Trailer: Big Game

Finnish director Jalmari Helander's debut film Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale was a terrifically twisted yuletide adventure, combining decidedly offbeat humour and a glossy, commercial sheen into a fun little romp. His follow-up Big Game appears to take this sensibility one step further into action-blockbuster realm, with an awesomely ridiculous plot about a young hunter (Rare Exports' Onni Tommila) who rescues the President of the United States (Samuel Jackson!) after Air Force One is shot down. Containing elements of everything from Cliffhanger to Home Alone, Big Game looks like rip-roaring tongue-in-cheek entertainment, a project that could definitely catapult Helander into the Hollywood big leagues. 

Trailer: Furious 7

The trailer for the SEVENTH entry in the non-stop Fast and Furious franchise -- simply entitled Furious 7 -- is out of the gate and it's a slick, action-packed beauty that fans will totally lap up. Fast and Furious 6 reached new heights of crazy for the series, what with cars pulling down a cargo jet, and it's probably safe to say that Furious 7 is going to offer plenty more physics-defying vehicular mayhem (cars falling out of the sky!) to complement its themes of family togetherness that Vin Diesel loves hammering home. I'm particularly interested in seeing how new-to-franchise director James Wan (The Conjuring), coming mostly from a horror background, will handle the big-budget action; he's got a good eye, and having done one decent action-y thriller in Death Sentence, I don't think he will blow it. Trickier perhaps, would be the work-around Paul Walker's untimely death. How will they write him out of the film? How's the doubling with his brothers going to look? It's hard to tell any of this from the trailer, but damn I'm hyped.

Keanu Avenges Dog's Death and Wows Fantastic Fest

If anyone needs a career resuscitation, it's Keanu Reeves. Although he did praise-worthy work with his underseen-and-appreciated 2013 directorial debut Man of Tai Chi, the gargantuan calamity that was 47 Ronin proved to be a large nail-in-the-coffin for the star. Enter his forthcoming hitman action-thriller John Wick, seemingly out of nowhere. After premiering at Fantastic Fest over the weekend, twitter lit up with raves about the film, which is apparently directed by his Point Break stunt double! The trailer makes it out to be a throwback to the bullet-ridden action flicks of the '90s, which is fine by me; any film that has Keanu uttering the line, "That dog was a final gift from my dying wife" must be kinda fun, right? Read more tweets here, and watch the trailer below:

Trailer: Mad Max: Fury Road

The web's been abuzz this morning with film writers/bloggers going gaga over the Comic-Con trailer for George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road -- I have to count myself in. Though there have been some massive announcements at the entertainment/pop culture convention over the weekend -- including a King Kong spin-off movie from Legendary, and confirmation of Tarantino's next film straight from the horse's mouth -- the long-gestating Miller reboot-cum-sequel of his classic Mad Max trilogy was definitely the one that grabbed my interest the most. Conceived as one long chase sequence, or as Miller has also described, "a western on wheels", the film won't be out until May 2015, but this blistering trailer should get you all jazzed up for it.... (more info on the film here)

Action Movie Kid is All Kinds of Awesome

What do you do when you're a special effects wiz at Dreamworks Animation with a kid? If you're Daniel Hashimoto, you turn your three-year-old's imagination into action-packed reality. Check out this super-cute compilation of short videos he's created with James, who gets to wield a light saber, fire rocket launchers, amongst other things...

Trailer: Lucy

It appears Luc Besson has yet to completely get ass-kicking femmes out of his system; I guess that's why we've got Lucy, an action thriller starring Scarlett Johansson -- who currently can be seen ass-kicking in Captain America: The Winter Soldier -- as a woman who swallows a super-drug that turns her into an superhuman ass-kicking femme, or something. Trailer definitely has a strong whiff of been-there-done-that about it, but hey, if you need some ScarJo/Black Widow action to tide you over until The Avengers 2 comes out, this could be your ticket. Watch her make Old Boy scream in the trailer below:

A few words: The Raid 2; Captain America: The Winter Solider

The next two weeks are gonna be pretty good to action fans: this Friday sees the release of the highly anticipated Indonesian martial arts actioner The Raid 2, and a week later, Marvel's Captain America: The Winter Soldier is unleashed. Both films could not be more different, but I'd wager that they will each deliver enough to satisfy their respective fans.

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The Raid 2 picks up soon after the first one ends, and throughout the film, writer/director Gareth Evans finds ways to expand on its criminal underworld, introducing a bevy of new characters and subplots that make it more of a sprawling gangster saga than a straight all-out fight-fest. That said, once the action kicks in, you ain't seen nothing like this... The brutality is amplified, but better still, there's more variety in fight choreography, with ballsy usage of weaponry like baseball bats and hammers that's guaranteed to make you squirm in your seats. Plus there's one hell of a car chase that makes anything coming out of Hollywood pale immensely in comparison. The Raid 2 is one vicious, unrelenting movie, but if you can stomach it, I swear you'll be coming back for more. Don't miss it on the big screen!

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I'm far from a Marvel fanboy, and I generally tend to find all their films samey and disposable, but the first Captain America flick I really dug and find to be a somewhat underrated entry in their universe. As far as sequels go, The Winter Soldier ain't bad at all, and definitely contains the grittiest action set-pieces yet for Marvel. With a background largely fixed in comedy (Community, You, Me and Dupree), directors Anthony and Joe Russo seem like an odd choice to be handling this kind of fare, but they've done a fine job here; even though they succumb to all-too-frenetic staging at times, the grounded, punchy, battering-ram feel of the action is a nice change from Iron Man et al. Of course, the finale consists of mucho numbing gargantuan destructo-vision that's the norm for superhero films now, but otherwise it's a solid, entertaining sequel, and Steve Rogers continues to be one of Marvel's more likeable characters.

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We'll be giving away double passes to Captain America: The Winter Soldier later this week so keep your eyes out for that. Also, if you're feeling retro and want to catch the old '70s Captain America TV movies, we do have them, here and here.

The Raid 2 Obliterates Sundance Crowd

...and with those few eloquent words, you pretty much have the gist of overwhelmingly orgasmic reactions to Gareth Evan's The Raid 2 which premiered at Sundance yesterday.

Due here on March 28, the sequel to the 2011 bone-crunching Indonesian actioner has generated plenty of buzz among fans, and if the tweets last night are anything to go by, then Evans has really delivered the goods, and then some. Here's a sampling of those tweets:

Comparisons to Kubrick AND Kurosawa? Holy shit! There HAVE been a few more "balanced" reviews -- like this Indiewire one, and this dude who almost vomited -- and I still do have concerns over the film's 148-minute length. But damn, I'm so ready to be broken by this movie. Click below for the latest trailer: And if you haven't seen the first one, rent it here!

Teaser Trailer: The Raid 2: Berandal

When The Raid came out last year, it knocked all our socks off here at Fatso. This Indonesian  actioner raised the martial arts genre to a whole new level of bone-breaking bad-assery, and made a star out of its lead Iko Uwais, a dazzling silat expert. Naturally, a sequel was announced not long after, with writer/director Gareth Evans promising the scale of the action to be much larger and more ambitious than before. Based on the teaser that's just gone online, I don't think we'll be disappointed. Although it's fairly brief, the flashes of action that we do see is enough to get us freakin' excited. Click below for a wall-punchingly intense glimpse of The Raid 2: Berandal:

Trailer: Non-Stop

See what happens when you put Liam Neeson on a plane? Non-Stop re-teams the 61-year-old Taken star with his Unknown director Jaume Collet-Serra for a mid-air mishmash of anonymous text messages, ransom demands, passengers getting knocked off and Neeson getting framed for all of the above. The trailer doesn't really leave much to the imagination, and the story feels stitched from a bunch of other terror-in-the-skies-type thrillers, but damn if I don't want to see Neeson kick up a storm at 40,000 ft!

Trailer: Homefront

Okay I'm not entirely sold on James Franco as a meth-producing hick bad guy whom Jason Statham should be afraid of; without tats, corn-rows and gold teeth a la Spring Breakers, he doesn't especially look like a threat to anyone, just the annoyingly ubiquitous Franco whom everyone enjoys drubbing of late. But the Sly Stallone-scripted Homefront does appear to have a fun B-picture kick a solid (however generic) Statham vehicle can sometimes deliver, so if you're in the mood for that, click on... PS: Yes that's WINONA RYDER.

Tony Jaa Joins Fast 7

While the "woah, didn't see that coming" movie news of last week may have belonged to the casting of Ben Affleck as the next Batman, I'm more excited at the announcement that Muay Thai ass-kicker Tony Jaa (Ong Bak) has signed up to join Fast and Furious 7. Jaa will be making his English-language debut, and though details of his role haven't been revealed -- it's likely he'll just end up being a token martial artist as Joe Taslim and Gina Carano were in Fast 6 -- it's encouraging to see him back working after seemingly abandoning acting altogether in 2010. Later this year Jaa has Tom Yum Goong 2 on the way -- check out the action-packed teaser trailer below:

Trailer: White House Down

Ready to see the White House go boom again? Trailer for Roland Emmerich's Channing Tatum-starring actioner White House Down has arrived, and it looks almost exactly like the same movie as Olympus Has Fallen, but with different actors and possibly more polished CGI. This will be the THIRD time Emmerich has destroyed the White House: the first was in Independence Day, and then again in 2012.

Cult Classic Trailer: No Retreat, No Surrender

Junkies of cheesy '80s action movies will be pleased to know that Corey Yuen's 1986 martial arts flick No Retreat, No Surrender is getting re-released on DVD and Blu-ray from Vendetta Films on April 17. The film is probably best known for featuring the first big feature-starring role for Jean-Claude Van Damme (who plays a Russian baddie named Ivan Kraschinsky), and maybe more infamously, as the one where the main character, young karate champ wannabe Jason Swillwell (Kurt McKinney), trains from the ghost of Bruce Lee. Click on the youtube trailer below to soak up some '80s karate goodness:

Short Film: Iron Man vs. Bruce Lee

The talented guy behind that cute Dragon Baby short last year returns with a similarly fun action short pitting Bruce Lee against Iron Man. Why not? This will be the most entertaining 1 minute you'll have today.

Trailer: Fast & Furious 6

Never thought I'd be getting all amped for another Fast and Furious movie, but after the unexpected delirious surprise that was Fast Five (best action movie of 2011 imho), I'm definitely eager to see what kind of mayhem returning director Justin Lin has in store for us. The minute-long trailer that premiered at the Super Bowl earlier this week definitely promises "bigger" and "more": planes, tanks (!) and The Rock telling us, "We've graduated to a whole new level". I might be alone in thinking this but the franchise is shaping up to be like the live-action, testosterone-pumped, petrol-head version of Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines. Ogle at some vehicular warfare here:

Trailer: Olympus Has Fallen

Hollywood's knack for producing two movies in the same year with similar-sounding plots returns with Olympus Has Fallen, one of two "Die Hard in the White House"-type blockbusters coming to a theatre near you soon (the other one is White House Down from Roland Emmerich). Directed by competent-enough go-to action-hack Antoine Fuqua (Training Day), it looks like a big, dumb hunk o' cheese, featuring Gerard Butler doing his best Jack Bauer impression, a cast of typecast familiars (Morgan Freeman and Aaron Eckhart in authority roles) and some ropey CGI effects. I'm half-there.

Teaser Trailer: A Good Day to Die Hard

Watch lotsa stuff explode in this plotless minute-long teaser for the next Die Hard movie - the FIFTH one, if you've lost count. Brucey gets to shoot people in Russia with his son (Jai Courtney) this time round, which one hopes will be a step up from Die Hard 4.0 (jeez how that title has dated). It's directed by John Moore though, who doesn't exactly have a track record to get excited about (Max Payne, The Omen remake), but I guess we'll see on Valentine's Day 2013. Yippee ki-yay etc.

Trailers: The Last Stand, Bullet to the Head

I'll admit that I wasn't too crazy about the '80s-action-hasbeen-revival-fest that was The Expendables - the idea seemed funny on paper, but watching the film was completely something else: a dreadful, eye-rolling experience which didn't match the novelty of its casting. But this nostalgia for over-the-hill action heroes ain't going away any time soon with The Expendables 2 on the way, and these two forthcoming vehicles for Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

But I have higher hopes for Bullet to the Head and The Last Stand than The Expendables 2, because:

• They're both solo outings, which means Stallone and Arnie have more time to uh, shine and won't need to vie for attention amidst other stars. One of the things that killed The Expendables for me was star-studded suffocation.
• Directors: Bullet to the Head pairs Stallone up with one of the greats of the genre from the late '70s/early '80s, Walter Hill (Hard Times, 48 Hrs.). The Last Stand is directed by one of South Korea's top filmmakers of the moment, Kim Jee-woon (The Good, The Bad, The Weird, A Bittersweet Life).

Having said that, though these trailers are pretty fun, I also wouldn't be surprised if the films turned out to be lemons either. Time to hang up the guns and retire gracefully guys - your time has come and gone. :)

'Cos it's pretty dreary outside...

Let's watch aaall the breaking glass in Total Recall, and Bruce Willis sell his dignity in a couple of TV commercials for a Russian bank (from the director of Torque no less):