Features
Andrew Jerman

Action
Rod Lott
Here's what I knew about the video game "Tekken" before watching the film it now has spawned: "Tekken" is a video game; I think it involves fighting.

Action
Rod Lott
Proof that "13 Assassins" isn't your everyday Takashi Miike film: The opening scene depicts a man committing hara-kiri, and just as the sword is about to be inserted into his stomach, the director cuts away.

Action
Rod Lott
Hitting video one week after "Tekken" is "The King of Fighters," and the two share an awful lot in common: The live-action films are based on video-game franchises, more or less skipped theaters, place style over substance, and flirt with unresolved daddy issues as a subplot.

Action
Rod Lott
"Queen of Triads" is a more accurate title for "King of Triads," but to quibble about such things over a thoroughly mediocre Hong Kong actioner is a waste of time and energy.

Drama
Rod Lott
Strangely, the biggest shock surrounding Best Laid Plans isn't that someone thought to redo John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men in the world of underground mixed martial arts, but that it works as well as it does — or hell, that it works at all.