As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in hosting a few weekly live tweets on twitter and occasionally Mastodon. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of Mastodon’s #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We snark our way through it.
Tonight, for #MondayActionMovie, the film will be 1989’s Shocking Dark!
If you want to join this watch party, just hop onto Mastodon, pull up Shocking Dark on YouTube, start the movie at 8 pm et, and use the #MondayActionMovie hashtag!
Food Wars is one of those anime that feels like it should be ridiculous on paper, but somehow turns that absurdity into part of its charm. Across its five seasons, it blends intense cooking battles, over-the-top reactions, and shameless fan service into a series that is equal parts culinary hype machine and anime guilty pleasure.
What makes Food Wars stand out right away is how seriously it treats food while never taking itself too seriously as a show. The cooking scenes are loaded with detail, and the anime clearly loves showing off the textures, colors, and techniques behind every dish. Even when the plot gets wild, the series keeps circling back to a genuine appreciation for cooking, competition, and creativity, which gives it more heart than you might expect from an anime known for clothes literally exploding off people after a good bite.
Anyone who has grown up watching the high-octane drama of Iron Chef—whether the original Japanese production or the iconic American version on The Food Network—will feel right at home with the structure of this show. Much like those classic programs, Food Wars relies on a foundation of thematic ingredient requirements, ticking clocks, and an intense panel of judges waiting to dissect every flavor. The “Shokugeki” battles, or culinary duels, capture that same competitive spirit where a single secret ingredient or a daring last-minute pivot can be the difference between legendary status and total failure.
One of the most defining aspects of the series is how it effectively gamifies the entire culinary experience, turning every kitchen session into a high-stakes arena. The show treats cooking like a complex strategy game where each ingredient choice acts as a tactical move and every technique serves as a power-up. This framing forces the audience to view food not just as sustenance, but as a weapon or a defense, making the act of creation feel as tense and strategic as a combat sequence in any traditional action series.
This competitive spirit extends directly into the tasting sequences, which are arguably the most iconic parts of the entire five-season run. When a judge takes a bite, the show transforms the experience into a sensory battleground where the flavors represent different forces, emotions, or even elemental powers that clash on the palate. By turning flavor profiles into visual and psychological challenges, the show ensures that tasting isn’t just about appreciation—it is a judgment call that defines the character’s growth, pride, and survival in the cutthroat atmosphere of Totsuki Academy.
At the center of it all is Souma Yukihira, a protagonist who is easy to root for because he is confident without feeling smug. He is the kind of main character who thrives on pressure, and the show uses him well as an engine for momentum. Every challenge becomes a chance to watch him improvise, adapt, and push himself in a way that keeps the series moving fast. He is not some brooding genius or chosen one; he is just a stubborn, talented cook who wants to prove himself, and that makes the whole competition structure more fun.
The supporting cast is a big reason the anime works as well as it does. Erina starts off as icy and intimidating, but the series gradually gives her more depth, letting her grow beyond the “judge with a famous tongue” gimmick into someone with real emotional weight. The Polar Star Dorm crew adds a lot of personality and warmth, giving the story a sense of community that balances out the cutthroat tournament energy. Even when the show leans into exaggerated comedy, the characters usually feel distinct enough that their rivalries and friendships stay entertaining.
One of the show’s biggest selling points is obviously the fan service, and Food Wars does not pretend otherwise. It uses exaggerated reactions, dramatic body language, and suggestive imagery as a kind of visual shorthand for how amazing the food tastes. That approach is part joke, part spectacle, and part stylistic identity. For some viewers, that is the whole appeal; for others, it is the thing that makes the anime hard to recommend without a warning label. Still, the series is self-aware enough that the fan service feels tied to its outrageous personality rather than just being randomly thrown in.
The first season probably captures the show’s identity best because it still has that fresh mix of school-life fun, cooking creativity, and escalating rivalry. The early arcs feel energetic and focused, with each battle building on the last and giving the cast room to establish who they are. As the series moves forward, it gets more dramatic and more tournament-heavy, which is both a strength and a weakness. On one hand, the stakes rise and the clashes feel bigger; on the other, the show can start to feel like it is repeating its own formula with just enough variation to keep going.
By the middle seasons, Food Wars becomes more polished in some ways and more excessive in others. The food presentation remains impressive, and the battles often feel like mini sports dramas, but the storytelling starts to lean harder into anime logic, rival schools, overblown power scaling, and increasingly ridiculous cooking showdowns. That is not necessarily a bad thing, because the whole series is built on heightened reality, but it does mean the emotional impact depends a lot on whether you are fully onboard with the show’s specific brand of chaos.
The final season is where opinions tend to split the hardest. Some viewers feel it loses the magic and becomes more generic battle shounen than cooking anime, while others still see it as a satisfying enough conclusion that keeps the core spirit alive. There are still character moments worth caring about, especially around Souma and Erina, and the show does try to give the story a proper sense of closure. Even so, it is hard to ignore that the later stretch does not hit the same high point as the earlier seasons, especially when the novelty of the format starts wearing thin.
What keeps Food Wars from collapsing under its own absurdity is that it genuinely understands the appeal of competition. The anime is about food, yes, but it is also about pride, craft, ambition, and the need to prove yourself through skill. That gives it a surprisingly strong backbone underneath all the comedy and fan service. When it is working at its best, the show makes cooking feel like a high-stakes art form, where one meal can define a relationship, a reputation, or a future.
In the end, Food Wars is the kind of anime you watch because you want something loud, stylish, and a little indecent, but you stay because it actually cares about the process of cooking and the people doing it. It is messy, exaggerated, and sometimes way too horny for its own good, but that is also why it sticks in your memory. Across five seasons, it delivers a strange but effective mix of genuine culinary admiration and total anime nonsense, and that combination is exactly what makes it such a recognizable cult favorite.
Back in the late 90’s, I remember seeing the trailer for LETHAL WEAPON 4 that shouted out Jet Li. As a person who was just starting to get into Hong Kong cinema, I thought he was absolutely incredible and the best thing about the movie. I was soon watching all of his Hong Kong films and having a ball! The American market loved Jet Li, and used him often in movies like ROMEO MUST DIE and THE EXPENDABLES franchise, but he never reached the quality of his best Hong Kong films like ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA and FONG SAI-YUK.
Happy Birthday, Jet! You’re one of the all time greats!
When a high school basketball player named Willie Joe Harris (Derrick Franklin) gets in some trouble with some local drug dealers, he goes to Dakota Smith (Fred Williamson), an ex-cop and private investigator who now spends his time golfing. Realizing that the old neighborhood has been taken over by drug dealers like Slim Jim (Ice-T), Dakota and his friends come together to take back the streets. Jim Brown is former football coach Chad Grant. Ron O’Neal is Willie Joe’s guardian, Frank. Bernie Casey is Rex Stevens, whose family was killed by hitmen looking for Willie Joe. Together, they’re on the edge. They’re not alone on the edge, though. A manic Gary Busey plays a hitman named Felix. Gloria Allred (!) plays Councilwoman Gloria Johnson, Dakota’s contact at city hall.
Fred Williamson directed On The Edge and, in tradition of Original Gangstas, the main appeal of the film is to see a bunch of former blaxploitation stars showing off that they could still own the screen. Our stars may not move as quickly as they used to but they’re still good shots, they’re still good with a quip, and the ladies still love Fred. The film also has an anti-drug “take care of your community” message but most people will just be watching to see Fred Williamson and Jim Brown doing their thing. (The film’s cover art might feature Ice-T front-and-center but this is a Fred Williamson film all the way.)
The film itself isn’t great. Sometimes, it was impossible to make out what the characters were saying and the scene with Gloria Allred mostly seemed to be there so that Fred could say that he knew Gloria Allred. But the combination of Williamson, Casey. O’Neal, and Brown still carried a punch. Say what you will about his films, few people were more confident on screen than Fred Williamson.
I knew who Jackie Chan was well before I discovered Hong Kong cinema in the early 90’s through the works of John Woo and Chow Yun-Fat. I had seen him in the CANNONBALL RUN movies, including part 2 in the movie theater, and I recognized the VHS for THE PROTECTOR (1985) at my local video store, but I had no idea just how amazing he was as a filmmaker and performer until I became obsessed with Hong Kong’s local film industry in the mid-90’s. As I read about the incredible work that Chan had done or was doing in books like “Hong Kong Babylon,” I made notes on all of his movies that I wanted to see. Of course, the original POLICE STORY was at the top of the list.
In POLICE STORY, Chan plays Hong Kong cop Chan Ka-Kui. In the film’s opening scene, he takes part in a sting operation to bring down Chu (Yuen Chor), one of Hong’s major drug kingpins. After the plan goes awry, we get an incredible action sequence where cars crash through a shantytown, bullets fly, cops piss themselves, Chan hangs off of a bus with the handle of an umbrella, runs down a mountain, arrests the drug lord, and we’re just getting started!
From that amazing opening, Chan is assigned to protect the key witness, Salina (the gorgeous Brigitte Lin), whose testimony is key to bringing Chu down. This doesn’t go well. Between corruption in the police force, false accusations, and Chan’s tenuous relationship with his girlfriend May (Maggie Cheung), the ensuing chaos seems to indicate that Chu is going to get off on the drug charges and Chan just may end up dead.
But let’s be honest, the plot is just a reason to get to the action. And once you’ve seen a few of Jackie Chan’s Hong Kong movies, you just settle in for a loose story, lots of goofy humor (that doesn’t always work), and some of the most insane stunt work you’ll ever see. POLICE STORY is a perfect example of that formula, and quite honestly, it’s one of the great action films. The stunts feel and look dangerous. The final sequence, set in a shopping mall, is some of the best action I’ve ever seen in a movie. I sat there with my mouth open and shaking my head as great stunt after grunt stunt takes place. I can’t help but wonder how many people got injured doing those scenes as glass shatters, bodies fly, and Chan puts himself through hell for the sake of the scene. It can’t be described… it needs to be experienced.
And yet, for all the amazing action, I can relate to Jackie Chan. He messes up. He gets hurt. He argues with his girlfriend. I’ve done all of these things, and I love it when he gets his stuff together and uses his unique set of skills to save the day!
As awesome as POLICE STORY is, viewers need to be aware of the serious tonal shifts that take place in the Hong Kong cinema of the 80’s. It can be a little jarring if you’re not used to it, as the movie goes from slapstick comedy to brutal action to melodrama, sometimes within the same scene. In some ways, that’s part of the charm, but these films can feel very strange for the uninitiated.
At the end of the day POLICE STORY isn’t perfect, but it is Jackie Chan at his best… fearless, inventive, and committed to giving the audience their money’s worth. If you’re interested in the unique and dangerous films that Chan made at this physical peak, this is as good as it gets.
Reb Brown, the star of some of the loudest movies ever made, will be turning 78 in four more days but I bet he could still beat the evil doers and encourage us all by shouting, “Go! Go! Go!” A former college football player turned actor, Reb Brown holds the distinction of being one of the first actors to play Captain America and for also starring in classic films like Yor Hunter of the Future, Strike Commando and Strike Commando 2. Though he may not have ever become a household name, Reb Brown is a beloved figure amongst my circle of film-loving friends.
The scene below is from 1988’s Space Mutiny and it featured Reb doing what Reb does best.
4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
129 years ago, on this date, Douglas Sirk was born in Germany. He would start out his career as a stage director in Germany before coming to the United States in 1937. In the U.S., he made his mark as the director of a series of lushly visualized and often over-the-top melodramas. Never a critical favorite, Sirk was rediscovered and his reputation rehabilitated when film students and critics started to reexamine his work in the late 60s and the 70s. Once dismissed as the maker of tawdry (if popular) melodramas, Douglas Sirk is now seen as a subversive master of irony, one who used his melodramas to comment on American society. It’s fair to say that, without the films of Douglas Sirk, there would be no Lifetime today.
It’s time for….
4 Shots From 4 Douglas Sirk Films
Magnificent Obsession (1954, dir by Douglas Sirk, DP: Russell Metty)
All That Heaven Allows (1955, dir by Douglas Sirk, DP: Russell Metty)
Written on the Wind (1956, dir by Douglas Sirk, DP: Russell Metty)
Imitation of Life (1959, dir by Douglas Sirk, DP: Russell Metty)
“I may not do everything great in my life, but I’m good at this. I manage to touch people’s lives with what I do and I want to share this with you.” — Carl Casper
Jon Favreau’s Chef is one of those modest, crowd‑pleasing films that wins you over by staying sincere. It is not trying to be more elaborate than it needs to be, and that restraint is part of its charm. The movie understands that a good meal, like a good story, does not need to be overloaded to leave an impression.
At its center is Carl Casper, a Los Angeles chef who has spent too long under the thumb of a controlling owner and a punishing routine. Favreau builds the character as a man with genuine talent who has gradually been boxed into serving the same familiar dishes until the spark goes out of his work. That setup gives the film emotional weight without making it needlessly grim, and the early conflict feels grounded in the kind of professional frustration that many viewers can recognize.
What makes Chef work so well is that it treats food as more than decoration. The kitchen scenes have the energy of a workplace movie, but they also carry the warmth of a film about craft, pride, and rediscovery. Favreau clearly cares about the details, and the movie’s culinary authenticity helps make the food feel alive rather than merely photogenic.
The film’s strongest material often comes from its sense of rhythm. Favreau lets scenes breathe, whether Carl is cooking, arguing, bonding with his son, or slowly finding his footing again through the food truck. The road‑trip structure gives the movie a loose, easygoing momentum that matches its themes of starting over and rebuilding a life from something more personal. It is a familiar shape, but Favreau handles it with enough warmth and confidence that it never feels mechanical.
The cast also helps carry the movie’s laid‑back appeal. John Leguizamo brings dependable energy as Carl’s friend and partner, while Emjay Anthony gives the father‑son relationship a needed emotional anchor. Sofía Vergara and Scarlett Johansson add texture to the supporting ensemble, and the cameos help the film feel like it belongs to a broader world without turning into a stunt parade. Robert Downey Jr.’s appearance is especially in the spirit of the movie’s playful, slightly scrappy personality.
If there is a weakness in Chef, it is that the stakes are sometimes as light as the movie’s tone. The conflict is easy to understand, but the film is not interested in digging especially deep into the pressures of restaurant life beyond what it needs for Carl’s personal reset. Some viewers may also feel that the story moves so smoothly that it can occasionally glide past tension rather than fully wrestle with it. Still, those softer edges are part of the movie’s comfort‑food approach, and they fit the film more often than they hurt it.
There is also something undeniably self‑referential about Favreau making a film like this at this point in his career. After years of working in large‑scale studio filmmaking, Chef feels like a deliberate return to basics, a movie about rediscovering joy in the craft rather than chasing spectacle. That choice gives the film a little extra meaning, because it plays not just as a story about a chef but as a story about an artist reconnecting with the thing that made him care in the first place.
That connection carried forward in a very natural way with Netflix’s The Chef Show, which Favreau made with Roy Choi after the film. The show turned the movie’s culinary curiosity into a full‑fledged project, with Favreau cooking alongside celebrity friends and guests across its two‑season run. In that sense, Chef was not just a one‑off passion project; it became the foundation for a longer creative obsession that blended cooking, conversation, and filmmaking into the same kind of easygoing pleasure the movie already had.
What lingers most about Chef is its tone. It is upbeat without being fake, personal without becoming self‑pitying, and relaxed without losing its sense of purpose. Favreau understands that small victories can matter just as much as dramatic ones, and he shapes the film around that idea with real affection. The result is a feel‑good film with enough flavor to satisfy, and enough honesty to keep it from feeling empty.
And for anyone who had never been especially drawn to a Cubano sandwich, Chef also worked like a terrific advertisement for giving one a try. The film made the sandwich look less like a simple handheld meal and more like a kind of culinary payoff, something warm, rich, and memorable enough to make viewers hungry before the scene was even over. While most audiences understandably gravitated toward those rapturous Cubano moments, for me the real standout was the scene featuring the mojo‑marinated pork. There was something about the way the meat was staged—the slow rendering of fat, the caramelized crust, the faint sheen of orange‑garlic sauce—that made it feel less like a quick bit of menu decoration and more like the heart of the film’s culinary language. That sequence, in its quiet way, captured the same blend of craft and desire that the whole movie is built on.
Overall, Chef is a warm, appealing, and thoughtfully made film that succeeds because it knows exactly what it wants to be. It is funny, heartfelt, and easy to enjoy, even when it does not push its dramatic material as far as it could. Favreau serves up a movie that celebrates food, family, and creative freedom in a way that feels genuine, and that sincerity is what gives the film its staying power.
A young Indian brave named Little Hawk (Don Reynolds) runs across the countryside, hoping to run into the Durango Kid. Instead, he runs into Steve Reynolds (Charles Starrett), who listens as Little Hawk explains that the Indians and the white men are about to go to war. Steve promises to deliver the message to Durango. That will be easy for Steve because he is Durango!
White bandits are disguising themselves as Native Americans and attacking stagecoaches. The local townspeople are getting riled up. Meanwhile, businessmen Jim Haverly (Monte Blu) is running a trading post and secretly selling weapons to the Indians. Jim is hoping to profit from the upcoming war. Jim is also the uncle to Little Hawk’s best friend, Billy (Tommy Ivo). When Durango and his sidekick Smiley Burnette show up, they team up with Billy and Little Hawk and try to stop the war before it happens.
This is one of the many B-westerns that featured Charles Starrett as the Durango Kid. The Durango Kid was always an agent of the federal government but he pretended to be an outlaw to make it easier for him to get information. Sometimes, it really didn’t make sense for Steve to pretend to be the Durango Kid, like in this movie. I guess no one wanted to give up the gimmick, just like no one wanted to give up Smiley Burnette’s musical comedy.
This one has all of the horse-riding and gun-shooting that fans of the genre would expect from a Charles Starrett western. It also has a lot of stock footage that appeared in a countless number of other B-westerns. Starrett is a convincing cowboy and Monte Blue is a good villain, as always. The child actors can sometimes be difficult to tolerate but I imagine the kids in the audience preferred watching them to sitting through the romantic subplots that these films usually had. Fans of the gerne will enjoy the film, if just on a nostalgic level. Those who are not into westerns will still not be into them after watching.
In my quest to see every movie and TV show that Charles Bronson ever appeared in, I finally decided to take on THE MOB this morning. I’ve held off for years because this early, uncredited role as a dockworker only gives Bronson a couple of lines. He looks like a natural fixture on the docks, but his screen time only adds up to a minute or two in total.
With Bronson being little more than some temporary dockside scenery, I settled in for a story about Johnny Damico (Broderick Crawford), a tough, no-nonsense cop who’s doing some rainy night ring-shopping for his girlfriend when a man is killed just outside the store. He bungles up the whole situation, and the killer gets away. It turns out the killing was a mob hit and soon Damico is going undercover as Tim Flynn from New Orleans so he can infiltrate and bust the organized crime ring operating on the waterfront.
Broderick Crawford is so good in this role. His Damico / Flynn has a cynical sense of humor that I enjoyed. He thinks fast, he’s rough around the edges, and he even gets to slap some bad guys around a time or two. He’s one of those characters whose mouth should probably get him in more trouble. Well, now that I think about it, his mouth does almost get him killed a couple of times. Crawford and Bronson would work again together a few years later in the prison film BIG HOUSE USA (1955).
With Crawford’s performance anchoring the movie, Director Robert Parrish delivers a tight, efficient and entertaining crime story that clocks in at just under an hour and a half. One of the things that made the film enjoyable for me is the interesting and recognizable supporting cast of actors who pop up throughout the film. I’ve already mentioned Bronson, but actors like Ernest Borgnine, Neville Brand and Frank DeKova all show up to torment our undercover cop at various points throughout the film. It’s always fun for me to see a cast full of familiar faces!
At the end of the day, I enjoyed THE MOB. It doesn’t try to be anything more than a good crime film, and with Broderick Crawford’s excellent performance, it does its job well.
Through the Shattered Lens 