I meant to do this back when I reviewed POINT BLANK (Mickey Rourke vs. mall terrorists version), but I forgot, so here’s another Mickey Rourke picture to kick things off on a new thing I’ll try called COUNTDOWN TO THE EXPENDABLES. Not sure if I got enough time before the movie comes out next month, but I’m gonna try to go down the list of all the main EXPENDABLES cast members and review one of their movies that I haven’t seen before. (See, it’s a good thing Seagal turned the movie down, because there’s not anything by him that I haven’t seen. Maybe I’d have to review the cameo on the episode of Roseanne that I didn’t find out about until after Seagalogy went to print.)
Whether or not Stallone’s movie ends up being any good I think we can all agree that he did a good job of casting a wide range of tough guys from different movements, generations and disciplines. So through this journey I think we will all learn a few things and expand our knowledge of the Badass Arts in its many forms. I know I’ve already seen one unexpected gem in preparation for this series, so this could be a great time.
THE LAST OUTLAW is not that unexpected gem. Sorry. It’s not too bad, though. (read the rest of this shit…)
MORTAL KOMBAT ANNIHILATION is an asinine sequel by any standards, but as long as you don’t hold the 
DRAGON’S BALLS: EVOLUTION is the weird story of a young misfit named Goku (Justin Chatwin, the guy who everybody thought ruined WAR OF THE WORLDS by not dying) who has a strange hair do and on his 18th birthday finds out that he has to collect 7 (seven) magic dragon’s balls before the eclipse, or an alien guy named Piccolo is gonna resurrect another guy that’s gonna somehow destroy or conquer the world or whatever. That’s why Goku’s grandfather (Randall Duk Kim, “the Keymaker” from the MATRIX sequels) taught him martial arts and magic “airbending techniques” such as using his ki energy to light torches. I’m not clear though why the grandpa waited until the shit went down to explain what was going on. I guess this kid got his John Connor style childhood’s worth of training, but it seems like getting a head start on collecting dragon’s nuts wouldn’t be a bad idea when the entire earth is at stake. I like the earth. 
Well, whattya know? PREDATORS really is a good old fashioned action movie in the tradition of PREDATOR. Whichever corporate overlord holds the deed to the PREDATOR licensed property seems to be taking a temporary break from the “make sure they know we just want their money” policy that was in place for the 
I know MORTAL KOMBAT is not exactly a high kwality movie. It has one or more leads who are completely unconvincing as fighters. Linden Ashby as Johnny Cage can maybe get by on arrogance, but the teacher from BILLY MADISON as Sonya Blade just comes off as a grouchy aerobics student in a black painter’s cap that’s supposed to make her a supercop. This movie is a pioneer in bad computer generation imaginations, possibly the first movie to prove that CGI not good enough for a feature film is in fact good enough for a feature film. (Say thank you, 
I never got into Brian D. Palma’s THE FURY so much, but since you guys mentioned it during my SCANNERSathon I decided to give it another shot. Sure enough it’s a pretty good one with some solid DePalma slo-mo suspense sequences and some crazy shit here and there for flavoring. As you can see to your left, Kirk Douglas has a shootout in his swim trunks. He looks so manly and yet also like your dad embarrassing you on a vacation. Or like a middle school wrestling coach that makes everybody uncomfortable ’cause his balls hang out of his shorts. 
They say THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO is an international phenomenon. The whole world has Dragon Tattoo Fever and Steig Larssonmania. This is a Swedish mystery thriller, the first in an already completed trilogy adapted from the hugely popular books written by this guy Larsson and published after he died. Some people die and their family is horrified to find their porno stash, this guy dies and they find 3 (three) smash hit mystery novels. It’s ridiculous. Like anything that’s popular around the world (cursed videotapes, drifting, Lambada, quiet preteen Swedish vampire dramas) the Americans want in on that action, so they’re already working on an American version. I’d be annoyed, except it’s David Fincher directing, so let him do what he wants.
If I had to choose the better STREET FIGHTER I guess I’d have to go with the newer one, STREET FIGHTER: THE LEGEND OF CHUN LI. It’s a slick, competently made preboot with TV actress Kristin Kreuk as the young Chun Li. There seems to be more martial arts in the first 8 minutes (when Chun Li is still a kid) than in the entire STREET FIGHTER: THE MOVIE even if you watched it two times in a row. Could’ve done without Chun Li’s constant voiceover narration through the first half, though. 
I haven’t really kept up with this, but I heard something about Roger Ebert drawing a nerd fatwa by saying that video games aren’t art. From the sounds of it I think people should lay off the guy, because do you really want to convince Ebert to love video games and have him spend his last years playing Halo looking for its themes? I don’t want that, and I wish he’d cut down on the Twitter a little too. 
Didn’t Robert Zemeckis used to be a big deal for movie nerds? Right now he’s mainly looked at as a heretic because of his obsession with doing those creepy motion computerized movies that I seem to be pretty alone in appreciating. But there was another Zemeckis before that, a live action one. Everybody loved that BACK TO THE FUTURE and a couple of his other movies. It seems like people used to put him up there just below Spielberg as one of those worshipped All-American brand name mainstream directors of the ’80s. 
