My favourite shameless, mindless movies

Having spent the last week beset by sickness, I've had more than the lion's share of tv and movies. And after a conversation yesterday about dumb, cheesy movies you can't help but love, I started thinking about the films in my personal hall of fame that people have given me sour faces for liking.

I have a lot of favourite movies, but it's getting late and I'm two posts behind on my #blogjune, so here - let me share a couple of my favourite utterly shameless ones:

Pacific Rim movie poster excerpt

Pacific Rim. There is some cheese here and I felt guilty liking it as much as I did after seeing it in the cinema. But hey, if this were a mecha anime, no one would bat an eyelid. I love it. I love movies that make me feel like I'm 14 again, free of cynicism and full of wonder.

The Expendables movie poster excerpt

The Expendables. All three of them, thank you. I understand why people cringe when I bring this up. The stories are not believable, the acting isn't what would make you go see them/stream them/download them; they're not pieces that make you think. At all. In fact, you want to shut your brain off entirely to avoid feeling pain. It looks like a bunch of old dudes just decided to have fun and make an action movie. That's good enough for me.

Battleship movie poster excerpt

Battleship. More cheesy tropey trope. This gets a whopping 34% on Tomatoes, with the consensus that it's too loud, predictable and formulaic. But whatever. There is a tongue-in-cheek quality to this film, though I haven't worked out yet whether it's intentional or just something I'm projecting because there's no way they can be serious. Either way, it doesn't matter. I liked and would watch it again. And again.

The Fast and the Furious cropped still

The Fast and the Furious. The cheese is undeniable, but if you just roll with it, you'll be rewarded with six more movies that build on the characters you come to love. These movies are dumb and unbrainy, but I still got mega feels when The Rock and Vin Diesel did the bro arm thing in Fast Five, and when Paul Walker drove off in Furious 7.

John Wick cropped still

John Wick. It's hard not to feel a twinge of "wat" about the premise. Keanu plays an ex-hitman who comes out of retirement after some jerks kill his dog, the last gift his girlfriend gave him before she died. If that happened to you, you'd flip out and go fight a ton of people too, right? Well, whatever you make of it, what happens next is #spoileralert 90 minutes of brilliantly choreographed cinematic violence.

In hindsight, I probably should have called this post "a list of action movies that are actually pretty rad". :)