Anyone with even the most remote interest in martial arts films will recognize Li Lianzi, better known by his stage name of Jet Li. This Chinese-born Singaporean started his martial arts career after three years of training under the wushu/kung fu master Wu Bin. That training quickly bore fruit in
The Forbidden Kingdom is a rather unique take in the wuxia film genre. A genre which is defined by Chinese martial arts galore, as well as CGI magic attacks for quite a few of them. Such films also tend to follow Chinese folklore, which this counts as. Journey to the West is a novel that came to us
New Gods: Yang Jian wants to be an epic animated Chinese martial art fantasy film. It really does. Unfortunately, all it has going for it are some pretty visuals and nicely choreographed fight scenes in the first half of the film. It never rises above mediocrity due to a long-winded, confusing, and
DC Studios is branching out. Instead of following the normal comic-book movie playbook, we're getting a movie based on the Batman villain, Clayface. Clayface is an interesting look at what we can do when a comic-book villain gets humanized a bit. The film stars Tom Rhys Harries as Matt Hagen, an
"The Debut" turns a comedy that pokes fun at the sincerity of the local stage and elevates it to a fascinating character study of a woman on the edge. While still being hilarious.
The 2026 reboot of Magic Knight Rayearth shows us that friendship is quite powerful in the magic department in Ep. 4 "Our Battle". It's a lesson from My Little Pony, but it's quite applicable to this anime too. Our trio of heroines will need that power, since this is their bloodiest battle to date.