intense guys

Point Break (1991)

Movie cops have been kicking in movie doors for almost a hundred yearsand FBI agent Gary Busey’s entrance at a So-Cal beach cottage is one of the best. We get restless, hand-held camera work and a scream-goosed soundtrack. We get very big guns, hard-boiled bikini babes and a cameo from Red Hot Chili Peppers front-man Anthony Keidis. And we get Keanu Reeves (as former Ohio State quarterback turned lawman Johnny Utah) up close and personal with six blades of a lawnmower in a climax that is straight out of a 1930s chapter serial. Fine work as usual from Kathryn Bigelow, who in spite of limited commercial success and a qualified critical reputation, has directed four muscular, memorable and influential films: Near Dark (1987), Blue Steel (1990), Strange Days (1995) and Point Break.

The Guys Are Gone

As they say in the movies: The End.
After a year of carefully selecting clips and writing heart-felt, usually accurate captions, Intense Guys is calling it a day. Thanks to all of the regulars who have shared our enthusiasm for these movie moments: the wild and the wonderful, and the obvious and obscure. And thanks to two of our earliest supporters—and guest Intense Guys—Tom Charity and Phil Campbell.
We’ve done this long enough denstistas to realize that we’ve only just begun. There are enough great clips of favorite actors, death scenes, spoiler-tagged endings—and 14 other categories—to keep Intense Guys intense for years to come. But for now, at least, the projector spins to a stop.
Thanks for watching,
Marc, Andrew and Rick Staehling

The Guys Are Gone

As they say in the movies: The End.
After a year of carefully selecting clips and writing heart-felt, usually accurate captions, Intense Guys is calling it a day. Thanks to all of the regulars who have shared our enthusiasm for these movie moments: the wild and the wonderful, and the obvious and obscure. And thanks to two of our earliest supporters—and guest Intense Guys—Tom Charity and Phil Campbell.
We’ve done this long enough to realize that we’ve only just begun. There are enough great clips of favorite actors, death scenes, spoiler-tagged endings—and 14 other categories—to keep Intense Guys intense for years to come. But for now, at least, the projector spins to a stop.
Thanks for watching,
Marc, Andrew and Rick Staehling

Written On The Wind (1956)

Frank Skinner’s music is a not-so-subtle hint as to who may be waiting for Rock Hudson in the flame red convertible, and sure enough it’s Dorothy Malone, as hard-drinking nympho Marylee Hadley, about to put the make on our favorite oil exec. Malone’s at the wheel here but it is director Douglas Sirk, marshalling some splendid visuals and doling out the deliciously demented dialogue who is really in control.http://exterminador.24hora.org He gives his actress the best lines and she delivers them in a mocking, conspiratorial voice. This part would instantly transform her from movie good-girl to bad. He gives Rock, valiantly trying to light a cigarette in the director’s imaginary wind, only a few. His answers are dramatically apt and 50-plus years later remarkably telling.

Samuel Fuller

The Big Red One (1980) is Samuel Fuller’s most personal film. It follows the U.S. First Infantry—the same division in which Fuller himself fought and earned a Purple Heart—from North Africa to D-Day to Czechoslovakia during World War II. It is one of the last films about the war actually made by someone who experienced it first hand. In this scene, “The Four Horsemen” as they were called, led by the legendary Lee Marvin, don’t take too well to a fellow soldier’s disrespect of their Italian comrade. The character of Zab (Robert Carradine), who provides the voice over, was based on the director (note the famous Fuller Cigar).

The Matrix (1999)

It doesn't matter that the sequels disappointed. It doesn't matter that the slow-mo martial arts and "bullet time" action choreography that set it apart quickly became the most abused and imitated visual formula of the early 2000's. It doesn't even matter that star Keanu Reeves and directors The Wachowski Brothers haven't knocked anything out of the park since this blockbuster debuted nine years ago. 24 Hora SeguroAll that matters is that for 136 minutes, this film does it all—hooking you with its mystery, wowing you with its visuals, immersing you in its universe—and most importantly, delivering on its massive potential to the final frame. But let's go back to where things start to get really good. Before the red pill, before "I know kung fu", before the big showdown with Hugo Weaving, the Wachowskis crank up the suspense and put a very pre-Neo Keanu out on a very high ledge.

Clint Eastwood

There’s a backlash brewing and it’s coming from the same folks that pronounced Clint Eastwood a great director in 1992, a pretty good actor in 1995 and then voted him two Oscars for Million Dollar Baby in 2004. The new story—strange, but gaining traction—suggests the 78 year old Californian is losing a step behind the camera and was never much in front of it. While we wait out this latest revisionist shit storm we’ll revisit and relish some of Clint’s “lesser” roles: movie veteran John Wilson in White Hunter Black Heart, Tightrope’s New Orleans detective Wes Block and in this clip, Texas Ranger “Red” Garnett who tangles good-naturedly with A Perfect World’s criminologist Laura Dern. Clint gets his licks in here, but let’s his costar have the last word. It’s a telling gesture from an actor who has long known who he is, who he plays and how to make the best of both.

Dog Soldiers (2002)

Scary movies are an interesting breed these days—seems like every other one that comes out is either "torture porn" or a remake of something Japanese or Korean. Enter director Neil Marshall. Until he stank it up with 2008's Doomsday, the British filmmaker looked like a beacon of horror purity among all these disconcerting trends. His big claim to fame is the unqualified modern genre classic The Descent (2005), but he started things off a little more tongue-in-cheek with Dog Soldiers, the best besieged-by-Scottish-werewolves flick we here at IG can think of. Before the guns start blazing and the monsters are revealed, we get this traditional yet terrific starting sequence, where tryst turns to terror and tug-of-war.

Beau Travail (1999)

Denis Lavant is one of the movies' great movers. Harmony Korine cast him as a Chaplin impersonator in Mister Lonely. In North America he is probably most famous for his starring role in the video for Unkle's "Rabbit in Your Headlights" (directed by Jonathan Glazer). But French filmmakers have been hip to his extraordinary physical prowess since the mid 80s, especially on the back of his films with Leos Carax (Boy Meets Girl, Mauvais Sang and Les Amants du Pont Neuf). Claire Denis's Beau Travail is essential viewing. Almost a dance film, both abstract and elemental, it's a free version of Herman Melville's Billy Budd transported to the French Foreign Legion in East Africa and scored to Neil Young, Benjamin Britten, African blues and, here, Corona's dance hit "Rhythm of the Night". Lavant plays the Claggert role. His climactic dance is a kind of suicide rattle; it speaks of annihilation, abandonment, the impossible impetus of desire.

Where Eagles Dare (1968)

The 1970s were not kind to Richard Burton. His film work in that delirious decade includes The Medusa Touch, Exorcist II: The Heretic, The Klansman, Hammersmith Is Out, Bluebeard, and as if one misguided biopic wasn't enough, The Assassination of Trotsky. Which only makes the hard-drinking Welshman’s turn in this Alistair MacLean-penned WWII thriller from the late 60s all the more welcome. Burton’s working quietly here, not quite mocking the material, and with the great Patrick Wymark on the receiving end of his perfectly phrased bon mots, clearly having a good time. He should have: the film was a hit, his American co-star Clint Eastwood was reportedly a rare pal on the set, and Burton still had 14 years left in the tank. Wymark would be dead in two.