The Killer (1989)

★★★½
There are basic themes explored throughout the Heroic Bloodshed genre, and The Killer exemplifies all of them. It is one of director John Woo's most ambitious projects, taking the crime story concept told to perfection in his A Better Tomorrow and the frenetic gunplay found in A Better Tomorrow II and combining them into this explosive tale of brotherhood, betrayal and redemption. It has a conflicted assassin who values loyalty and honor above all else and a cop who uncovers the good in him. When these two join forces, they make for a most satisfying partnership against a Triad organization that is slowly undergoing unrest due to corrupting influences. The story tells of a clash between an older breed of gangsters and the next generation, which includes members less likely to abide by the rules. Prosperity breeds contentment, which gives rise to complacency. Those who come in later, far removed from building the structure that beckons them, embrace a new way of thinking that poisons the well. Will adherents to the old ways push back? That's where Ah Jong comes in.

Killing Me Softly (2002)

★
Killing Me Softly exists because some filmmakers thought it would be a good idea to make an erotic thriller starring two good-looking actors and put them in a bunch of sex scenes. It can work, but here, the script was apparently the last thing anyone considered. Maybe someone should have thought up a decent plot first.

King Arthur (2004)

★★★
If given a choice, I'll take John Boorman's version of the Arthurian legend, Excalibur, any day of the week over Antoine Fuqua's King Arthur. This new envisioning purports to be based on the actual historical figure who inspired the stories, but there are still plenty of routine plot elements present, right down to the hero and villain meeting on the battlefield, to raise a few eyebrows. The movie's accuracy is hardly the point, though. Writer David Franzoni took the characters we already know and gave them new backgrounds and incorporated them into a new adventure, to give us something unfamiliar to watch. It turned out to be pretty good, which surprised me. He'll probably tell you he was being faithful to true events, but as the opening caption tells us, recent archaeological discoveries have uncovered the true King Arthur. Since the evidence is recent, we hardly know the whole story. Give the archaeologists time to keep digging.

The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977)

★★½
The Kentucky Fried Movie is the first effort by the ZAZ team, which consisted of David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker. Throughout the '80s and into the early '90s, these men wrote and directed some of the funniest movies ever made. Though they didn’t develop the idea of the cinematic parody, they used it frequently as the method to deliver their jokes. They would pick genres or current events and apply a humorous spin on them. This approach resulted in their best work, Top Secret! and The Naked Gun.