The Forbidden Kingdom - 2008

*I'm including an additional section for this review, based on all the mixed opinions I've heard regarding the film.*

What It Is Not: A stylish Asian martial arts epic along the lines of Crouching Tiger or Hero.

*Now that the disclaimer is out of the way, I can continue.*

What It Is: A fun martial arts adventure film... from Hollywood.

Why I Watched It: Jet Li and Jackie Chan, in the same movie!

What I Thought: Forbidden Kingdom was amazing. It was a super slick, updated version of all the crazy fantasy adventure films of my childhood.

Forbidden Kingdom was a lot of fun, but it wasn't the serious epic drama that a lot of people seem to be expecting. The movie starts with a normal American kid that loves old kung fu movies. Some bully's force him to help with a robbery, where he ends up with a magic staff that transports him to the China-like fantasy world known as the Middle Kingdom. In order to save the Middle Kingdom, he's got to return the staff to Monkey King.

The movie had far more in common with The Neverending Story and The Last Starfighter than it did with the recent slew of stylish martial arts epics. Hell, drop the sci-fi from The Last Starfighter and substitute some 70's kung fu and you're left with Forbidden Kingdom.

All that being said, the comedy was rough in some spots, but generally hilarious in others. The adventure aspects were super fun and the fight scenes were fucking amazing! I especially liked the myriad styles of kung fu that were showcased, from Eagle Claw to Drunken style.

Oh yeah. About the fight scene between Jackie Chan and Jet Li, it simply should not be missed!

Highlights: Summoning rain, drunken style, tiger style sound effects, hot girls, crazy hair, the Monkey King, and Jet Li and Jackie Chan in the same fucking movie!

Who Should See It: Fans of Jet Li, Jackie Chan, or Wushu in general.

How Soon: Catch it in the theater! It's far more fun than anything else out there right now.

Review Dump - March 2008

I can't remember the last time I was this busy. My schedule is just full and it's been hard to find time for reviews. Without including all the boring details, here's the first ever Movie Slut Review Dump. Perhaps I'll give some or all of these titles a proper treatment someday down the road. Meanwhile, I hope you don't find the temporary change of format too offensive.














The Bank Job - 2008
What It Is: Dramatization of a real-life 1971 bank robbery.
What I Thought: A damn fine hiest film.














Hell Comes To Frogtown - 1987
What It Is: Post-apocalyptic cult film starring Rowdy Roddy.
What I Thought: Terrible enough to be pretty fun.














Brotherhood of the Wolf (Le Pacte Des Loups) - 2001
What It Is: Werewolves vs. Native American martial artists, in 18th century France.
What I Thought: Ridiculous...ly awesome!














Night Hawks - 1981
What It Is: Stalone the cop chases Rutger the arsonist.
What I Thought: Good cop movie with a good villain.














Princess Mononoke (Mononoke-Hime)- 1997
What It Is: Anime about nature vs. industry/humanity.
What I Thought: One of the best Anime films ever!














Hard Boiled (Lat Sau San Taam) - 1992
What It Is: John Woo's last film before Hollywood.
What I Thought: Ranking #5 for the highest on-screen body count, what the fuck do you think? One of the greatest action films ever made!














Falling Down - 1993
What It Is: The Warriors with a shirt and tie.
What I Thought: Funny and frightening in the best possible way!














The Quest - 1996
What It Is: Van Damme and Roger Moore in a pulpy adventure flick.
What I Thought: Enjoyable when not taken seriously.














Perfect Creature - 2006
What It Is: The vampire film The Breed should've been.
What I Thought: Weak plot, gorgeous movie.











Planet Earth - 2006
What It Is: Most expensive nature show ever.
What I Thought: Best nature documentary ever!














The Beastmaster - 1982
What It Is: Classic sword and sorcery flick.
What I Thought: A little cheesy, but very very fun.














Targets - 1968
What It Is: Aging Boris Karloff vs. a psycho sniper.
What I Thought: A darkly enjoyable classic.














Doomsday - 2008
What It Is: Another Underworld/Equilibrium/Resident...
What I Thought: Just as good/bad as the movies it rips off.

Thriller - A Cruel Picture (Thriller - En Grym Film) - 1973

What It Is: The classic Swedish revenge film that inspired much of Tarantino's Kill Bill.

Why I Watched It: See Kill Bill comment above.

What I Thought: Excellent!

Thriller is an awesome revenge flick full of violence, drugs, retribution, and... surprisingly... hardcore sex.

A young girl is literally picked up off the side of the road, drugged up, hooked on heroin and forced to work as a prostitute. Her pimp makes one huge mistake and gives her a free day each week and a little spending cash. She uses that day to pick up some useful skills like driving, shooting, and hand-to-hand combat.

Why does she wish to learn these things? Let's just say her pimp isn't going to be happy when he finds out and neither will her customers.

Highlights: Sex and Violence with none of that silly Rock and Roll to get in the way!

Who Should See It: Revenge fans and cult movie buffs!

How Soon: Grab the DVD whenever, it's a great film.

Harry Knuckles and the Pearl Necklace - 2004

What It Is: A very sophomoric sophomore attempt from Odessa Filmworks.

Why I Watched It: Odessa's last film was the awesome kung-fu musical, Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter.

What I Thought: Simply liking one film by a writer/director/studio/whatever, does not mean you'll like their other works.

Much like a line from one of the songs featured in the movie, the film itself was indeed "running on empty." Unlike the very next line from the very same song, the film was not "running on awesome." Harry Knuckles did have a handful of very funny scenes, but it was way too long. At 2 hours in length, the movie followed a snails pace despite the director's mention of cutting an additional hour from the film.

Harry Knuckles' few good moments just weren't enough to make up for the slow and boring majority of the film.

Highlights: Action scenes involving gratuitous fist to genital introductions, intentionally bad one liners, and much, much more schlock.

Who Should See It: Nobody, watch the truly inspired Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter instead!

How Soon: Never.

D-War - 2007

What It Is: A big budget Korean movie about monstrous serpents searching for the ultimate power.

Why I Watched It: Explosions plus dragons equals awesome. Still, I wasn't exactly rushing to theater, but my friend convinced me to see it on a lark.

What I Thought: I shouldn't have bothered. It was schlock. Take a really bad 70s kung fu flick, add it to the horrible Dungeons & Dragons movie, and you have D-War.

It sucked!

Highlights: The terrible dialogue led me to believe Engrish had been translated into bad English.

Who Should See It: People that deserve to be punished.

How Soon: As soon as they do something awful enough to deserve quality cinema like D-War.

War - 2007

What It Is: Brand new Statham/Li action movie.

Why I Watched It: Statham+Li = Transporter+Hero! Right?

What I Thought: I was wrong. I should have known two cool actors don't necessarily make a cool movie, you still need a cool guy behind the camera that won't fuck things up. The acting was fine, the direction was sub-par.

War had a decent story with a much better than average twist. Unfortunately, the cool and original twist was too little, too late. The action was so choppy you couldn't tell what the fuck was going on at any given point. In a flash of limbs, flapping clothes, and cracking bones, enemies were strewn about the floor and the protagonist was walking away.

I was really ready for a good action movie, but all I got was a mediocre plot and indecipherable action scenes. I don't need the fights slowed to the performance art pace of Hero or Crouching Tiger, but I do want to see what the hell is happening on screen! I'm now forced to give even more kudos to excellent action films like The Protector that keeps the camera back and shows you ALL the action, in 1 take no less!

Highlights: An unexpected, but that's it.

Who Should See It: Only die hard Statham or Li fans, cause you'll see it even after I've told you not to bother.

How Soon: Save it for DVD, when you've run out of anything else to watch.

Rush Hour 3 - 2007

What It Is: Another unnecessary sequel to the pretty solid Rush Hour.

Why I Watched It: The trailer looked funnier than I expected the movie to be.

What I Thought: The jokes from the trailer were the best parts of the film.

It seemed like everyone was trying really hard, but there just wasn't enough extra material in the Rush Hour world to justify a 3rd installment. The plot was atrocious and I've seen better stunts in almost every other Jackie Chan film.

Highlights: George, the French cabbie was by far the funniest thing in the whole movie. He alone almost made the film worth watching.

Who Should See It: Only die hard fans of the first two.

How Soon: No "rush".

Seven Samurai (Shichinin No Samurai) - 1954

*I usually use the title pic from the film's Wikipedia page, but I didn't like the chosen image for Seven Samurai.*

What It Is: A truly incredible Akira Kurosawa movie about 7 ronin that band together to defend a poor farm town from bandits. Also, it's the movie that inspired the classic western, The Magnificent Seven.

Why I Watched It: It's probably the first subtitled movie that ever took my breath away.

What I Thought: It was filmed in 1954 and it still rocks. The story is good, the cast is awesome, the humor is well-placed, the tragedy works and the heroism hits home.

I really can't say enough. Kurosawa was on his A-game with Seven Samurai and it seems his key actors were as well. The film does exactly what it sets out to do and that's really all you can ask for.

Highlights: The in-depth characters of the samurai themselves (the leader Kambei directly inspired Yoda), Toshirō Mifune is hilariously great as usual, "find hungry samurai", and "I can't kill a lot with only one sword!"

Who Should See It: Foreign film buffs, Asian movie fans, and everybody else!

How Soon: Whenever you're ready for a tragically cool and very classic samurai tale!

Seven Samurai

Afro Samurai - 2007

What It Is: A bad ass, adult oriented anime blending blaxploitation, hip-hop, and samurai goodness.

Why I Watched It: Sam Jackson baby!

What I Thought: Afro Samurai, at its heart, is a very decent revenge tale about Afro (Yes, that's his name.) dedicating his life to finding his father's killer. If that's all the 5-episode anime was about, however, it would be simply lost within the torrent of so many other excellent samurai animes. What makes Afro Samurai really shine, is it's inclusion of so much awesome.

"What sort of awesome," you ask. Well, I'll tell you.

Afro Samurai seamlessly blends fantasy, sci-fi, comedy and too many other genres to mention. (Just check out the Genre tags at the bottom!) The show features excellent voice talent by Samuel L. Jackson (Afro), Samuel L. Jackson (Afro's imaginary friend, Ninja Ninja), Kelly Hu (Okiku), and Ron Pearlman (the lisping gunslinger that killed Afro's father). For those of you that weren't paying attention, Jackson lends his voice to both lead characters. In my book, twice the Samuel L. equals 10 times the awesome!

Afro Samurai is very bloody and very funny. What more do you need in an anime?

Highlights: Ninja Ninja's shit-talking, Ron Pearlman's lisping villain, and Sam Jackson baby! Bloody, action-packed, funny, sexy, anime goodness!

Who Should See It: To borrow a line from a review on Amazon.com, "Bottom line: if you like afros, if you like samurai, if you like animation, if you like violence, if you don't freakin' suck, then this show is for you."

How Soon: Whenever you think you're ready to turn of your brain and let your Id enjoy some quality TV.

Afro Samurai (Director's Cut)