Christmas Cinema Viewing - Pulpy Thrillers and Pointless Bum Nummers
The wife and I like to, over the Christmas period, visit the movie theatre and check out all the new films pushing and fighting their way into the multi-screen havens of stale popcorn, rancid piss smells and cough created germs at the hope of the almighty seasonal dollar.
This year was no exception.
Saturday December 22nd we strolled in and watched new Tom Cruise vehicle, Jack Reacher.
Now, firstly, a couple of things: I have never read a Jack Reacher book and I was only excited to see this film, initially for 2 reasons
1) Action Cruise tends to be good Cruise and
2) Werner herzog as a Bond style villain with a comically milky eye.
Apart from those things I had fairly low expectations and they were further lowered when I was set upon on Twitter and told that it was a load of old rubbish and I should avoid it.
Well I'll tell you the problem with Jack Reacher the movie and no, Lee Child purists, it has nothing to do with Tom Cruise's height you bunch of negative whiny bitches. The problem with Jack Reacher the movie was the marketing. As always marketing companies (who should really change their name to mismarketing companies or talentless hacks, they can take their pick) have fouled this up and advertised it as a relatively dumb action film. This is to do the film a disservice as it has a clever witty script, it trundles along at a decent pace, the performances are excellent and it's a good old fashioned pulpy, unpretentious, wise-crakin', ass-whuppin' good time of a conspiracy thriller.
It has a twisty-turny-yet-fairly-obvious-if-you-know-how-these-things-go type story to tell and it gets in and out with no fuss. The action is good, clear, tight and to the point too with a great finale that manages to amuse, thrill and surprise in a satisfying way.
In the shadow of the events recently in Connecticut it's a little tricky in parts because it does fall squarely on the side of the right wing where guns are concerned but, to be fair, that is hardwired into its western style, dime novel sensibility.
Lastly the casting of Werner Herzog is a stroke of sheer genius, every word he utters (and that's not a lot as he doesn't have nearly enough scenes) is the sort of nonsensical yet deep sounding babble that drips from the Bavarian's lips as easy as if he were reading a shopping list. It's an absolute wonder to behold and, actually, a little went a long way where he was concerned, any more and it would've veered into really questionable and confusing Bond style villain antics and that would've derailed the simplicity and succinctness with which Christopher McQuarrie told the story.
The wife and I thoroughly enjoyed this, sorry if you didn't that is a real shame because this movie is fun, aware of its cliches but written well enough to not over play them.
8 out of 10
Next up was This is 40 on Dec 24th
which really needed to be renamed 'Man these attractive white folk who are their own worst enemy really do whine ALOT!'
Ok, let's get started. I have a love hate relationship with Judd Apatow. I love that he has made possible some really great comedy films and that without him comedy in the last 10 years might have been just whatever Tyler Perry finds funny this week but I hate Judd Apatow because of his clear belief that, in his own directed films at least, that he is some Woody Allen like exposer of deep truths and a witty commentator on the silly little flaws of human nature. I also hate him because he seems to think showing naked bits of people that are usually, thankfully covered up is somehow hilarious and daring... oh and he produces that shitfest of incessantly pointless whiny drivel and mind numbingly shallow pile of arse 'Girls'... oh and he puts his famous musician friends in movies... oh and he needs someone to tell him to fucking stop once in a while.
Lets make something clear, hardly any film needs to be over 2hrs long and certainly not a comedy. OK. There are only a handful of stories in the world and the art form of film used to have a 90min standard because it worked. If you can't tell your story in a three act structure over the course of 90 minutes then you really shouldn't be working in film. You want to ramble? write a book, do a podcast anything but make a movie, let alone a comedy movie that is LITERALLY ABOUT NOTHING.
Are there exceptions to the 90min rule? sure - plenty.
Is there wiggle room where a movie at 105mins or even 120mins can be good or better? of course
Can you name a time you laughed for longer than 90mins? Probably not very frequently and certainly not at this Crate & Barrel catalogue looking mound of beige whining arse.
In fact John Cleese, the far too psychologically minded member of Monty Python, once said that, on average, people can laugh happily for around 40 minutes and after that there better be some plot, action or emotion going on to maintain momentum into the third act. The easiest example of this is Four Weddings and a Funeral because you laugh at the first three weddings, then there's the quiet bit where you are a little sad at the funeral, then end strong with a big, funny ending that ties all the story-lines together.
The trouble with 'This Is 40' is actually not that it isn't funny, it's actually, in places, very funny and when it comes to actual funny lines it is funnier than Apatow's previous effort 'Funny People' but the problem is it's not about anything.
The movie starts and two very annoying, idiotic, pretty people who live in a wonderful home, spend money like it's going out of style and with two daughters who are far cleverer and less annoying than them, have two Dads both of whom fucked up their first marriage and are now living with second families with varying degrees of success. When the movie ends this is all still true, except that Leslie Mann's Dad, played by John Lithgow, is a little more sympathetic and that's it. Nothing is learnt, nothing has changed and no one has said to these two whiny, whingey, stupid people "Shut the fuck up and sort yourselves out!"
The performances are fine too, although Leslie Mann, because of her high pitched nasaly voice, gets to points in this film where I could've quite easily beaten her to death with a shovel but all round there's nothing really bad about the way it's acted or shot.
It's just we're talking about a film where two people, because of their woeful communication, utter inability to manage their money and staggering lack of personal awareness and insight decide that selling their beautiful home is the solution to their problems rather than, I don't know, not spending $12,000 on flying a band no one has ever heard of ever to play in a tiny bar, not spending $10,000 on a catered Birthday party and suing the pilled-up, drippy girl who just robbed them of another $10,000.
I don't care about any of the people in this film and if the ending was that they were all mowed down by a hail of machine gun bullets from the arseholes of 8ft robot destroyers it wouldn't have bothered me in the slightest and, at least, it would've been an ending.
4 out of 10
Lastly, Django Unchained on Dec 25th
I don't even know where to begin with this. Well, firstly, unlike this film, I'll just give you a quick bit of back story. I used to like Tarantino. My patience wained with him, however, somewhere around the middle of Kill Bill 2 and after the howling and irritating mistakes of Death Proof and the masturbatory Inglorious Basterds I was about ready to give up.
Then came Django Unchained. I have seen the original, Franco Nero starring, film which is an ambiguous, rambling, strange, pulp, cult spaghetti western and like it, for what it is.
So, there, a few sentences and you understand where I am coming from and can probably see I didn't enter the screening tonight with anything more than a glimmer of hope.
Well after what felt like 5hrs but was really, a still ludicrous, 2hrs 45mins later I left the cinema utterly frustrated because while half of me wants to scream, shout, break things and write Tarantino off completely as a tired, old, unoriginal, repetitive, long winded, self congratulatory, masturbatory hack, the other half of me found a lot to enjoy in this saga of a film.
Whichever way you slice it though, it's TOO DAMN LONG. It's not one film, it's about eight and like all of Tarantino's stuff it's ever so pleased with itself and the way it sounds. For the first 3 films Christoph Waltz wanders around with a case of, sometimes amusing but mostly incessant, verbal diarrhea and in the second 5 films he is joined in his eloquent verbiage by Leonardo DiCaprio. They both swan about spewing out endless dialogue for ages and ages and ages.
Then, after all the talk, there's lots of shooting and blood letting, just like there was at the end of the previous 7 films that make up Django Unchained and also at the end of Inglorious Basterds because, in the absence of plot or momentum, violence will do.
I felt like I was actually living the year that this film takes place in, every single day of it, every moment.
I firmly believe that Tarantino is so surrounded by sycophantic dribbling nerds in his infamous screening room in LA that no one has the balls to read one of his scripts and say to him "MAKE IT SHORTER" and no the answer, in this case, just like it wasn't for Kill Bill and isn't for the Hobbit, is not to make this two films, three films, eight films, whatever. It's to have an editor or a script doctor go over his work and tear vast useless chunks out of it and then say "there... go make that movie"
So enthralled is he with his own repetitive, obvious and not-as-clever-as-it-thinks-it-is dialogue that he believes every word must be left in, clearly! because, if not, explain to me how a fairly run of the mill rescue and revenge film takes almost 3hrs to finish.
Ok, so enough about the bloated running time, what about the whole 'making Django African American' thing, well considering the time period this film is set in (2 years before the civil war) it's an absolutely brilliant idea if he hadn't already done the same thing with the far superior Jackie Brown. Also, before everyone goes and gets confused, thinking that Django somehow has some big important statement to make about racism, slavery, hatred etc. it doesn't.
Honestly, it really doesn't.
I don't know about you but I didn't need 2hrs 45mins of N words and racist violence from Quentin Tarantino to know that slavery was wrong and despicable. Ok?
This is how the conversation went at Tarantino towers:
"The original Django is set just after the civil war and this is going to be a prequel. Well, you know how I like black people and am best friends with Samuel L Jackson? how about Django is black and we set it before the civil war... am I a genius or what"
That's it people, seriously.
If the film was more serious then I would completely take your point but, and I hate to sound like Spike Lee because he's an over reactionary idiot who needs to get over himself, sitting watching the film is a bit like watching a white guy relish getting away with a ton of harsh racist slurs and referencing things like Mandingo fighting while patting himself on that back for being oh-so-clever.
And on that subject, Tarantino, just because you know one German opera does not make you a cultural scholar, ok?! especially when you have so little faith in your own audiences intelligence that you spell out EXACTLY your incredibly obvious plot references.
Lastly, and then I'll get on to some good stuff about the film, Tarantino needs to pick: either you're making an exploitation film or you are making an epic western with a serious message. Never before have a mix of genres and styles from someone who is supposedly a master at it, been so all over the place.
Man it was a frustrating vast chunk of my time I will never get back.
On the good side the acting is showboaty but entertaining, the script has some genuinely funny and exciting moments and the direction, when he can be bothered, is decent. His use of titling and soundtrack however, is, by now, completely tedious and irritating.
The exploitation elements are fantastic, the gore is excessive, the gun play enjoyable and the odd comic asides, like a scene where early Klan members dispute their poorly made eyeholes in their hoods, are genuinely surprising and funny but would be perfect if included in an exploitation film length film.
Despite the length there was enough going on to keep me watching but it felt like plowing through a miniseries on a Sunday afternoon rather than watching a film. The cinematography was pleasing and there was some interesting use of the camera but if I am honest, I am struggling to come up with lots of really positive things about it.
We all know that Tarantino rips off other films but when he starts ripping himself off (the exploitation violence and Tarantino cameo of Resevoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, the African American switch from Jackie Brown, the epic length and revenge plot from Kill Bill, the shoot everything ending from Inglorious Basterds - shall I go on) it's maybe time someone call him on his bullshit.
All I can say is, despite how this review sounds, I didn't hate it and the things that are wrong with it come completely from Tarantino (and others) believing that his shit doesn't stink. There is a GREAT film in there screaming, kicking, clawing and endlessly nattering trying to get out but until he either gets an editor or someone cuts him down a peg or two, he's not going to make one again it seems.
As to whether I will ever watch another QT film in the cinema (I have seen every single one since Pulp Fiction) well when the next one comes out, if it's below 2hrs long then I'll think about it.
5 out of 10
This year was no exception.
Saturday December 22nd we strolled in and watched new Tom Cruise vehicle, Jack Reacher.
1) Action Cruise tends to be good Cruise and
2) Werner herzog as a Bond style villain with a comically milky eye.
Apart from those things I had fairly low expectations and they were further lowered when I was set upon on Twitter and told that it was a load of old rubbish and I should avoid it.
Well I'll tell you the problem with Jack Reacher the movie and no, Lee Child purists, it has nothing to do with Tom Cruise's height you bunch of negative whiny bitches. The problem with Jack Reacher the movie was the marketing. As always marketing companies (who should really change their name to mismarketing companies or talentless hacks, they can take their pick) have fouled this up and advertised it as a relatively dumb action film. This is to do the film a disservice as it has a clever witty script, it trundles along at a decent pace, the performances are excellent and it's a good old fashioned pulpy, unpretentious, wise-crakin', ass-whuppin' good time of a conspiracy thriller.
It has a twisty-turny-yet-fairly-obvious-if-you-know-how-these-things-go type story to tell and it gets in and out with no fuss. The action is good, clear, tight and to the point too with a great finale that manages to amuse, thrill and surprise in a satisfying way.
In the shadow of the events recently in Connecticut it's a little tricky in parts because it does fall squarely on the side of the right wing where guns are concerned but, to be fair, that is hardwired into its western style, dime novel sensibility.
Lastly the casting of Werner Herzog is a stroke of sheer genius, every word he utters (and that's not a lot as he doesn't have nearly enough scenes) is the sort of nonsensical yet deep sounding babble that drips from the Bavarian's lips as easy as if he were reading a shopping list. It's an absolute wonder to behold and, actually, a little went a long way where he was concerned, any more and it would've veered into really questionable and confusing Bond style villain antics and that would've derailed the simplicity and succinctness with which Christopher McQuarrie told the story.
The wife and I thoroughly enjoyed this, sorry if you didn't that is a real shame because this movie is fun, aware of its cliches but written well enough to not over play them.
8 out of 10
Next up was This is 40 on Dec 24th
Ok, let's get started. I have a love hate relationship with Judd Apatow. I love that he has made possible some really great comedy films and that without him comedy in the last 10 years might have been just whatever Tyler Perry finds funny this week but I hate Judd Apatow because of his clear belief that, in his own directed films at least, that he is some Woody Allen like exposer of deep truths and a witty commentator on the silly little flaws of human nature. I also hate him because he seems to think showing naked bits of people that are usually, thankfully covered up is somehow hilarious and daring... oh and he produces that shitfest of incessantly pointless whiny drivel and mind numbingly shallow pile of arse 'Girls'... oh and he puts his famous musician friends in movies... oh and he needs someone to tell him to fucking stop once in a while.
Lets make something clear, hardly any film needs to be over 2hrs long and certainly not a comedy. OK. There are only a handful of stories in the world and the art form of film used to have a 90min standard because it worked. If you can't tell your story in a three act structure over the course of 90 minutes then you really shouldn't be working in film. You want to ramble? write a book, do a podcast anything but make a movie, let alone a comedy movie that is LITERALLY ABOUT NOTHING.
Are there exceptions to the 90min rule? sure - plenty.
Is there wiggle room where a movie at 105mins or even 120mins can be good or better? of course
Can you name a time you laughed for longer than 90mins? Probably not very frequently and certainly not at this Crate & Barrel catalogue looking mound of beige whining arse.
In fact John Cleese, the far too psychologically minded member of Monty Python, once said that, on average, people can laugh happily for around 40 minutes and after that there better be some plot, action or emotion going on to maintain momentum into the third act. The easiest example of this is Four Weddings and a Funeral because you laugh at the first three weddings, then there's the quiet bit where you are a little sad at the funeral, then end strong with a big, funny ending that ties all the story-lines together.
The trouble with 'This Is 40' is actually not that it isn't funny, it's actually, in places, very funny and when it comes to actual funny lines it is funnier than Apatow's previous effort 'Funny People' but the problem is it's not about anything.
The movie starts and two very annoying, idiotic, pretty people who live in a wonderful home, spend money like it's going out of style and with two daughters who are far cleverer and less annoying than them, have two Dads both of whom fucked up their first marriage and are now living with second families with varying degrees of success. When the movie ends this is all still true, except that Leslie Mann's Dad, played by John Lithgow, is a little more sympathetic and that's it. Nothing is learnt, nothing has changed and no one has said to these two whiny, whingey, stupid people "Shut the fuck up and sort yourselves out!"
The performances are fine too, although Leslie Mann, because of her high pitched nasaly voice, gets to points in this film where I could've quite easily beaten her to death with a shovel but all round there's nothing really bad about the way it's acted or shot.
It's just we're talking about a film where two people, because of their woeful communication, utter inability to manage their money and staggering lack of personal awareness and insight decide that selling their beautiful home is the solution to their problems rather than, I don't know, not spending $12,000 on flying a band no one has ever heard of ever to play in a tiny bar, not spending $10,000 on a catered Birthday party and suing the pilled-up, drippy girl who just robbed them of another $10,000.
I don't care about any of the people in this film and if the ending was that they were all mowed down by a hail of machine gun bullets from the arseholes of 8ft robot destroyers it wouldn't have bothered me in the slightest and, at least, it would've been an ending.
4 out of 10
Lastly, Django Unchained on Dec 25th
Then came Django Unchained. I have seen the original, Franco Nero starring, film which is an ambiguous, rambling, strange, pulp, cult spaghetti western and like it, for what it is.
So, there, a few sentences and you understand where I am coming from and can probably see I didn't enter the screening tonight with anything more than a glimmer of hope.
Well after what felt like 5hrs but was really, a still ludicrous, 2hrs 45mins later I left the cinema utterly frustrated because while half of me wants to scream, shout, break things and write Tarantino off completely as a tired, old, unoriginal, repetitive, long winded, self congratulatory, masturbatory hack, the other half of me found a lot to enjoy in this saga of a film.
Whichever way you slice it though, it's TOO DAMN LONG. It's not one film, it's about eight and like all of Tarantino's stuff it's ever so pleased with itself and the way it sounds. For the first 3 films Christoph Waltz wanders around with a case of, sometimes amusing but mostly incessant, verbal diarrhea and in the second 5 films he is joined in his eloquent verbiage by Leonardo DiCaprio. They both swan about spewing out endless dialogue for ages and ages and ages.
Then, after all the talk, there's lots of shooting and blood letting, just like there was at the end of the previous 7 films that make up Django Unchained and also at the end of Inglorious Basterds because, in the absence of plot or momentum, violence will do.
I felt like I was actually living the year that this film takes place in, every single day of it, every moment.
I firmly believe that Tarantino is so surrounded by sycophantic dribbling nerds in his infamous screening room in LA that no one has the balls to read one of his scripts and say to him "MAKE IT SHORTER" and no the answer, in this case, just like it wasn't for Kill Bill and isn't for the Hobbit, is not to make this two films, three films, eight films, whatever. It's to have an editor or a script doctor go over his work and tear vast useless chunks out of it and then say "there... go make that movie"
So enthralled is he with his own repetitive, obvious and not-as-clever-as-it-thinks-it-is dialogue that he believes every word must be left in, clearly! because, if not, explain to me how a fairly run of the mill rescue and revenge film takes almost 3hrs to finish.
Ok, so enough about the bloated running time, what about the whole 'making Django African American' thing, well considering the time period this film is set in (2 years before the civil war) it's an absolutely brilliant idea if he hadn't already done the same thing with the far superior Jackie Brown. Also, before everyone goes and gets confused, thinking that Django somehow has some big important statement to make about racism, slavery, hatred etc. it doesn't.
Honestly, it really doesn't.
I don't know about you but I didn't need 2hrs 45mins of N words and racist violence from Quentin Tarantino to know that slavery was wrong and despicable. Ok?
This is how the conversation went at Tarantino towers:
"The original Django is set just after the civil war and this is going to be a prequel. Well, you know how I like black people and am best friends with Samuel L Jackson? how about Django is black and we set it before the civil war... am I a genius or what"
That's it people, seriously.
If the film was more serious then I would completely take your point but, and I hate to sound like Spike Lee because he's an over reactionary idiot who needs to get over himself, sitting watching the film is a bit like watching a white guy relish getting away with a ton of harsh racist slurs and referencing things like Mandingo fighting while patting himself on that back for being oh-so-clever.
And on that subject, Tarantino, just because you know one German opera does not make you a cultural scholar, ok?! especially when you have so little faith in your own audiences intelligence that you spell out EXACTLY your incredibly obvious plot references.
Lastly, and then I'll get on to some good stuff about the film, Tarantino needs to pick: either you're making an exploitation film or you are making an epic western with a serious message. Never before have a mix of genres and styles from someone who is supposedly a master at it, been so all over the place.
Man it was a frustrating vast chunk of my time I will never get back.
On the good side the acting is showboaty but entertaining, the script has some genuinely funny and exciting moments and the direction, when he can be bothered, is decent. His use of titling and soundtrack however, is, by now, completely tedious and irritating.
The exploitation elements are fantastic, the gore is excessive, the gun play enjoyable and the odd comic asides, like a scene where early Klan members dispute their poorly made eyeholes in their hoods, are genuinely surprising and funny but would be perfect if included in an exploitation film length film.
Despite the length there was enough going on to keep me watching but it felt like plowing through a miniseries on a Sunday afternoon rather than watching a film. The cinematography was pleasing and there was some interesting use of the camera but if I am honest, I am struggling to come up with lots of really positive things about it.
We all know that Tarantino rips off other films but when he starts ripping himself off (the exploitation violence and Tarantino cameo of Resevoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, the African American switch from Jackie Brown, the epic length and revenge plot from Kill Bill, the shoot everything ending from Inglorious Basterds - shall I go on) it's maybe time someone call him on his bullshit.
All I can say is, despite how this review sounds, I didn't hate it and the things that are wrong with it come completely from Tarantino (and others) believing that his shit doesn't stink. There is a GREAT film in there screaming, kicking, clawing and endlessly nattering trying to get out but until he either gets an editor or someone cuts him down a peg or two, he's not going to make one again it seems.
As to whether I will ever watch another QT film in the cinema (I have seen every single one since Pulp Fiction) well when the next one comes out, if it's below 2hrs long then I'll think about it.
5 out of 10
Kill Bill Vol. 1 & 2 - 28th January 2011
It's really quite simple, when all is said and done, I am sorry folks but this should've been one single damn movie. The two movies are over indulgent, overly long, filled with needless stuffing and generally just not as interesting as they think they are.
I could leave the review right there and those who get it would get it and the rest could just argue amongst yourselves but I feel the need to explain, so strap in, shut up and let me begin.
First of all, somewhere along the line, I sort of ran out of interest in Quentin Tarantino. I was probably just 15 when my older brother took me to a midnight screening of Pulp Fiction, quite possibly, at the time, making it the coolest screening of any film ever. What I remember most of all about the film was the way it looked, the way the dialogue sounded and, of course, that iconic soundtrack. I can't actually lay claim to, at that age, knowing what anything really meant but I knew that what I was witnessing made me, for that moment at least, very very cool and blasted my mind open to a world of possibilities, as far as film was concerned.
Since then I have seen everything from True Romance to Inglorious Basterds and all that came between and I don't know, at some point, I just began feeling that something wasn't right.
I think, if I am honest, that feeling started with Kill Bill.
I saw both volumes of Kill Bill in the cinema, 6 months apart as they were released and I remember my reaction to the first one was excited amazement, I remember it just being a huge amount of escapist fun, loving the style, the colour, the sound and the way it just seemed to continue to top itself with one brilliant set piece after another.
Now, you have to bare in mind that, I suppose, up until that point, I had been raised pretty much on a steady diet of western or european made films and so, Tarantino throwing all these, often bright, stylistic, eastern, grindhouse or B-movie cinematic cliches at me was a pretty big eye opener, that and I remember leaving the cinema thinking 'shit, when did Tarantino learn how to direct action?!' because, well, we knew he could make people look cool pointing guns but never had he made anything like this before.
My reaction to Kill Bill Vol 2 was, I remember, a little bit more muted. I guess I wasn't prepared for and it wasn't really my sort of taste to watch a slower, more mumbly and, what I felt at the time was a bit of a pretentious film. There were things I liked about it, like the great Michael Parks second role, and a couple more great set pieces but over all I found it to be a saggy, plodding movie compared to the first which seemed over too quickly and the second which doesn't end soon enough.
This is why, for years, I have maintained the first film is the better film, despite the revisionist history I have heard, that has emerged more recently stating that, in fact, Vol.2 is the better film.
Since Kill Bill I have given Tarantino two more chances, first with Death Proof which has a great car chase yes but a wasted legend of a leading man and way way way too many scenes of sassy girls being sassy in sassville, oh and Eli fucking Roth. Then came Inglorious Basterds which proved to be ineptly made, boring, overly long and generally jaw droppingly crass and awful without really any exciting or interesting moments of the behind enemy lines, boys-own adventure stuff that it should've been.
I think, now I may have given up on him. With the announcement that he's planning Kill Bill 3, now may be the time.
That doesn't mean, though, I don't still like his earlier films and for some reason, this particular day I fancied doing something I don't think I have really properly done before and that is watch both Volumes of Kill Bill, back to back without any interruptions.
What emerged from this meagre experiment was basically my assertion that it should be one really good 2 and a half hour movie without all the superfluous waffle and ponderous mumbling with failed attempts at gravitas that come across as slow and pretentious, also that I can kind of see what the Vol.2 worshippers see in that film but I still don't fully agree and finally that Michael Parks is a solid gold genius and that the film isn't called "Michael Parks Kills uninteresting bastard Bill in the first 2 minutes and then spends the rest of the film telling amusing stories and playing the banjo" is a bit of a cinematic crime.
So, taking them separately then, Vol.1, a bit to my surprise, did not hold up very well for me, maybe because I have seen it too much and definitely more than the second one, maybe because I have gone off Tarantino but probably also largely down to the fact that since I saw these films in the cinema I have watched a few more original eastern films and realise where all this stuff originated from. The problem with it is that after a couple of viewings all the exciting flare, style and fun sensibility that it once had is replaced with predictability and the distinct impression that you, as an audience member are being taken on a messy ride by someone who doesn't care one iota for you. This was a film made for Tarantino by Tarantino, so that one evening in the distant future him and Eli Roth can sit around and watch it, probably sipping some annoyingly retro beer and congratulating each other with 80s style high fives on their ability to spot a few heavy handed references whilst perving over Uma Thurman's grotesque feet. Ok so that may be a little harsh, it's really not that bad but it would be nice if there was one single character in this film instead of just a bunch of people in various iconic cat walk knock off costumes spouting a series of well thought out quips or whispering supposedly heavy and important sentiments that are really complete gibberish and wouldn't look out of place in a fortune cracker.
You see, there is cool dialogue and then there is dialogue that is written to be knowingly cool, unfortunately since all the early praise he received was for his unique sounding dialogue, Tarantino, much like M Night Shymalalamama and his twists, thinks he must keep topping himself with each film and in the process has run out of anything to say, in fact in Kill Bill he even starts referencing himself which is a sure sign that the well is running dry.
When you look at his body of work post Pulp Fiction on the surface it appears he is just in pure genre territory: Blaxploitation, Kung-Fu Epic, car chase/horror & war movie, all of which sound vastly different but in fact they are all genres that have their origins mainly in the Grindhouses of the 70s, except war movie and he based his script and his title on a B-Movie from, yes, you guessed it, the 70s, add that to the fact that none of the characters in any of the films post Jackie Brown really leap off the screen and most of them sound identical, it begins to feel like Tarantino continues to make the same film over and over again. Still enough of this rambling and half finished thoughts about the man himself, back to the films...
So in round-up Volume 1 is enjoyable fairly quick paced fun for the most part that after a few watches unfortunately begins to suffer from diminishing returns and flat characterisation. The anime sequence is still outstanding and the whole style of the piece, from the music to the direction and the costumes is still pitch perfect visual bubble gum. Everyone's performance is pretty comic book and/or James Bond villainy, which maybe the point, I don't know, but it blurs all the characters into one none of them particularly as exciting as the next. Uma Thurman though does an excellent job at trying to show the vulnerability of her character and obviously did a ton of training in preparation for the role, so big kudos to her for slogging it through. The big fight at the end, in the house of blue leaves, is expertly done and when I first watched it, I found it genuinely enthralling, now it does feel like it goes on a bit and the Crazy 88 begins to feel a bit like the Flabby 888.
Also, it's a shame that the O Ren Ishii ending, in the snow garden, grinds the whole climax to a halt and it feels that, despite the little tacked on, soap opera, twist ending he just doesn't know how to end the damn thing, even Volume 2 has like 3 endings and 2 credit sequences! and you think he isn't over indulgent?
That sort of segues nicely into Kill Bill Volume 2 which Tarantino likes to claim is his spaghetti western film but mostly it's just more of the same only predominantly in America with a brief flashback to China for the Pai Mei sequence. One of the errors of the film is possibly also one of its minor strengths and that is it contains most of the plot, usually not a bad thing but when you really wish it would just get to the point it takes what seems a millennia to set up something entirely obvious. The first film is really only about The Bride's first two kills, briefly sets up the massacre that started it all and concludes with the briefest bits of important knowledge, in Vol.2 he has seemingly left himself the arduous task of filling in everything else and so while Vol. 1 is fairly straight forward, Vol.2 is all over the place and doesn't know what it wants to be. It basically falls into two sections, one is excruciatingly long set-pieces that ultimately amount in very little or tiresome, irrelevant exposition and that, apart from the brilliant trailer fight between The Bride and Elle, is pretty much that.
It's style, one of the strengths of the first one which helped to glue all of the disparate parts together into some vaguely followable, is a complete mess. It starts with a film noir beginning, for reasons best known only to Tarantino, it features shots and soundtrack stolen left and right from better Westerns, it has a whole flashback in the middle that attempts to be both a serious and sometimes harrowing, authentic Chinese martial arts film and a cheesy, stylistic, montage heavy kung-fu film and then the rest of it is the sort of stuff we've seen QT do a gazillion times before like seedy bars, chats across a table and gangster business gone wrong.
None of it particularly makes much sense, is interrupted by captions and title cards, for very little reason (don't worry, we know what's going on, it's not hard, I don't now need to be told that she's going after Budd, I have worked this shit out!) and in the end are we meant to like or care about any of this? aren't they all, when all is said and done, fairly unlikeable, hired killers?
I wouldn't be the first person to point out that the whole ending, well the first ending anyway, set in Bill's hideout (which, after all this style over substance, looks like a suite at a cheap Holiday Inn), is, well, a bit crap. Nothing is revealed at this point that is in anyway going to change the ending and I am sorry but David Carradine wasn't nearly charismatic or interesting enough to pull off the clunky, Superman referencing final monologue. Why did we leave Michael Parks back at the cantina?
The ultimate conclusion, featuring the laughable, secret martial arts move feels not heroic or dramatic or even particularly emotional, it just feels like a complete cop out. In fact, come to think of it, none of the Viper Squad that she actually kills get very interesting or imaginative deaths. One gets stabbed in the chest, one gets a long drawn out, ponderous and uninteresting sword battle that ends with a fairly badly done scalping and Bill gets to walk away and fall over pathetically. We never know what happens to the now blind Elle, although her fight in the trailer with The Bride is Vol.2's high point and ace in its sleeve, and Budd is killed by her with a snake, which at least is fairly interesting. Even when Budd attempts to bury the Bride alive, in another pretty good stand out sequence, it's more imaginative than anything she does.
Vol. 2 then is still, for me, the weaker of the two films because as the first one tries to cram all the style and action into its running time, Vol. 2 struggles to cram all the substance into its running time. What needed to happen was for someone to march into the edit suite, slap Tarantino around the back of his head with a large wet fish, duct tape his mouth shut and tell him in no uncertain terms to put style and substance together into one coherent film and stop fannying about.
True film geeks are always going to prefer the original eastern martial art's movies than to wade through a carbon copy like Kill Bill and the rest of the people don't care about all the referencing and the long winded waffle, so you have to ask yourself, who is all this for if not just for Tarantino (and probably Eli Roth) to pleasure themselves to.
The second film then has all the stuff with Budd and that's all pretty cool, watchable and interesting, more or less, although bits still do drag on and on, and that's about it. Almost anything not featuring Budd or set around Budd's trailer in the second film is pretty drawn out and pointless. The Pai Mei training sequence could be good but the tone shifts wildly all the way through it, from comical, to menacing, to serious, to violent, to painful and to triumphant stylistic montages which might be the point but still leaves an audience either feeling disconnected and cold or confused and irritated. Michael Parks as Bill's father figure is a wonderful scene but I am not sure how much of it belongs in the film because it doesn't exactly add anything except, finally, some good acting.
So to sum up, I suggest putting the two films together, cutting out all the title cards, the rambling and the indulgent crap, telling Tarantino that he is human, fallible and he needs to edit himself in the future.
Vol.1 - 6.5 out of 10 Royales with cheese
Vol.2 - 5 out of 10 tasty beverages to wash this all down