Somebody Explain Kill Bill, please...

[Flexor the Mighty!]

How do you define self indulgent? Why does this movies qualify, as compared to others? How is this movie lazy, compared to others?

Good question. I'm not sure either how it is lazy. It was a modern day take on the kung fu genre of the 1970's. I enjoyed the action, the story was decent, the acting was pretty good, and the characters were fun to watch on screen. I enjoyed both parts quite a bit. It was a classic Tarentino flick with the scenes not being shown in order and stuff like that. I won't say you "didn't get it" since it's quite possible to get it and not enjoy it. I never thought it was trying to be intentionally bad in any way though.

 

[The Grumpy Celt]

Good question.

Thanks. I get the feeling that in this discussion some of us are using the same terms but defining those terms in different ways, so asking seemed prudent.

I for one enjoyed the movie/movies. My understanding is they started as one flick, but it would have been almost four hours long so Quintin cut it in half and rearranged all the scenes and so forth to get two movies out of it.

Eventually it is supposed to be re released on DVD as a set or even as a single flick. I keep hoping this will happen and when it does I will pick it up.

 

[WayneLigon]

Eventually it is supposed to be re released on DVD as a set or even as a single flick. I keep hoping this will happen and when it does I will pick it up.

I've been hearing that for awhile; I hope it comes about and that we get the full color House of Blue Leaves sequence that the @%$^% MPAA made him put in black and white because of the gore factor.

 

[hong]

Speaking just for myself, I found Kill Bill 1 hilarious. I haven't seen a lot of kung fu movies...so Kill Bill to me looked like a "live action anime" movie. I found it so over the top, in gore, in silly lines, and in the simple (hole filled) plot that I couldn't help but enjoy it on the level of a sendup, or guilty pleasure.

If you think Kill Bill was OTT, you should check out Versus. By god, that one is OTT. Absolutely hilarious fun.

 

[Mistwell]

I think people who claim that others "just don't get it" if they didn't like these movies, just don't get why people dislike them.

I personally like them, but I get why people would dislike them, and I don't think people who dislike them "don't get it".

 

[Vanuslux]

Self-indulgent is a given with Tarantino, but the allegation of lazy is absurd to me and I don't even particularly like the films.

 

[Agamon]

If everybody liked and disliked the same things, life would be pretty dull. I have no idea why "realilty TV" is popular, but I don't wonder how it's possible that it is. Different people are entertained in different ways.

 

[Simplicity]

Eh... personal taste. I found the movie spectacular. By far my favorite Tarantino movie (and I like a lot of them). Obviously, I didn't find it boring.

The movie was a big tongue-in-cheek love of old movies of the past. Many of QT's movies are. But that's not what made the movie good. What made it good was it's style. In style, the movie really had something going for it. It was cinematic, and visually very interesting. The fight scenes were good to great almost without exception.

 

[The Grumpy Celt]

Self-indulgent is a given with Tarantino, but the allegation of lazy...

I still wonder what they (Randolpho, Tonguez, two, mmadsen, etc.) mean when they use these terms, lazy and self-indulgent, when talking about a movie. Aren't most movies self-indulgent almost by definition? And how do you define lazy in terms of movie making?

 

[paradox42]

Why should I like apple pie?

Why isn't football boring?

Not to hijack the thread, but football IS boring.

And on the subject of Kill Bill(s), they're two of my favorite movies. But then, I'm a tarantino fan, and the only movie I've seen that had him involved, which I didn't really like, was From Dusk Till Dawn. I felt that was two movies trying to be one, that didn't really fit well together. But that's me- lots of other people liked it, and in fact there's even a sequel (or is it two now?) to it.

For me, I think the fine uses of irony in the movies (particularly the first one) was my favorite aspect of them. Though the two big "villian monologues" (O'Ren in movie 1 at the yakuza meeting, Bill himself in movie 2 discussing Superman) are among my favorite quotations, and illustrate this sense of irony quite nicely.

EDIT: Simplicity touches on another thing about them I like a lot; the movies were done to be pure exercises in style. The scene I think illustrates this best is the one with O'Ren walking into the House of Blue Leaves with her entourage, and "Battle Without Honor or Humanity" playing in the background. That scene has no reason to exist except style. The scene just oozes cool from every metaphorical pore, and yet it's nothing but an extended observation of the yakuza entering a restaurant. Tarantino's style is definitely an acquired taste, but if you like him at all this scene should get your heart thumping in anticipation of what's to come.