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Everyone likes a good action movie, but everyone loves a great one. The art of the action genre has evolved in the last few decades, as visual effects have shoved human on-set accomplishment to the side, and many of the biggest blockbusters are made largely in a computer. There are plenty of wonderful movies made that way, but if we’re being honest, our tastes lean more towards fights and stunts and shootouts that make our blood pump and our bodies involuntarily flinch because, dang it, that looks like it’s gotta hurt.

So, allowing for the fact that there are enough films to populate a Top 100, here are our picks for The 25 Best Modern Action Movies, from the year 2000 to today. Every year more movies push the boundaries of what the action genre is capable of, so we look forward to having to update this over the years to...

If you want to watch a Gen-Xer get wistful, just ask them about MTV in the 1980s and '90s. MTV wasn't just an endless repository for music videos and short films (which would have made the network significant on its own); it also dictated a great deal of the generation's cultural attitudes. There was a punkish, puckish outlook in the '80s as punk, New Wave, and Hip-Hop all rose to the fore, gleefully tearing down old music traditions and setting up something that could be intense, playful, or sometimes just plain silly. The 1990s adopted a great deal of angst, as the disaffection grunge generation and poetic alternative rock came into prominence. In 1994, it wouldn't be strange to see a Hip-Hop music video, a suicidally dark industrial music video, a tender ballad, a heavy metal music video, Nirvana, and a weird novelty act like Green Jellÿ all in a row.

There’s no denying that The Fast and the Furious was inspired by a plethora of vehicular heist films that preceded it, but it also ended up being a source of inspiration for many action films that came after it. If we look at the North American market, after the success of the Ff franchise, films like Torque, Need for Speed, and Baby Driver were greenlit. Russia jumped on the trend with Street Racers. So did Malaysia with Evolusi Kl Drift and its sequel Evolusi Kl Drift 2; yes, they weren’t hiding their love for Tokyo Drift. India launched the massively popular Dhoom franchise. The Norwegian film industry also spawned a franchise inspired by the Ff films, i.e., the Borning trilogy. While the French were ahead of the curve with the two Taxi movies, they eventually expanded it into a five-film franchise after the demand for vehicular mayhem increased in the 2000s.

VFX artists tear apart scenes from Torque, an infamous Fast & Furious motorcycle ripoff. Directed by Joseph Kahn, Torque tells the story of Ford (Martin Henderson), a biker who returns from Thailand to find himself the target of two dangerous street gangs. The film, which was written by Matt Johnson and also stars Ice Cube, Monet Mazur, Dane Cook, and Max Beesley, came out three years after The Fast and the Furious (2001), and was clearly heavily inspired by the film in terms of its characters, storylines, and over-the-top action sequences.

In a recent episode of their "VFX Artists React" YouTube series, the VFX artists at Corridor Crew analyze scenes from Torque, forgoing a lot of their more technical analysis to instead poke fun at the sheer ridiculousness of the film's various action scenes. They draw attention to the movie's very obvious product integration with the framing for Pepsi and Mountain Dew advertisements,...

Plot: A high school science teacher (Brandon Routh) tries to save his students and town from a parasitic alien entity.

Review: Joseph Kahn is one of the most underrated genre directors. His first movie, Torque, was a big flop but holds up relatively well twenty years later as a kind of quasi-spoof of early-2000s era action movies in the vein of XXX and The Fast and the Furious. His follow-up, the teen sci-fi flick, Detention, was a total blast, and the last movie he made, Bodied, was probably his best movie to date. Sadly, it kinda got lost when the short-lived YouTube Red picked it up. Now he’s back with Ick, which is very much in the mould of Detention and was one of the most energetic and fun movies I saw out of this year’s TIFF Midnight Madness.

For those who may not know, Kahn is...

In a film where no shot lasts beyond a handful of seconds, the world stops briefly to go over the origins of the black goo that gives “Ick” its title. But in the latest madness from director Joseph Kahn, no one in the small, suburban town of Eastbrook can be sure where it came from, or for how long exactly it’s been around. It’s actually this lack of interest in deeper introspection that the longtime pop culture provocateur takes on in what he dubbed a “soft rock horror” movie before its debut at the Toronto Film Festival. With one of cinema’s most malleable metaphors for societal anxieties since such films as “The Blob” and “The Stuff,” he certainly grabs attention.

Only Kahn — still best known for music videos for the likes of Britney Spears and Taylor Swift, amidst features such as “Torque,” “Detention” and “Bodied” — could make...

The world is ending and nobody cares in Ick, Joseph Kahn’s latest genre offering after 2017’s Bodied and 2011’s Detention. Despite only making four features in 20 years, Kahn is ubiquitous in pop culture from his background in directing music videos for major artists like Britney Spears and Taylor Swift. He also directed 2004’s Torque, a film received so disastrously even he pokes fun at it. That might explain why, after making one studio film, he’s directed all of his following films independently––including Ick, a riotous take on the creature feature and a scathing satire of society’s apathetic attitude in the face of existential threats.

It takes almost no time to see that Ick is very much Kahn’s own creation. This film runs rampant without a single studio note. A 2000s-set prologue establishes the backstory of Hank (Brandon Routh), a high school quarterback who was on...

While horror remakes are inevitable, its rare that international filmmakers are hired to helm American remakes of their originals. Even fewer filmmakers get to make not one, but Two movies about sentient killer elevators (Killovators? Murdervators?). Lucky for us, Dick Maas laughs in the face of convention. His feature debut, The Lift, is a zany 1980s concoction of A.I. paranoia and cable-attached monsters, kickstarting his career as an odd duckling who cherishes a proper B-Movie script. Movies like Amsterdamned, Prey (aka Uncaged), and Sint would further cement his audacious brand of metropolitan nightmares that treat midnight movie storylines with higher prestige, only adding to the Dutchman’s legacy.

Maas’ The Lift might seem like a strange choice for an American remake—a procedural thriller about corrupt elevator companies—but it’s hailed as one of the Netherlands’ premiere horror imports. Imagine an episode of The Twilight Zone with more...

Torque, a Fast & Furious-like biker movie, starred recognizable actors but received poor reviews, especially compared to Fast & Furious. Director Kahn intended Torque to be a comedic take on Fast & Furious but studio pushed for a serious action film, affecting its success. Torque struggled to replicate Fast & Furious' success despite similar stunts and budget, highlighting the importance of a strong lead cast.

Branded as Fast & Furious but for motorcycles, Torque turns 20 years old this year. The 2004 biker movie is rated 22% on Rotten Tomatoes, much lower than The Fast and The Furious 54%, which is surprising considering both were produced by Neal H. Moritz. Torque stars some recognizable actors despite its terrible Rotten Tomatoes score, featuring the likes of Ice Cube and Adam Scott. However, Torque received negative reviews from critics about everything except its action scenes. This makes sense as the movie was supposed to be a Fast & Furious equivalent,...

Patrick Lussier's 2011 film "Drive Angry" might belong to a genre hereby designated "neo-grindhouse." There was a wave of films in the late 2000s and early 2010s that sought to evoke the style or the content of a very specific type of exploitation movie that was popular in the 1970s. In addition to the Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez 2007 twofer "Grindhouse" and its spinoffs, films like "Redline," "The Man with the Iron Fists," "Turbo Kid," "Kung Fury," "Hatchet," "Torque," "Deathgasm," "House of the Devil," and "The Love Witch" popped up on the regular. 

"Drive Angry" gleefully embraced its goofy, action/horror premise with aplomb. A dead race car driver named (sigh) John Milton (Nicolas Cage) escapes the clutches of Hell having stolen Satan's persona gun, a device called the Godkiller. On his tail is Satan's Accountant (William Fichtner), assigned with nabbing John and dragging him back to Hell. John,...

One Fast Move is an example of young adult star-driven streaming cinema, a recycled effort of substandard films from a generation before. The K.J. Apa vehicle is tweaked just enough to look and feel different, but unless you are a dedicated cinephile—or a diehard fan of the genre of motorcycle films—you won’t recognize it.

No, One Fast Move is far from the original. It’s a direct rip-off of a series of biker films made over twenty years ago, like Torque, Supercross, and, of course, the infamous Laurence Fishburne film Biker Boyz. All of these films had howling plots, trying to create a The Fast & the Furious franchise of motorcycle films filled with murder and infidelity.

K.J. Apa in One Fast Move (2024) | Image via Amazon MGM Studios

RELATEDZendaya’s Euphoria Co-Star Eric Dane Set to Appear in Will Smith’s Bad Boys 4 as Major...

Sony Yay!, the kids entertainment channel from Sony Pictures Networks India, is ramping up its anime content and developing original Indian IPs for international platforms as it looks to grow beyond traditional broadcasting.

Launched in 2017, Sony Yay! has established itself as a top three player in India’s competitive kids’ television market. The channel’s strategy focuses on Indian content and popular anime titles to capture young audiences.

“We started off as a homegrown Indian content channel just to stand out and serve Indian audiences with Indian stories and Indian characters,” Sujoy Roy Bardhan, marketing, communications and on air promotions head at Sony Yay!, told Variety. “That’s also the way we were able to very quickly catch the attention of kids, because there was a lot of relevance of our characters in the category.”

The channel has built a library of 60 movies and 400 episodes for its original IP, pet comedy “Honey Bunny.

Gears of War: E-Day might be one of the most highly anticipated entries into a franchise for quite a while, and it shows in the way people’s expectations keep mounting.

One of the biggest curiosities people seem to have is if and how the franchise will retcon some parts of its lore, and the Reddit community has gathered to figure it out.

The New Gears of War Has a Lot of Retconning to Do Gears of War: E-Day has a lot of lore aspects that need to be retconned. | Image Credit: The Coalition

Prequels are always an exciting affair with any franchise, especially when they cover major, cataclysmic-type events that you’ve only heard about and seen the aftereffects of. Creating a prequel comes with its fair share of challenges though, with one of the most prominent ones being working around the lore.

Possible Retcons in E-Day?

byu/Salty...

Marc Singer in Agent Recon (Quiver Distribution)Graphic: The A.V. Club

Welcome to Random Roles, wherein we talk to actors about the characters who defined their careers. The catch: They don’t know beforehand what roles we’ll ask them to talk about.

The actor: Marc Singer began his career as a stage actor,...

Joseph Kahn primarily works as a music video director, having collaborated with the likes of Taylor Swift, Backstreet Boys, Rob Zombie, Mariah Carey, Britney Spears, U2, Aerosmith, Lady Gaga, Kelly Clarkson, Eminem, Maroon 5, Shakira, and many more – but he has also made a few feature films over the years. He made his feature debut with the 2004 action comedy Torque, and has followed that up with the comedy Bodied and the horror film Detention – which we’ve covered for both Awfully Good and Best Horror Movie You Never Saw. Now, Variety reports that Kahn is making a creature feature called Ick, and Brandon Routh (Superman Returns) and Mena Suvari (American Beauty) have signed on to star in the film.

Ick is coming our way from Interstellar Entertainment and producer Steven Schneider. The film aims to “evoke the timeless creature features of the 1980s with an ambitious arsenal of scares and comedy.

A throwback to 1980s creature features, Joseph Kahn’s next movie is titled Ick, and Variety reports today that Brandon Routh and Mena Suvari will be leading the cast.

Variety’s report notes, “The film aims to evoke the timeless creature features of the 1980s with an ambitious arsenal of scares and comedy.”

The site also teases a blending of “old school prosthetics and state of the art visual effects.”

Joseph Kahn’s Ick centers on “Hank (Routh), a high school science teacher who still pines for his childhood sweetheart (Suvari). While discovering he may have a teenage daughter (Malina Weissman), Hank must grapple with a terrifying alien anomaly invading their small town.”

The film was written by Sam Laskey, Dan Koontz and Joseph Kahn.

“‘Ick’ is a movie that evokes primal fears about the world today, and best of all, it introduces a unique mysterious monster. I am thrilled...

Netflix is getting into the medical procedural space, with the streamer announcing a pickup for the drama “Pulse.”

The series hails from creator Zoe Robyn, who will also serve as co-showrunner alongside Carlton Cuse. In addition, Justina Machado has been cast in a series regular role.

The official logline for the series states, “While the staff of Miami’s busiest Level 1 Trauma Center navigate medical emergencies, young ER doc Dani Simms is unexpectedly promoted to Chief Resident amidst the fallout of her own provocative romantic relationship.”

Machado will star as Natalie Cruz, described as “a brilliant and politically-savvy doctor, who oversees both administration and medicine in her role as the Chair of Surgery and Emergency Medicine.”

Both Robyn and Cuse also serve as executive producers on the series. Kate Dennis will serve as director and executive producer on the show’s first two episodes. Bradley Gardner, Emma Forman, and Michael Klick also executive produce.

In life, spewing hate comes easy; finding the good takes effort. That’s my mantra for “Revenge of the Remakes.” Get dirty and identify value where others hastily — maybe unfairly — laid harsh criticisms. Any remake, in any genre, faces biased outrage from peanut galleries who refuse to remove their nostalgia goggles. It’s easy to prey on the hate clickers out there, which is why I use this column as a voice for the misunderstood and wrongly delegitimized. A remake isn’t trash because it’s a remake, there’s more to the equation.

That said (and believed), not all remakes are created equal. With soaring highs come subterranean lows. Sometimes remakes are nothing but a copy-and-paste cash grab, devoid of creative ambitions. These examples fuel smear campaigns about remakes at large — and today, we’re dissecting one of the worst.

John McTiernan’s Rollerball is an unprecedented studio disaster...

Many filmmakers have attempted to copy the success of the Fast & Furious franchise, but few have succeeded in capturing its essence. Movies like Need for Speed, Biker Boyz, and Torque imitate the high-speed stunts and criminal underworld of Fast & Furious, but fall short in creating cohesive narratives and emotional resonance. Films such as Getaway, Overdrive, and Drive Hard attempt to combine elements of Fast & Furious with other genres, but ultimately fail to deliver a compelling and coherent movie experience.

The Fast & Furious franchise is likely the most successful series of movies about street racing, but there have also been dozens of attempts to copy it. With the first movies in the series released in 2001, the movies about fast cars and a shady criminal underworld have gone on to be incredibly successful. The franchise has managed to earn almost $7.5 billion across 11 movies and even created some spin-offs within the same universe.

Amazon Prime Video's The Horror of Dolores Roach features a compelling horror comedy-drama that revolves around well written characters, played by a talented cast. Based on a podcast of the same name, The Horror of Dolores Roach follows a Sweeney Todd-esque narrative, where the titular character, Dolores, returns to Washington Heights after spending 16 years in prison. To her dismay, her old neighborhood is heavily gentrified and the only familiar place she turns to gradually becomes her worst nightmare. In its runtime of eight episodes, The Horror of Dolores Roach never leaves a dull moment and keeps viewers hooked with gory twists and turns.

Its parallels with Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd and political undertones alone are enough to keep viewers entertained throughout its runtime. However, The Horror of Dolores Roach also features an impressive cast, who effectively elevate the tension in its violent drama with their performances. Therefore, since...

Adam Scott never wanted to be anything other than an actor. He has been devoted to his craft ever since his days of appearing in plays in high school. His first notable professional gig was playing a strung-out deliverer of exposition in the not-at-all-remembered 1994 MTV series "Dead at 21," one of the most 1990s things ever. A few years later, Scott appeared in the final theatrically released "Hellraiser" movie, "Hellraiser: Bloodline" in which he played a sweaty, immortal French aristocrat. That same year, he played the unnamed helmsman of the U.S.S. Defiant in "Star Trek: First Contact." Incidentally, his "Star Trek" character has recently shown up in the video game "Star Trek: Timelines" where he was named Helsman Wyatt, presumably after Ben Wyatt, Scott's character on "Parks and Recreation."

Scott has since had a varied, textured career that included both high-profile jobs and low-profile nothings (this author may...

With a new month quickly approaching, it’s time to look ahead and see what’s coming to all your favorite streaming services this November. That’s Netflix, Disney Plus, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video and, of course, HBO Max.

Halloween will soon be behind us and given that Christmas isn’t too far off, we’re beginning to see some holiday titles pop up, with all the major platforms getting into the festive spirit. That’ll continue in December as well, of course, but for November, there’s certainly tons on offer for those looking to start the celebrations early.

There’s a lot of other great stuff on the way, too, though, be it classic films, underrated gems, brand new releases and much more, and you can check out the entire lineup, sorted by date, down below. Ready to dive in?

November 1

Netflix

60 Days In: Season 5

A...

Joseph Kahn is a prolific commercial and music video director, but he has only made three feature films. His first, Torque, was The Fast and the Furious on motorcycles, but he made it a spoof of The Fast and the Furious, and people expecting a straight Fast and the Furious weren’t on board. He made […]

The post ‘Bodied’ Director Joseph Kahn on Why His Explosive Rap Battle Comedy Was a Tough Sell For Distributors [Interview] appeared first on /Film.

For many moviegoers, only one film released in 2017 successfully confronted racial inequality under the guise of mainstream entertainment, and that was “Get Out.” But another movie that fell into that same category has yet to hit theaters. Joseph Kahn’s “Bodied,” an outrageous hip hop satire that screened in the Midnight Madness section of the Toronto International Film Festival, has yet to land a theatrical deal; nevertheless, it topped IndieWire’s annual critics poll as the best undistributed movie of 2017.

The riotous comedy, in which geeky, overeducated white grad student Adam (Calum Worthy) permeates Toronto’s underground rap battle scene, is a blatant provocation: A big part of the movie revolves around Adam’s realization that racial epithets and other seemingly offensive aspects of rap performance are key to his own success in the scene, and that participants regard such button-pushing lyrics as less problematic than his socially-progressive background had led him to believe.

From the moment Bodied opens with a promotional advert for the Killafornia Battle League (in which we’re *immediately* told to “suck a dick!”) to the very last insert-rap-lyric-here outro line, director Joseph Kahn and co-writer Alex Larsen assassinate political correctness with pop-culture lyricisms and heat-seeking regard. Ninjas of the rapped word in their ranks, racial appropriation and misrepresented social justice tenacity in their crosshairs. We no longer can share a single thought without offending someone, somewhere, who wants to score uncashable “woke points” – and Kahn wants to make their fragile little minds explode. This is two straight hours of offensive battle rap bars, non-stop hilarity, layered introspection and the most stylized, take-no-prisoners commentary on what a black-and-white minefield our behavioral ethics have become.

That, and it’s the most motherflippin’ fun you’ll have in a theater of any kind this year, the next, and probably many to come.

This writer will admit that he joked to a friend recently about music video director Joseph Kahn’s slow feature film output over the last 13 years as almost making him the new Terrence Malick. While don’t take that as anything more than a goof, each of his three features do represent a very specific point in time that’s bound to be dated within a short period. His first feature Torque arrived in the middle of the Neal Moritz renaissance and was Kahn’s stealth attempt to smuggle a parody of The Fast and The Furious beer commercial aesthetic within an actual Fast and Furious knock-off. The second, Detention, came at the dawn of social media dominance, as obnoxious and scatterbrained a millennial anthem one could hope for.

Now arrives the third feature, Bodied, coming at the beginning of “Trump’s America,” and it is, if anything, a middle-finger...

Eager-beaver, and ready to rumble, Bodied, huffs and puffs its way into our current cultural moment with impeccable timing. Produced by Eminem and directed by cult (or as the cool kids say, 'vulgar') auteur, Joseph Kahn whose straight-faced ludicrousness on display in Torque and Detention have earned each a tiny but enthusiastic following. Here, with Slim Shady blessing and Kahn's amped music-video sensibility, they invert the 8 Mile rags to eventual (offscreen) riches story, into a bold, hyper-progressive satire. One that sees a bookish Berkley masters student trash-fire most of his white privilege in an earnest effort to become legit in the self-aware-misogynistic world of Battle Rap. Bridges, oh so many bridges, ones you probably never even knew existed, are consumed as paradoxes and inequality...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

The Toronto International Film Festival kicks off this week, and with it, the rest of a very busy fall festival season. In preparation for the lauded festival, we’ve hand-picked 20 films we can’t wait to see, from the starriest of premieres to the most unexpected of offerings. Check them out below.

“mother!”

Darren Aronofsky has veered off in many unpredictable directions over the years, but at his core, he’s a master at subverting the horror/thriller genres: From “Pi” to “Black Swan,” the filmmaker excels at taking his stories in creepy, unpredictable directions in which it’s hard to tell how much we can believe onscreen — and whether his characters have lost their minds. That mode certainly seems to be in play for “mother!”, which appears to be a “Rosemary’s Baby”-like tale of a married couple (Jennifer Laurence and Javier Bardem) whose home is infiltrated by...

Deadpool director Tim Miller has just signed on to direct a feature film adaptation of the 1984 cyberpunk novel Neuromancer for Fox. X-Men producer Simon Kinberg is on board to help develop the film project as well. 

The book was written by William Gibson and is the first part of the Sprawl trilogy. For those of you not familiar with the book, it went on to win the Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick Awards. here's a description of the story::

Neuromancer centers on Henry Dorsett Case, a disgraced computer hacker living in Japan who was punished for stealing from his employer by being rendered unable to access The Matrix, a worldwide virtual reality network. But he's given a shot at getting back in the saddle when he is hired to complete the ultimate hack: one on an artificial intelligence orbiting Earth.

The first book was followed by Count Zero (1986) and...

Eminem has produced a new movie called Bodied, which is a satirical film that focuses on the intense hardcore world and art of rap battles. Today we have the first trailer for the film and as you'll see it definitely has that Eminem style and vibe.

The film was directed by Joseph Kahn, who helmed the film Torque and a shit-ton of music videos throughout the course of his career. He's directed music videos for Taylor Swift, Dr. Dre, Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, and of course Eminem.

Kahn developed the script for the film with former rap battle champion Alex “Kid Twist” Larsen. The story centers on a progressive graduate student who "finds success and sparks outrage when his interest in battle rap as a thesis subject becomes a competitive obsession."

The movie stars Anthony Michael Hall, Disney Channel alum Calum Worthy, and hip-hop personality Charlamagne Tha God. It also features Dizaster,...

Last week, we got the Galas and Special Presentation lineup for the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival, and there was so much good stuff that I don’t know how I’m going to see all of it. So naturally, now the Midnight Madness schedule has been released, and it’s filled with even more good stuff. This year’s opening night film will be Bodied from director Joseph Kahn, and Kahn’s involvement is enough to get me interested. He previously helmed the bonkers Torque and Detention, so I’m in for whatever he’s cooked up next. The …...

Watching xXx: Return Of Xander Cage mimics the effect of mainlining a Red Bull/Jolt Cola concoction while you skydive off the Empire State Building with only a handkerchief for a parachute. It’s like Shaun White and Travis Pastrana had conjoining daredevil wet dreams that formed some Exxxtreme tsunami of fantastical X-Games stuntmanship. I imagine someone asking “what about a story?” only to have Vin Diesel grab them by the lapel, hoist them up and say, “how about I skateboard, travel and bed sexy ladies for the first twenty minutes, There’S Your Story!” – they complied, of course. That’s the opening to Xander Cage’s adrenaline-packed franchise return, and radness only increases from there broskis and braskis!

Agent Xander Cage’s return is a somber one, since it begins with the death of Augustus Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson). Government suit Jane Marke (Toni Collette) calls Xander out of retirement to avenge Gibbons’ death,...

Just three years ago, filmmaker Guillermo del Toro was prepping a live action adaptation of Justice League Dark, which at the time was entitled Dark Universe. After two years in development, the director eventually left the project, and we didn't hear much else about it until rumors swirled earlier this year that the studio is making an animated adaptation instead. That news was confirmed at Comic-Con, with the movie debuting this year, but today we have a new look at what may have been, if another director would have been involved.

Joseph Kahn, who has directed the feature films Torque and Detention, along with the controversial Power/Rangers short film last year, revealed on Twitter that he pitched his take on the project before it became an animated movie. He also shared his video of an eight-second animation test, which featured his version of Swamp Thing. Of course, we will...

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Want a quality action film, but you only have an hour and a half? Step this way...

Looking back over the genre, action films definitely haven’t suffered from the trend to make everything longer. They’ve always been pretty long, regularly clocking in at over two hours. Perhaps because of all the slo-mo? But while the sweet spot for action classics seems to be the 100-110 minute mark, there are those that have cut the genre right down to basics, and succeeded all the more for it.

Below is my pick of 25 great action films 90 minutes or under. Even more so than other genres, action crosses many other films - picking a pure ‘action’ flick is all but impossible. So below I’ve chosen films that retain action sequences as their main narrative device, and keep the action at the heart of the movie, rather than as a extra.

Meet some of the best directors working today, who haven't gone down the blockbuster movie route...

Ever find it a bit lame when the same big name directors get kicked around for every high profile project? Christopher Nolan, Jj Abrams, maybe the Russo Brothers? With so much focus on blockbuster films these days, getting a major franchise job seems like the main acknowledgement of success for a filmmaker. And yes, both the financial and creative rewards can be great. But there are plenty of other directors out there, doing their own thing, from art house auteurs to Dtv action specialists.

Here are 25 examples.

Lee Hardcastle

Even if you don’t know his name, you’ve probably seen Lee Hardcastle’s ultraviolent claymations shared on social media. He first started getting noticed for his two-minute remake of The Thing, starring the famous stop motion penguin Pingu. Far from just a cheap one-joke mash-up,...

The long in the works film adaptation of William Gibson's acclaimed sci-fi novel "Neuromancer," which at last report stalled several years ago, has apparently found a new lease on life.

Screen reports that UK-based Gfm Films has been joined by Chinese media company C2M Media Group which has stepped up with financing for the project. The pair will now co-develop and produce the film with the first priority being the hiring of a new writer and director.

Several people have been previously attached to the project, most notably Vicenzo Natali ("Cube") and Joseph Kahn ("Torque"). At present, the only linked name is producer Lucas Foster ("Mr. and Mrs. Smith").

The controversial short Power/Rangers is back online after Saban Brands settled their copyright dispute with the makers of the film. The movie has now returned to Youtube and Vimeo after being pulled by both streaming video sites earlier in the week. And it looks like no further legal action is being pursued. You can also see the video below.

This past week, a tsunami of copyright controversy began to swirl after producer Adi Shankar unveiled his latest entry in the so-called Bootleg Universe, this time debuting a Power/Rangers fan film from Torque and Detention director Joseph Kahn. The 15 minute short was an instant sensation, starring Katee Sackhoff, James Van Der Beek and Will Yun Lee from a script Joseph Kahn wrote with James Van Der Beek and Dutch Southern. They called it a 'deboot' of the Power Rangers franchise, and Saban Brands, who own the Power Rangers copyright,...

"Torque" director Joseph Kahn has been working on a "Power Rangers" short film. But it's nothing like the big screen reboot that Lionsgate has been planning. Kahn's stars James Van Der Beek and Katee Sackhoff, and is far from being kid-friendly. "Overall, it's a very serious thing," Kahn told HitFix. "The joke isn't that you're laughing at each particular scene; the joke is that we did this 'f*ck you' thing in the first place. You're going to look at it and you go 'wow I can't believe they f*cking did that.'" In the short film, Van Der Beek plays Rocky, a former Power Rangers member who takes the Pink Ranger (Sackhoff) hostage. Check it out below. Short Film:...

Have you watched "Torque" and "Detention" director Joseph Kahn's HitFix-premiered "Power Rangers" fan film yet? As of this writing, you can still catch the Sfw version on YouTube. The Nsfw version, on the other hand? Apparently Vimeo's "Staff Pick of the Day" recommendation wasn't enough to keep the video-sharing site from taking it down -- presumably under pressure from "Power Rangers" copyright holder Saban Entertainment. "Saban is trying to shut Power/Rangers down," wrote Kahn on Twitter. "If you'd like to keep watching, tell them to stop harassing me." Indeed, despite satire being protected under the First Amendment -- that part of the Constitution which has allowed fan-made films to flourish online -- "Power/Rangers" seems to be under attack in part, perhaps, due to its affiliation with a known Hollywood director. "Hey @vimeo my Power/Rangers short you took down is protected under fair/use/free speech/satire,...

For years now there's been this hunger from fans to watch "dark and gritty" movies starring characters they grew up with. The success of Bryan Singer's X-Men movies and then Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy helped fuel Hollywood's desire to bring more of these kinds of stories to the big screen, and now they're everywhere. From The Avengers to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to The Fantastic Four, we now live in the age of "The Dark and Gritty Reboot." Producer Adi Shanker (The Grey, Dredd) teamed with filmmaker Joseph Kahn (Torque, Detention) on what they're calling a "bootleg fan film" that sort of deconstructs not just the dark and gritty reboot, but also the ways in which fans love to devour this type of content...

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This isn't the Power Rangers you grew up with. Dawson's Creek veteran James Van Der Beek and Battlestar Galactica and Longmire fan-favorite Katee Sackhoff got their morphing time on in a 14-minute gritty flick—seriously, there's lots of blood, naked women and stuff you definitely wouldn't see on Saturday morning—from director Joseph Kahn. His other credits include Taylor Swift's "Blank Space" music video, Torque and several other of your favorite music videos. The film comes with this disclaimer: "Power/Rangers: Deboot of the Power Rangers. My take on the Fan Film. Not a pilot, not a series, not for profit, strictly for exhibition. This is a bootleg...

Updated: Hollywood’s habit of rebooting campy old properties into “dark” and “gritty”, Nolan-esque movies has grown tiring for a long time. No material is sacred, and no material is too ridiculous to be unironically rehashed.

One of the lesser titles on that long list of remakes are the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, a horribly silly ’90s staple that by 2016 when the official Lionsgate movie is released will be 20 years removed from when the original show went off air.

Joseph Kahn’s short film Power/Rangers isn’t that.

Starring Katee Sackhoff (Battlestar Galactica) and James Van Der Beek (Dawson’s Creek) in Kahn’s “fan film”, one that doesn’t “reboot” the old property but extends its story threads to their natural, grim and bloody conclusion, Power/Rangers is an intense and dense fan story that takes fan filmmaking to a new level.

Kahn is a music video director...

Last night, producer Adi Shankar unveiled the next film in his Bootleg Universe, a new short entitled Power/Rangers, based on the popular film and TV franchise which will be rebooted in next year's Power Rangers. This is the fourth short film in the Bootleg Universe, following The Punsher: Dirty Laundry, Venom: Truth in Journalism and last year's Judge Dredd: Superfiend.

Katee Sackhoff, James Van Der Beek and Will Yun Lee star as characters from the original Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers hit TV series. Joseph Kahn (Torque, Detention) directs from a script he co-wrote with James Van Der Beek and Dutch Southern. Here's a statement from Joseph Kahn from his Vimeo page, where fans can watch the unrated cut of the short film.

"Deboot of the Power Rangers. My take on the Fan Film. Not a pilot, not a series, not for profit, strictly for exhibition. This is a bootleg...

Last night, producer Adi Shankar unveiled the next film in his Bootleg Universe, a new short entitled Power/Rangers, based on the popular film and TV franchise which will be rebooted in next year's Power Rangers. This is the fourth short film in the Bootleg Universe, following The Punsher: Dirty Laundry, Venom: Truth in Journalism and last year's Judge Dredd: Superfiend.

Katee Sackhoff, James Van Der Beek and Will Yun Lee star as characters from the original Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers hit TV series. Joseph Kahn (Torque, Detention) directs from a script he co-wrote with James Van Der Beek and Dutch Southern. Here's a statement from Joseph Kahn from his Vimeo page, where fans can watch the unrated cut of the short film.

"Deboot of the Power Rangers. My take on the Fan Film. Not a pilot, not a series, not for profit, strictly for exhibition. This is a bootleg...

Well this is a bit of a curious thing. While Lionsgate preps a new Power Rangers movie for July 22, 2016, Joseph Kahn has directed an R-rated short film inspired by the kid-targeted action property. The new film is said to be a "modern reinvention" of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, but I doubt it will have much in common with Kahn's vision. In an accompanying video Kahn, who directed the awful 2004 movie Torque, says, "I think the trick that I really wanted to do with this was to make that dark and gritty version that everybody keeps talking about, but really do it. Really see if I could totally accomplish it with essentially a really incredible incredibly silly property." While the short isn't what I would necessarily call "good", it is a fun little watch and the fact it features James Van Der Beek and Katee Sackhoff hamming it up is mildly amusing.

Previously we've seen a couple of impressive short films from producer Ari Shankar from the comic book universe. Joe Lynch directed Truth in Journalism, a take off on the Spider-Man character Venom, and Mike Pecci directed The Dead Can't Be Distracted, which was a bootleg version of The Punisher. Now Shankar is back with Power/Rangers, a gritty, R-rated, 14-minute short film directed by Joseph Kahn (Torque) that adapts "Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers." The film certainly puts an interesting twist on the mythology of the Japanese imported action adventure, and it's much different from the eventual big screen take on the way. Plus, it stars James Van Der Beek and Katie Sackhoff, which is just completely surreal. Watch! Here's Joseph Kahn & Adi Shankar's short film Power/Rangers (via HitFix): And if you're wondering just why Shankar decided to make this movie, here you go: Interestingly enough, Kahn wasn't...

The big screen reboot of the "Power Rangers" franchise is still a year off, but today "Torque" director Joseph Kahn and "Dredd" producer Adi Shankar have come up with something that should get fans excited and premiered it via HitFix.

In the tradition of Shankar's "Punisher" and "Venom" fan film shorts comes the 14-minute "Power/Rangers," a dark and very adult sequhttp://www.darkhorizons.com/admin/news/edit/35920el to the children’s franchise. Boasting violence and nudity, the film begins with most of the Power Rangers dead and with James Van Der Beek as a traitorous Rocky having taken Katee Sackhoff's Kimberly prisoner. Russ Bain, Will Yun Lee and Gichi Gamba also star.

The "Power/Rangers" short has been removed from YouTube...

"I make unapologetically R-rated, ferociously violent, action & crime cinema," producer Adi Shankar ("Dredd," "Lone Survivor," "A Walk Among The Tombstones," "Killing Them Softly") says in his Twitter profile. Though that seems to presuppose that the only way to do that kind of material is in an R-rated format. We'll leave that debate for another day, but Shankar has been putting his philosophy to use in his ongoing bootleg series of shorts, and today comes the violent, gritty take "Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers" you've always wanted. Uh, right? Rounding up James Van Der Beek, Katie Sackhoff, and Joseph Kahn ("Torque") to direct, this one imagines what would happen if those colorful teenage kids trained to fight turned into adults with Ptsd. Well, it is in a blue palette world of electronic music and choreographed fights. It's an interesting take on the material, though the aesthetic design feels somewhat...

This morning Adi Shankar released Power/Rangers, a “bootleg short film” directed by Joseph Kahn (Torque, Detention), co-written by Dutch Southern (Bad Turn Worse) and starring James Van Der Beek (Dawson’s Creek) and Katee Sackhoff (Battlestar Galactica). Described as “a twist on the Power Rangers mythos”, the short film is a a well crafted brilliant fx-heavy […]

The post Watch: Joseph Kahn’s Power Rangers Short Film ‘Power/Rangers’ appeared first on /Film.

Lionsgate may be working on a "Power Rangers" reboot, but we bet it's nothing like this super-gritty fan film, directed by Joseph Kahn ("Torque") and featuring James Van Der Beek and Katee Sackhoff.

The short film, "Power/Rangers," which clocks in at around 12 minutes, picks up years after our heroes last fought Rita and her monsters. Van Der Beek plays Rocky, a former member of the Rangers crew who has since turned on his onetime friends, taking Kimberly, a.k.a. the Pink Ranger (Sackhoff), hostage.

An intense exchange littered with flashbacks shows how hard times have fallen on our heroes, with sex, drugs, and eventually gruesome murder eventually overtaking the gang. There's also plenty of cursing, too, another element that didn't make it into the Saturday morning kids show.

HitFix has an interview with Kahn, in which he explains his thought process behind the film, which also features impressive...