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There are some who would say that Bloodsport was the film Ingmar Bergman intended to make when he directed Wild Strawberries. And to be perfectly serious Bloodsport is the better film.

When Frank Dux’s childhood friend and the son of his martial arts mentor is killed in a Kumite, a bloody underground mixed martial arts championship, Dux (Jean-Claude van Damme) goes AWOL from his army post to travel to Hong Kong to compete in the next Kumite and avenge his fallen friend’s honor. Hot on his trail, two military agents (one played by Forest Whitaker) follow him to protect the army’s investment in Dux’s amazing martial arts talents. With the help of a wrestler with a huge forehead (Donald Gibb from Revenge of the Nerds) also competing in the tournament and a plucky and attractive female journalist, Dux enters the brutal Kumite and displays his excellent fighting skills. But can he beat the man-killing, pec-flexing Chong Li or will he end up like his boyhood buddy?

A contract killer (Whitaker), who lives his life in accordance with the “Hagakure: The Way of the Samurai,” becomes targeted by his mob bosses after a job goes wrong, leaving a witness behind.

Jim Jarmusch (Broken Flowers, Night on Earth) creates a film unlike any other with Ghost Dog. He manages to blend the coda of Kurisowa’s films about Feudal Japan with the characters and locales of an American mobster movie. In concept it may sound like the potential for a trainwreck, but in the hands of one of the leaders in independent cinema, it makes for truly original filmmaking. Jarmusch does a great job of utilizing this mixture of genres, not relying on cookie-cutter stereotypes, but rather, finding a way to flip everything on its head. The result is colorful characters that exist in a reality that is fresh and not found anywhere else.

Wow, check out this Oscar friendly cast...With a bunch of Oscar nominations and a win for Gandhi, there’s Ben Kingsley. And over there is Oscar-winner Forest Whitaker for his amazing performance as Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland. Michelle Williams got a nod for Brokeback Mountain and Alfred Molina should have gotten one for Frida (or a number of other high caliber performances). It also has the cinematographer of Terms Of Endearment. Again… wow, this must be a classy film. This must be one of those Merchant Ivory flicks or something. Oh wait, Michael Madsen is in it. Halt the award talk. No, instead everyone is slumming, probably cashing a quick paycheck. It’s a kooky Sci-Fi flick called Species. And though it spawned a few straight to DVD sequels that no one ever saw, it’s actually a very watchable junky B-movie (make that an affectionate C+).

A teenage cutie, Sil (Williams), is raised in a glass bubble and is studied by Xavier Fitch (Kingsley). It turns out she is no ordinary teeny bopper… you see, radio telescopes picked up DNA from space, Fitch and the scientists at the lab combined it with human DNA to create her (choosing to create a female so she would be more docile - oh boy, were they wrong, right?). She grows up fast, they decide to put an end to their experiment and gas her, but she escapes the lab. Like The Terminator this moppet is a fish outta water in our world, but she’s a quick study. Oh, and underneath her beauty she’s actually a slithery spiked creature, a sorta Alien/Predator combo. Luckily for the censors she quickly grows into her adult form, the striking Natasha Henstridge. Although she stops aging, she does manage to get naked a lot.