Action
Rod Lott
Robert Downey Jr. reprises his other franchise role — the Golden Globe-winning one — as popular culture's arguably most popular detective of all time in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. To shortcut things, whatever you thought of Downey's first go-round in 2009, you're likely to have the same feelings about this 2011 sequel.

Action
Rod Lott
I commend you, Kill Speed, for trying to win audience favor, by killing off a drunk Tom Arnold in your opening scene. We don’t see enough junkie’s trailers being blown up these days in such a spectacular fashion. Yet with the level of enjoyment free-falling from there, you quickly prove yourself the year’s worst action movie.

Action
Rod Lott
Since 2005, Synapse Films has helped keep the sticky-floored spirit of grindhouse cinema alive by issuing collections of coming attractions under the 42nd Street Forever banner. Interested parties can catch up on the half-dozen titles thus far on DVD (I have, minus the lone XXX-Treme one) or opt for the new Blu-ray Edition. It's essentially a "greatest hits" piece, culling 80 trailers from all previous volumes.

Action
Rod Lott
If you thought the X-Men series could use schoolgirl uniforms and tools protruding from naughty bits, have the Sushi Typhoon guys got a movie for you! It's called Mutant Girls Squad and, being from Japan, is three times crazier than America would think to make, or have the guts.

Action
Rod Lott
“Based on real acts of valor,” Act of Valor may prove a better Navy recruitment film than action film in the short term. While not the first movie depicting Navy SEALs doing their thing, it's the first movie to do so starring actual, active-duty Navy SEALs. Seriously — for privacy reasons, their names aren't even in the credits.

Action
Rod Lott
After sitting out the 2009 prequel, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, Kate Beckinsale and her skintight, black-leather outfit return for Underworld: Awakening, the fourth and likely not-final entry in the mindless but massively popular vampires-vs.-werewolves franchise. Also back? That omnipresent blue tint. Not so lucky? Scott Speedman.

Action
Rod Lott
Walking Tall was one '70s revenge movie that eluded me until now. Or rather, I eluded it. I mean, the hero's name is Buford Pusser, for God's sake! It's produced by that song-and-dance scoop of vanilla known as Bing Crosby. It stars sweat machine Joe Don Baker.

Action
Rod Lott
Can Steven Soderbergh do a martial arts-fueled action thriller? That was rhetorical in a bear-crap way; the guy can do anything. Best known for Traffic and the Ocean's Eleven franchise, he's a director par excellence, even when the story goes to snuff in his experimental larks, like casting porn star Sasha Grey as the lead in 2009’s no-budget drama The Girlfriend Experience.

Action
Rod Lott
Set in South China 1919, the China/Hong Kong blockbuster Let the Bullets Fly slaps the viewer to attention with a bravura beginning: an action set piece in which masked robbers on horseback use the most ancient of technologies (the ax) to stop a train by flipping it over. With that opening, comparisons to South Korea’s The Good, the Bad, the Weird are inevitable, right down to the needless bloating running time.

Action
Rod Lott
Italians do it better.

Action
Rod Lott
Back when Thou Shalt Not Kill ... Except played theaters briefly in 1987 (I distinctly remember the Oklahoma City newspaper ad, depicting a skull with a bandana and halo), audiences didn't care. Today, they would, because some its creative talents — namely, Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell and Scott Spiegel — collaborated on Evil Dead II, which has grown into a beloved cult smash.

Action
Rod Lott

So impressed was I with Ernesto Díaz Espinoza's Mandrill that I immediately ordered the writer/director's two previous efforts, Mirageman and Kiltro, sight unseen. All three star Marko Zaror, who, based upon this film alone, should've been cast in the upcoming Expendables sequel, period. The guy deserves to be an international action hero. He's got the chops, both in the literal and figurative senses.

Action
Rod Lott
He’s not all that visible today, but in the 1960s, Jim Brown enjoyed a record-breaking career in the NFL, followed by a trailblazing one in Hollywood. He doesn’t get enough credit for it, but he arguably was the movies’ first African-American action star.

Action
Rod Lott
Jumping back and forth between Brazil and Hong Kong, The Heir Apparent: Largo Winch serves as an origin story of its title hero (German-born Tomer Sisley, The Nativity Story), secret adopted heir to self-made gazillionaire Neiro Winch (Miki Manojlovic, Europe's equivalent to our Philip Baker Hall) and the world's fifth-largest fortune.

Action
Rod Lott
It's hard to believe a film as influential and flat-out copied as the Japanese sensation known as Battle Royale never has seen an American release (legally, at least) until now. So much care has been put into assembling the set by Anchor Bay Entertainment that the wait seems excusable.