Kill Bill: Volume 1 (R)
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Marvel at its breathless fight sequences, the knife fight in a suburban kitchen, or the sword battle that pits Uma Thurman's Bride against a hundred men in Green Hornet masks; delight in the copious references to movies writer-director Quentin Tarantino has seen (and made); giggle at the blood that sprays from decapitated corpses, like some Monty Python homage; grin at the animated flashback sequence. That's where Tarantino thrives: in the spectacle of moviemaking, in the sheer pleasure of mishing and mashing sources till it looks (almost) brand-new. But the passion of filmmaking doesn't extend to the passion of filmgoing; we want some kind of closure, not a "coming soon" demanded by a studio boss who wants to make back his investment by twice reaching into our wallets. In the end, what we get is a tale of revenge half-fulfilled, a tease with the most climactic anticlimax in recent film history, a no-duh coda awaiting the ending it never gets. Not this year, anyway.
Review by Robert Wilonsky
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