As a big boy, I often compare my taste in movies to my taste in food. Sure, sometimes you want something good for you, like an Oscar-winning drama. Other times, though, what you really want is the equivalent of cinematic junk food.
9 Venom: The Last Dance
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Release Year |
2024 |
|---|---|
|
Runtime |
1 hour 49 minutes |
The Venom franchise is perhaps the best modern example of cinematic junk food. It involves Tom Hardy (and his weirdest accent yet) merging with a brain-eating alien monster and having bizarre misadventures. And Venom: The Last Dance brings this trilogy to a thrilling, and surprisingly moving, conclusion with an ambitious movie that stays grounded in some fairly solid character work.
For fans of Marvel comics, there’s a lot of interesting lore here about the symbiotes and even the cinematic introduction of Knull, a cosmic baddie who threatens the universe. Fortunately, though, you don’t need to have read a small mountain of comics to understand the plot, as the tale of “keep this weird McGuffin away from the even weirder bad guy” is a tale familiar to all moviegoers.
8 Bad Boys: Ride or Die
|
Release Year |
2024 |
|---|---|
|
Runtime |
1 hour 55 minutes |
In the best possible way, Bad Boys: Ride or Die feels like an artifact from a nearly forgotten era of film. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer brings us his unique brand of throwback mayhem, and it’s frankly awesome to sit back and enjoy the chaos. Plus, you hardly have to focus on the finer plot details (never let the story get in the way of good action!) when original bad boys Will Smith and Martin Lawrence are chewing the scenery and swapping hilarious quips.
For action lovers, Bad Boys: Ride or Die has a little bit of everything. If you’re a hardcore fan of the earlier movies, it’s debatable how well this belated sequel lives up to its franchise legacy. Personally, I was just happy to see these characters onscreen together again, and this relentlessly paced film left me with a huge grin plastered on my face from beginning to end.
7 Black Hawk Down
|
Release Year |
2001 |
|---|---|
|
Runtime |
2 hours 32 minutes |
Based on a true story, Black Hawk Down is much more serious than most of the action movies on this list. It also has an impeccable pedigree: this movie about a crashed helicopter comes to us courtesy of Ridley Scott, the director of beloved genre classics such as Alien and Blade Runner. And a killer cast brings this tale to life, including Josh Hartnett, Eric Bana, and Ewan McGregor.
As with many adaptations, Black Hawk Down takes a few liberties with the source material, wringing some extra drama out of scenes that were a bit more prosaic in the book of the same name. Still, action lovers who are also history buffs will enjoy that this film has one foot firmly planted in the real world. And everyone will enjoy Ridley Scott’s deft directorial hand as he helms one of the most original cinematic adaptations in Hollywood history.
6 Godzilla Minus One
|
Release Year |
2023 |
|---|---|
|
Runtime |
2 hours 5 minutes |
The Godzilla franchise has worn many faces over the years, and I’m not talking about the iconic rubber suits. The original movie is more akin to a horror film, while its sequels quickly took the shape of self-aware, shlocky creature features. These days, the Monsterverse is giving the giant lizard the Marvel treatment, but none of those modern movies can hold a candle (lit by fiery breath) to Godzilla Minus One.
At the risk of sounding too much like a fanboy, Minus One is the perfect Godzilla movie. It brings the franchise back to its roots with the tale of a disgraced Kamikaze pilot who survives an attack by everyone’s favorite kaiju. He may be the only one who can ultimately bring the lizard down, but only if he can overcome his survivor’s guilt in time to save Japan. Fast and fierce, Minus One sets the tone for all future creature features.
5 The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
|
Release Year |
2015 |
|---|---|
|
Runtime |
1 hour 56 minutes |
Many film lovers want nothing more than for former Superman actor Henry Cavill to trade his red cape for a tuxedo and play James Bond. If you’re one of them, you’re sure to love The Man From U.N.C.L.E., which allows the charismatic actor to play a Cold War-era CIA Agent. To stop some bad guys from building their own nuke, he must team up with an unlikely ally: a KGB agent played by Armie Hammer.
The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is a movie that blends solid actor chemistry with cool action set pieces and quotable dialogue. On top of that, it’s a period piece set in 1963, which instantly sets the film apart from most modern blockbusters. This may be the only time we get to see Cavill as a dashing superspy, but by the time the credits roll, you’ll join me in hoping he eventually gets to play James Bond on the big screen.
4 The Equalizer
|
Release Year |
2014 |
|---|---|
|
Runtime |
2 hours 12 minutes |
The Equalizer is one of those rare film franchises that completely eclipsed the TV show it was based on. Sure, the ‘80s TV show was thrilling enough, but the first movie is completely captivating thanks to the one and only Denzel Washington. The premise of the film is that he’s a former marine who tried to put his old life behind him. But, much like John Wick, he gets sucked back into a world of unrelenting violence, forcing him to dispatch one colorful foe after another.
This is one of those quintessential “turn your brain off” action movies. All you need to know is that you’re rooting for Denzel and rooting against the Russian mafia. Plus, our hero is trying to protect a trafficked young girl, so it’s easy to root for our vigilante hero and his righteous cause as he fights the worst kind of scum.
3 Train to Busan
|
Release Year |
2016 |
|---|---|
|
Runtime |
1 hour 58 minutes |
When I first heard of Train to Busan, I was a bit skeptical. It’s a zombie movie, and I thought this genre was completely dead. However, this South Korean film blew me away with both the simplicity of its premise and the brilliance of its execution. The plot involves passengers effectively stuck on a train while their country is being ravaged by zombies. Each of them just wants to get to safety, but it turns out that not even a speeding train is safe from these running (not walking) dead.
Train to Busan has all the horror staples we love to see, including great special effects and creative kills. But once it gets going, the movie provides almost nonstop action thrills to go with all those spooky chills. And even if you’re not a horror fiend, you’ll likely fall in love with the father/daughter tale that emotionally anchors the entire film.
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2 Starship Troopers
|
Release Year |
1997 |
|---|---|
|
Runtime |
2 hours 15 minutes |
When is an action movie more than an action movie? When it has something to say, of course! Starship Troopers is Paul Verhoeven’s adaptation of the Robert Heinlein sci-fi book. But while the book was a more straightforward sci-fi story, the RoboCop director uses extremely black satire to create a hilariously bleak commentary on fear, war, and politics.
Don’t worry, though: the politics don’t get in the way of some heart-pumping action sequences. The quintessential beauty of Starship Troopers is that it works on multiple levels. You can enjoy it as the kind of satire that would make Jonathan Swift proud, or you can simply enjoy it as the best cinematic bug hunt since Aliens. Either way, unless you’re a franchise superfan, I encourage you to stick with this first film rather than exploring the diminishing returns of this movie’s direct-to-video sequels.
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1 Kate
|
Release Year |
2021 |
|---|---|
|
Runtime |
1 hour 46 minutes |
Somewhere along the way, John Wick became a film genre unto itself. The formula is simple: take an actor mostly known for other kinds of films and transform them into an action star. In Kate, that actor is Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who plays an assassin hoping to complete one last job and leave her violent life behind. But she gets poisoned, and with only one day to live, she decides to track down and kill the man who handed her a death sentence.
Kate has a small-but-strong cast, including Woody Harrelson as Kate’s mentor. As with the best action movies, though, the real draw of this film are the scenes of our main character kicking butt and taking names. Trust me: if you mostly know Winstead from her iconic performance as Ramona Flowers, you’re going to be blown away by just how great she is as a bloody and bona fide action star.
When you’re in the mood for a good action movie, it can be hard to find one that gets your heart racing and makes you want to sit up and cheer. Fortunately, all of these movies fit the bill, and you can snack on them one by one or set aside a day to binge. Either way, you can satisfy your cinematic appetite by streaming these films on Netflix.
Looking for your new favorite action movie? Stream all of these titles today on Netflix!