items tagged with action movies

XXX

Put simply, Vin Diesel’s action thriller XXX, directed by The Fast and the Furious helmer, Rob Cohen, succeeds competently at its intentions, which are to make a loud, ass-kicking, summertime blockbuster and kickstart a new, James-Bond-playing-extreme-sports movie franchise.

K-19: THE WIDOWMAKER

Most movie trailers make the film in question look much better than it actually is; the previews for K-19: The Widowmaker don’t give any indication how good it actually is.

MURDER BY NUMBERS

In Barbet Schroeder’s thriller Murder by Numbers, Sandra Bullock stars as Cassie Mayweather, a Southern California detective who, along with her nebbishy partner (Ben Chaplin), attempts to solve the murder of a local Jane Doe, killed in a seemingly haphazard fashion and left beside a creek.

HIGH CRIMES

If Hollywood studios absolutely insist on feeding us one piece-of-crap potboiler after another, they could certainly do worse than the trashily entertaining military thriller High Crimes.

ICE AGE

Movies with charm have been in such short supply this year that the animated Ice Age feels like a shot of pure oxygen. Visually, the film is lacking the detail of a Shrek or a Monsters, Inc., and it’s a bit on the goody-goody side, but it’s a completely enjoyable, amiable good time at the cineplex, particularly if you’ve been looking for a movie to take the family to that’s less saccharine than Return to Neverland and infinitely smarter than the likes of Big Fat Liar and Snow Dogs.