii. George Lucas went on a vacation with his friend Steven Spielberg when Star Wars was released __ and Spielberg revealed that he had always wanted to make a 007 mo
When Indy gets back in the truck and throws the driver through the windshield, the driver tries and instantly fails to pull off the same impressive feat, making up one of Indiana Jones' best action sequenc
First of all, Lucas needed a $20 million budget, wanted most of the control of the film, licensing, and sequel rights. Studios also didn’t want Spielberg to direct because of his flop 1941 starring John Belu
When Indy and Marion escape with the Ark, they manage to get it onto a cargo ship headed for London. However, the ship is intercepted by a German sub and the Nazis take the Ark back. But Indy being Indy means that he refuses to give up that eas
No moment sums up the Indiana Jones character better than this one. In the middle of the Cairo melee, a crowd clears the way between Indy and a master swordsman who wants to challenge him to a duel. The swordsman does a bunch of impressive acrobatics with his sword to show Indy the kind of opponent he’s up against. And instead of indulging the swordsman, Indy just takes out his revolver and shoots