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#60 - Kill Bill: Vol. 2
Quentin Tarantino, 2004
The second part of the duology about the legendary assassin "The Bride" taking revenge against her former teammates and their leader, the titular Bill.
I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've watched Vol. 2 in about a decade (on a related note, I watched Vol. 1 last year - it was still solid) but I've since learned to think of this as a superior film to its predecessor. Sure, that film had the infamous confrontation with O-Ren and the Crazy 88, thus resulting in all sorts of bloody carnage. Vol. 2 can get a bit of a bad rap in the wake of that, but I don't think it's that warranted. It helps that the genres that get homages this time around are old-school kung-fu films and spaghetti Westerns. Bringing back the legendary Gordon Liu to play the ridiculously strict kung-fu master Pai Mei was a touch that I've learned to appreciate a lot more after familiarising myself with the Shaw Brothers' output.
Of course, the film still feels fairly padded. There are plenty of scenes that, while I can understand their relevance to the film as a whole (the opening scene depicting the lead-up to the chapel massacre, for instance), still feel like a bit of a chore to watch and don't quite have the right level of Tarantino's charm to them. Others, such as the scene where Budd visits his workplace, feel extremely irrelevant. It helps that, for all the padding, the best parts of this film manage to be really good. Whether it's the frantic fight between the Bride and Elle Driver inside a cramped trailer or Bill's Superman monologue (which is definitely a contender for the best Tarantino monologue ever written), the film definitely feels like a good one. I definitely consider this in the top half of Tarantino's filmography.
Quentin Tarantino, 2004
The second part of the duology about the legendary assassin "The Bride" taking revenge against her former teammates and their leader, the titular Bill.
I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've watched Vol. 2 in about a decade (on a related note, I watched Vol. 1 last year - it was still solid) but I've since learned to think of this as a superior film to its predecessor. Sure, that film had the infamous confrontation with O-Ren and the Crazy 88, thus resulting in all sorts of bloody carnage. Vol. 2 can get a bit of a bad rap in the wake of that, but I don't think it's that warranted. It helps that the genres that get homages this time around are old-school kung-fu films and spaghetti Westerns. Bringing back the legendary Gordon Liu to play the ridiculously strict kung-fu master Pai Mei was a touch that I've learned to appreciate a lot more after familiarising myself with the Shaw Brothers' output.
Of course, the film still feels fairly padded. There are plenty of scenes that, while I can understand their relevance to the film as a whole (the opening scene depicting the lead-up to the chapel massacre, for instance), still feel like a bit of a chore to watch and don't quite have the right level of Tarantino's charm to them. Others, such as the scene where Budd visits his workplace, feel extremely irrelevant. It helps that, for all the padding, the best parts of this film manage to be really good. Whether it's the frantic fight between the Bride and Elle Driver inside a cramped trailer or Bill's Superman monologue (which is definitely a contender for the best Tarantino monologue ever written), the film definitely feels like a good one. I definitely consider this in the top half of Tarantino's filmography.