Tag: Joe Taslim

No-Brainer | The Furious (2025) Review

June 11, 2026

We’ve got to talk about Joe Taslim and Kensuke Sonomura and Jeeja Yanin and all the With Eyes East favorites who’ve assembled for this action movie Super Bowl, but the story of The Furious might begin with a different name: Bill Kong. The last (and first) time producer Bill Kong came up on this site, it was in the comparison between live-action Blood: The Last Vampire – which he produced as a vehicle for Gianna Jun – and Kingdom: Ashin of the North, the homegrown Korean product which more successfully showed off Jun Ji-hyun to the world. If there’s one thing Bill Kong likes, it’s an American audience, as he also helped foster such crossover hits as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and the Disney live-action Mulan. He may have found a fellow traveler in director Kenji Tanigaki, the Japanese action coordinator who cut his teeth on Hong Kong productions like SPL, Flash Point, and Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In (not to mention odds and ends like Blade II and Takashi Yamazaki’s Always: Sunset on Third Street). Together, they’ve brought The Furious to the international market, starting with the Toronto International Film Festival, up to and including American screens the same day as the latest Spielberg release. That’s confidence. … More No-Brainer | The Furious (2025) Review

Kitana Wins

May 7, 2026

I’ve just gotten back from Mortal Kombat II, with a couple of hours to post this and prove that I saw it extra nerd early on Thursday rather than on Friday. I suppose I could show you the ticket, which I’d wanted to anyway because it was for 6:30, but then on the door, it said 6:45. And when I looked at Fandango today to see if anybody was gonna be sitting next to me, it also said 6:45, but there’s no way to prove that now. So, take my word that I thought to myself, “How can it be a 6:30 showing and a 6:45 showing at the same time?” Like a practiced modern moviegoer, I arrived at the theater at 6:30 sharp, budgeting enough time for all the pre-movie rituals, including waiting at the concession stand wherein the group in front of me appeared to be buying tickets? Growing surprisingly anxious, I finally made it to the premium-format theater and my seat and proceeded to sit there like a dope through, like, ten minutes of ads for insurance and cars. … More Kitana Wins

“Warrior” Couldn’t Be More Relevant in 2021

March 18, 2021

Just as some believe anti-violence in film can be achieved by sickening the audience with ultraviolence, any cinematic depiction of racism necessarily traffics in the imagery and narratives of racism. And necessary they may be in turn, all the brutal historical dramas which bring atrocities to vivid life beg the question: isn’t there another way? Perhaps there have been or could be movies about racism that forgo such descriptions as “confrontational.” Instead, we could have two strangers from opposite sides of the track building a new and honest relationship with nary a slur slipping out. Sometimes you want that, and that’d be nice. But sometimes, you want to see a racist guy kicked through a wall. … More “Warrior” Couldn’t Be More Relevant in 2021