Never Kneel to Hardship: Ip Man: Kung Fu Legend (2026)

Director: Li Liming

Notable Cast: Dennis To, Yoko Wang Wan-Zhong, Zhang Tingfei, Zhao Jingzhuyu, Pan Yuanjia, Steven Dasz, Yan Yanlong, Lee Yiu-King, Zhou Xiaofei, Wu Xinzun, Tong Xiaohu, Philip Condron

 

“We in the martial arts community kneel to heaven, to earth, and to our ancestors, but never to hardship.” 

 

Say what you will, but that quote from Ip Man: Kung Fu Legend exemplifies the Ipsploitation genre to a ‘T.’ No matter what, the resilience of how the industry will continue to craft a cinematic myth around Ip Man will defy all hardships - including poor reception or budgetary restraints. This is a genre that absolutely, positively will not kneel to hardship. 

 

To be fair, while Li Liming’s Ipsploitation flick, Ip Man: Kung Fu Master, was low-key fairly fun (you are welcome to read my article on the film over at the 36 Styles website HERE), I’m not sure I expected that one to start a new Ip Man franchise outside of the Donnie Yen series. It was entertaining enough; Dennis To returned to the main role after playing him in the prequel Ipsploitation flick, The Legend is Born: Ip Man, and it had some fun fight sequences, but it’s not like it was reigniting the fires in my soul. 

Still, when it was announced that the director and star of Kung Fu Master would be returning for its sequel, Ip Man: Kung Fu Legend (try not to get too confused with those similar titles), I was pleasantly surprised. Kung Fu Master was fun, so a sequel would just naturally keep that going, right? Right?

 

Yet, Kung Fu Legend represents the overall laziness that exploitation genres can unfortunately fall victim to. It feels like it wants to touch on the story elements of the far superior - and undervalued - Donnie Yen flick, Ip Man 2, but it lacks some of the brashness and stylistic elements that made that film feel like an old-school kung fu flick modernized. Instead, Kung Fu Legend runs the blueprint hard and rarely digs deeper than the surface to reach its themes, and it certainly doesn't want to dig into any real character arc for Ip Man. This is a film where people in strife, fending off some mustache-twirling Western bad guys, need a hero, and Ip Man is going to Wing Chun them to victory. For some, that might be enough, but when some of the other Ipsploitation flicks have found a voice or reason for existence, this one struggles to do so.

 

What Consumes You, Forces You To Consume: Saccharine (2026) Review

Director: Natalie Erika James

Notable Cast: Midori Francis, Danielle Macdonald, Madeleine Madden, Robert Taylor, Showko Showfukutei, Octavia Barron-Martin, Anna Adams

 

Director and writer Natalie Erika James tackled many intriguing narrative elements from a female perspective in her first two films. With Relic, she tackled what it looks like to have a “disease” within your family and how it works on women in its multi-generational character studies, and she even managed to squeeze out some intriguingly strong sequences when tasked with remaking- sorry, I mean crafting a prequel to Rosemary’s Baby in Apartment 7A.

The latter was more mundane than the former's intensely interwoven social commentary and haunted house narrative, but the American-Australian filmmaker has a style that uses distinctive perspectives to dig into women's social and internal plights while still delivering horror movie frights. It’s a one-two jab and uppercut that can work impressively when it’s moving cohesively. Her third feature film, Saccharine, aims for the same balance, particularly feeling like a more proper follow-up to Relic than Apartment 7A, and the results are, unfortunately, perhaps more mixed than one would have hoped for. 

 

Saccharine does earn some credit, though, because it touches on fascinating aspects of its narrative throughout, even if its messaging gets muddled. Like both previous films, James - who serves as the writer and director - wants all of the horror and plotting choices to mean something, and she absolutely tries to make that work. 

 

Machine Guns, Aliens, Horses, and High Speed U-Turns - The Movie: Hope (2026) Review

Director: Na Hong-jin

Notable Cast: Hwang Jung-min, Zo In-sung, Hoyeon, Alicia Vikander, Michael Fassbender, Taylor Russell, Cameron Britton, Lee Sang-hee, Um Mun-suk, Im Hyun-sik

 

For the start of this review, I want to note that Na Hong-jin, as a director and a writer, had already crafted three films that I would be very tempted to consider masterpieces. The Yellow Sea and The Chaser are incredibly grounded, gritty thrillers that blend action, drama, and horror nearly perfectly. The Wailing, his third film, is a masterpiece that sucker-punches its audience with suffocating folk-horror elements that bleed into dark comedy and some of the most thrilling slow-burn storytelling in genre cinema. 

 

Which is why, after seeing his latest ‘epic,’ Hope, I feel…dysregulated. 

 

Hope is Na Hong-jin drilling further into genre cinema with his swing at an action-spectacle flick. He once again weaves genres together in unconventional ways, and manages to craft a film that is, in the moment, absolutely thrilling to endure, with massive action set pieces, incredibly charming characters, and some of the most tense chases you will see in a film this year - if not this decade. Can’t say I wasn’t absolutely engaged through most of its 2.5+ hour runtime.

 

Yet, Hope is also perhaps the messiest and most baffling film I’ve seen this year. Moment to moment, I was glued to the screen, but its narrative and storytelling are wildly off-kilter at times, setting up expectations for characters, plot, or narrative, then either ignoring them or hammering them home with the power of 10 metric tons of nuclear alien fire. It makes choices that either make it the greatest dumb movie of all time or the dumbest great movie of all time. Depending on how you want to read Na Hong-jin’s intentions, I suppose.