Ninja Academy

A gaggle of screw-ups and oddballs sign up for a weeklong martial arts training camp. But when the camp is attacked by their sensei's rivals, the trainees are forced to put their new skills to the ultimate test. Ninja Academy is a fairly straightforward rip-off of Police Academy. The martial arts portions of the film are well done. The comedy portions, not so much.

Rating: 58%

(Image from Wikipedia)

Meglos

In an underground city, the people of Tigella's lives are controlled by a mysterious object called the Dodecahedron. The scientific-minded people of Tigella, called the Savants, struggle to harness the power emitted from the Dodecahedron, while the other half of the population, the Deons, worship the Dodecahedron as if it were a gift from the gods. Meanwhile, on the desolate planet of Zolfa-Thura, a shape-shifting creature called Meglos schemes to steal the Dodecahedron for its own purposes. Meglos is a decent serial that never quite crosses the line into excellence. All the elements are there: good cast, good themes, great settings. And yet, it ends up being fairly average. Most of the episodes are shorter than normal, which keeps the pacing tight but leaves the impression that there just wasn't enough material in the script. Jacqueline Hill, who played Barbara during the First Doctor era, plays Lexa, the fanatical leader of the Deons who ultimately sacrifices her own life to save Romana.

Rating: You never know who's who%

The Way of the Dragon

aka Return of the Dragon

In The Way of the Dragon, Bruce Lee plays Tang Lung, a young martial arts student who travels from Hong Kong to Rome to help a restaurateur who's being harassed by gangsters. Tang Lung's "Chinese boxing" skills provide the restaurant with some short term victories against the bad guys, but the campaign of violence and intimidation continues to escalate. The film climaxes with an epic fight between Tang Lung and a hired killer from America played by Chuck Norris. Enter the Dragon might be Bruce Lee's best film but The Way of the Dragon is probably my favorite. The mixture of fish out of water comedy and stellar fight choreography is a refreshing break from the dour plotting of Bruce Lee's other films. And, if you didn't already know, the fight between Lee and Norris in the Colosseum truly is spectacular. 

Rating: 73%

(Image from Wikipedia)

I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer

A group of inconsiderate teens stage a big prank at their town's annual Fourth of July Carnival, faking an attack by the North Carolina Fisherman killer. But something goes wrong and one of the participants dies. The surviving teens decide to keep their involvement in the stunt a secret. One year later, they begin to receive threatening notes from someone who knows the truth about what they did the previous summer. I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer is textbook 2000s horror: muted colors, shaky cam, jittery editing, nu metal soundtrack, the whole nine yards. There isn't anything in the movie that ties it back to the previous Last Summer films, other than the use of the Fisherman killer. The basic structure of the movie works but none of the characters are particularly likeable and the reveal of the killer's identity at the end of the movie is pretty dumb.

Rating: 52%

(Image from Wikipedia)