scott sanders' BLACK DYNAMITE (2009)

it's tempting to underrate Black Dynamite because it is in one sense little more than a canny pastiche, painstakingly and to great effect re-creating the 'tude and 'sthetic of 70s soul cinema but necessarily sidestepping originality and even (depending on how you define it) sincerity. it is both impossibly straight-faced and a series of sly winks, and as its reputation builds it will be referred to by people who throw words around as a parody, or a spoof; it's neither of those things, but the mistake is understandable. Black Dynamite is indulgent novelty, and there's no getting around that.

but that doesn't stop it from being one of the year's funniest, most entertaining movies, and almost parenthetically one of its best. the core is Michael Jai White, who co-wrote the screenplay and stars as its titular badasssss, a Vietnam vet, ex-CIA, occasionally nunchuck-wielding soul brother whose quest to avenge his brother's murder pits him against drug dealers, cops, junkie orphans ("I will shake this poisonous shit out of your little smacked-up body if I have to!" "Black Dynamite stop, we've tried that, nothing works"), pimps and the Fiendish Dr. Wu on his way to fight The Man himself. it would probably be a big silly mess if White (and his script!) weren't so pitch-perfect, in both his hard-assed, super-cool demeanor (he does not so much imitate Blaxsploitation heroes as create the Last Great one) and his considerable kung-fu excellence.

but it's Sanders that really sells it: from the film's uproarious, awkwardly propulsive tone to the framing, texture and "production gaffes" (one scene sees a character bitch-slap another in mid-fight, at which point the slapee dejectedly breaks character and is replaced frames later by a different actor) he has made a film that would pass flawlessly for the sort of films it mimics were it not just a liiiiiiittle too smart for its own good. (Sanders is an encouraging new force in the dire world of black cinema, not matter how much Black Dynamite's ingrained (pop)cultural politics may seem to trivialize it.) it is above all else an example of how to goof on something dear to you: with wit, definitive knowledge and zero self-consciousness. despite a criminally minor theatrical run, Black Dynamite is an unmistakable success, and doesn't have long to cool its heels in obscurity.

terence young's FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE (1963)

sam peckinpah's THE GETAWAY (1972)

marc forster's QUANTUM OF SOLACE (2008)

kathryn bigelow's POINT BREAK (1991)

david gordon green's PINEAPPLE EXPRESS (2008)

michael bay's BAD BOYS II (2003)

i was suitably impressed the first time i saw it, on an empty afternoon's whim at the dollar theater, but watching it again solidifies a firm opinion that Bad Boys II is nothing less than the exemplary action film of this decade. (i'm troubled to think of anything that comes close.) it's also the reason i've found myself defending Michael Bay in the ensuing years, despite turning an eager, easy blind eye to Pearl Harbor and The Island: the bravado here, the complete command of an oft-obnoxious but quizzically sincere style, is a nutzoid textbook on 21st century montage. no film is bigger, no film is louder, no film more hyperactive.

guillermo del toro's HELLBOY (2004)

james cameron's THE TERMINATOR (1984) and TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY (1991)

i hope when James Cameron sits back and reflects proudly on his career (which he probably does on an hourly basis or so) the Terminator movies get their proper due; though i'd probably say Aliens is his best work, Judgment Day creeps closely behind, and part of the latter's success is the full embrace of a rich mythology hinted at in the first film, a mythology that continues to fuel the brand 25 years later. (that the original now seems a bit tedious is only further credit to its sequel's wall-to-wall spectacle; it's a pretty accomplished lowish-budget piece of sci-fi.) the one thing that still troubles me, though, is that such a fully, arguably unnecessarily realized backstory relies so heavily on an obvious (and, thanks to persistent oversight, irreconcilable) paradox within its time-bending premise: if Sarah Connor were ever to find true, lasting success in her campaign to stop SkyNet, her beloved son would surely blink out of existence, and she would once again find herself a sadder, older version of the vapid clubrat we meet at the beginning of the first film...which would once again leave SkyNet unprevented and unopposed. (this is all, of course, assuming that space/time doesn't rupture and destroy everything post-1984, though if that were the true nature of Terminator's time travel philosophy, it probably would have happened eight times over by Judgment Day's climax.) the only other explanation is that all the holes and folds in time throughout the films are already accounted for in a grander timeline, which means that there's no changing or stopping mankind's fate, no matter how many picnic tables are etched up with facile assertions of free will.