MORTAL KOMBAT (2021) is a perfectly okay movie, especially given the past success rate of video game adaptations. It does a decent job of putting some of the Mortal Kombat characters into a passable modern movie. I found it reasonably entertaining, and had I expected it to be bad I might even have been pleasantly surprised. It also might’ve played better in a theater, if I could go to one.
Here’s the problem: I’m the type of guy who thinks you could make something truly kick ass out of any bullshit that involves colorful characters fighting each other. They’ve been talking about a new Mortal Kombat movie for more than 10 years, with James Wan announced as producer for six of those, and I think the ‘90s incarnations are fun (if ridiculous) movies that have plenty to build upon. So for years now I have been anticipating this movie that ended up being directed by Australian commercial director Simon McQuoid and written by Greg Russo (first credit) and Dave Callaham (DOOM, THE EXPENDABLES, WONDER WOMAN 1984), with a story credit for Oren Uziel (who had been developing it with Kevin Tancharoen after his unlicensed Mortal Kombat: Rebirth short and an episode of the official web series Mortal Kombat: Legacy). And I thought it might be something special. Maybe next time. (read the rest of this shit…)
DOUBLE DRAGON (1994), loosely based on the video game series, is a sci-fi fantasy action kids movie from the director of THE RETURN OF BRUNO and the producers of NATURAL BORN KILLERS. I do not personally consider it to be a good movie, but upon this rewatch I found it somewhat enjoyable on the strength of its specific only-in-the-‘90s strain of complete inexplicability.
It stars Mark Dacascos (a year after ONLY THE STRONG, a year before KICKBOXER 5 and CRYING FREEMAN) and Scott Wolf (the same year Party of Five started) as martial artist brothers, Alyssa Milano (in the window between Who’s the Boss? and EMBRACE OF THE VAMPIRE) as the leader of a vigilante group, and Robert Patrick (who had only done FIRE IN THE SKY and two T-1000 cameos since T2) as an evil gang leader/businessman obsessed with obtaining an ancient Chinese medallion that would give him super powers. It takes place in the cyberpunky post-The-Big-Quake New Angeles in the futuristic year of 2007, with all the satirical billboards and colorful street gangs that implies. (read the rest of this shit…)
There’s a new MORTAL KOMBAT movie about to enter our realm, and it’s crazy to think they’ve been developing this thing for over a decade! It made me want to journey back to the beginning of that process and revisit what happened when director Kevin Tancharoen tried to reimagine the fighting tournament game turned movie series.
Tancharoen was on the mixing stage at Warner Brothers when he heard talk about hopes to restart the series. He thought there was a way to put a new, gritty spin on it, and wanted to try. One problem: the only movie he’d directed was a glossy musical, the 2009 version of FAME. He was much more established as a choreographer for Britney Spears than as a filmmaker. He knew they weren’t gonna fuckin believe he was the guy to bring back MORTAL KOMBAT unless he showed them. (read the rest of this shit…)
As someone who finally got into Paul Wesley Snipes Anderson’s RESIDENT EVIL series pretty close to when it was finally wrapping up, I was thrilled to hear that the director and his wife/star Milla Jovovich (HELLBOY, not the Ron Perlman one) had purchased the film rights to a fresh new video game franchise copyright property trademark. Without any judgment on (or implied knowledge of) the respective video games, I feel that there is potential for a series called MONSTER HUNTER about monsters and hunters who hunt monsters to be better than one about zombies and umbrellas or whatever. And I loved that one!
So I had planned to see this Toho co-production based on the works of Capcom in the biggest, if emptiest theater in Seattle, until shit (the pandemic) happened and that was not possible for me. But as soon as they made it available for digital “purchase” I paid the four-or-five-dollars-more-than-the-movie-ticket-would’ve-cost and now that file access is MINE.
It begins in a world of fantasy. Pirate ships are sailing through sand. Ron Perlman (HELLBOY, the Ron Perlman one) is there. Tony Jaa (KILL ZONE 2) is there. Monsters attack. Tony gets knocked off the boat. It is sand, so he doesn’t drown, but he’s left behind.
Then we switch to a different desert, the type in our world, in our time. It even has latitude and longitude listed on screen. I think they might mention directions and clicks at some point if you want to check your map and follow along at home. (read the rest of this shit…)
Hey man, I’m not a monster, I enjoyed WRECK-IT RALPH like anybody, and the sequel is fun too. This licensing crossover bonanza shit has kinda become its own genre since WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT invented it in earnest, so we’ve had the toy version (TOY STORY), the other toy version (THE LEGO® MOVIE), the… everything version (READY PLAYER ONE) and the horrific, soul-rattling nightmare version (FOODFIGHT!). RALPH’s video game version does it just right – an elegantly executed premise full of Pixar-worthy well-thought-out world building, funny characters, good jokes, loving homages, minute detail, occasional Q*Bert cameo. I mean they even had an end credits jam by Buckner & Garcia (look it up). Some time later I went to Disneyland and they had playable Fix-It Felix, Jr. games in the Starcade, and especially seeing it in person you realize what a nice tribute it is to the beautiful design of the Donkey Kong game cabinet and the 8-bit animations of that era of video games. It makes you remember that, crude as they seem now, they are an artform.
So now we have the sequel RALPH BREAKS [sic] THE INTERNET, and at least it’s not a rehash. Sentient video game characters Ralph (John C. Reilly, CRIMINAL) and Vanellope (Sarah Silverman, THE WAY OF THE GUN) are inseparable friends from frame 1, and when the arcade they live in gets wi-fi they find themselves exploring the big city that is the internet. It has an actual help desk for a search engine, an eBay building where auctions take place, flocks of Twitter birds overhead, and lots of little blocky avatars of internet users walking around trying to avoid people waving pop-up ads and clickbait in their faces. It’s all very clever and observant (they get a big laugh from an auto-fill in gag, and there’s one about “one weird trick”) and designing the behind-the-scenes characters (a messenger who delivers eBay reminder emails) in the style of ’50s advertising icons helps keep it from feeling desperately current. (read the rest of this shit…)
a survey of summer movies that just didn’t catch on
“Are you tellin us that you’re gonna arrest a guy for bein a plumber? Get outta here!”
May 28, 1993
Okay, look. I’m not claiming to know a better way to make a live action movie based on a video game about an Italian plumber eating mushrooms, punching bricks and murdering hundreds and hundreds of turtles but also collecting coins while trying to rescue a princess. And seeing how directors Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel reimagine the world of the famous Nintendo game as a dystopic Manhattan in an alternate dimension where people evolved out of dinosaurs is the closest thing to fun this movie has to offer.
As you know I am a scholar of the Big Summer Popcorn Movie, or whatever you want to call it. And I not only like to review the new ones but I like to look back at the old ones and figure out what’s what. We’re getting to the end of the summer movie season (which I consider to be May through August) but now that I’ve finished The Super-Kumite I think it’s time to start a new summer movie project. Fuck you, September. You don’t scare me.
This is what I’m gonna do. For each summer from 2003 until last year I’m gonna pick two movies to review: one that I never saw before, one that I’m revisiting. And as you can see I’m starting with THE CRADLE OF LIFE as the one I never saw before.
release date: July 25, 2003
It turns out I dig these LARA CROFT TOMB RAIDER movies. Maybe if I’d seen them at the time, on the big screen, as if they were gonna compete with the A-list summer blockbuster type movies, I would’ve been more critical of them. But ignoring them for ten years and then deciding to watch them out of curiosity really pays off I think. Sometimes you gotta let these things age in the cellar for a while. (read the rest of this shit…)
Round 1, Bout 3: TEAM VIDEO GAMES vs. THE MEN FROM HONG KONG
MORTAL KOMBAT: THE ANIMATED VIDEO, aka MORTAL KOMBAT: THE JOURNEY BEGINS was a straight-to-VHS-and-Laserdisc release made as a tie-in with Paul W.S. Anderson’s 1995 live action theatrical MORTAL KOMBAT movie. The cover boasts that it allows you to “GO ONE STEP BEYOND VIRTUAL REALITY WITH 3D ANIMATION LIKE YOU’VE NEVER SEEN BEFORE!”
It is true that I’ve never seen animation like this before, but only because most people who would make it would know it was not good enough to release on a video. This video alternates between substandard Saturday morning cartoon type drawn animation and extremely crude animatic type computer animation. More on that in a minute. (read the rest of this shit…)
So nice they named it twice for some reason? I actually was always curious to see what this BALLISTIC: ECKS VS. SEVER movie was all about, so those of you who voted it up in the SUGGESTIONS gave me that nudge I’ve been needing for years.
Antonio Banderas plays Jeremiah Ecks, an ex-FBI agent who went deep undercover and faked his death but also thought his wife was dead but she wasn’t but now he’s retired but they come to him and say his wife is actually alive and he should help them go after this kidnapper Sever (Lucy Liu) because she knows where his wife is. She took the son of innocent Talisa Soto (MORTAL KOMBAT) and rich asshole Gregg Henry (PAYBACK) and she keeps him in a big metal cage in a Batcave type underground lair but she seems to like him because she brings him cafeteria lunch trays loaded with good food like home made macaroni and cheese, Jello and Ding-Dongs, and he says “Thank you” politely. (read the rest of this shit…)
DOA: DEAD OR ALIVE is the name of a tournament where the best fighters from around the world are invited to come stay on a remote island where they are pitted against each other in un-refereed fights with few rules. It’s like Mortal Kombat except not interdimensional, no monsters, during daylight, and not to the death. So they probly could’ve picked a better name. Maybe just “A.”
They’re wedded to this DOA title, though. They got the logo on parachutes, computers, signs, even a volleyball. That’s the kind of island we’re dealing with here, it has custom made non-tournament related sporting gear. These are professionals. (read the rest of this shit…)
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Recent commentary and jibber-jabber
KayKay on Avengers: Endgame: “CJ, your interesting points are marred only by this spectacularly flippant remark: “This isn’t James Bond, where every movie is…” May 6, 08:10
CJ Holden on Avengers: Endgame: “And I mean, let’s be honest, having someone who gives the directors a bunch of rules and guidelines isn’t always…” May 6, 02:11
Kaplan on Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse: “>This type of bond is always appealing in movies, but if I’ve ever seen it with a male-female friendship I…” May 6, 02:05
CJ Holden on Avengers: Endgame: “Well, after part 4, all M:I movies were written and directed by the same guy, so there is that. And…” May 6, 01:56
VERN on Avengers: Endgame: “I think the idea is to set it up so the directors supposedly can’t fail, they already have teams who…” May 6, 01:33
Muh on Avengers: Endgame: “Gunn’s a writer/director and I think they may get more leeway, but also GOTG was a long time ago in…” May 6, 00:21
CJ Holden on Avengers: Endgame: “And again I have to say that Marvel gives their directors WAY more freedom than they get credit for. This…” May 6, 00:09
Muh on Avengers: Endgame: “Two brothers with a string if tv credits are perfect, as Marvel movies are basically just tv shows. Showrunner tells…” May 5, 23:58
RRA on Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse: “Sorry I forgot another thing that bugged me: *SPOILER* the movie initially going from a Trumpian-era angle of the U.S.…” May 5, 23:27
RRA on Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse: “I found this rather generic tbh. For a (bloated pointlessly nearly 700 pages long) source book which was basically DEATH…” May 5, 23:23
RRA on F/X: “I think Vern’s analogy at the end sums up my basic review of this movie: it’s not great but a…” May 5, 23:13
KayKay on Avengers: Endgame: “Which begs the question: Then what exactly are these directors bringing to the table? Apart from the sheen of critical…” May 5, 23:10
JTS on Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse: “I agree, this is a really good version of this type of movie. I enjoyed it. I didn’t even realize…” May 5, 20:50
Muh on Avengers: Endgame: “Not really though. Half the time most of that work is done by pre-viz, stunt teams and second unit. And…” May 5, 19:46
KayKay on Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse: “Am only reading this review after I catch it this weekend but am cautiously optimistic so far based on the…” May 5, 18:49
VERN’S “I RECOMMEND THE SHIT OUT OF THIS PRODUCT” CORNER:
MORTAL KOMBAT (2021) is a perfectly okay movie, especially given the past success rate of video game adaptations. It does a decent job of putting some of the Mortal Kombat characters into a passable modern movie. I found it reasonably entertaining, and had I expected it to be bad I might even have been pleasantly surprised. It also might’ve played better in a theater, if I could go to one.
DOUBLE DRAGON (1994), loosely based on the video game series, is a sci-fi fantasy action kids movie from the director of 
There’s a new MORTAL KOMBAT movie about to enter our realm, and it’s crazy to think they’ve been developing this thing for over a decade! It made me want to journey back to the beginning of that process and revisit what happened when director Kevin Tancharoen tried to reimagine the fighting tournament game turned movie series.
As someone who finally got into Paul Wesley Snipes Anderson’s 
Hey man, I’m not a monster, I enjoyed WRECK-IT RALPH like anybody, and the sequel is fun too. This licensing crossover bonanza shit has kinda become its own genre since WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT invented it in earnest, so we’ve had the toy version (TOY STORY), the other toy version (THE LEGO® MOVIE), the… everything version (
As you know I am a scholar of the Big Summer Popcorn Movie, or whatever you want to call it. And I not only like to review the new ones but I like to look back at the old ones and figure out what’s what. We’re getting to the end of the summer movie season (which I consider to be May through August) but now that I’ve finished The Super-Kumite I think it’s time to start a new summer movie project. Fuck you, September. You don’t scare me.
Round 1, Bout 3: TEAM VIDEO GAMES vs. THE MEN FROM HONG KONG
So nice they named it twice for some reason? I actually was always curious to see what this BALLISTIC: ECKS VS. SEVER movie was all about, so those of you who voted it up in the 
DOA: DEAD OR ALIVE is the name of a tournament where the best fighters from around the world are invited to come stay on a remote island where they are pitted against each other in un-refereed fights with few rules. It’s like Mortal Kombat except not interdimensional, no monsters, during daylight, and not to the death. So they probly could’ve picked a better name. Maybe just “A.”
