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Kill Bill - Vol. 1

Kill Bill - Vol. 1

List Price: $29.99
Your Price: $19.49
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Why the B&W? Read on, MacDuff....
Review: Why watch a film that pulls it's punches at the climatic fight scene in order to secure an R rating when you can watch the unrated Ichi The Killer? This will neither please the Extreme Asian crowd nor the Tarantino fanbase who have seen him do all this better before. Likewise, the Sergio Leone/Morricone animated pastiche is accurate but so what? The Ironside music was particularly embarrassing. Be honest, is this any different to the latest Charlie's Angels movie?

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: cartoonish but stylish
Review: Ultra-violent and cartoonish, this is an hommage to some of Tarantino's favorite cult films and directors. Uma Thurman slices and dices her way through tons of bad guys with her trusty Japanese sword, deftly defying gravity to her advantage. At times, this seems like "Crouching Tiger" for the MTV generation. The violence is so over the top that it really is funny, especially when limbs and heads get severed and there's geyers of blood spurting forth.

Part of the film is animie that explains the origin of the Lucy Liu character. It is highly stylized in its own right and commands your complete attention.

Some of the non-action scenes are too long and drawn out, which is this film's biggest flaw.

If you're looking for complex plot and thought-provoking dialogue, look elsewhere. If you're looking for mindless action, this is about as stylized and as funny as it gets. Blows away films that take themself too seriously, like the Blade series. Look for part II next year.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: 'Kill Bill' tops the list for best flick of the year!
Review: Wow, I am really amazed at this piece of cinema. I love this film hardcore. It's so bad..., it's not even funny (well, occasionally it actually is). The plot is simplistic as follows: A woman gets beaten severely by the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad (DiVAS), and is then shot in the head by the head of the squad, Bill. She awakes four years later from a coma and discovers she has lost her unborn baby. She seeks revenge for the people who beat her and killed her unborn child. I can't tell you much more, but I have to say this film has to be one of my favorite flicks of all time now. Quentin Tarantino has done it again I believe, and he has done it very well.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Return of the Master
Review: "Kill Bill, vol. 1" is an incredibly violent, cartoonishly gorey, and ultimately very watchable film. I won't bore anyone by recounting the plot, as many others have done that ad nauseum. What I will tell you is that I think the movie is extremely entertaining, and that "Q and U" have created a highly memorable movie character. QT certainly borrows loads of cimematic and stylistic techniques from previous eras and multiple genres... but so what?!?! He is confident enough to create films that will not be confused with any other directors, and much of his borrowing is tongue-in-cheek. IN the end, perhaps the most important question about any moviw where you KNOW there's a second installment is whether or not you'll go see it. In the case of "Kill Bill", I cannot wait to see volume two.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Its nice to see Uma Thurman again
Review: This is one of the best movies i have seen in the last few years.
I've been waiting to see it for a year and a half, first Pulp Fiction now this, Quentin Tarantino is the man. My favorite part
in Kill Bill was the 10min animation & the blood bath battle at
the end of the movie. Uma Thurman & Lucy Liu really impressed me in this fim and i cant wait to see the upcoming Kill Bill vol.2.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: OOZING WITH STYLE, BUT..
Review: Sure, it's a typical Tarantino visual feast with delicious camera shots from wicked angles. And yes, as a martial arts movie it may hang with the top of the tops (with some less than subtle influences of "Crouching Tiger".) The soundtrack is to die for. As is the killer combo of Ms. Therman and Ms. Liu. The grandiose fighting finale would match, or even beat, the 'Burly Brawl' from Matrix Reloaded.

But sadly that's about all going for the movie.

Tarantino's 4th film nowhere near matches his sheer class from Jackie Brown or Pulp Fiction. Once the hype to this two-part snazz has faded, I wonder if people'll realise that behind its glossy veneer this film really is quite uninspired, stylish maybe, original somewhat, but a predictable script that fails to intrigue.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A bloody laugh
Review: It's a movie to see twice. It's pulp fiction, a comic book, deadly serious, and a great laugh. Plus...there is clearly a skilled craftsman behind the camera. All in all such a curiosity as this will leave one thinking. More than most films do these days. Lastly, Tarantino should not have cut the film in two but had the whole shebang in one run with an intermission. That would have really toasted the critics.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: WHOA
Review: This movie was simply amazing. It was by far the most violent and gory movie I've seen before, and that was very entertaining. The "fake" wounds were so overdramatic that the fact that they looked so false was almost funny--actually I was probably the only one dying laughing at those parts.

The movie was set up like a book, making it seem as if it were a book converted straight from text (very artistically done). While the movie has some very serious issues to deal with--the plot is so twisted, how can it not?!--there are many funny moments (some I don't think were supposed to be funny, but they definitely were!).

Whoever doesn't mind seeing a shower of blood every five seconds (honestly) and really wants to be entertained, see this with a bunch of friends! And buy the soundtrack, it's AMAZING! I love the irony of the music during the movie, too. While there's a huge fight scene with limbs being sliced off every second, there's happy fun jazz music playing in the background.

The overdramatic acting is perfect for this movie, it's all about being overdone. I've never seen anything like it, and I HIGHLY recommend it.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Bloody "Kill Bill" slices through combat
Review: To be fair, Tarantino never asked anybody to take him seriously. But critics did anyway and set him up for the fall that he is about to take with "Kill Bill: Volume 1," a 90-minute orgy of endless sword fights, multiple severed limbs and gushing blood. It boggles the mind that after six years of silence, all Tarantino has to offer is this garbage.

I say this with no glee. There was a time when Tarantino seemed like the most promising filmmaker of his generation. And of course, he still has talent.

He has flair. He knows where to place a camera and how to maximize tension and take moments to the extreme. But with "Kill Bill," we realize that his flash and panache are in the service of absolute emptiness. This puerile, ugly fantasy is the sad but unmistakable product of a consciousness not worthy of serious attention.

In fairness, since no critic, including myself, saw the final version of the film, I'll go back for a second viewing after the movie opens.

The film -- really half a film -- takes its inspiration from the kung fu movies of the '70s and the Japanese and Hong Kong action extravaganzas of the '80s and '90s. Perhaps that in itself should serve as a clue. Tarantino's inspiration is coming secondhand, not from life but from fantasy, and from other people's fantasies, to boot. Once it was possible to assume that Tarantino's pop culture references were an ironic critique on the barrenness of media-age culture, but there's no mistaking it now: Tarantino's work is not a commentary on the barrenness. It is the barrenness.

Yet all would be forgiven if he at least turned in a decent kung fu movie. He doesn't. Instead of something kinetic and fast-paced, we get a ponderous wallow in gore. Originally conceived as one movie, "Kill Bill" is being released as two films, but "Volume 1" does not play like a discrete entity. Scenes are allowed to go on forever, as if to stretch this installment to feature length. And then it doesn't really end; it just stops. At least it does stop.

Uma Thurman's blood-covered face fills the screen in the movie's first shot.

She plays the Bride, an elite assassin whose wedding has been interrupted by her former associates. They've come and killed all her guests, and now her former boss, Bill (David Carradine), is there off camera to finish her off. As he shoots her in the head, the screen goes black. It's a disturbing opening, but it's also arresting. At this point, there's still hope.

"Kill Bill: Volume 1" is essentially a revenge saga. The Bride wakes up after a four-year coma, and just as soon as she can get her atrophied legs moving, she starts working her way down a list, killing people. In that way, the movie is like "A Chorus Line": The story doesn't move forward but sideways, with each character getting a turn.

When the Bride shows up at the door of one enemy (Vivica A. Fox), the camera, as in an Asian action film, moves in for a pair of ominous close-ups as the soundtrack blares. It's an amusing touch, until we realize that Tarantino isn't making a parody but a bloated American tribute. The '70s- sounding soundtrack is cranked just into the zone of distortion, to replicate how it might have sounded in a small, empty theater 30 years ago. It's an authentic touch, but it's also 90 minutes of very loud, very bad music.

The movie is full of similar indulgences, including a tedious sequence about the making of a sword, and, even worse, a dull expository sequence, in which we find out how an American-born woman, Cottonmouth (Lucy Liu), became head of a Japanese crime syndicate. It's rendered as a Japanese anime, with lots of cartoon blood. Mainly, though, the movie is about combat -- with scenes of Thurman kicking with her long legs and holding a sword with two hands, as the bodies pile up in a circle around her.

Heads, arms and legs are cut off, and the blood gushes as from a shower. These dismemberments are not isolated incidents but the substance of the film, a blood-running motif. The centerpiece is a ridiculously overlong and grotesque scene in which the Bride, in pursuit of Cottonmouth, kills and dismembers scores, maybe hundreds, of people. The scene must go on for 30 minutes. It feels even longer.

As the body count mounts, and the blood soaks the floor, "Kill Bill" gradually begins to seem like a deeply neurotic expression hiding behind a screen of genre convention. Among Tarantino's many women with swords, we get Go Go (Chiaki Kuriyama), a 17-year-old in a Catholic school uniform who is Cottonmouth's lethal bodyguard. Whose delicious fantasy is this? And when steel nails penetrate her brain, and her eyes fill with blood, is that supposed to be funny? Or cool? Or arousing?

Let's just call it pornography. And let's just admit it's indefensible.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: great movie...
Review: a lot of people seem to misunderstand director quentin tarantino's motives in the scenes he shows in this film. i've read many people refer this movie as a hong kong action flick, but i believe tarantino rather chose to emulate the japanese anime style rather than the hong kong martial arts style. this can be quite evident to those who have seen the japanese anime (animated series and movies) "ninja scroll." the idea of blood squirting out like a fountain is a common theme in many japanese anime and manga (comics). tarantino makes it also quite obvious when part of the movie turned into an animation. hong kong films are more "crouching tiger, hidden dragon" with people flying around. although there were some incredible acrobatic scenes, i believe tarantino wanted to portray the japanese samurai/anime style.

what the story may lack in a seemingly simplistic plot, tarantino more than makes up for in style and allusion to the japanese anime genre and, of course, the 70's music and theme. the humor is obviously very black, mixing the death and mutilation of people with the cartoon-like gushing of blood everywhere. but like i said, this is to emulate japanese anime.

there are those who abhor and do not find any interest in the japanese anime style. and there are those who are die-hard fans of japanese anime. tarantino took a risk to bring to life what was previously only viewable as cartoons or comics. it's like bringing batman, superman, spiderman, daredevil, x-men, and the hulk to the big screen to americans. what was previously only imagined in the minds of comic artists and cartoon artists, he brought to the big screen. i'm a big fan of japanese anime, and could easily see the allusions to "ninja scroll," "akira," and other great anime. for those new to the genre, they may not understand it and just laugh it off as a bloody action flick with no plot. but i believe that tarantino made a great stylish film.


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