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1 item from 2004

16 April 2004 | Studio Briefing - Film News | See recent Studio Briefing - Film News news »

At least the critics, for the most part, are consistent. If they didn't like Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill Vol. 1, they dislike Kill Bill Vol. 2 even more. If they were enthusiastic about Vol. 1, they're downright passionate about Vol. 2. There's little middle ground here. While Elvis Mitchell in the New York Times calls the second Kill Bill installment, "the most voluptuous comic-book movie ever made ... deliciously perverse," across town, at the New York Daily News, Jami Bernard calls the movie "strangely static -- a dulling experience that can safely be admired from afar without it ever engaging the senses. ... Quentin Tarantino has made a movie he could watch all day. But can anyone else?" Well, plenty, it would seem, for most of the reviews are in the vein of John Anderson's in Newsday, which refers to the thriller as "a film of stunning virtuosity and emotional clout ... a powerhouse movie ... [that] may even prove that Quentin Tarantino is as good a director as he has so long been purported to be." Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times praises it as "an exuberant celebration of moviemaking, coasting with heedless joy from one audacious chapter to another, working as irony, working as satire, working as drama, working as pure action." And Manohla Dargis in the Los Angeles Times calls it "an adrenaline shot to the movie heart, soul and mind." But Mark Caro in the Chicago Tribune maintains that Vol. 2, exposes Tarantino's weaknesses, not strengths. "He gives zero indication that he knows how actual kids act in emotionally fraught situations" and in an ending in which "he tries to inject real-life pathos," he exposes how deeply he "is in over his head as he tries to give his four-hour myth a heartbeat." On the other hand, Ty Burr in the Boston Globe writes that the movie shows the director "working at full throttle, using the medium in a way that prompts astonishment, delight, even gratitude. ... The result is insanely good, and the best time I've had at the movies in ages." One critic who panned the first installment does in fact do a 180-degree turn with this one. Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal recalls that at the end of his review of Vol. 1, he wrote snidely: "The second half will be released at a later date. I can hardly wait." In his latest review, he observes, "Well, I would have waited with great eagerness if I'd known of the pleasures to come." »

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1 item from 2004