Wish Dragon (2021)

While others may or may not watch another animated family feature with "Wish" in the title around now, I opted for something a little more popular if less discussed. Mainly I chose it because it was one of the few movies on my Netflix list that promised to be both cheerful enough for the season and not too insipid. A 98-minute runtime isn't bad either.

In a modern Shanghai slum, Din Song (Jimmy Wong) has been working in food delivery -- at the expense of his education, to the outrage of his mom (Constance Wu) -- in order to afford an appearance upper-class enough to gain entrance to the 19th birthday party of aristocrat Li Na Wang (Natasha Liu Bordizzo), who was his best friend before her father (Will Yun Lee) forced her to move away so he could chase his economic dream. One day, an eccentric customer (Ronny Chieng) pays Din with a jade teapot, which turns out to contain a dragon, Long (John Cho), who's obligated to grant the bearer three wishes. Din has a fair idea of how to spend one wish, but he'll have to watch out for some thugs hired to grab the teapot.

Police Story (1985)

Had I realized I was about to see another action flick, I would not have put this next on my queue. Still, it's not all that similar. No sci-fi here, just the slightly off physics of Jackie Chan.

Hong Kong policeman Chan Ka-Kui (Chan) gets some positive attention for arresting crime lord Chu Tao (Chor Yuen), but convicting him will be tough. Ka-Kui is assigned to guard a reluctant witness, Chu's secretary (Brigitte Lin), who manages to slip away, disbelieving his claims of danger. A subplot involves his girlfriend (Maggie Cheung) getting the wrong idea about the two of them. Not content to beat the charges, Chu arranges to frame Ka-Kui for murder. Chief Inspector Raymond Li (Lam Kwok-Hung) trusts Ka-Kui but is too by-the-book to forgo an arrest, so Ka-Kui runs off to deal with matters irregularly.

Shaolin (2011)

This must be the first movie I've seen because it was excerpted in a video where an expert rates on-screen kung fu veracity. I decided it had been long enough since my last martial art viewing.

In the 1920s, Hou Jie (Andy Lau) is a warlord as brutal and treacherous as the next -- until his daughter (Shimada Runa) gets killed, his wife (Fan Bingbing) walks out on him, and he becomes a powerless fugitive with a bounty on his head. Not knowing what else to do with his life, he joins Shaolin Monastery, which he had recently desecrated, the abbot (Yu Hai) being more forgiving than most of the monks. He finds a new level of emotional peace, but his fighting days aren't over: His former deputy and "sworn brother," Cao Man (Nicholas Tse), is perhaps even worse than Hou used to be, at least with regard to refugees. And these monks are not the hands-off, super-pacifistic kind of Buddhists.

Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016)

Having enjoyed the first two in the series, I was rather dismayed to sense a lukewarm reception for this. Sure, it blew away Norm of the North in its first duel, but even weeks before Zootopia stole its thunder, few people seemed interested in it. Even the dumb-looking Sing is ahead by a majority of estimates. Well, as one of the minority of viewers who preferred the second movie to the first, I thought I might beg to differ again. Besides, I saw nothing to lose by streaming.

You've likely seen ads indicating that fanboy-turned-champion Po (Jack Black) finally reunites with other pandas, whom he had presumed wiped out. As hinted at the end of KFP2, the first one to find him is his original father, Li (Bryan Cranston), provoking the jealousy of adoptive father Mr. Ping (James Hong). This is not as incidental to the main conflict as you'd think, for the latest national menace, the oddly solid spirit of a bull named Kai (J.K. Simmons), can be defeated only by a "master of qi" -- pandas' historical area of expertise. Po accepts Li's invitation to the hidden panda village, where, if he doesn't master qi in time, at least he'll learn more about his identity, the question of which is plaguing him once more.