This being Thursday, it's time for another edition of Thursday Movie Picks, the blogathon run by Wandering Through the Shelves. This week's theme is "Combat Sports", which is easy if you include boxing, and obviously much more difficult if it doesn't include boxing. In the end, I went with three cheesy movies that don't go by the Marquess of Queensbury rules:
Best of the Best (1989). A group of Americans (including Eric Roberts and Chris Penn) coached by James Earl Jones travel to South Korea to take on a team of Korean martial artists in a competition. They're heavy underdogs, and go through all the tropes of team-building movies. Hey, I didn't say these movies are any good.
Kickboxer (1989). While my previous selection actually had some good actors (including Louise Fletcher as mother to Eric Roberts), this one stars Jean-Claude Van Damme, as a man who sets out to avenge the injury his brother received at the hands of a Thai kickboxer. Oh so totally original. But it can always get worse, as we get to our final movie:
Mortal Kombat (1995). You probably recall the video game, known for the "Finish him!" cry when one of the fighters was close to death. Somebody (specifically, producer Lawrence Kasanoff -- OMG -- looking through his filmography I see the hilariously awful Blood Diner) had the brilliant idea to take the characters in that game and make a movie out of it. Critics, unsurprisingly, hated it; fans of the game flocked to it in droves.
4 comments:
I know of Mortal Kombat but never played the arcade games and never saw any of the movies which looked bad.
Any Van Damme, Steven Seagal, etc...FILMS...you know they will suck but you watch the fight scenes.
Mortal Kombat is a classic!
I haven't seen any of your picks this week - in fact, I've only ever heard of the last one. But I feel like I didn't miss out on much 😅
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