Quentin Tarantino's second volume to his epic Kill Bill saga follows a more cerebral story than the first film. The action is scaled back to make room for a movie that Sergio Leone would love. It's a film filled with close ups, deranged dialogue, and a great sense of itself. It's hard to believe that at one time both these films were going to be one long movie. Volume 2 is so much different than it's predecessor that you have to wonder if both films as a whole would have been as great as they were separate.
After killing half of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, The Bride (Uma Thurman) prepares to murder and maim through the rest of her former co-workers and finally face the man that put a cap in her crown, Bill (David Carradine). That's the basic storyline- it's still a revenge tale that sweeps us across the country on a mission from hell. Whereas Volume One owes its soul to kung fu movies, Volume Two was born at the breast of the spaghetti western, where there were no consequences, just vast verandas to be filled with the carnage of the day. Tarantino knows the art of Leone and paints the first half of the film with images that Sergio and John Ford would be proud off. The desert is a dark and sinister place at night. Add to it the recklessness of Bill's brother Budd (Michael Madsen) and The Bride's arch nemesis Elle (Daryl Hannah) and you get what amounts to a Mexican stand off in the desert. No one trusts each other and they shouldn't- they're killers.
Once again Tarantino proves that he is a great artist who uses dialogue as his medium, particularly during the confrontation where Bill compares the Bride to Superman. No matter how much she tries to disguise herself as the pregnant wife of a record store owner she will always be a killer- she'll always be Bill's killer. It's dialogue like this that makes a scene that is typical Hollywood fluff and makes it cool. That's the thing about Tarantino- he makes well worn cliches cool.
Of course, the $64,000 question is which volume is better. It's really all a matter of preference. If you grew up with kung fu movies and their ilk you will enjoy the first volume. If spaghetti westerns are your game then you will prefer volume 2. I prefer the second volume, mainly because it slows itself down almost to a crawl, but you don't notice it. It's more cerebral than the constant hack and slash of the first movie and delivers an ending that may seem "wimperish", but is more grandiose than most. Kill Bill, Volume 2 is a great and enjoyable ride.
Starring Bill Goldberg. That says it all. That tells you how utterly shitty this film is and the pain it is to watch it. Goldberg's a killer Santa. I'm not even going to go even deeper into it beyond that fact. This guy was a failure as a wrestler, so you know an Oscar isn't in his future. This film is 78 minutes long (thank god) and you have to wonder which Arab prince threw money away on such a piece of garbage. It was nice to see The Nanny getting her head burned off, but why James Caan, why?
Yes, this is the kind of movie that you scrape off your shoe after stepping on it in the front lawn. It belongs in a poopy bag at the park to be thrown away shortly after falling out of a dogs ass.
I must admit before I get started- I wasn't the biggest fan of Inglourious Basterds the first time I saw it. It was still a very good movie, but I felt that some of the dialogue went much too long even for a Tarantino movie. I was disappointed as hell. So I revisited the movie a few days later and found that on a second viewing the dialogue flows a lot better than in my original viewing. So let this be a lesson to you- watch it twice, especially if war films are not your forte.
Inglourious Basterds is a World War II saga about a group of Jewish Allied Soldiers that act as an assassination squad, killing and scalping every German they come in contact with, owing Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) one hundred Nazi scalps. The film centers on their exploits to eliminate the entire German high command and end the war once and for all.
Now before you go into this film thinking it's Saving Private Ryan or The Longest Day, please remember that this isn't an action filled movie. There's a ton of dialogue that makes this film more of an espionage flick than an action one. But Tarantino is so good at crafting this film that you don't notice as the Basterds develop a plan for the ultimate execution.
The film owes a lot to the classic World War II films that preceded it, mainly the Dirty Dozen, Kelly's Heroes, Where Eagles Dare, and the original Inglorious Bastards. These films take the stance of a group of outcasts leading the way to winning the war against unthinkable odds. Tarantino draws on the basic storyline of these films and updates them in his own unique way of telling a story. Just as he did with the Kill Bill films, he merges several genres and eras of film making into one movie and it works yet again.
Quentin Tarrantino is the world's biggest film student. He's absorbed every film he's ever seen and uses them whenever he writes or directs a film, giving us a history lesson in the cinema of the 1960's and '70's. Just as with his other films, Inglourious Basterds is another unique film that doesn't redefine a genre because it doesn't belong to any one genre. With Tarantino, every film is a unique experience that you're not going to get anywhere else.
So what do we call Terminator Salvation? A sequel? A prequel? It's hard to define and even harder to explain the in's and out's of the Terminator franchise to an someone coming into it cold. What this film does is follow the war between the machines and the Resistance, a small group of survivors trying to destroy that evil programming called Skynet. (insert Vista joke here)
The film basically follows the exploits of John Connor (Christian Bale), who is considered a prophet by the Resistance because he can see the future. No, actually he has the tapes his mother started recording in the first film. It does beg the question- How did he find a functioning tape deck in the post-Apocalyptic world? Why couldn't he put them on his iPod? There's plenty of room between the Guns N' Roses tunes.
John Connor isn't the main character in this fourth installment. Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) awakens from a coma during one of the battles and enters this new world that he doesn't know. He literally stumbles into Connor and Connor's father (who is only a teenager at this point) Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin). Remember that Reese copulates way back in 1984.
This is basically a futuristic war film with effects that mesmerize beyond belief. Sadly, there isn't much of a story to go along with it. That's the problem with the film- if you haven't followed the original films you will be confused, wondering what the hell is going on as the film plays out. Worthington is the highlight of the film, playing a man lost in the brave new world to which he has awaken. Bale seems underused in the film and has adopted his gruff Batman voice that people freaked about last summer for this film as well.
This film seems to be opening another trilogy of Terminator films and even though it outshines the third film, Terminator Salvation fails to achieve the greatness of James Cameron's original films. This film is full of great action, but fails to deliver much of a story behind it. Not the best of the franchise, but it still delivers a nice ride.
The Shootist represents John Wayne's swan song, the final film where the legend that is John Wayne appeared on the screen. The film follows the final days of J.B. Books (Wayne). Dying of cancer, he visits an old doctor friend (Jimmy Stewart) who informs the old gunslinger that he doesn't have much time left. Books takes up lodgings with a Mrs. Rogers (Lauren Bacall) and her son Gillom (Ron Howard). When the area finds out that Books is in town and dying it seems that everyone wants a piece of him, coming out of the woodwork with money making schemes as this shootist prepares for one final battle.Directed by Don Siegel (Dirty Harry) The Shootist is Wayne's best acting since The Searchers almost twenty years earlier. Instead of the invincible cowboy he plays a man at the end, preparing for what may lay beyond this world. The legend is still there, but he's a little humbler. Just looking at the rest of the cast, you know the films going to be good, though it does suffer from an almost Made For TV feel. John Wayne survived almost three years beyond the release of The Shootist. He never made another film. Having this film as a bookend to a career that was simply legendary was a great capstone. He was THE premiere MAN for over thirty years and brought his persona to his films in a way that has never been repeated except by Clint Eastwood. John Wayne was a man and a character that grew beyond the confines of the silver screen and into American culture.
Barry Lyndon allows us to travel back to the Old World and visit an era where a man can go from being an Irish farm boy to European aristocracy based on pure bullshit. There's no claim or heredity. Just bullshit from the title characters stand point.
The film stars Ryan O'Neal as Redmond Barry, who falls in love with his cousin, but she finds him to be but a boy and shuns him for an older British officer. This situation sets off a chain of events that leads Redmond into fighting for two armies and eventually becoming British nobility under the name Barry Lyndon after marrying the Lady Lyndon (the beautiful Marisa Berenson). Barry becomes the typical 18th century nobleman by pissing away his wife's money and whore mongering, leading to a slow and painful downfall.
Directed by Stanley Kubrick, Barry Lyndon is yet another technological achievement for the legendary director. Now before you ask what in the hell I'm talking about and assume I've gone crazy since this is a film set in the 18th century let me explain. The film was shot with specially designed cameras so that natural light can be used instead of the arc lamps typical in Hollywood productions. What does this achieve? Kubrick gets a look that feels primitive because it's bathed in natural light. There's a sense of going back to the old days where there was no electricity or running water.
The film does get dull from time to time and Ryan O'Neal isn't great as Lyndon. What the film is really good at is expressing Kubrick's inspiration- paintings of the era. The film is shot like multiple paintings, beautifully detailed and lit. For this, the film is a work of genius, even though the story is a bit blah. This is one of Kubrick's forgotten films, sandwiched between A Clockwork Orange and The Shining. It's an OK period piece that is polished up with the Stanley Kubrick magic.
There are only three reasons I gave the Hunter two stars. First, it was Steve McQueen's last film and he is very good in it. Second, Eli Wallach is in it and Eli makes any movie better (except The Holiday). Lastly, Steve McQueen drives a Trans-Am.
Other than those three things this film is horrible. Directing, writing, acting. It all sucks except those three things. McQueen is a bounty hunter that can apparently go around driving into things, blowing stuff up, and causing mayhem. And he's not even a cop. Where the hell do I sign up? I want to blow up a chemistry classroom, too. Levar Burton shows up- he's wanted for selling old books without covers as a side line to Reading Rainbow.
Enough of that crap, let's talk about McQueen and the T/A. Sadly, a plot to the story is that his character is a bad driver, but the sad part is that McQueen drives a Trans-Am badly better than most people drive normally. Of course it gets blown to hell, but it's a good ten minutes.
Seriously, I can only recommend this for McQueen. It's sad that the guy in the movie that's actually dying is the only actor in the movie that isn't dying on screen. McQueen, Wallach, and Trans-Am are awesome. The rest of this is shit.
