Q. Tarrantino's "Kill Bill"- Good or Stinker?

[Sikander]

Re: Re: Q. Tarrantino's "Kill Bill"- Good or Stinker?

Originally posted by Static Universe


The irony here being that Uma looked her ghastly anorexic-lookingist in Pulp Fiction. From the previews I've been of Kill Bill she looks much healthier now.

Of course, Uma T. does nothing for me and I think she only ever looked good once, stepping off the giant seashell in Terry Gilliam's Baron Munchausen.

But WTF do I know?

She didn't look too bad making out with Marie Curie in Henry and June either, but she blew me completely away in Munchausen too.

[Sikander]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Q. Tarrantino's "Kill Bill"- Good or Stinker?

Originally posted by Static Universe

Ah yes, I'd blocked that from my memory because Glenn Close was in it.

It's a good movie besides the sex. What's wrong with Glenn Close, too old or something?

[FrustratedPoet]

Originally posted by Uncle Sparky
I suspect many of our European posters won't be able to see it until it comes out in video.

[Lung]

Overrated

I love it how people take an arty movie like anything made by Tarantino and assign imagined deepness to it and proclaim it as a masterpiece

Let Tarantino do a mindless porno and i'll fork out money to see it

[Static Universe]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Q. Tarrantino's "Kill Bill"- Good or Stinker?

Originally posted by Sikander

It's a good movie besides the sex. What's wrong with Glenn Close, too old or something?

I've just found her too disturbing since I first saw her in The World According to Garp. I block all John Lithgow movies from my memory as well...

[BustaMike]

Originally posted by Lung
Overrated

I love it how people take an arty movie like anything made by Tarantino and assign imagined deepness to it and proclaim it as a masterpiece

Let Tarantino do a mindless porno and i'll fork out money to see it

All that post is is total misunderstanding on your part. There's deepness imagined or real in Kill Bill. The movie is straight forward, but near perfect at what it's attempting to be. Music choice, quirky humor, tons of style, fight scenes - it's all perfect, and the plot is adequate enough for it all to work. It's not supposed to be deep. It's supposed to be exactly what it is.

[JohnT]

As somebody who grew up in the seventies, I have to say that Kill Bill was a freakin' awesome movie on a number of levels, funny as hell, and a lot "deeper" than many of you are giving it credit for.

As Tom Wolfe writes novels about cities, Tarantino films movies about his media collection - he wants us to know what his favorite songs are, his favorite movie scenes, everything. Kill Bill is a hommage to everything that Tarantino found cool as he was growing up: Ironside, crappy slasher flicks like I Spit on Your Grave, the score from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, anime, the Green Hornet, martial art films, Kung Fu, Charlies Angels and a host of other "gangs of women who kick butt" exploitation films, put together with the attention of an obsessive compulsive. My favorite hommage to the seventies was at the very beginning of the movie, when he recreated those cheesy NBC 1972 movie-of-the-week promo shots.

Kill Bill is a uniquely American movie, one that I think would've been impossible for a John Woo (for example) to write and direct - Tarantino's knowledge of American pop culture is damn near encyclopedic, and for one who grew up in it, I found the film damn near irresistable.

The plot is kind of standard exploitation fare (the movies KB is paying hommage): Woman is attacked, left for dead, and re-awakens out of a coma to go on a killing spree. Tarantino shakes this up with his traditional non-linear narrative style, plus an... anime? animation? animetion! ( ) sequence that answers the all important question of

Spoiler:

How do you get an American audience to accept a story sequence involving a little girl who watches the brutal death of her parents (at the age of 4, I think), and then, at the age of 11, takes advantage of the head killers's penchant for pedophilia by killing him while he is screwing her? Answer: Use animetion!

There are a number of disturbing concepts and ideas brought forth in this movie that are secondary to the action, but primary in their effect upon the mood and the feel of the Bride's world. St. Leo made mention of one such concept, there are others (and, I'm sure, more to come).

There are also tons of little details that give you a glimpse into the characters emotions and the backstory. One that I liked was the Bride's list of names - her letters become larger and more jagged on the last two names, indicating that her hatred of those two characters must be particularly strong.

There's going to be one bad-ass fight between her and Darryl Hannah. I can't wait.

[Billy Bob Mode]
Breasts: 0
Body Count: 100? Mostly blade wounds of a particularly nasty nature, a couple of gun shots.
Body parts that were cut off/bitten off/crushed by door: 200, minimum.
Severed arteries, as evidenced by the frequent use of that new Tarantino art form, the arterial spray, nay, the arterial fountain: 60.
Number of times I closed my eyes: 3
Number of times I wish I had done so: 13
Number of audience members who walked out due to being offended (3 during the Buck scene alone!): 6
Rating: 9.5/10. But I can understand how it isn't for everybody.

[st_swithin]

I think I would have been more excited to see it had there been anyone but David Carridine in it. I still can't forgive that bastard for taking Bruce Lee's role in "Kung Fu".

I mean, F the American people if they can't handle seeing an Asian in a leading role. Myself included - I'm as American as the next guy.

As far as romance including sex with a comatose patient, see "Talk to Her" ("Habla con Ella"). Very moving and well-written and acted. Javier Cámara is my new hero.

[Static Universe]

Saw Kill Bill tonight and I'm giving it three thumbs up.

Great fights, cinematography, acting (except for Hannah), and sets. Tarantino continues to impress me, and I just hope we don't have to wait so long for the fifth Tarantino film.

I won't say it changed my position on Uma Thurman not being that hot. She looked good here, but she had ugly toes, which was a big turn-off. She is one of her generation's best actresses though, and she pretty much managed to carry the entire movie on her own.

Daryl Hannah is really showing her age, and her total lack of acting ability as well. Too bad Kelly Lynch played the villian in Charlies Angels, as she would have been excellent in this role. Why Tarantino went with Hannah is beyond me.

I'm looking forward to the next installment.

[St Leo]

Well, I might as well post the review from my blog. This thread shall never die.

---

Kill Bill Volume I by Quentin Tarantino
Atheism: 9
Technophilia: 9
Tilt: 10
Average: 9.3

"Revenge is a dish best served cold." - an Ancient Klingon Proverb

That framed quotation sets the mood for the rest of the movie. The style keeps you chuckling. Limbs are pulverized in the sort of poetic motion that is worthy of a Coleridge poem. Blood spurts in delightfully preposterous fountains of joy.

An assassin, whose entire wedding party was wasted five years ago, wakes up from a coma and gets medieval on the executioners. By medieval, I mean Yakuza medieval. By executioners, I mean hot female executioners. By wakes up, I mean wakes up and kills corrupt hospital officials. By coma, I mean a prolonged period of lack of consciousness. By a, I mean an article preceding a hitherto unmentioned undefined and unknown to listener English noun. By [space], I mean that you are allowed to breathe at that point.

Have you breathed? Good. You aren't allowed to anymore.

Btw, when I say "hot female executioners", do I sound like Zap Brannigan?:P

The music 0wnZ. The sound 0wnZ. The visuals 0wn. The characterization 0wnZ. The plot... is good. The action 0wnZ.

I am sure there are people who are going to complain about the movie not being thought-provoking. Good for them. They should learn to read and write one of these days. Making a movie thought-provoking is like laying out train tracks of aethetically varying widths -- it misses the whole point.

Go sell a few pints of your bodily fluids and see this movie.

Anti-hype review: It almost doesn't sux0r. Unfortunately, I am not the writer/director/producer, so it inevitably does.

---

[Drogue]

It is a great film. Loved every second on it. Indeed, it is the only film I've watched with my SO that I've managed to watch the whole off I went in wanting to see a fun, well-done, but pretty mindless violence movie. I didn't expect to laugh half as much as I did, and I didn't expect it to go together half as well as it did. The anime and B&W sections fitted in perfectly, the plot worked, there was humour and personality amid the violence, and there was some beautiful fight scenes. The best slasher I've ever seen, and a beautifully made film. Well worth being a Tarantino

[The Emperor Fabulous]

St Leo...your review is completely misleading

I found the movie to NOT be atheistic...

just saw it tonight...found it thrilling...AND thought-provoking

[Drogue]

I don't understand what could be atheistic in the film?

I found it thrilling, and thought-provoking in places, on the nature of revenge, and the morality of her actions, however I don't think the intention was to be thought-provoking. I think most of St Leo's review goes with what I think, however there are bits I disagree, and the emphasis I would put differently. But all in all, it is a beautiful, relatively-mindless kung-fun/slasher film, with great acting and directing.

[Dis]

I'll try to see it today or tomorrow, and I'll write a "real" review

[Dinner]

It was thrilling and action packed with a half way decent plot but I got a little bored during the 45 minute long fight scene which involved several dozen characters who we knew nothing about. It would have been better if a bit more background information and character development occurred. As it is the characters are flat and don't develop at all.

Also I found several illogical inconsistencies such as right when Black Momba wakes up and starts crying how does she know four years have passed? No one has told her and she hasn’t seen anything with the date on it. She flies to Japan and kills the first woman then flies back to California and kills the second woman during which she’s still driving the same truck she stole from the nurse she murdered at the beginning of the film. In the weeks between when she killed the nurse and the John wouldn’t the cops have found the dead bodies and put out an APB on the stolen truck?