REVIEWS IN A HURRY Back to First Page & Alphabetical Index
				Kung-Pow: Enter the Fist (2002, 81 min, PG13) **1/2 – Directed by and starring Steve Oedekerk.  Kung-fu parody that combines state-of-the-art technology with grade school humor.  Using the latest in digital wizardry, writer-director-star Oedekerk not only re-edits and re-dubs a martial arts flick from the 1970s, but actually inserts himself and others into the movie.  The Chosen One (Oedekerk) must avenge the murder of his family, and all manner of wedgies, bad dubbing, pants falling down, flatulence, and sexually ambiguous kung-fu masters ensue.  Childish but at times entertaining.
	Kids in the Hall:  Brain Candy (1996, 89 min, R) *** - Directed by Kelly Makin, starring Dave Foley and Mark McKinney.  The first (and probably only) feature from the Python-esque comedy troupe from Canada is an anarchic and wild look at a fictional drug guaranteed to make you happy.  The “Kids” all play multiple roles, including the soulless owner of the corporation that produces “Gleemonex” and the well-meaning but corruptible scientists who develop it.  Lesser roles include various people who take the drug, ranging from a closet (flaming) homosexual in denial to a lonely grandma.  The success of the movie’s satire is debatable but I laugh every time I watch it. Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003, 111 min, Color/B&W, R) **** - Directed by Quentin Tarantino, starring Uma Thurman and David Carradine.  Gorgeous and gory in-joke for movie lovers combines the lowest forms of pop-culture dreck:  the spaghetti western and the kung-fu movie.  After years in a coma, a former assassin known only as The Bride (Thurman) sets out to avenge herself on her former colleagues, led by her ex-lover Bill (Carradine).  Starting in Japan, no amount of bodyguards, slow-motion, gaping plot holes, goofy dialogue, bad editing, or over-the-top anything can stop her.  If you have the stomach and you love the movies, this one’s for you. Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004, 136 min, Color/B&W, R) ***1/2 – Directed by Quentin Tarantino, starring Uma Thurman and David Carradine.  Not the sequel to “Kill Bill: Volume 1,” but the rest of the movie; it was shot all at once and then separated when studio honchos considered it too long.  Director-writer Tarantino pulls some of the same tricks as he did in “Pulp Fiction,” in which he takes the ridiculous caricatures of “Vol. 1” and then, out of the blue, develops them enough to make us care in a strange, ironic way.  The Bride’s (Thurman) quest for revenge takes her to the American Southwest, and the more movies you’ve seen, the more this will make sense. The Killing (1956, 85 min, B&W, NR) ***1/2 – Directed by Stanley Kubrick, starring Sterling Hayden and Elisha Cook Jr..  Tightly-plotted and tautly-wound black-and-white noir about an ex-con (Hayden) out to pull a racetrack heist.  The movie jumps all over its own chronology as the ex-con assembles his men, foreshadowing Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs” nearly a half-century later, and, of course, there’s a treacherous dame manipulating a weak-willed man (Cook).  One of Kubrick’s (“2001,” “A Clockwork Orange”) first films, we can already detect his detachment and visual style. Killing Zoe (1994, 96 min, R) *** – Directed by Roger Avary, starring Eric Stoltz and Jean-Hugues Anglade.  Frenetic, low-budget heist movie driven by pure manic energy.  An American safecracker (Stoltz) joins a boyhood friend (Anglade) for a Paris bank robbery that goes horribly, horribly wrong.  Drugs, hookers, and gunplay ensue, not for the weak of heart.