The first part of a time-hopping South Korean sci-fi opus which draws on many familiar elements but is more than equal to the sum of its parts. There are extended CGI-driven alien battles involving spaceships and cities being destroyed which could easily be from the latest Marvel blockbuster. These scenes are interspersed with a period-set, […]
Another DTV Ip Man spin-off, which follows very similar straight-to-streaming efforts like director Li Liming’s double-bill of 2019’s Ip Man: Kung Fu Master – in which Dennis To returned to the titular role – and its 2020 prequel, Ip Man: Crisis Time, plus Fu Li-wei’s 2019 film, Ip Man and Four Kings. Miu Tse (the wushu kid from the 1990s Jet Li classics New […]
“Vinny” Chow (newcomer Jay Kwon) is a young New Yorker undergoing an identity crisis. He feels culturally distant from his Chinese roots, pressurised by an overbearing father and apathetic in his kung fu lessons. He feels a far greater kinship, however, to New York’s Italian American community, so he decides to relocate from Chinatown to […]
“It’s a young man’s game,” says retired British martial artist Mike (Scott Adkins) as he packs up his life as a failed fighter in Atlanta to settle in Birmingham, Alabama (a neat little in-joke, considering how Adkins’ real birthplace is near Birmingham, UK). To say Mike has fallen on hard times is an understatement; he’s […]
A charming, inventive and entertaining live-action debut for the superhero Shang-Chi, originally modelled on Bruce Lee and first introduced into the Marvel comics at the height of the kung fu boom in the 1970s. Shang-Chi might not have the same superhero clout as Spider-Man or Captain America, but this origin story very much positions him as an […]
The Snake Eyes elements formed some of the most interesting moments in the previous two films in this most commercial of franchises – existing only to shift more Hasbro toys – so a standalone story dedicated to the Joe’s sword-wielding, silent ninja seems, on paper, to be quite an intriguing prospect. This has a huge […]
