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This animated trilogy concludes on a very high note with this smart, involving and often hilarious adventure. Both the writing and the animation are especially strong this time around, drawing in bigger themes while still keeping things both thrilling and very silly. But it's the endearing central characters who make it resonate.

As the Dragon Warrior, the panda Po (voiced by Jack Black) is struggling to rise to the challenge to become a teacher, coaxed by his master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman). He'd rather be out fighting battles with his five warrior pals Tigress, Monkey, Mantis, Viper and Crane (Angelina Jolie, Jackie Chan, Seth Rogen, Lucy Liu and David Cross). Then he meets his long-lost father Li (Bryan Cranston), who tells him of a secret homeland for pandas, where Po might be able to find himself. Meanwhile, the power-mad warlord Kai (J.K. Simmons) has broken through from the spirit realm, determined to collect the chi of every master in the mortal world. So it's rather urgent that Po discovers his own chi before Kai finds him.

This is far more than the usual story about discovering your place in life. It's a complex exploration of how our backgrounds and communities contribute to who we are, and why each of us has a distinct role to play. These themes emerge naturally through the snappy, sometimes exhilarating story and characters. In voicing Po, Black finds the perfect balance between goofiness and honest emotion that often eludes him in live-action roles. His interaction with all of the surrounding characters bristles with humour and insight, with sharply funny one-liners peppering every scene. Most of the side roles are spread very thinly, but both Cranston and Simmons register strongly, while Jolie and Hoffman get some solid scenes all their own. And Hudson's riotously flirtatious ribbon-dancing panda easily steals her scenes.

Continue reading: Kung Fu Panda 3 Review

Rapper-turned-actor-turned-filmmaker RZA is clearly influenced by cohorts Quentin Tarantino and Eli Roth as he indulges in this crazed pastiche of 1970s kung fu action romps. It's energetic and often quite funny, but far too silly to come together properly, mainly because he never adds any sense of post-modern wit. If the action scenes were more coherent, it at least could have been a guilty pleasure.

In a 19th century Chinese village, an American ex-slave (RZA) is known only as Blacksmith, forging weapons for gang members to raise the money to buy his girlfriend Lady Silk (Chung) from the local brothel's Madam Blossom (Lucy Liu). But their fate is caught up in a battle for power after the patriarch of the Lion clan is murdered and the swaggering Silver Lion (Mann) challenges rightful heir Zen Li (Yune). After a vicious attack by Silver Lion's muscled henchman Brass Body (Bautista), Zen Li is rescued by Blacksmith. And they get help from Englishman Jack Knife (Crowe) to fight Silver Lion and his thugs.

The title refers to something that happens about halfway in, when Blacksmith forges new arms for himself after being attacked by Silver Lion for helping Zen Li. This sets the stage for an orgy of metal-on-metal battling (there are also bronze and copper characters), leading to a clattering showdown between Blacksmith and Brass Body, who for some inexplicable reason can morph his body into, yes, brass. As such a wild fantasy, it's not surprising that the plot makes so little sense, although a bit more genuine character depth would have helped hold our interest.

Continue reading: The Man With The Iron Fists Review

Henry (Brody) takes a month-long assignment teaching at a tough school run by beleaguered principal Carol (Harden). Unflappable in the face of the unruly students, he calmly tries to get through to the teens. He clicks with fellow teacher Sarah (Hendricks). As a substitute, Henry's job is to maintain order, which seems like an impossible challenge. So he instead reaches out to a teen hooker (Gayle), thinking he might actually be able to make a difference in her life. But he can't help but wonder if he's doing more harm than good.

Continue reading: Detachment Review

Now that Dragon Warrior panda Po (voiced by Black) has joined the Furious Five (Jolie's tigress, Rogen's mantis, Chan's monkey, Liu's viper and Cross' crane), there's peace in the valley again. But in a distant kingdom, the villainous peacock Lord Shen (Oldman) has developed a secret weapon with which he plans to take over China and put an end to kung fu. Although he's been rattled for decades, since his soothsayer (Yeoh) told him he'll be conquered by a panda.

And he knows the Dragon Warrior is on his way.

Continue reading: Kung Fu Panda 2 Review

Blazing across the screen with eye-popping, sublime artwork, Kung Fu Panda sets itself apart from the modern domestic animation trend with its sheer beauty. From an opening dream sequence whose abstract style seems culled straight from a modern manga, the film enters instant classic status as some of the most gorgeous animation Hollywood has produced since the golden age of Disney. Eschewing the cold and severe art of Dreamworks' Shrek films, the makers of Kung Fu Panda fill the screen with painterly backdrops of mountain vistas and fluttering leaves that give Zhang Yimou a run for his money. It somehow makes it all the funnier to have the titular panda, Po (Black), come huffing and wheezing through the impeccable and non-specific ancient China landscapes like a less-active relative of Hurley on Lost.

Continue reading: Kung Fu Panda Review

Sure, the vampire myth has been with us forever. One of the very first films was a vampire movie. We are indeed obsessed with these blood-sucking trollops. And yet, lately, the vampire film has fallen into a rut that I worry it can never pry itself out of. We don't see the vampires of yesteryear anymore. Gone are green skinned, hairy-eared ghouls that haunted graveyards and sucked the blood from corpulent women. Gone are the baby-bird-headed stick figures that lurked in foggy London alleyways. Today vampires are all glamorous, leather-bound martial arts experts. They have great hair (that's a side-effect of living forever), nice shoes, and groove to industrial music. They are the Goth fashionistas who are as infatuated with sucking blood as they with collecting Ferraris and having swanky parties.

Continue reading: Rise: Blood Hunter Review

The story, very loosely based on the exploits of female bounty hunter Domino Harvey (Keira Knightley), follows our heroine as she grows dissatisfied with her socialite upbringing and embraces the darker side of law enforcement. Her mentor on this journey is legendary bounty hunter Ed Mosbey (Mickey Rourke), assisted by pseudo-comic relief Choco (Edgar Ramirez). That she meets these gentlemen as they try to scam hundreds of dollars off of would-be bounty hunters (including herself) doesn't dissuade her from trusting them with her new life.

Continue reading: Domino Review

In the wake of "Reservoir Dogs," "Pulp Fiction" and "Jackie Brown," film buffs have come to expect intrepid sub-Hollywood scavenger Quentin Tarantino to bowl us over with ingenious, amped-up, style-blending B-movie off-shoots made with a quantum leap of depth and cinematic panache.

Influenced by cut-rate, under-the-counter samurai imports, spaghetti Westerns and popcorn-munching exploitation flicks of bygone eras, the writer-director's two-part revenge saga "Kill Bill" ("Volume 2" is due in February) has sexy, gritty, droll, deluxe Tarantino élan coming out its ears -- and absurdly grisly dam-bursts of stage blood spurting from other violently severed body parts in ambitious marathon swordfight scenes. But while the picture oozes style (and blood), it comes up short on substance -- which is what has always set Tarantino's grindhouse homages head and shoulders above the pulp pictures that inform them.

Choreographed by both kung-fu genius Yuen Wo-Ping ("The Matrix" movies, "Charlie's Angels," "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," etc.) and Japanese Kenjutsu legend Sonny Chiba (who plays an eccentric master sword-maker in the film), these focal-point fights are the culmination of a plot about a sultry, strong-willed former assassin (Uma Thurman) who was left for dead when her employer -- possibly peeved by her resignation, although "Volume 1" is vague on that point -- turned her wedding into a massacre.

Continue reading: Kill Bill: Volume 1 Review

Everything the kinetic, colorful, superficially violent "Kill Bill: Volume 1" lacked in depth and character is remedied tenfold in Quentin Tarantino's stunning, cunning conclusion to his epic revenge fantasy.

Gone are the absurdist bloodbaths and the superficial grindhouse storytelling, and in their stead the wily writer-director transitions (with masterfully effortless cinematic aplomb) into a character- and dialogue-driven feast of substance and surprises -- which is, nonetheless, still punctuated by spectacularly stylish swordplay.

After a winking mock-noir prologue of recap narration, Tarantino opens "Volume 2" with a parched black-and-white flashback to the wedding rehearsal (glimpsed throughout last year's installment) at which The Bride (Uma Thurman), an unnamed and incognito former assassin trying to go straight, was brutally gunned down (along with everyone in attendance) by her former compatriots.

Continue reading: Kill Bill: Volume 2 Review

If it weren't for director Wych "Kaos" Kaosayananda's laughably excessive use of slow-motion, the convoluted, monotonous, mindlessly flashy, espionage-action bomb "Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever" would be about 12 minutes long -- which might have made it almost watchable.

In a plot more scattershot than its endless, aimless rounds of ammunition, "Ballistic" kitchen-sinks together rival government intel agencies, microscopic assassination nano-bots, poorly faked deaths and new identities, a kidnapped kid that must be rescued in "less than 12 hours" for no explained reason, and rogue spies avenging their murdered families. It's nearly impossible to keep track of who's trying to kill whom and why, but that's of little importance to Bangkok film industry refugee Kaos. As long as somebody is getting shot or something is blowing up, he couldn't care less.

The uninspired bedlam that passes for action in this disaster isn't any more lucid than the story. Shrapnel-flying, cartwheel-turning shootout scenes are cheap, disorderly rip-offs from the "The Matrix." Wet asphalt used to give the movie a slick look makes for boring motorcycle "chases" that never exceed 40 mph (and even at that speed it's hard to say who's the chaser and who's the chasee). And Kaos seems to live by the mantra "why shoot at someone when you can set off explosions all around them -- and still miss?"

Continue reading: Ballistic: Ecks Vs Sever Review