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Mortal Kombat

  • Title: Mortal Kombat (1995)
  • IMDb: link

Mortal Kombat movie reviewThrowback Thursday takes us back to 1995 to the first attempt to adapt the Mortal Kombat video game into a feature film. Director Paul W.S. Anderson‘s Mortal Kombat is a flawed, but nonetheless enjoyable, B-movie. The story involves former Shaolin monk Liu Kang (Robin Shou), Hollywood action star Johnny Cage (Linden Ashby), and Special Forces officer Sonya Blade (Bridgette Wilson) being chosen by Thunder God Lord Raiden (Christopher Lambert) to defend Earth against an evil dimension in a tournament known as Mortal Kombat.

Each fighter has a different purpose for entering the tournament. Cage wants to prove his ability as a fighter (in a secret tournament no one will know about?), Kang is after revenge for the death of his brother (Steven Ho), and Sonya is chasing another competitor in the mercenary Kano (Trevor Goddard). The story is simply a loose structure to fit the various fight sequences, locations, and set pieces. An unapologetic B-movie memorable for Lambert’s mugging and some not too shabby special effects for the time, the film works as a tribute to the video game series without anyone in front, or behind, the cameras, or in the audience, taking the very ridiculous premise seriously.

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Supergirl – Phantom Menaces

  • Title: Supergirl – Phantom Menaces
  • wiki: link

Supergirl - Phantom Menaces television review

Emotion drives most of the stories of “Phantom Menaces” with Supergirl (Melissa Benoist) trapped in the Phantom Zone leaving her friends to soldier on and deal with her loss. Not suprisingly, Alex (Chyler Leigh) is hit hardest by the team’s inability to rescue Kara while J’onn (David Harewood) attempts to bury his emotions and throw himself into his work finding the phantom that escaped as it looks to breed through humanity creating a new army of phantoms. Meanwhile, Lena‘s (Katie McGrath) and Brainy (Jesse Rath) help each other work through the frustration of Lex Luthor‘s (Jon Cryer) win and attempts to get back to business in a plot thread that works to build on the redemption arc of both characters and push Lena into a new role on the series other than her brother’s keeper. McGrath continues to be the season’s stand-out.

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Supergirl – Rebirth

  • Title: Supergirl – Rebirth
  • wiki: link

Supergirl - Rebirth television review

Supergirl‘s final season begins with a mess of a first episode that attempts to wrap up several threads from the COVID-shortened Fifth Season all in one episode prior to moving on to new stories. Before the opening credits even roll, Brainy (Jesse Rath) is saved and Leviathan is defeated leaving the rest of the episode to deal with Lex Luthor (Jon Cryer) who apparently has become a god, has half the world’s population under his sway, and is working to kill off everyone else. Cryer is fun here yet again in what will apparently not be his final appearance which offers him more than one victory over Supergirl (Melissa Benoist). As has been the show’s problem recently, too much of the episode is centered around making sure every single member of the ever-growing supporting cast gets their moment. Given Supergirl’s current predicament, I’m bit concerned with the short-term direction of the show and if the rest of the cast can keep things afloat prior to the Maid of Might’s inevitable return from the Phantom Zone.

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King Kong vs. Godzilla

  • Title: King Kong vs. Godzilla
  • IMDb: link

King Kong vs. Godzilla DVD reviewOriginally envisioned as a stop-motion film featuring King Kong fighting a giant Frankenstein Monster, the struggling project was given to Toho Studios which saw in Kong an adversary worthy of Godzilla. The story involves a submarine which takes absolutely no attempt to avoid hitting a giant iceberg which cracks and releases the slumbering Godzilla once more. The movie is a bit unclear on if people know who Godzilla is (they know at least about his name, but otherwise the film is inconsistent about the creature’s history).

Elsewhere, a pharmaceutical company discovers Kong on an isolated island. Deciding to remove him from the island as a prize, the giant raft takes him close to Japan where he escapes as events maneuver the two behemoths into a confrontation. When the first fight proves inconclusive, and doubles Japan’s problems of now having two rampaging monsters on the loose, the locals arrange a rematch for the two at Mount Fuji (including delivering a slumbering Kong via balloons) hoping that the creatures may end up killing each other. Their battle ends with only one walking away and the fate of the other in doubt.

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King Kong

  • Title: King Kong (1976)
  • IMDb: link

King Kong DVD review1976’s King Kong holds up fairly well nearly 45 years after its release. The first remake of the 1933 film, producer Dino De Laurentiis and director John Guillermin‘s film is memorable for its practical effects including the mechanical Kong mask developed by Carlo Rambaldi and Rick Baker giving Kong’s face a wide range of emotion. While some of the composite shots merging Kong with the world aren’t as effective today, there’s still quite a bit of movie magic. Baker also credits cinematographer Richard H. Kline whose work he felt hid the limitations of what could be done with Kong at the time.

Updating the story a bit to fit with the times, the ship isn’t searching for exotic locations but instead that of an oil company executive (Charles Grodin) looking to drill. Stowing away is paleontologist Jack Prescott (Jeff Bridges) who has his own reasons for wanting to visit the island. The ship also picks up the sole survivor of a shipwreck, aspiring actress Dwan (Jessica Lange), who completes a cast supplemented by the ship’s crew and the natives they will encounter on the island.

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