Anyone seen Kill Bill yet? [merged]

[barsoomcore]

Just to keep the conversation going (why? hong's showed up), I feel compelled to point out, in the wake of all this "It's okay that it sucks cause he MEANT it!" "No, it just sucks!" debate --

I didn't think it sucked, so I don't think he meant it to suck.

I thought it rocked. I thought I saw some of the best durn fight scenes put on film, some uber-chops from Uma and Lucy (and the rest of the crew), inventive film-making, funny sight gags and a relentless, merciless revenge story.

Kill Bill Vol 1 is a great film. It doesn't need to be justified or explained. If you didn't like it, you didn't like it. I didn't like any of the The Matrix movies but lots of people did. For my money, Kill Bill Vol 1 was the most daring and exciting film I saw in a mainstream theatre all year. It was more outrageous and more idiosyncratic than anything I saw at the Vancouver Film Fest this year.

Nobody but Quentin Tarantino could have made that film. That alone makes it more interesting than just about anything else out of Hollywood.

And I think he MEANT for it to rock.

 

[Numion]

I thought it rocked. I thought I saw some of the best durn fight scenes put on film, some uber-chops from Uma and Lucy (and the rest of the crew), inventive film-making, funny sight gags and a relentless, merciless revenge story.

I think it sucked. I still think that QT knew what he was doing, at some level at least.

The main problem was that it wasn't a movie. It was completely pointless. 1.5h TV-serie episode done with a huge budget. Except that those leave you wanting to see the next part, hopefully.

Okay that last part was needless. But had it been a complete movie my views would be notably higher. All the ingredients for a tarantino hit were there: gross but somehow funny scenes (but those were worse than his previous movies), some funny dialogue (again, worse than before) and a nice soundtrack (or one that at least keeps playing in your head. Broken nerve. The chinese band .. aaargh.)

So thats where I'm coming from. I saw a totally pointless 1.5h extravaganza of violence, but I didn't see what I paid 10 euros to see: a movie. I'll forgive part of this to QT, as it was the studios greed that split the movie. Well guess what, I won't see vol II! Nyah-nyah-nyah! (yeah, I know, nobody cares, and yeah, I actually will see it )

+ some of the intentional crap just didn't hit me. I'm not entertained by furious chinese talking, even if that was funny in HK films. Crap in your pants still feels like crap in your pants, even if you did it on purpose.

 

[jdavis]

Well there are lots of movies I hate that may or may not be good, that's not at all the point here, you didn't like it well that's fine and dandy, to say it sucked because you didn't like it or get it is sort of presumptious. After all this time I really don't care if other people liked it or not that's everybodies right. Lets face it here all that stuff listed earlier was intentional, it's not a parody it's a homage, it's not making fun of the genre it's showing respect to the genre. You don't like that then obviously your not going to like the movie, it's no brainer, if you don't like shlocky films then you won't like this shlocky film, that's not rocket science. This movie is a happy little homage movie, it's exactly how it was meant to be.

Since this thread just popped up from a long nap let me just summerize my points here: The movie was made exactly how it appears and for very good reasons, Taratino meant it to be exactly that way (links were provided to back everything up through this and the other thread on this movie). If you didn't like the movie then that's completly ok and fine, it's a movie that definatly wasn't made to have any type of universal appeal. This movie wasn't made for everybody to like it was made for a select group to worship as a cult movie. People who liked it tend to love it, for me it's the best movie this year so far it would be on my personal top ten list, but that's just me, for other people it could of made their eyes bleed and caused pregnant women to go into early labor. Oh well, no movie is ever universally liked, thats just how it goes.

 

[Particle_Man]

Not only did I like it,

Not only did most critics like it,

But the Kill Bill ratings poll (1-10) gave, on average, a very high rating for that movie from posters to that thread.

WE WIN!!!!!!

 

[Welverin]

WE WIN!!!!!!

YAY! WOO-HOO! GO TEAM!!

 

[takyris]

Jdavis: Good point. I don't like the brooding-trenchcoat-loner brand of anime -- I find it self-absorbed and whiny, and was permanently turned off by a former player who both loved that brand of anime and acted like that in person (and was then surprised when women failed to fall all over him). As a result, I didn't like The Matrix. I don't think it sucked, but it seems to be a faithful homage to a genre (and subgenre, since most anime people will tell me that not all anime is like that anime) that I personally dislike. To expect otherwise would be silly.

For the record, as of late, I've been voting with my dollars. Kill Bill just didn't interest me enough to see. I can see it on Netflix, and if the fight scenes are good, I'll get to watch 'em again for free. And if fast edits and good cinematography can't make Uma Thurman look like a good martial artist, I'm only out my usual Netflix price.

 

[jdavis]

Jdavis: Good point. I don't like the brooding-trenchcoat-loner brand of anime -- I find it self-absorbed and whiny, and was permanently turned off by a former player who both loved that brand of anime and acted like that in person (and was then surprised when women failed to fall all over him). As a result, I didn't like The Matrix. I don't think it sucked, but it seems to be a faithful homage to a genre (and subgenre, since most anime people will tell me that not all anime is like that anime) that I personally dislike. To expect otherwise would be silly.

So many of these "This movie sucks/rocks" threads with people arguing whether a movie is bad or not keep poping up. All you can actually do is say whether you liked it or not and why, it's much harder to judge whether it was a "good" movie or not, people just like different things in movies. My personal favorite movie is Streets of Fire, do you know how many wierd looks I get when I say that's my favorite movie of all time? I might be the only person in the world who thinks that is the best movie ever or that it is even a watchable movie. I don't expect people to agree with my opinion, it's just my opinion.

It doesn't bother me when people say they don't like this movie or that movie, but when they start saying "that movie was crap" that you get into a professional film critics area and it becomes a bit iffy. There is just a lot of personal preference that goes into liking a movie, I rather gouge my eyes out than set through Sophie's Choice or Steel Magnolias but that doesn't make them bad movies.

 

[Tarrasque Wrangler]

It doesn't bother me when people say they don't like this movie or that movie, but when they start saying "that movie was crap" that you get into a professional film critics area and it becomes a bit iffy. There is just a lot of personal preference that goes into liking a movie, I rather gouge my eyes out than set through Sophie's Choice or Steel Magnolias but that doesn't make them bad movies.

Thank you so much for saying that. I've been waiting 8 pages for someone to say something that correct. As someone who was a professional film critic once upon a time, I go absolutely bonkers when
A) people say "It wasn't my kind of movie, ergo it was a bad movie." Sorry, taste is subjective, quality is not.
or B) when people say to critics "Well, that's just your opinion." There are standards and formulas you can apply to any film, work of art, musical piece, etc. to determine whether it is, in fact, good or not. That doesn't have to mean that film or whatever is your cup of tea, it just means that it succeeded at what it set out to do.

Kill Bill was trying to be a mildly cheesy kung-fu revenge exploitation movie. Now, there was a lot more going on in the movie than that that not everybody picked up on, but at the very least one has to admit that as a mildly cheesy kung-fu revenge exploitation movie it did the job nicely.

 

[barsoomcore]

I just have to say

Best. Movie Title. Ever.

 

[Tarrasque Wrangler]

I just have to say

Best. Movie Title. Ever.

What, "Kill Bill"?

Or the one in my .sig?

[Captain Kirk] Must ... plug ... website ... [/Captain Kirk}