Action Films: This major genre type includes films that have tremendous impact, continuous high energy, lots of physical stunts and activity, possibly extended chase scenes, races, rescues, battles, martial arts, mountains and mountaineering, destructive disasters (floods, explosions, natural disasters, fires, etc.), fights, escapes, non-stop motion, spectacular rhythm and pacing, and adventurous heroes - all designed for pure audience escapism with the action sequences at the core of the film.

Action films and adventure films have tremendous cross-over potential as film genres, and road films often overlap with action films. (See the adventure film genre listings for examples of these action/adventure pictures.) Both types of films come in a variety of forms or genre-hybrids: sci-fi or space, thrillers, crime-drama, war, horror, westerns, etc. Oftentimes, action films are great box-office hits, but lack critical appeal because of their two-dimensional heroes or villains.

Download Action Films

War films were suddenly big business again, after the success of war genre films in the mid-20s caused a revival, such as The Patent Leather Kid (1927) (with Best Actor-nominated Richard Barthelmess) and the early talkie She Goes to War (1929) with Eleanor Boardman. The start of the talkie era meant that war films would now be supplemented with the realistic sounds of war - aerial dogfights, explosions, gunfire, etc. Millionaire director/producer Howard Hughes' expensive Hell's Angels (1930) featured more impressive WWI aerial battle sequences - and the debut of platinum blonde sex symbol Jean Harlow (speaking the famous saucy line: "Would you be shocked if I put on something more comfortable?") in love with two English brothers who were British Royal Flying Corps pilots (Ben Lyon and James Hall).

Download War Films at the Start of the Talkies

The gentlemanly, artistocratic, independently-wealthy New Yorker, amateur detective Philo Vance was introduced in the works of Willard Huntington Wright (S.S. Van Dine), first in his 1926 novel The Benson Murder Mystery. Thin Man star William Powell and others portrayed Philo Vance from 1929 to 1947:

Download Other Fictional Crime Fighters: Philo Vance

Other notable, low-budget supernatural/horror films in the late 1950s through the 1970s included:

* Bell, Book, and Candle (1958), a romantic fantasy adapted from the Broadway stage comedy of the same name, with pre-Vertigo James Stewart (as a stodgy book publisher) and Kim Novak as his bewitching Greenwich Village neighbor
* The Innocents - 1961William Castle's ghost-infested B-movie House on Haunted Hill (1959), starring Vincent Price as a wealthy and eccentric man who offers $10,000 to his wife and others to survive one entire night in a ghostly manse; with decapitated heads, vats of lye, crashing chandeliers; inspired the parody Saturday the 14th (1981), and was remade in 1999
* 13 Ghosts (1960), another haunted house thriller from William Castle, memorable for its "Illusion-O" process (viewers were given the option of using ghost-viewing glasses)

Download Recent Ghostly-Supernatural Tales

Cast:

Ethan Hawke, Gwyneth Paltrow, Anne Bancroft, Robert DeNiro, Chris Cooper, Hank Azaria, Raquel Beaudene, Jeremy Kissner

Review:
You have to give a film maker credit for exhibiting the necessary chutzpah to take one of the most beloved classics in the English language, Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, and transform it into a modern-day morality play/romance. Viewers who approach this motion picture with the mistaken expectation that it's going to be the kind of rigorously faithful adaptation that David Lean produced in 1946 are likely to be disappointed. Nevertheless, while Alfonso Cuaron's Great Expectations falls considerably short of being a definitive interpretation of the novel, it still offers an entertaining two hours.

Download Great Expectations

It has been several years since I've read a book by John Grisham (I believe the last one was The Client). After three or four of Grisham's novels, I grew tired of the predictable repetitiveness and contrived suspense of the narratives. As a result, the intelligence and subtlety of The Rainmaker took me by surprise. I don't know if this is because the novel is better than any of the prolific lawyer-turned-author's previous efforts, or if Francis Ford Coppola has performed a near-miracle in transforming the written pages into a screenplay. Whatever the case, The Rainmaker stands above any other filmed Grisham adaptation, including A Time to Kill, the former holder of that title.

Download Rainmaker

Stars: Rosella Elmi, Guglielmo Favilla and Elisa Ferretti

Review:

So, in my last review I mentioned that zombie flicks are getting a bit tired these days, and I still maintain that. But the prospect of a new Italian Zombie film is something I can still totally get behind. Eaters may not me the most original Zombie entry on the block — in fact, it’s largely a mashup of other genre flicks (see: Day of the Dead, Children of Men) — but it’s a film that’s not afraid to go places American, PC zombie films would fear to tread.


Download Eaters

Cast:
* Natalie Portman as Nina Sayers
* Mila Kunis as Lily
* Vincent Cassel as Thomas Leroy
* Barbara Hershey as Erica Sayers
* Winona Ryder as Beth MacIntyre
* Benjamin Millepied as David
* Ksenia Solo as Veronica
* Kristina Anapau as Galina
* Janet Montgomery as Madeline
* Sebastian Stan as Andrew
* Toby Hemingway as Tom
* Sergio Torrado as Sergio

Download Black Swan

Arnold Schwarzenegger remained committed to jump-starting his acting career post-governor's office and his infidelity scandal and divorce with wife Maria Shriver via his commitment to the Lionsgate western The Last Stand. Schwarzenegger agreed to play what a Lionsgate exec described as a border town sheriff facing a drug cartel leader trying to escape across the Mexican border.

Download Lionsgate Announces 2013 Release Date for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s THE LAST STAND!