Posts Tagged ‘Martyn Ford’
Thursday, May 14th, 2026
I have not revisited MORTAL KOMBAT (2021) since at-home-viewing during pre-vaccine COVID times. My review opens by calling it “a perfectly okay movie,” and that’s my memory of it. Good cast, some fun fatalities, but it was a movie I’d anticipated for some time and it was sadly middle of the road. Its attempt to MCU-ify the Mortal Kombat mythology was not terrible, but not nearly as fun as the brazen, brain-damaged approach of Paul Wonder Stuff Anderson’s 1995 version.
MORTAL KOMBAT II comes from the same director (Simon McQuoid) but a different screenwriter (Jeremy Slater, FANTASTIC FOUR 2015, GODZILLA X KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE), and it’s one of those sequels that’s being made with the understanding that nobody liked the first one very much and they gotta convince everyone this is gonna be different. (How many of those are there, even? Off the top of my head I’m only coming up with GI JOE: RETALIATION.)
They were pretty much required by law to center this one on the titular tournament that strangely didn’t get around to happening during part 1. They also made the two most popular game characters not featured last time into the leads, while the previous non-game audience identification dude becomes just a guy who’s on the team already when they get there. You’d never guess from this that part 1 was all about Cole Young (Lewis Tan, FISTFUL OF VENGEANCE) unless you pick up on the line that’s there to explain that his wife and kid won’t be in the movie. I like Tan and feel bad he got sidelined, but what they do to his character (SPOILER: squash his head with a giant hammer like he’s one of Gallagher’s watermelons) is really fuckin funny. He takes one for the team. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Adeline Rudolph, CJ Bloomfield, Desmond Chiam, fighting tournament, Hiroyuki Sanada, Jeremy Slater, Jessica McNamee, Joe Taslim, Josh Lawson, Karl Urban, Lewis Tan, Ludi Lin, Martyn Ford, Max Huang, Mehcad Brooks, Simon McQuoid, Tadanobu Asano
Posted in Reviews, Action, Fantasy/Swords, Martial Arts, Videogame | 12 Comments »
Wednesday, November 19th, 2025
Okay, I’m gonna be up front about this: RED SONJA (2025) is a movie that I kinda liked, but it took some effort. It’s an underdog movie, you kinda gotta be rooting for it to work, I don’t know if it’s gonna win over anybody standing there with their arms folded. But maybe I’m wrong. It has a sincerity to it. It doesn’t seem self conscious. That can go a long way.
It’s set in the land of Hyrkania during the Hyborian Age. When Sonja (Matilda Lutz from the excellent Coralie Fargeat movie REVENGE) was a child her village was raided and she fled. (Unlike in some of the ’80s barbarian movies we don’t have to specify what horrible things the raiders did.) Since then somehow she became a hell of a fighter and lives tribeless in the forest, searching for her people. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: M.J. Bassett, Martyn Ford, Matilda Lutz, Michael Bisping, Rhona Mitra, Robert E. Howard, Robert Sheehan, Tasha Huo, Wallis Day
Posted in Reviews, Action, Fantasy/Swords | 6 Comments »
Tuesday, June 29th, 2021
F9: THE FAST SAGA, a.k.a. FAST 9, actual onscreen title: FF: F9, is not the Platonic ideal of a FAST AND FURIOUS movie. That would be FURIOUS 6 or FAST FIVE. But if Plato is anything like me he would’ve appreciated this one for what it is. I don’t know how much of a grump he was.
(lots of spoilers here of course)
This is the first FAST movie since 2003’s 2 FAST 2 FURIOUS that’s not written by Chris Morgan, instead being credited to Daniel Casey (KIN) & director Justin Lin (HOLLYWOOD ADVENTURES) with a story by those two & Alfredo Botello (uncredited revisions on TOKYO DRIFT). They’ve come up with a patchwork that certainly shows the dangers of a movie series going on for twenty years with at least half that time spent trying to top itself in size and ridiculousness each time out. But for me it has a much better balance of preposterous action and sincere melodrama than, at the very least, HOBBS & SHAW and FATE OF THE FURIOUS. It has more and better spectacle than your average movie, but also requires that you like the characters and themes of the series to enjoy it. In fact, in between a car somehow Tarzan-swinging across cliffs on a rope and another one being (as you’ve surely heard) launched into space, you’re gonna spend a surprising amount of time in 1989 when Dominic Toretto’s dad (J.D. Pardo, THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN PART 2, SNITCH) was killed in a racing accident and Dom went to prison for beating another driver (Jim Parrack, FURY) with a wrench. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alfredo Botello, Bow Wow, Charlize Theron, Daniel Casey, J.D. Pardo, Jason Tobin, Jim Parrack, John Cena, Jordana Brewster, Justin Lin, Kurt Russell, Lucas Black, Martyn Ford, Michelle Rodriguez, Nathalie Emmanuel, Screen Actor's Guild Award Winner Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, Shea Whigham, Sung Kang, Thue Ersted Rasmussen, Tyrese, Vin Diesel, Vinnie Bennett
Posted in Action, Reviews | 122 Comments »
Monday, September 17th, 2018
If VOD is where we must go to see rugged heroes run through solidly entertaining classical action formulas then I guess that’s what we’ll do. In FINAL SCORE, Dave Bautista (WRONG SIDE OF TOWN) proves that he can handily carry a wholly unoriginal vehicle that knows how to properly operate the machinery of the DIE-HARD-on-a-____ template. To be more specific, this time it’s the SUDDEN DEATH template – DIE-HARD-in-a-hockey-arena-but-in-a-soccer-stadium.
Bautista plays American ex-Marine Michael Knox, who comes to London to bring his teenage “niece” – actually the daughter of a war buddy whose death he blames himself for – to the soccer match. (Yes, he keeps not calling it football, but don’t worry, there’s a part where a guy gets punched out for that very offense.) Unfortunately Uncle Mike and Danni (Lara Peake, HOW TO TALK TO GIRLS AT PARTIES)’s outing coincides with a plot by separatists from the ex-Soviet nation of Sukovia (on the eastern border of Sokovia, I believe) trying to find a former rebel leader in hiding and then blow up the stadium. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alexandra Dinu, Amit Shah, Dave Bautista, Die Hard on a ____, Martyn Ford, Pierce Brosnan, Ray Stevenson, Scott Mann
Posted in Action, Reviews | 14 Comments »
Tuesday, August 1st, 2017
Note: the Blu-Ray cover calls it BOYKA: UNDISPUTED 4, but you know the rules – I go by what it says onscreen in the actual movie, which is simply BOYKA: UNDISPUTED.
Fuck prison fighting circuits. Time for some undisputedness on the outside – doing a flying spinning double kick while breathing the fresh air of freedom, or at least freedomishness. International martial arts superstar Scott Adkins returns to his signature role of Yuri Boyka, defeated villain of UNDISPUTED II who won an international prison fighting tournament in part III and got away at the end. Remember? The first time we ever saw him smile or laugh.
Now we find that new Boyka, the one who has experienced smiling before, in the Ukraine, openly fighting in an underground MMA outfit. The filthy prisoners chanting his name have been replaced by gambler bros in leather jackets. I don’t think it matters to him, because in the now noticeably bigger ring he is alive. I don’t know what kind of new camera/lens/rig they’re using, but it shows him better than ever, putting you in the ring, floating around him, under him, gliding over you like a supernatural force.
When he’s not grouchy he’s broody, because he doesn’t consider the slate clean. He’s still very religious, and feels a duty to donate most of his earnings to his church. The father disapproves of his “violence” and questions whether he can seek salvation while still fighting. But Boyka says “I think God gave me this gift. And I think it would be a sin to waste it.” (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alon Moni Aboutboul, DTV, DTV sequels, Emilien De Falco, good part 4s, Isaac Florentine, Martyn Ford, Scott Adkins, Teodor Duhovnikova, Todor Chapkanov, underground fighting
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews | 111 Comments »
