Posted by Doug
Wed, 15 Oct 2003 03:50:00 GMT
I sometimes visit Christian Spotlight on the Movies. They have pretty good reviews (obviously from a Christian perspective). I’ve been fairly distracted by “Kill Bill” today. I went over to CPotM? to see what they had to say about it. Turns out they didn’t have a review up yet. On their main page is a request for new movie reviewers. So I hunted around and found the form to submit a review. I ended up writing a bit more than I did here on my blog. Who knows if they’ll take it. When I look at their current needs list I see that “Kill Bill” is already assigned to someone. However, the due date was also four days ago. I enjoy writing and would like to build up a list of “published” works. We’ll see what happens.
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Posted by Doug
Tue, 14 Oct 2003 16:15:00 GMT
I went to see “Kill Bill” last night. This the martial arts film directed by
Quentin Tarantino starting
Uma Thurman,
Lucy Liu, and
David Carradine. I was totally unprepared for this film. I thought, “Uma Thurman, tights, martial arts. What more does a guy need?” I had to look it up in the dictionary, but I think the best word for this movie is
macabre. I was shocked by how gory the film was. The very first scene sets the stage. All you see is what may be Uma Thurman’s head badly beaten with her breathing raggedly. She says, “The baby is yo,” and then
BAM the guy shoots her in the head. Then the credits roll to the tune of Cher singing “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)”.
I think I can describe this movie by comparing it to two other movies and a TV show:
Payback,
SE7EN, and
The Wild Wild West. The movie is about revenge. The whole tone of the film is geared towards that. It’s like “Payback” in that way. It’s also like “Payback” in how violent the film is. However, it’s not like “SE7EN” at all. That film was both gory and violent and repulsive. “Kill Bill” is shockingly violent and gory, but not realistically so. The gore is almost comical. It’s more like the scene with the dark knight in
Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Lots of limbs get chopped of and lots of blood spurts out like a high pressure hose with a leak. The other notable aspect of this film is Tarantino’s use of ‘70s style production with liberal use of sound effects and colors to enhance the scene. “Payback” attempted to be realistic. “Kill Bill” makes no such attempt.
I’ll throw in another movie to the mix of comparisons:
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The fight directory for both films was
Yuen Wo Ping, but they have little else in common. There was lots of “wire-work” for flips and such. However, “Crouching Tiger”’s fighting was stylized; it was almost a dance. “Kill Bill” was just raw violence with little fighting style.
In short, I don’t think I can recommend this film. Will I see
Kill Bill Vol. 2? I think I have to. You might ask why I didn’t walk out of the film. The “problem” was that the story and the acting was good enough to keep me wondering. I kept wondering how this was all going to play out. I knew Uma Thurman was going to win. I knew she was going to kill everyone she set out to. I even knew roughly how (mostly likely with their head cut off). The film really plays up the background on the characters; but does so in a tantalizingly slow way that leaves you guessing and wondering.
BTW, I’m not including a link to
All Movie’s review of “Kill Bill” because I think it gives too much away.
UPDATE Jamie Zawenski says: ”’Kill Bill’ totally rules. Go see it immediately.” Hmm, whatever.
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Posted by Doug
Mon, 13 Oct 2003 23:43:00 GMT
Carla and I went to see
Out of Time with
Denzel Washington. A fairly unremarkable picture. It was good. There wasn’t anything blatantly bad about it. There were no performances that were notably bad. The directing was OK. I think the story was just a little weak. It was somewhat predictable.
Here’s the funny part though. The most remarkable thing about the film was the guy sitting in front of us. We went to see the late film that started at 9:40pm. This guy comes in with is buddy. They appear to be fairly young (well younger than me). They sit with the respectable seat between them. This one guy proceeds to fall asleep almost immediately. This wasn’t a stadium seating theater. The seats only came up to his mid-shoulders. His heat kept falling back so he was looking straight up. The result was extremely loud snoring. Every so often he would start to choke, snort, and wake up only to quickly fall back asleep. The whole thing was some strange mixture of annoying and funny. The guy’s poor friend kept poking him trying to keep him up. I’m sure the friend was quite embarassed. Anyway, I don’t think I’ve seen anyone snoring in a movie theater.
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