High Plains Drifter (1973)

Vampires (1998)

  John Carpenter's Vampires in a 1998 Horror/action flick starring James Woods,Daniel Baldwin,Sheryl Lee,Thomas Ian Griffith,Maximillian Schell,Tim Guinee,Mark Boone Jr.

  The Vatican has been funding a secret vampire slaying group led by Jack Crow (James Woods) worldwide.After a mission to go on a nest in New Mexico the vampires are killed but they are unable to find the master vampire.Later on that night the vampire slaying time go out and celebrate in a motel and the master vampire known as Jan Valek (Thomas Ian Griffith) appears.Valek kills everyone in the hotel leaving only a bitten prostitute,Katrina (Sheryl Lee).Crow and his partner Anthony Montoya escape.They take Katrina with them because after a few hours of being bitten,they are able to track down Valek's moves. Valek must go back to the church where the team is being leaded and look for answers and wonder why Valek knew where he was and knows his name.

  The budget of this movie was extremely low.About 20 million and it has a great soundtrack similar to other John Carpenter movies like Escape from New York and LA.

Ip Man 2 (2010)

  Ip Man 2 is the sequel to the Ip Man movie once again directed by Wilson Yip.This is now the 5th collaboration with Donnie Yen.Their credits include SPL aka Killzone,Flashpoint (rumored to be a prequel of Killzone),Dragon Tiger Gate,Ip Man.The movie has most of the returning actors from the first Ip Man. Sammo Hung,Lo Meng (Five Venoms,Kid With Golden Arm),Fung Hak On(Magnificent Butcher,Last Hurrah for Chivalry,Five Shaolin Masters),Darren Shalavi,(Mortal Kombat Web Series,Tai Chi Boxer)Kent Cheng(Once Upon a Time in China),Dennis To Yue(Ip Man Legend Begins),Huang Xiao Ming (Sammo Hung's son).

  After years of Ip Man's escape from Mainland China.He relocates to Hong Kong to live in poverty.Ip is trying to make ends meet and wants to teach Wing Chun to students.After he has some recognition he must get permission from the other masters to teach and prove himself that he can.One of the masters is played by Sammo Hung who is an expert at Hung Fist.At the same time Hong Kong is ruled by the British and make the Chinese work for little money.There is an event boxing match of Britain's famous Boxer Twister (Shahlavi) who is an arrogant selfish bully.He ridicules the Chinese martial artists at the boxing event and ends up hurting a couple.Master Hung decides to counter and go into a match with Twister.Twister has killed      Master Hung in the ring and now Ip Man must prove that Chinese martial arts can defeat Western boxing.

 The fighting is superb.Combines both Wire Fu and Kung Fu and the editing never looked better.Donnie gets to fight with Shaw Brother's legends Lo Meng and Fung Hak On,even though the fights were short and they are both in their 60s,they are still in top form.Sammo's fight with Donnie is different from the one in Killzone because they fight in a round table and have very limited space.Later on they become friends instead of wanting to kill each other.Huang Xiao Ming plays Donnie's disciple Wong Shun Leng.His fighting isn't bad but to be Sammo's son he's got to prove himself.Dennis To from the Ip Man prequel plays Sammo Hung's main disciple.It is one of his first films and he later proves in the prequel that he can throw down some serious Wing Chun and can also be a major kung fu star like Wu Jing.This movie put Darren Shalahvi's career on the map.Appearing in the Webisode of Mortal Kombat playing Kano and fighting along with Michael Jai White.Darren had more roles in B movies with Steve Austin and Steven Seagal.At least he is out there being recognized instead of being in crappy cameos in Zack Snyder movies like 300 and Watchmen.If you blink you probably missed his cameo appearance.This is one of the best Kung Fu movies in years along with True Legend,Ip Man prequel,Reign of Assassins.Donnie is in talks to do more Ip Man movies so stay tuned.

Con Air (1997)

     Con Air is a late 90s action packed movie directed by Simon West (Mechanic 2011,Expendables 2). The movie stars Nicolas Cage,John Malkovich,John Cusack,Dave Chapelle,Danny Trejo,Ving Rhames, Steve Buscemi,Mykelti Williamson(Forrest Gump,Heat),Rachel Ticotin (Man on Fire,Total Recall),Nick Chinlund (Training Day,Tears of the Sun,Chronicles of Riddick),MC Gainey (Wild Hogs,Beerfest).

   An army ranger Cameron Poe (Nicolas Cage) released from active duty gets out and meets his wife at her job at a bar.He is confronted by local drunk customers and ends up killing one of them in self defense.Poe pleads guilty thinking he will do less time and spends ten years in prison.the day of his parole,he is transported in an aircraft with other convicts that have done worse crimes.The convicts have an inside plan on how to get control of the airplane and escape.It is up to Poe and the help of the DEA and US Marshalls to let Cyrus the Virus(John Malkovich) achieve his plan.

   Con Air is a summer movie full of action from all types of weapons,airplanes,hand to hand,vehicles.There is also a lot of comedy involved with the characters,especially the convicts.With a budget of 75 million and a worldwide gross of 224 million worldwide.It is a succesful well appreciated movie.At the time Nic Cage was  barely a leading actor with low budget movies before National Treasure,Face off,Gone in 60 seconds.This was the movie that made him a leading man after The Rock.John Malkovich plays a smart villian who is both sarcastic and deadly.Probaby one of his best career performances.John Cusack does well as a bookworm US Marshall who is very intelligent and finds out the prisoners moves.He has been around since the 80s and has done all type of movies like drama,comedy,action.With an all star cast that later their career took off like Steve Buscemi in Boardwalk Empire,Dave Chapelle in Dave Chapelle Show,Danny Trejo in  Machete,Ving Rhames in Mission Impossible movies.Simon West has great editing in cinematography,action scenes and explosions that will give Michael Bay a run for his money.It is not a movie to be taken seriously not 100% realistic but it is almost two hours of great escapism with guilty pleasure fun.Simon West has already wrapped up production in summer of 2012 for the Expendables sequel.Let's see if he is able to top Con Air. The world will find out in August.

Punisher War Zone (2009)

 This is the third adaptation of the Punisher.Now it takes place in New York City.It is directed by Lexi Alexander and stars Ray Stevenson,Dominic West,Colin Salmon,Julie Benz,Wayne Knight.

This is a straight up action movie with all sorts of weapons that the Punisher uses in the comic books and the PS2 game.He is brutal and you see he does not hold back.The villains are once again The Italian mob, a bit cartoonish like the ones in the vampire movie Innocent Blood.Punisher's nemesis is the former crime lord that was disfigured known as Jigsaw.Jigsaw recruits his brother from the insane asylum to get revenge on the Punisher along with his mob.One of Jigsaw's crew members,Nicky was undercover and is killed by the Punisher.The Punisher later finds out he was a fed and pays respect to his wife and daughter. Jigsaw then recruits all the criminals in New York from Russians,Triads,Skinheads,Blacks,Hispanics to put a bounty on the Punisher.

Compared to the Thomas Jane movie this one lacks in dialogue but most have seen both prior Punisher movies and read the comic books so they have an idea of his origin.The most annoying character in the movie has got to be Loony Bin Jim (Doug Hutchison. He tries extremely hard to be very sarcastic and loony.There is a lot of comedy as well with the villains having fun and destroying everything in their path instead of being coldlblooded one dimensional killers.The budget for this movie was 35 million and was used very well.Unfortunately the actors are unknown and the movie had very few advertising.The movie did not make even half of its budget back,but with dvd sales and streaming online it has gotten the recognition.If you are a Punisher fan this one you will like it is more like the comic book.The director is a female and proves that she can direct a great action movie.Hopefully she'll get more work in the future.

Red (2010)

Drive Angry (2011)