Posts Tagged ‘T.J. Storm’
Friday, April 1st, 2022
“Listen, Annie’s parents were killed for a piece of plastic pizza. I want you guys to just stay home and not get hurt.”
If you’re like me, you’re very excited for Michelle Yeoh’s new movie EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE, which is in a platform release right now in the U.S. (I’m gonna see it tomorrow, some cities are getting it next Friday). And if you know about that movie you may also know it co-stars Ke Huy Quan, formerly known as Jonathan Ke Quan. He’s a superstar to anyone who was a kid in the ’80s, because he played Short Round in INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM and Data in THE GOONIES. But after that he worked more sporadically than he wanted. He’s American, born in Vietnam, but he did a few movies in Taiwan, Japan and Hong Kong, while his most prominent Hollywood roles were a season of Head of the Class and a small part in ENCINO MAN.
He left the business in the early 2000s, but the success of CRAZY RICH ASIANS inspired him to try again, and right away he got to play Michelle Yeoh’s husband! Good for him. His return inspired me to finally check out a movie I’d been curious about for years, BREATHING FIRE (1991), because it’s his only previous English language martial arts movie, and very much the kind of chintzy low budget b-movie I enjoy. Atrocious dialogue and acting, convoluted-to-nonsensical story, but lots of laughs, training montages and pretty cool Hong Kong style fights. A fun time. To give you an idea, the DVD I rented was a double feature with a dubbed Bruce Li vehicle called EDGE OF FURY, and the cover pretends like Bolo Yeung (who plays one of the bad guys and is credited as “Bolo Young”) is the star. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bolo Yeung, Ed Neil, Jerry Trimble, Jonathan Ke Quan, Laura Hamilton, Paul Hertzog, T.J. Storm, Tan Tao-Liang
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews | 4 Comments »
Monday, June 10th, 2019
GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS is not the perfect American Godzilla movie of our dreams, nor is it one that takes a thrillingly new angle on giant monsters, like SHIN GODZILLA did in 2016. Honestly I expected to like it more than I did, being a devotee of director Michael Dougherty’s previous movie, KRAMPUS. (He’s also the guy who wrote X-MEN 2, URBAN LEGENDS: BLOOD MARY and SUPERMAN RETURNS, and then wrote and directed TRICK ‘R TREAT) But this is the first time an American version feels to me like it’s completely in the spirit of the Japanese films from Toho Studios, particularly the “Heisei period” from GODZILLA 1985 to GODZILLA VS. DESTOROYAH (1995), so we’re getting there. As a monster fan apparently more forgiving than some of my friends, I found plenty to love about it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bradley Whitford, CCH Pounder, Charles Dance, David Strathairn, giant monsters, Joe Morton, Ken Watanabe, Kyle Chandler, Michael Dougherty, Millie Bobby Brown, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Sally Hawkins, T.J. Storm, Thomas Middleditch, Vera Farmiga, Zhang Ziyi
Posted in Monster, Reviews | 38 Comments »
Wednesday, September 26th, 2018
I didn’t get to see THE PREDATOR until after the world had already estimated its coordinates somewhere in the hostile territory between disappointment and disaster. Maybe that prepared me for the sloppy last stretch (it seems like some connective tissue must’ve been lost in editing or reshoots) and a thudding comedy riff or two involving a character with Tourette’s. And I guess a couple subpar quasi-science discussions, sometimes involving “the spectrum.” Also, is it just me or are these people weirdly unsurprised to see aliens?
But everything else in the movie tears its gear off and covers itself in mud to prove it’s a true warrior of entertainment. This is a funnier Predator movie, one full of joyful, gory mayhem, clever dialogue and inventive action beats. Let me give you an example from the opening. Decorated army sniper Quinn McKenna (Boyd Holbrook, JANE GOT A GUN) witnesses the crash of a Predator ship and pulls an extra-terrestrial helmet and gauntlet out of the wreckage before catching a glimpse of the camouflaged alien pilot (6’9 1/2″ parkour artist Brian A. Prince) stringing up another soldier. Panicked, McKenna accidentally fires the wrist weapon, slicing his friend’s corpse in half and dumping intestines and blood onto the cloaked Predator, revealing its location and appearance.
I mean, you love that, right? I love that. We all, in my opinion, love that. That’s what movies are for right there. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Boyd Holbrook, Brian A. Prince, Fred Dekker, Jacob Tremblay, Jake Busey, Keegan-Michael Key, Olivia Munn, Shane Black, Sterling K. Brown, T.J. Storm, Thomas Jane, Trevante Rhodes, Yvonne Strahovski
Posted in Action, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 64 Comments »
Tuesday, November 15th, 2016
THE MARTIAL ARTS KID is about a young man who gets in trouble too much so he gets sent far away to live with his aunt and uncle. He meets a nice girl he likes, but she has an asshole sports car driving bully boyfriend who threatens him just for talking to her. And the boyfriend is part of a bad crowd and they end up in competition over the girl and in sports. And he has an older mentor that trains him.
Remind you of any other movie? Me too. THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS: TOKYO DRIFT. Or maybe you were thinking THE KARATE KID, but in that one he just moved because his mom moved, he wasn’t a troublemaker. Totally different. Also, that’s about a kid who specifically does karate. This is a kid who does martial arts in general. I don’t really see a comparison.
Okay, maybe I do. I just like to mention TOKYO DRIFT whenever I can. This is a weirdly transparent KARATE KID rehash, arguably closer to a straight up retelling than the official remake with Jaden Smith and Jackie Chan. There’s even a wax on/wax off reference like some remakes would want to do, and it plays with your expectations of him being given a nice car as a gift. Instead he gets a bike, which he rides around the suburbs, keeping him a Martial Arts Kid when he seems to be on the verge of Martial Arts Manhood. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Cynthia Rothrock, Don "The Dragon" Wilson, Jansen Panettiere, Kathryn Newton, Matthew Ziff, Sydney Sweeney, T.J. Storm
Posted in Action, Family, Martial Arts, Reviews | 5 Comments »
Monday, September 5th, 2016
In this age of reboots one thing I didn’t see coming was a respectful attempt to resurrect the magic of KICKBOXER. Produced by Cannon when Jean-Claude Van Damme was still a new star, the original is a seminal film in the foundation of the western-star martial arts movie. Part of the beauty of the era it helped ignite was its disposability; there was such a hunger for this stuff on VHS that they kept churning out KICKBOXERs and BLOODSPORTs and BLOODFISTs with whatever Next Jean-Claude Van Damme they could get. And the combination of these basic story formulas and the appeal of seeing thick-accented martial artists try to act cool between flying kicks made for many enjoyable evenings for people all around the world.
Things have changed. Far fewer straight up action movies are made than in the ’80s and ’90s, and viewing them is not as common of a ritual for young people growing up. The fringe market of DTV has mostly shifted to VOD, a riskier business model since people actually have to watch the movies for them to make money. So, weirdly, this new KICKBOXER (released to VOD on Friday) was made with care, in hopes of people liking it. You can tell they’re genuinely trying to recapture what was fun about those movies, but in a modern context – by which I only mean it has nice digital cinematography of sunny Thailand and many of the opponents are played by famous UFC fighters. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alain Moussi, Cain Velasquez, Darren Shahlavi, Dave Bautista, Georges St-Pierre, Gina Carano, JCVD, John Stockwell, Larnell Stovall, remakes, T.J. Storm, underground fighting
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews | 30 Comments »
Wednesday, May 4th, 2016
BLACK COBRA was another one of my blind rentals, and I wouldn’t say it’s a surprise gem, but it’s definitely more interesting than I bargained for. The last thing I rented without knowing anything about it was BILLY BOY, which turned out to be a shitty South African movie about white people, filmed during apartheid, so it’s a cool coincidence that this is a competent (if sorta home made) one with a black South African hero after apartheid. And the first fight scene is against a group of white South Africans trying to treat him like it’s the old days.
T.J. Storm sounds like the name of a fictional action hero that a kid in a movie idolizes, but that’s the handle of the martial arts champ and stuntman who plays Sizwe Biko, a guy who “won a couple of titles” and whose father is a jailed hero of the South African revolution. (Whether or not they’re related to Steven Biko is never mentioned.) His father wouldn’t confess his crimes to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, so he was never let out, and now they’re conspiring to kill him in prison. Sizwe learns that he could get him out by bribing a certain judge, so he digs up the family’s secret diamond stash and takes them to L.A. to fence.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, DTV, South Africa, T.J. Storm
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews | 15 Comments »
