#91
Kill Bill Vol. I
(2003) Action
Written and Directed by Quentin Tarantino
Starring Uma Therman, Lucy Liu, Vivica A. Fox, Daryl Hannah, David Carradine, Michael Madsen, Sonny Chiba, Chiaki Kuriyama, and Jun Kunimura
This is another movie I would consider "entertainment." Although unlike most entertainment movies
Kill Bill, much like
Inglorious Bastards, has tons of artistic merit and excellent technique in addition to doing things for fun. That is not something that's common in entertainment cinema. Most of Tarantino's movies I would say are like this except for a few that I consider to be even higher in caliber.
Reservoir Dogs would be one example of a Tarantino movie that I consider above mere entertainment, but unfortunately I never quite enjoyed it enough to contend for my top 100.
Kill Bill was a movie that I heard a lot of ignorant people criticise because they did not appreciate the artistic elements (I'm not talking about MoFo's btw). There are a lot of entertaining and fun movies that are just not very realistic due to a lack of effort on the film makers' parts in terms of attention to detail and research. Then there are movies like
Kill Bill which are intentionally unrealistic for the sake of style in a creative way, while still having a lot of attention to detail and marks of considerable research and preparation. That is something I do consider praise worthy when it's done as well as it is in
Kill Bill. In that regard I think this movie is a text book example of style and entertainment. Tarantino's use of music is always excellent, but I think
Kill Bill might actually have his best use of music. The band playing in the background of several scenes was a band that Tarantino heard when he was in Japan. He tracked them down and asked them to be in his movie. Stuff like that is just going the extra mile that most film makers do not do. All of the characters are so well developed. It's just an extremely fun experience watching this movie. I don't have to suspend disbelief. I don't have to turn my brain off. I could over analyze this movie until the end of time and I would not get bored. I see no validation in the defenses of movies like
Scream when movies like this accomplish an even better level of entertainment and can be appreciated even by someone who is unwilling to compromise their standards. Unfortunately
Vol. 2 got bumped off my top 100. I just like
Vol. 1 more, and there is so much competition these days for spots on my top 100 that I had to cut many great movies that I love. Also the animated scene of Lucy Liu's character's background is so amazing, and I've never seen a live action movie insert an animated segment like that before or since. There will be one more Tarantino film appearing on my list.