Action Adventure Films

Latest Articles

The plots thicken

9/11 Truthers, Tea Parties, Birthers — conspiracy is in the air. No wonder Hollywood is embracing paranoia.
Eight years after the destruction of the World Trade Center — the result of one of the most devastatingly successful conspiracies in history — Americans still take comfort in paranoia.
By PETER KEOUGH | September 11, 2009

Review: Terminator Salvation

Terminator franchise can not be salvaged
The future has not been kind to the Terminator franchise.
By PETER KEOUGH | May 21, 2009

Review: Outlander

It's the viewer who's in real danger
One can only imagine writer/director Howard McCain on vacation at a Norwegian fjord and gazing up into the starry night and hatching this brilliant idea: Beowulf from Outer Space.
By TOM MEEK | January 20, 2009

Wish-fulfillment for a burning world

The 2008 heroic holiday DVD and Blu-ray gift guide
From the shining big-screen debut of Iron Man to the large amounts of green produced by the Incredible Hulk, this was the year the public couldn't get enough of their favorite heroes.
By BRETT MICHEL | December 11, 2008

Robot love

Terminator ’s wonder years
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is ostensibly sci-fi action adventure. It may be the best teen drama for adults on TV.
By JON GARELICK | October 01, 2008

Our superheroes, ourselves

What the current crop of comic-book action movies tells us about America's identity crisis
Is there a breed of person more tenderly optimistic, more winsomely hopeful for the best, more loyal to the possibility of good, than the American summer moviegoer?
By JAMES PARKER | July 09, 2008

Block party

Indiana Jones goes Lego
Somehow I missed out on the whole Lego video-game universe.
By AARON SOLOMON | June 24, 2008

Hulk sulk

The new version keeps his pants on
After two hugely budgeted adaptations in five years, my biggest question about the Hulk remains: what’s with the pants?
By PETER KEOUGH | June 10, 2008

Frill rides

Getting an Indy history lesson on DVD
Looking back on a time when action sequences unfolded without the currently fashionable veil of rapid editing and CGI.
By PETER KEOUGH | May 22, 2008

Numb Skull

Indiana Jones’s mild Kingdom
You can’t say they don’t warn you.
By PETER KEOUGH | May 22, 2008

Iron Man

Robert Downey, Jr. saves the day
Though a Marvel Comics fan, I never thought much of Iron Man.
By PETER KEOUGH | May 01, 2008

Spring brakes

Spring Arts Preview: Some diversions before the summer onslaught
Funny how spring movies can mirror the options of spring break.
By PETER KEOUGH | March 10, 2008

New Times editor, Ben Dover

Kristol’s op-ed addition marks a sellout to the neocon cabal
This is the disgraceful hiring of a political operative, not a journalist.
By PHILLIPE AND JORGE | January 16, 2008

Reading is fundamental

Last-minute items to toss under the tree and more
Some of the books I enjoyed most this year were written for an audience more than 10 years my junior.
By PORTLAND PHOENIX STAFF | December 12, 2007

Last man standing

Once a cautionary tale about human folly, has the doomsday myth become just more fun and games?
In his 1954 novel I Am Legend , Richard Matheson conjured up a terrifying scenario: a man-made plague has killed most of humanity.
By PETER KEOUGH | December 12, 2007

Legend of the last

It all comes down to Will power
They all start the same way.
By PETER KEOUGH | December 12, 2007

Mutiny in Heaven

Philip Pullman ’ s fantasy novels are condemned as a crash course in militant atheism. But one BU professor thinks otherwise.
It is a truth now well established that the idea for a series of books about a schoolboy wizard did not , in fact, originate with its author, J.K. Rowling (as she has naively claimed), but was piped up red-hot and stinking from Below.
By JAMES PARKER | December 06, 2007

How To Cook Your Life

Bring coffee
Adored by students, immune to his tantrums (he cries more than the cast of Spider-Man 3 ), Brown is still an easy-going charmer.
By BRETT MICHEL | December 05, 2007

Untrue north

This Compass doesn't point to Pullman
Just as there are many universes in the world of Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass (published in Great Britain as Northern Lights ), so there are many movies in this New Line adaptation.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | December 05, 2007

Enchanted

Better than generic holiday fare
Wicked (cartoon) witch sends adorable fairy-tale princess down a rabbit hole and she’s deposited, suddenly human, in present-day Times Square.
By BROOKE HOLGERSON | November 20, 2007

Beowulf

Full-blown FX
As Beowulf (mostly in voice), the reliable and paunchy Ray Winstone develops a digitally chiseled physique.
By TOM MEEK | November 20, 2007

'Tis the season

To stay inside and watch awesome movies
Yeah, yeah, summer . Go outside, hone your tan, toss a Frisbee, blah blah blah.
By RYAN STEWART | June 28, 2007

Swingin’ Spidey

The movie adaptation is pleasantly mediocre
The Spider-Man 3 game has been out for a few weeks now, and the feeding frenzy has subsided a bit.
By MITCH KRPATA | May 22, 2007

Fit to be Thai’d

Black Tiger delights; Fauteuils d’orchestre bores
This retro spoof is an affectionate homage to cheapo Thai Westerns of the 1950s, trashy Thai action films of the 1960s, weepie melodramas of all eras.
By GERALD PEARY | February 27, 2007

Beowulf & Grendel

Beguiles, thanks largely to the sparse Icelandic landscape
Icelandic director Sturla Gunnarsson treats the Old English epic about a foreign warrior enlisted by a broken Dane king to rid the land of a scourge with both respect and irreverence. Watch the trailer for Beowulf & Grendel
By TOM MEEK | August 09, 2006