Godzilla Minus One (4*)
Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning (4*)
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3 (3.5*)
Nimona (3.5*)
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (3*)
The Creator (2.5*)
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2.5*)
Napoleon (1.5*)
Eight movies on the 2024 nominee list are considered action films, unfortunately I can only recommend four of them!
At the top of the audience ratings and a new entry in the longest running film franchise in history is Godzilla Minus One. If I remember right, my introduction to science fiction was one of the original Godzilla movies from at least 60 years ago. The current film won the Visual Effects Oscar based, primarily, on the monster’s charging sequence and the destruction it unleashes on a Tokyo neighborhood. The science fiction film effects are embedded in an interesting family story and the film also serves as an exploration of Japanese national character. It has its flaws, but is gigantically entertaining.
Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible movies are always action-packed, but without much CGI, Cruise relies more on practical effects. That’s shorthand for pretty much do it yourself, or, when absolutely necessary, call in the stunt guy. Dead Reckoning is full of fights and chases ranging from a submarine at the beginning to car chases, and the action-packed finale involving a train wreck and a Tom Cruise on a motor cycle with a parachute. If you want action as it used to be in movies, see Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning.
And, if entertainment is what you want, you can’t miss the latest installment in one of the few comic book movie series that I like, the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Although not as good as the first two, this one combines incredible CGI worlds with the funny and strange characters that makeup this oddball family. Vol. 3 tells the sad origin story for Rocket, the rodent voiced by Bradley Cooper amid a galactic level assault with some new heroes and villains. With help from CGI, the action sequences are very intense.
Nimona is an animated film that just barely makes my recommended list, but it seems to me it is really more of a fantasy film. Written by a leading trans-gender author of graphic novels, the featured character is, indeed, someone of ambiguous gender. And the real value of this film lies more in what it says about being transgender than in the rather awkward and shallow story-line. Note, though, that this will not appeal to some viewers.
Four of the 2024 year action films I cannot recommend. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is an animated mess. In attempting to grapple with the multiverse, they end up having some 242 spider-men creatures all going in and out of different universes and battling some dude with dalmation spots. There is action here, but it is sterilized animation. I enjoyed the first “Into the Spider-verse” a lot more than this one because you could easily keep track of the characters and the plot made sense. So see this one only if you have to.
I was really looking forward to The Creator and was heavily disappointed. There are so many depths to the issue of artificial intelligence that I simply expected more from a movie on the topic. The child-like robot was very much human-like, but the film was more interested in exploring its similarities to action movies than in actually plumbing interesting ideas. I’m not sure who would benefit from this film.
Disappointing in other ways was the final film in the Indiana Jones series, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. This film had the largest budget of any on the list this year and used it to not only pay Harrison Ford, but also deage him by computer so we could have vivid flashbacks to what he looked like in his 30s. The problem, of course, with deaging is that it might be able to make physical characteristics look decades younger, but it doesn’t work so well on making them move younger. And, sadly, without Spielberg at the helm, the action sequences just didn’t pop. Watch only if you have a real need to see all of the Indiana Jones movies!
Finally, at the bottom of nearly everyone’s rating list, is the Joaquin Phoenix mess called Napoleon. For sure there are plenty of battle scenes, although many of them were computer assisted, and the conflicts are intense and very graphic – war wasn’t exactly pleasant at that time. The story attempts to make Josephine responsible for much of Napoleon’s successes and failures, but has so many plot holes that it is just unconvincing. And overly long!
Six of the 2023 Oscar Action films are must-sees, especially if you like the genre. The Best Picture winner, Everything, Everywhere, All at Once (4.5*) surprised me. It is an amazing discourse on the multiverse, nihilism, and postmodernism. (I should add that, to me at least, it is more of a science fiction film that a conventional action movie, so action lovers might be disappointed. The Batman (4.5*) was another surprise and while there are battles with his villains, I liked the film because of its more human-level story. A more conventional science fiction film is Avatar: The Way of Water (4*), using state of the art motion-capture technology, it is a treasure trove of visual effects and just so much fun as they take their imaginations and technology under water. RRR, from India, was surprising, especially in the action sequences which were sometimes comically over-the-top! All Quiet on the Western Front tells the stalemate in France during World War I from the German point of view with huge amounts of grisly war violence. And, finally, Tom Cruise also had an action-packed movie last year, Top Gun: Maverick which successfully keeps you on the edge of your seat as he pilots supersonic jets!
There are ten recommended movies from the last two years all action-packed. That’s more than enough to exhaust even the hardiest viewers!
