I can't watch KILL BILL

Hi everyone.

So my sister rented KILL BILL (vol. 1, I hadn't seen it yet) and I thought today would be a good day to watch it.

I couldn't get much past 45 minutes. I loved Pulp Fiction and enjoyed other Tarantino movies but this one is turning out to be too much. All the butchering on screen is driving me away.

Anyone else had problems with this?

 

You stopped too early, my friend.....stick with it until Go-Go enters the scene....I defy anyone to forget her.

As self-indulgent as QT can be, any director this in love with pure cinema is my friend for life, there are just too few left anymore that have any unique style or approach. As much as he steals, and makes everything a pastiche of sources, his bravado and sheer love of the medium are undeniable.

If those words don't work, light up a doobie and relax....that should do it, although these days, I no longer have that need. Just seeing both parts in a noisy theater with a bucket of popcorn(no soda, sadly!)was high enough for me....

 

Gee Damian how very unenlightened of you! I had the same experience and thank God I only lost $3 on a rental. I'm so tired of having Tarantino shoved down my throat the past 10 years by critics and slackers alike. I knew QT when he was a lowly video store employee; I give him credit for the wonderful JACKIE BROWN...as for the rest of his nihilistic, self-important cellulloid treasures, well....I'll pass.

 

See, I found the violence in Pulp Fiction and especially Reservoir Dogs to be far more disturbing. Somehow the stylized violence of Kill Bill looked totally harmless and unrealistic to me. OTOH, the "Stuck In The Middle" scene from RD made me really uncomfortable.
I can watch John Woo until I dream about dual pistols but give me something like "Private Ryan" and I'll be covering my eyes. Go figure.

 

And although the overseas editions of KILL BILL 1 may have more graphic(i.e., color)violence in places, I thought the monochromatic approach employed in certain passages heightened the perverse delight of it all, and stylized everything in a way that RESERVOIR DOGS, especially, made all too graphic, even when it was absurd. PRIVATE RYAN, impressive as it is, is cringe-inducing during the Normandy invasion, so much so I don't think it's a stretch to say it isn't all that less disturbing than the beheading of that poor guy in Iraq, though that is, of course, all to real and sickening. Spielberg's verisimilitude is awe-inspiring, but that doesn't make it more cinematic, and the measure of great movies is not in what's real but in what seems to be real while opening up a world uniquely its own. I think QT has been doing that throughout his career, but I also understand I'm preaching to the converted. If you can't dig his style, nothing we say will change that, but that's somebody else's loss, not mine....

 

Thank goodness, someone who agrees with me! I don't care how "post-modern" he is; who cares how clever and obscure his sources are when the sources were all s**tty movies to begin with? Do "cool" scenes matter when they're unattached to anything more meaningful than another cool scene? Tarantino is absolutely the most critically overrated presence in American culture today.

 

Well, being a lifelong fan of 'cool,' what can I say? Better QT than all the stick-in-the-mud types who make overblown, waste-of-time-and-money spectacles without any meaning or sense of spontaneity, or dreadful films trying to make some kind of 'point' that none of us needs to witness yet again.

All I know is, were Orson Welles with us, he would have approved, I think....

 

I love Tarantino and his movies comprise nearly my entire collection of movies. That said, I wouldn't want to see Kill Bill right now in light of current events.

 

What amazes me about KB is the sheer amount of blood, even blood flowing from where blood shouldn't be! GUSHING, even!

The only part I thought was disingenous was the end fight of KB I, where Uma dispatches about roughly 88 henchmen; just didn't buy it. Otherwise, Quentin's little Kung Fu homage is probably the most satisfying film(s)I've seen in some time.

Evan

 

You only own 5 movies?

 

Hey Damián, I watched the 1st Kill Bill on Saturday night, the concept was really familar to me, as I grew up watching black and white re-runs of The Samurai every afternoon after school. Same sort of deal - one swordsman takes on a veritable army of attackers and emerges victorious. I think Australia was one of the only places outside of Japan to get the show. Quite funny in the playground at the time - ninja fights galore amongst the school kids; Shintaro was a legend.

Here's the link -

http://www.alphalink.com.au/~roglen/samurai.htm

 

You of course are entitled to your opinion as far as the merits of Tarantino's work are concerned but your last statement transcends past opinion and becomes a statement that feels like its fact. Now I of course understand that that could be my perception of your statement, but the way its written leaves me with no other conclusion. There is in no way in my opinion that he is the "most critically overrated presence in American culture today". That ranking would easily go to a hundred other people of far less talent and craft then Tarantino has who occupy the American culture and you can start with the one sitting in the "fictional movie universe" oval office of a "thousand films". If you don't like the stories or the themes of his movies then fine, but that doesn't cancel his ability as a director at all.

 

Then don't ever see Peter Jackson's Dead Alive
Just endless blood flow...Comedy and Gore...a wacko combo...

 

Does he remember you?...where you come from has nothing to do with talent.

 

I just thought it was a dumb movie.

 

If that's all there was, I'd agree. Vol 2 makes this a complete movie and extraordinary.

 

I haven't seen it, and have no interest in seeing it, but I'm similarly concerned about this continual trend to "push the envelope" where violence is concerned. There's been quite a few movies in the last few years that I would have loved to see because of the story or the actors, but since the "buzz" was so much on the violence angle that I just didn't bother. The whole "how violent can we make this movie" angle just seems cheap and exploitative, and (in my admittedly presumptuous opinion) degrading to the art of film and the audience.

I'm not speaking with any authority here other than that of a common theater patron, but I won't be spending $8+ a ticket for any movie that I think is gonna make me want to use my popcorn box as a barf bag. Find another "envelope" to push, you genius directors!

 

This thread will be closed if it veers further into political territory. Keep politics out of the movie discussions, folks.

 

Tarantino wasn't really pushing the violence "envelope." Peter Jackson's films were as violent if not more, but people forget that because Rings is family friendly. And the kung-fu movies he's paying homage to is where that all came from. Eyeballs were squished and heads lopped off in movies way before Taranino ever picked up a camera. It's just that he gets more attention for it because he had a couple of really big movies before.

Really? Almost any cino-phile or movie buff woud disagree with that.

 

Oh okay..i'll fix that right now..hopefully now it "veers" less into politics...

 

Although I wouldn't goes a far as you do, I pretty much agree or used to agree with your statement. I own and love pulp fiction and (especially) jackie brown, but wouldn't call them art. Yes, pulp fiction has had its impact on cinema, but that didn't make it a work of art.

However, I feel tarintino hit his stride with kill bill 1 & 2. They really are a fantastic couple of films that don't claim to be art, but are enjoyable to the extreme.


By the way, Tarintono states the films are homages to the kung fu genre as raiders of the lost ark is to the old time serials. Anyone who takes these films seriously is missing the point.

 

First of all, thanks for all of your thoughts on this thread, everyone.

Gabe, I don't take the movie for more than what it is - I knew from the start I was watching a Tarantino movie, I knew from the start I was watching a martial arts movie, and I knew from the start I was watching a violent movie.

It's just that I didn't expect the violence on screen to drive me away the way it did. I'm not a fan of martial arts or pointlessly violent movies, but I do appreciate Quentin's work a lot, I've watched and re-watched PF dozens of times, etc.

In the end it's probably just me. Maybe in a couple months I'll give it another chance and have a blast watching it. As it is, right now, I can't.

 

I never said he wasn't talented; I was simply establishing my personal "starting point" with QT.

 

Michael, I'm actually shocked to learn that you've seen Dead Alive!
One of my favorite blood-letting horror comedies...
Did you know that that film, at least at the time, held the record for the most fake blood ever used in a movie?