every movie ever made, in alphabetical order
(we’re in the K’s, with anti-alphabetical cheats)

Kafka (1991)
Kagemusha: The Shadow Warrior (1980)
Kamikaze (1986)
Kandittundu (2021)
Kangaroo Court (2009)
Kansas City (1996)
Dog’s Dialogue (1979)

— — —

Kafka (1991)

Steven Soderbergh made this strange and stoic film, with Jeremy Irons as Franz Kafka. It doesn’t quite work, but also doesn’t bore.

Set in Prague not long after the first World War, everything is gothic and mysterious. Franz works at an insurance company, writes as a hobby, and his only friend has been murdered. The police are formally investigating, but mostly just pushing papers, while Franz follows clues that take him to Gabriela (Theresa Russell), a co-worker involved in shadowy politics with even more shadowy cohorts. As often happens, Russell is so good you’ll wish the movie was more about her, maybe less about Irons, who can’t quite pull off ‘bewildered’.

String-heavy music is suitably eerie. Politics and paranoia come into play, with random bursts of screaming chaos. I was never certain what was going on as it was going on, which was probably the intent, but when it ended, I still didn’t know what all had happened, which I suspect wasn’t on purpose.

Alec Guinness, Iam Holm, and Jeroen Krabbé co-star.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Kagemusha: The Shadow Warrior (1980)

A petty thief is pressed into duty impersonating a samurai warlord. There’s a striking resemblance, since both are played by Tatsuya Nakadai, and Akira Kurosawa is the writer-director, so this rather ordinary premise becomes much, much better than it sounds.

The film is set in the 1570s, when guns were new, so there’s more gunfire than sword fights. Also, some extended and very real horse agony that wouldn’t be allowed in an American film. 80% of the movie is the drama that swirls around the impersonation, but it doesn’t build to the heroic ending you’re expecting. For Kurosawa, that would be too easy.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Kamikaze (1986)

A mean, fat, slovenly scientist is laid off, comes home to argue with his family and watch TV. In his room, he’s invented a machine that zaps and kills the people on the telly, so whenever something’s on the tube he doesn’t like, he pushes a floor pedal at home and the victim explodes at the studio. There’s no mention of what happens if he doesn’t enjoy, say, an episode of The Beverly Hillbillies, or any show that isn’t broadcast live.

A cop perhaps addicted to tranquilizers investigates, the only sympathetic characters end up dead, the science is ridonkulous, the scientist seems stupid, and the movie gets dumber as it tries to implicate, I’m not sure what, the entire French government (?) in the murders.

Any random maladjusted 13-year-old white boy could’ve written this, but it took three grown men instead, and one of them’s Luc Beeson (Léon: The Professional).

Verdict: NO.

♦ ♦ ♦

Kandittundu (2021)

In pleasant black-and-white animation, an old doofer prone to tall tales and exaggeration tells several stories of magic and mysticism, occasionally interrupted by questions from his increasingly skeptical son. Dad has all the answers, but they’re all bullshit, for twelve minutes of good fun from India.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Kangaroo Court (2009)

The trial of Osama bin Laden is told in a 16-minute SNL-style skit, with a few amusing poem/songs. It’s borderline funny, and better while the characters sing.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Kansas City (1996)

Tough chick Blondie (Jennifer Jason Leigh) kidnaps rich lady Carolyn, a/k/a Pussy (Miranda Richardson), hoping to parley Pussy’s life for Blondie’s husband, who’s in severe hot water for robbing a black gangster while wearing blackface.

The movie’s directed and co-written by Robert Altman, a Kansas City native, in a story of that city’s raucous high-crime & jazz era, the 1930s. I lived in K.C. for 25 years from 2001-2004, and it’s not as lively as the movie any more, which is not to say the movie’s lively. Whether from sights and sounds or plain osmosis, though, I certainly knew where the film was taking place, often down to a few square blocks.

Leigh is always good and often great, so it’s startling that here, she’s not. She plays Blondie with all the depth of the character’s name — as a stereotype always-angry lowbrow, chewing gum and making faces, wearing bad teeth and yakking with a fake accent. Maybe Leigh’s doing the acting equivalent of a jazz solo, but she’s the leading lady, and plays that one note all the way.

Harry Belafonte is terrific as mobster ‘Seldom Seen’. Steve Buscemi, Dermot Mulroney, and Michael Murphy are featured, along with plenty of great music and authentic locations. It’s meanderingly watchable, but not Altman’s best.

Verdict: MAYBE.

♦ ♦ ♦

Dog’s Dialogue (1979)
a/k/a Dog’s Symposium

From the title and the opening shot of dogs barking in a meadow, you know what’s coming, but guess what? You don’t know jack.

The dogs are only incidental to a 22-minute short story, told mostly in snapshots La jetée style. It’s about love, debauchery, doublecross, and murder, and becomes so dark it’s kinda funny, though I suspect normals would be aghast instead of giggling.

For sheer artistry, it’s an accomplishment by co-writer & director Raúl Ruiz. The first half of the story effectively mirrors the second half, as events loop around to begin again, and it’s all occasionally punctuated by the barking of dogs. Pay attention, and it’s mildly spectacular.

Verdict: YES.

2/23/2026

Logo illustration by Jeff Meyer.
— — —
If you can’t find a movie I’ve reviewed, or if you have recommendations, please drop me a note.
— — —
No talking once the lights dim, and only real butter on the popcorn, not that fake yellow stuff.