Kung Fu Hustle 2004

Celebrate the opening of an outrageously strong That’s Incredible Cinema line-up with this once-only screening of the hilarious and breathtaking Hong Kong mega-hit on the big screen. “It's been a long time – you might have to go back to the Bruce Lee era – since a martial-arts film busted through the limits of physical freedom as wildly, and promiscuously, as Kung Fu Hustle, Stephen Chow's insanely entertaining smash fantasy… Chow, perhaps the first action star and filmmaker to be as influenced by classic cartoons as by the karate-chop balletics of human movement, directs like a gonzo fusion of Tarantino and Tex Avery… The chief villains, or so it appears in the leaky madhouse of what I'll kindly call a plot, are the Axe Gang, a tribe of top-hatted brutes… who wreak bloody havoc on Pig Sty Alley. It's fair to think that these whirligig cutthroats have set the standard for homicidal omnipotence, but they're pussycats next to the Beast (Leung Siu-lung), who emerges in his tacky hospital sandals, like a Dr Lecter gone to seed, to prove that he can kill all comers. It's up to Chow, as the poseur-turned-hero, to match him blow for mighty surreal blow. He does it in a climax of high-flying ultraviolence that will leave you gasping between giggles.” — Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

“Escalating from straightforward kick-punch-and-parry through aerial acrobatics to delirious CGI freestyle… Kung Fu Hustle is a kung fu parody that's also a terrific kung fu movie.” — J. Hoberman, Village Voice