Kevin Allen Movies

Fifteen-year-old CIA operative Cody Banks (played by Malcolm in the Middle star Frankie Muniz) is back in action in this comedy adventure, which sends the youthful secret agent to Old Blighty. Banks returns to Kamp Woody, the CIA training center disguised as a summer camp, where he's given a new partner, the bumbling but sharp-witted Derek (Anthony Anderson), and a new assignment, to track down a sinister double-agent who has made off with an experimental mind-control machine. The villain has made his way to Great Britain, so Banks is enrolled in an upscale private school in England, where he's forced to join the school band despite his lack of musical talent and finds himself working alongside Emily (Hannah Spearritt), a fellow teenage espionage agent. Keith David, Daniel Roebuck, and Cynthia Stevenson all return from the first film, while British filmmaker Kevin Allen takes over as director. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Craig Ferguson, best known to American audiences as Mr. Wick, the conniving boss who loves to fire people on The Drew Carey Show, co-wrote and starred in this mock-documentary about Crawford Mackenzie, Scotland's leading hairdresser. When Crawford receives an invitation to Los Angeles for the World Freestyle Hairstyling Championships, he eagerly hops the first flight to America, with a camera crew in tow to record his triumphant debut in the States. Once he arrives, he learns that he was invited to attend and observe but not to compete. Crawford is at first dejected, but he refuses to take the humiliation lying down; one way or another, Crawford is determined to show off his talents for the greater glory of Scottish hair styling. The supporting cast includes Mary McCormack, Sara Gilbert, Larry Miller, and Charles Napier; director Kevin Allen previously helmed the offbeat Scottish comedy Twin Town. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

In British television writer-director Kevin Allen's feature film debut, the industrial town of Swansea, Wales, is viewed through the post-punk lens of disaffected youth. Lower-class, crude, drug-addled brothers Julian and Jeremy (played by real-life brothers Llyr Evans and Rhys Ifans), steal cars, smoke dope, and terrorize the town on their joy rides. They are thought to be twins but really aren't. Their father Fatty (Hugh Ceredig) is injured while working for corrupt contractor Bryn Cartwright (William Thomas). Jeremy and Julian want to be compensated with money for their dad's injuries, but Cartwright refuses. Posing as a respectable businessman, he is actually a drug trafficker in cahoots with two corrupt policemen, Greyo (Dorien Thomas) and Terry (Dougray Scott). Greyo is smitten with the brothers' sister, who is a prostitute. The "twins" go after Cartwright and his associates with a vengeance, inflicting sick brutalities on their pets and their families. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide

Advertised as a Christmas special when it originally aired on December 26, 1995, "Yuletide Spirit" was actually the final first season episode of the British sitcom The Thin Blue Line. Everyone at the Gasforth police station suffers when a disgruntled Inspector Raymond Fowler loses the starring role in an amateur Christmas pantomime. Worse is to come, as the station is transformed into a makeshift maternity ward for a homeless couple. Meanwhile, in keeping with the tenor of the season, Detective Inspector Grim and Detective Constable Kray chase down a gang of crooked carolers! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The third series of French & Saunders, which originally aired on the BBC in 1990, produced the various clips assembled as French & Saunders: Gentlemen Prefer French & Saunders. Gone With the Wind, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, The Exorcist, and Dangerous Liaisons provide fodder for Hollywood parodies, but much of the material focuses on original characters. Chat show hosts and pundits, cleaning ladies with attitude, women in prison -- Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders embody them all. Elsewhere, the duo aim their satiric sights at both the publishing and PR industries. Ladies' magazines and late-in-life hangers-on of Andy Warhol also get their due. There's also an opera documentary in which dueling divas belt out Kylie Minogue's "I Should Be So Lucky" and a feminine twist on the dirty-old-men characters who have been one of the show's staples from the beginning. "Modern Mother and Daughter," the sketch that provided the basis for Absolutely Fabulous, is included, with French originating the role that would be played by Julia Sawalha in the actual series. Sharp-eared viewers will catch a snippet of Inner City's Detroit techno classic "Good Life" in "Modern Mother"; sharp-eyed audiences, meanwhile, will notice that Eleanor Bron, who would go on to play Patsy's poetess mother in Absolutely Fabulous: Birth, appears as an over-the-top academic commentator in the Warhol segment. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide

A restaurant worker (Lanah Pellay) is fired from a posh London eatery, so the man returns with a band of terrorists, who have their own ideas about how to run a restaurant, and they begin feeding new customers with old customers. Motorhead provides the music. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide