If Kill Bill Vol. 1 was Quentin Tarantino's ode to kung-fu and samurai films, NPR's Bob Mondello says Kill Bill Vol. 2 qualifies as his paean to spaghetti Westerns.
Bob Mondello, who jokes that he was a jinx at the beginning of his critical career — hired to write for every small paper that ever folded in Washington, just as it was about to collapse — saw that jinx broken in 1984 when he came to NPR.
Also in theaters this week, Jack Black and Paul Rudd star in a meta reimagining of Anaconda, Amanda Seyfried in a Shaker origin story, and Ralph Fiennes plays a World War I-era choirmaster.
NPR Staff recommends several non-fiction titles from Books We Love: "Good Movies As Old Books," "Pakistan," "Baldwin: A Love Story," and "One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This."