Memorial Day Weekend Movie Watching "There's a guy holding a gun on every one of these DVD covers!" remarked Disgruntled Dan as we drove away from the Movie Trading Company with our stack of action flick rentals. Afro Thunder cracks up and quickly validates the assertion by thumbing through the stack himself. It was Friday before Memorial Day and we were just beginning our four-day Action Filmfest. We weren't planning on watching the greatest action movies ever. That's for another time. Instead, we dug up some of the coolest action movies we've never seen -- or just haven't seen in so long that we're just trying to confirm that they are really as cool as we remember them.

In addition to a half a dozen or so DVDs, we made plans to visit the movie theater twice in the next two days. It was the beginning of one of those bachelor-happy weekends heavily greased with all the grilled steaks, smoked brisket, barbecue ribs, buffalo burgers, Cuban cigars, frozen tequila, ice cold beer, and topped off with Halo 2, WOW, Ultimate Alliance, and of course, Blood & Guts Action Movies.

Here's the lowdown on all the movies we crammed into our testosterone-laced four-day weekend.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End When the first film of this series came out, Johnny Depp reportedly claimed a gay Keith Richards of his own imagining as his inspiration for Jack Sparrow's odd behavior and mannerisms. So when Keith Richards makes a cameo appearance in this film as Jack Sparrow's father, we nearly fell out of our seats. That is so cool -- to play with your audience like that. And extra cool of Keith to agree to be a part of the joke. Say whatever you want to about this movie but don't say it's not fun. We had a blast watching the non-stop swashbuckling from the very beginning to the post-credits sappy, happy ending. We would have liked to have seen more Chow Yun Fat and had hoped to see some ninjas make a brief appearance but I wouldn't call those disappointments in light of all of the thrills we got for our eight bucks.

Nighthawks Deke DaSilva is one of the best all time character names in the history of cheesy cop movies. While watching this flat-footed 1981 police versus terrorist drama, I found I couldn't look at Billy Dee Williams without hearing Eddie Murphy from the Nutty Professor gushing "Billy Dee, Billy Dee, Bil-ly DEE!" Rutger Hauer plays the dumbest terrorist in history. And Lindsey Wagner squandered her TV fame as the Bionic Woman when she chose this pathetic movie to launch (end) her film career. Sly Stallone was still trying to figure out what his fans wanted when he followed this movie with another yawn titled Victory. He quickly straightened things out with his next two films when he included Mr. T in Rocky III and blew everyone away with Rambo, First blood, both in 1982.

Grindhouse There's a good reason why grindhouse films are no longer marketable. It's because they are genuine crap. And, thankfully there are enough good directors and producers out there today making enough decent movies, that having to sit through genuine crap is a mistake a moviegoer rarely makes nowadays. I'm sure Quentin Tarrentino's appreciation for the grindhouse movies of the sixties and seventies probably sounded like something that could make a good movie. Unfortunately, in Tarrentino's zeal, he perfectly matched ALL of the qualities of the source material and ended up producing more genuine crap. If you're going to watch these movies (it's a double feature) try to get someone else to pay for it. Trust me. You'll feel better about the whole experience when it's over. It might help if you're drunk, too.

Sin City I have to check my jaw after watching this movie to see if it's broke. Man, this is one tough movie. That Marv is something else. It's a real treat to watch Frank Miller (as a dirty priest) get pasted by Marv. I think about Frank's trashing of All-Star Batman and Robin and it makes me just a little happier to see him getting trashed by his own character in this movie. But whatever mistakes he's made with his recent All-Star scripts, he's managed to avoid in the making of this film. Frankly, I wish the Batman movies were made like this. Sin City is truly the most perfect comic book movie ever made. Other movies do a good job of bringing the comic book character to life. But nothing else has so successfully brought the comic book itself to life. Bravo!

Point Blank Frank Miller's Marv had to have gotten some of its inspiration from Lee Marvin's Walker. Or at least from Richard Stark's Parker. Parker is the name of a character created by Donald Westlake (aka Richard Stark), the central figure in Stark's series of paperback novels centering on a tough, gritty criminal with no redeeming qualities. Marvin plays it to the hilt in this stylishly directed film of revenge. This movie is very dated but easy to watch if you put your film appreciation hat on. You'll probably recognize John Vernon (Dean Wermer from Animal House) as Mal and Carroll O'Connor (Archie Bunker) as Brewster. And all of you old-timers will appreciate seeing Angie Dickinson (Police Woman) as Chris.

Payback Payback is a more contemporary film based on the same source material as Point Blank -- Richard Stark's novel, The Hunter. According to some, it is also the more faithful of the two films. Mel Gibson's performance as Porter (not Walker or Parker) is good but not as good as Lee Marvin's. Thankfully, Payback has a standout performance by Lucy Liu as Pearl, the dominatrix. She is too sexy and too scary at the same time. Perhaps better than the movie itself was the documentary (on the DVD extras) titled Paybacks Are a Bitch where first time director Brian Helgeland shared hysterical stories about his friend and mentor Dick Donner (Superman the Movie, Lethal Weapon, etc.). Also be sure to check out the inexplicable shots of Mel Gibson's interviews where he is sporting the most ridiculous Lord of the Rings style beard and moustache.

Scarface Say goodbye to my little friend. The years have not been kind to this classic. It's an amazing performance by Al Pacino but in light of all the recent hype and re-merchandising of this movie, it is sadly over-rated. Scarface unfortunatley inspired a tidal wave of ridiculous imitations (ie. every Stephen Seagal movie ever made) that have desensitized us to even the most shocking scenes of this film. And cultural changes have made scenes like Montana's nose dive into a mountain of cocain less titillating than absurd.