80s action movies were great for training montages! As a child, I was raised on this. This is what I pictured in my head when I started lifting weights as a teenager in the 90s. Van Damme doing jump spin kicks and splits, Stallone with the shiniest muscles ever seen on film, and Schwarzenegger pushing a big heavy thing that evidently developed all of his muscles in Conan. Admittedly Van Damme was my favorite. I wish all of his movies had training montages. But sadly there were none in Cyborg (1989), Hard Target (1993), The Quest (1996), Time Cop (1994) and many others. However, Van Damme training scenes remain embedded in my soul even to this day. Today I’ll share some of my favorite moments from Van Damme, Stallone and Team Korea.
Kickboxer (1989) was basically one giant training scene with a few fights mixed in there. Drunk dance fighting. Bamboo kicking. Coconut-dropping ab training. Grocery combat. Rope and Pulley stretching torture. Under water katas. Sunset katas.
Crappy quality, but good scene coverage.
Better quality, but slightly less scene coverage.
And, of course, THIS was critical to his training…drunk dance fighting.
What I love about the Kickboxer training scenes is that we see him go from beginner (but in damn good shape) to good to crazy. He never comes off as perfect, but humble and slow-gaining–even though in the movie his training comes along really quite fast. He ekes out his final match as a winner…but he earned it with some crazy eyes!
So in this movie we see JCVD develop from a pretty boy gym rat, drunk dancing with some nice Thai women in a bar…
To a hardened, trained fighter with broken glass on his cloth hand wraps…
To a bloodied, batshit crazy, blood-lusted warrior, blindly blocking Tong Po’s double ridgehand attack from behind.
Bloodsport (1988), a more classic, adult-version of the Karate Kid (1984) training montage complete with what I can only describe as Bondage Stretching Torture Training.
Training montage.
He gets his butt kicked a lot, he serves his shidoshi blind-folded, he meditates, there are breathing and conditioning scenes…old school shit like that. I dig it.
Again we see some major changes in JCVD’s demeanor. He starts out as this arrogant pretty boy who wins a girl from a goon with a sleight of hand coin trick…
Then we find him with shiny muscles, fighting dudes from around the world with basically no rules in the Kumite…
Again, we find him batshit crazy and now “really” blind because Chong Li threw some powdered drug in his eyes that somehow no one saw happen…
And finally he taunts a clearly already KO’d Chong Li into saying the equivalent of “mercy.” Poor Chong Li probably thought JCVD was gonna’ break his neck!
Rocky IV (1985), best montage ever complete with Russian ox-yoke work, support beam pull-ups (not sure why, but that seems tougher than regular pull-ups). Then there were the alternating scenes with Drago’s (Dolph Lundgren) training, in which he showed us that treadmill running on an incline can be super intense, but not as intense as the PSI levels of his punch!
Initially this looks horribly mismatched…there might be a 75 pound disparity between these fighters’ weights. Drago’s head looks like it’s the size of Rocky’s torso!
Rocky Balboa (2006), if I had only two words to say about this movie to try to get you psyched to see it: TRAINING SPEECH…or perhaps “HURTIN’ BOMBS.” That trainer knew his shit and gave an aging Rocky the brass tacks–that’s he’s strong as an ox but has the joints of a crumbling ancient Greek temple of Ares. We go most of the movie with no idea what kind of shape Sly was in for this movie. So when he took off his robe before the fight I was like HOLY SHIT, Sly is huger than ever! I guess the speech worked. LOL
31 years later Rocky got the same trainer–actually it’s the same guy from all the Rocky films. Listen to this guy give a brutally realistic pre-training speech and “let’s start buildin’ some hurtin’ bombs!”
Meet Rocky. He’s in his 60s now.
Best of the Best (1989), Team Korea’s national Tae Kwon Do team karate-chopping tree trunks while shirtless in the snow! Team Korea (and their team champion Dae Han) serves as “Team Villain” in this movie, and this training scene serves to make them seem quite formidable. Not just that, but after Team America (including Eric Roberts before he became type-cast the perpetual bad guy) saw their brick-breaking training video, they knew shit just got real.
Watch how Team Korea gets ready for the big fight.
Just doing some jumping incline push-ups down some stairs. Standard stuff, right?
Just chopping trees with our bare hands, shirtless in the snow. No biggie. Just a standard drill.
These Koreans are NUTS!
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Interior tells the story of one man, several ghosts and a whole lot of scares. This microbudget indie is a showcase for director Zach Beckler and his bevy of jump scares. It has been ages since the hair raised up on my arms and it was a thrill to watch as my long time friend delivered a confident directorial debut. In a day and age of recycled horror I love that there are people out there telling original stories on tiny budgets. The fantastic fright flick is perfect for late night viewings and I guarantee it will freak you out. Watch the trailer and you will know what I mean.
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I worked with Zach at a Florida movie theater and we bonded over horror films. He introduced me to many obscure movies and I will always remember watching The Descent with him. Years later he is branching out as a filmmaker and I loved his directorial debut. The film is currently hitting the film circuits and I wanted to get some advance buzz out there for it. You will jump, scream and love every second of the carefully edited Interior.
Interior takes place in a single location and features an out of work filmmaker helping out his ex-girlfriend. She believes her house is haunted and he agrees to help her get proof. He starts off skeptical but eventually gets harassed to the point where he says the great line “you gotta be f*cking kidding me.” So many horror films have forgotten the art of the jump scare. Interior looks to remind us why we love the experience of being afraid. The jump scares reminded me a lot of the amazing scares of Insidious or Exorcist III.
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What makes this film believable are the motives of the character. The guy needs money and is all around skeptical about the haunted accusations. He sets up cameras around the house and it all gets weird. Beckler works around his budget and fills Interior with scenes that set up the scares perfectly. As Interior unfolds it feels like your arm hairs will never go down. I watched the film on my computer and loved the surround sound. The 3D sound works perfectly as the scares come from everywhere. I literally paused it once to check my garage door because I swore I heard something.
Interior feels like several films at once while creating a voice of its own. In a day and age of recycled horror you need to appreciate when a director does something new with familiar tropes. Many films with 200 times the budget can’t create the scares of the $12,000 Interior. It is a love letter and a calling card.
Interior is a showcase for a first time director and I can’t wait to see what he does next. I’d love to see him give the film the Evil Dead treatment with a larger budget and amps that turns up to 11.
If Interior is playing near you please check it out! Stop by the website to see where it is playing.
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What We Do in the Shadows is a glorious comedy/horror mockumentary that centers around four vampires who live in New Zealand. The horror hybrid blends comedy with lots of gore and features some of funniest characters of the last several years. It is a creative blast of niceness and violence that will most certainly become a cult classic. The 85 minute film is so full of one-liners, sight gags and hilarious characters you need to watch it more than once.
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The movie revolves around a film crew following around a quartet of vampires. They are a ragtag group whose ages range from 183 to 8,000. Their personalities collide as they struggle with washing dishes, getting into night clubs and dealing with an 8,000 year old vampire named Petyr who looks a lot like Nosferatu. They live in a dilapidated mansion on the outskirts of town and entertain themselves via torture, dancing and developing household chore flow charts. I love how Viago (Taika Waititi), Vladislav (Jemaine Clement) and Deacon (Jonathan Brugh) all differ yet seem to have a genuine appreciation of each other. They look out for each other and have a familial relationship built from decades of living together.
Throughout the film they deal with werewolves (not swearwolves), new vampires and exploding blood geysers due to jugular punctures. Their routine gets disrupted when one of their kills escape and is turned into a vampire by the 8,000 year old Petyr. The new vampire named Nick opens up a new world to them. Bouncers start letting them into clubs and Nick starts bringing them unwanted attention as he tells everyone in town he is a vampire. The unwanted attention brings forth vampire hunters, stolen wardrobes and blood vomiting due to chip consumption.
What We Do in the Shadows is a bloody little film that does a lot of things I didn’t expect. For instance, Viago goes out of his way to make sure his victims have a good time before he kills them. He listens to their stories, feeds them wine and engages in small talk before the inevitable blood sucking.
Always make sure to lay newspaper down before you drink blood. Saves the carpet.
My favorite aspect of the film is the relationship between the vampires. They form a neat little musical band and watch intently as Deacon shows off his new erotic dances. I love their interactions with Nick’s best mate Stu. Stu is a nondescript human who becomes ingrained in the group. He teaches them about selfies, Skype and martial arts. He is a really nice person who everyone seems to love.
I love movies like this because they explode with creativity and give the world fantastic new characters. They flip a familiar genre on its head and somehow maintain a feature films worth of gags. If you are a fan of Flight of the Conchords and Christopher Guest (Spinal Tap) mockumentaries you need to watch this film.
Watch What We Do in the Shadows. Appreciate the vampire shenanigans. Check out Flight of the Conchords.
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MY CALL: An excellent anthology that focuses more on storytelling than shock value—but it still has its moments. These fun short stories span serious to silly and original to trope-rich. Well worth a watch! OTHER HORROR ANTHOLOGIES: Some other fun, decent and/or clever anthologies include (in order of release date): Black Sabbath (1963), Tales from the Crypt (1972), The Vault of Horror (1973), The Uncanny (1977), Creepshow (1982), Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983), Stephen King’s Cat’s Eye (1985), Creepshow 2 (1987), Necronomicon: Book of the Dead (1993), Campfire Tales (1997), 3 Extremes (2004), Trick ‘r Treat (2007), Chillerama (2011), Little Deaths (2011), V/H/S (2012), The Theater Bizarre (2012), The ABCs of Death (2013), V/H/S 2 (2013), The Profane Exhibit (2013) and The ABCs of Death 2 (2014).
Having directed several episodes of TV’s Tales from the Crypt and Tales from the Darkside, John Harrison had the right experience to bring these stories to life. The wraparound story is rather Hansel and Gretel-ish, featuring a young Matthew Lawrence (Boy Meets World, Creature of Darkness) incarcerated in a kitchen-side cell being fattened with cookies. The young boy distracts his captor (Deborah Harry; Videodrome), who plans on preparing and serving him for a hoity-toity dinner party, by reading twisted stories from a book aptly title “Tales from the Darkside.” The three stories are not linked themselves, but still find a good synthesis with the wraparound story.
Our first story “Lot 249” features a group of graduate students played by a young Christian Slater (Stranded, El Gringo), Julianne Moore (Carrie, Psycho) and Steve Buscemi (Con Air, Escape from LA)…that alone gives good reason for any movie fan to see this. Young Buscemi is an archaeological power geek who acquires (somehow) a sarcophagus with a mummy in it. How he pulled this off without eBay and bypassing customs inspections is beyond me. So what do you do with a mummy other than maybe sell it to turn a profit? Well, have no fear of indecision because the mummy comes with instructions—in the form of a scroll in hieroglyphics. Of course he reads this scroll, after all horror cannot transpire otherwise, and the mummy goes about killing people. The execution of the story is weak, but it’s cheeky tone makes up for that.
Next is “Cat from Hell,” a new take on Edgar Allan Poe’s The Black Cat. A wealthy geriatric recluse (William Hickey; Puppetmaster) hires a hit man (David Johansen; Campfire Stories, Freejack) to kill his cat for $100,000! Sound funny? Well not to our recluse, who explains how the cat had already killed three members of his household. Of course, our hit man takes the job and it turns out to be considerably harder than he expected. Enjoy. This one is zany but told with a straight face. You’ll giggle, but you’ll also wince.
It gets gory in a really fun way!
“Lover’s Vow” is the most clever story by far, it offers no laughs at all, and it steers clear of the tropes we find in the other two segments. In this story an artist (James Remar; Horns, The Unborn, The Warriors) sees something that he shouldn’t have and he swears a vow that he would never tell what he saw or describe his mysterious assailant, which is apparently a gargoyle. Later in the story he meets the love of his life (Rae Dawn Chong) and all the while he keeps from her this secret. There’s a cool ending. I never saw it coming, but my girlfriend managed to predict it.
The gargoyle is actually pretty cool.
I first saw this as a child, so this flick has a powerful nostalgia over me. But the stories are still entertaining to see unfold and I feel this should entertain today’s horror fans who haven’t yet seen it—especially viewers old enough (maybe over 30) to appreciate the practical effects and the before-the-were-stars cameos.
Enjoy.
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Hello all. Mark here.
Do you ever search Netflix for long periods of time and end up watching something really bad? It is a problem that many people have and I’m hoping these posts can eliminate the horror gambles. Time is precious and doesn’t need to be wasted upon a sequel to a direct to DVD found footage film.
There are hundreds of horror films on Netflix. Most are bad, some are decent and several of them are very good. I’ve searched the depths of the horror categories and discovered some gems and total soul crushers. The following suggestions represent horror films that cover all ends of the spectrum. If you watch these five films you will witness meta-horror, cockneys battling zombies, Swedish vampires and college kids killing themselves. I’ve made sure to incorporate some humor into the bleakness so you don’t get burnt out and questioning why you listened to my suggestions.
Wes Craven’s New Nightmare:
Freddy Krueger had become a joke. A once scary nightmare machine became a one-lining stand up comedian who couldn’t garner laughs or scares. However, somewhere out of left field Wes Craven came up with New Nightmare. It played with convention and brought scary back. The film was critically respected (77% RT) and I believe it led Craven to the groundbreaking Scream.
New Nightmare only made $18 million because the series was so deflated. However, it has accrued acult following and helped create the “meta-horror” dynamic. Wes Craven had found his footing and got his edge back (Sans Vampire in Brooklyn). Roger Ebert a notorious hater of horror liked the movie and eloquently wrote about it:
“Wes Craven’s New Nightmare” dances back and forth across the line separating fantasy from reality. This is the first horror movie that is actually about the question, “Don’t you people ever think about the effect your movies have on the people who watch them?”
Ebert’s question was answered several years later as young punks slashed and quipped their way to box office glory. New Nightmare refreshed Craven and this allowed him to give another generation a screaming new nightmare.
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Let the Right One In
This Swedish film is bleaker than bleak and beautifully made. It is an art house vampire film that captured lightning in a bottle. So many horror films are disposable and leave your memory as soon as you exit the theater. Let the Right One In will linger in your memory.
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Tucker and Dale vs. Evil
Funny, charming and gory. Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine are instantly likable bumpkins who think college kids are killing themselves all around them. Horror disliker Roger Ebert loved the film and I totally recommend watching it after you are done with Let the Right One In.
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Cockney’s vs. Zombies
Cockneys vs. Zombies tells the age old story of east Londoners vs. zombies. It is a relaxed breath of fresh air that allows the cast to crack wise while figuring out how to kill a zombie with a metal plate in its head. CvZ is a neat entry to the zombie canon that proves soccer hooligans will still fight when they are dead.
If you are in the mood for a midnight movie featuring a slow motion chase scene between an old man and a zombie this film is for you. The film is certified fresh (71% on RT) and captures a fun tone of cheeky, violent and more cheeky.
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Deep Blue Sea
Deepest Bluest my hat is like a shark fin! Deep Blue Sea is a miracle of awesomeness. We here at MFF love it and our readers are fans as well (It was voted Best Worst Movie Monster). Deep Blue has one of the best surprise deaths of all time and is endlessly fun. Director Renny Harlin intentionally made the shark one foot bigger than Jaws and apparently doesn’t care about CGI. While working at the movie theater I would sneak in for the finale and listen to the audience yell with delight. They formed a cohesive voice as they screamed for LL Cool J and Thomas Jane to kill the dastardly sharks. I love Deep Blue Sea and it has most certainly gained a massive following. Here are 17 cool facts about the film.
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Hello all. Mark here.
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The MFF podcast is back and we are asking “what if?” We ponder if Jack Burton was the star of Escape From New York, populate the eventual Predator remake and answer beautifully random questions. As always we talk about Kurt Russell, and as an added bonus we somehow combine Forgetting Sarah Marshall and I Know What You Did Last Summer.
If you have any questions for the pod please ask! We love taking random questions and making them much more random. Please review, rate and share the pod. Thank you for all the listens and support!
You can stream the podcast on the Sharkdropper website or you can download the pod on Itunes!
Sidenote: Itunes recently dubbed us “What’s hot!” Itunes don’t lie. We are hot.
Enjoy!
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MY CALL: Far from anything resembling horror, this boring art-house Iranian film features a skateboarding hipster vampire. Amazon boasts numerous positive reviews, but horror fans should beware. MORE MOVIES LIKE THIS: Film noir, I guess. Pretty much stuff that film students love and I hate.
Knowing that we are in for an Iranian vampire story, this black and white art-house endeavor opens in a manner which immediately strays from our expectations. From his snug white t-shirt to his hair, our protagonist smacks of a young Middle Eastern Marlon Brando, like a 50s greaser who at any moment may break into a dance number snapping his fingers and chanting some West Side Story Jets/Sharks theme or scream “Stellllllllllla.” Further Americanizing this film the sets, wardrobe and neighborhood could just as easily, or even more easily so, have been set in suburban Ohio rather than Iran. (It was actually filmed in California, by the way.)
But, oh yeah, this movie is also about a vampire. A vampire who only preys upon bad people—and who ensures that notion is well understood to the audience through over-exposition more deafeningly than a nearby jackhammer. For just a moment this reminded me of Innocent Blood (1992) in premise alone. Our most contemporary vampire (a young woman) listens to American LPs demonstrating to her audience two things: 1) hipsters in Iran are just as annoying as they are here, and 2) the score was the most (or only) brilliant part of this film. However, whatever the artistic intent behind her music and dancing and wardrobe and other Americanized themes, I failed to find any other brilliance here. Also on the “neat” side, the opening scene includes a cat which is later utilized as a device, like a judgmental observer of the truth behind the protagonist’s father’s addiction and paranoia. But this didn’t really lead anywhere special either.
Although I must acknowledge that the black and white helps the film by masking racial and cultural differences by obscuring skin and clothing color. But other than witnessing a sympathetic relationship between a young 50s style man and a young hipsterish vampire, I got nothing out of this. I was excited to see this film, yet it was boring since the opening scene.
Was this art? No—but I’m sure many will disagree. Was it artistic? VERY. Using a skateboard as something of a symbol for the discovery of compassion was artistic, maybe a little “neat,” but ultimately fell shy of making any impact on me (or my girlfriend). I imagine I’ll get some flack from “film fans” out there complaining that this is not a horror movie and shouldn’t be assessed as one. But guess what? This is JOHN’S HORROR CORNER and I’ll warn my readers as I see fit. LOL. Besides, I doubt anyone who would like this film reads my articles and, furthermore, I didn’t enjoy this as a non-horror film either. I didn’t enjoy it, in any form, at all.
Yup. That’s a skateboard in the bottom left.
In my eyes, writer/director Ana Lily Amirpour proves that she can make artsy films. She clearly wasn’t trying to make anything resembling horror—or so, I hope she wasn’t trying to—so horror fans should probably steer clear of this film much as I wish I had. I’m sure many will see greatness in this; but I also think those will be people who are disgusted by studio blockbusters, gore or mainstream comedies.
Somewhere in this story I think there was a plot, but I felt more like I sat through a series of scenes that simply “seemed to be linked.” A guy owes a drug dealer (who got the protagonist’s father hooked on drugs), he meets a friendly vampire who takes a shining to him, she helps him with his drug dealer problem, they find a mutual affection.
If you are a lovelorn film student, this may be for you. If you are a horror fan: RUN. Run far away and fast in the opposite direction. Amazon is producing a wealth of positive reviews, none of them praising any component of actual horror. Such praising reviews consider the film “a tale of love and loneliness set in a fictional Iranian town”; “a vampire romance”; and “a visual metamorphosis of the characters as they both make life-altering decisions, without any dialogue required.”
Horror fans, don’t be fooled by these positive reviews. To use a line closer to horror: “It’s a trick. Get an axe.”
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Hello all. Mark here.
Before we get into voting for the champion I wanted to include a list of 10 people that were left out. I got a lot of comments about who should of made the 16 cut and I want to give them a chance to shine. You can vote for two people!
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Now onto the Championship!
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The 16 have become two and they are very similar. Both Dredd and The Raid feature ultimate badasses who work their up tower blocks to take down a drug kingpin. They are action classics that feature urgency, splendid choreography and lots of death.
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What I love about Rama is he is a good dude who goes out of his way to stop the bad guys. He puts life and limb on the line in order to do a job that nobody will know he did. Whether he is fighting a villain with a baseball bat or 50 prisoners he always comes out victorious and only slightly winded. Rama is an action character perfected.
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What I love about Dredd is that he seems unperturbed by all the action. It is just another day and the way he vanquishes his foes seems believable. He is methodical in his killing and seems slightly annoyed at the attackers. Everybody is wasting their time trying to fight this guy because they have no chance of survival.
What do you do after killing 200 people? More work!
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Proudly sponsored by the audiobook company Audible, your new MFF podcast episode is here!
We hope you enjoyed our previous action-packed episode on Corona, Belgian Beer, BBQ and the Fast and Furious Films (Episode 10).
This week the MFF crew discuss their favorite in-theater movie experiences, dissect the “rules of the ghost” from It Follows and assess the “art vs. exploitation” of The Human Centipede franchise.
We also answer such important questions as…
“What made The Cabin in the Woods, Love Actually and Total Recall such amazing theatrical experiences?”
“Can Coors Light make Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li watchable?”
“What is the connection between The Fast and the Furious and Point Break…and ultimate Frisbee?”
“What makes a great dread-building scene in a horror movie?”
“When does It Follows take place?”
“What movies would benefit from recasting the lead role with Zac Efron?”
This week’s podcast is based on the following MFF reviews and articles:
It Follows: A Fantastic Horror Film Full of Dread, Urgency and Patience
The Human Centipede 2: Full Sequence (2011), an ass-to-mouth film about psychosis and poor hygiene
The Cabin in the Woods (2012), blowing away expectations
Bad Movie Tuesday: Street fighter The Legend of Chun Li
Is it film art? Or is it just an exploitative grindhouse film?
Sit back, relax and learn about everything you missed.
If you haven’t seen some of these movies, be comforted that we will geekily inform you as to why you should watch them.
You can stream the pod at the Sharkdropper website, listen to us on with your mobile app OneCast, or download the pod on Itunes.
If you get a chance please REVIEW, RATE and SHARE the pod!
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Hello all. Mark here
The 16 have become four and the battle lines have been drawn. I am amazed at some of the upsets and can’t wait to see who wins this tournament. It has been a roller coaster of surprises and I have no idea where it is going.
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Can Black Widow upset Dredd like she did to John Wick? Will they have answers for every attack and resort to a game of chess? Can Dredd keep this face for the entire fight?
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Can Rita Vrataski use her years of experience to out duel Rama? It will be a battle of endless cardio as Rita and Rama destroy a beach resort and still have something left in the gas tank. The cardio these two have is amazing. In one day Rita does yoga, jumps out of a plane, fights on a beach, steals a car, flies a plane and attacks a lair! Don’t get me started on Rama. I get tired watching the Raid 1 & 2.
This gif exhausts me.
Vote. Share. Come back tomorrow to vote for the winner!
Black Widow vs. Dredd
The Hulk Tamer vs. The guy who gave The Hulk a speeding ticket
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The Woman who saved the world from 100,000 deadly aliens vs. The Guy who beat up 800 thugs battled three bosses and threw 12 spin kicks in two seconds.
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Check back tomorrow and vote! Please share!
Movies, Films & Flix 