Compiled by: Jack Foley
CRITICS across America seemed to delight in the return of Quentin
Tarantino to the form approaching his early, breakthrough work.
Hence, Kill Bill has drawn as many favourable reviews in America,
as it has in the UK.
Entertainment Weekly leads the way, declaring that Kill
Bill may have little on its mind besides pop extravagance, yet
you can feel the movie tracing a transition in the world - from
West to East, from male to female rule.
JoBlos Movie Emporium, meanwhile, stated it is an
inventive, exciting, ballsy, violent, entertaining, stylized and
brilliant.
Village Voice opined that it is fun and smart, but
undeniably thin, while Ebert and Roeper hailed it
as the ultimate movie for kung-fu drive-in geeks....
Glowing, too, was Newsday, which felt that it is 'an eye-popping,
blood-soaked, ingeniously choreographed thriller and Hong Kong
homage that ultimately adds up to ... not much'.
While the Chicago Tribune declared that it is 'the most
gorgeous B-movie ever made'.
CNN, meanwhile, opined that 'the violence, blood levels
- and just plain cheesy gore - in this film are extreme, but Tarantino's
sharp dialogue and expert editing leaves you breathless'.
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While the Chicago Sun-Times felt that 'Kill Bill: Volume
1 shows Quentin Tarantino so effortlessly and brilliantly in command
of his technique that he reminds me of a virtuoso violinist racing
through Flight of the Bumble Bee ..."
Of the negative notices, one of the most vitriolic has to rate
as Slant Magazine, which wrote that Kill Bill: Volume
1 is essentially a pop culture wankers failed multimedia
experiment, a vacuous junk heap of dorky gags and riffs, violent
anime and offensive slapstick.
While the Los Angeles Times felt that 'for the first time
in Tarantino's filmmaking career, the written story - both in
word and development - proves the least interesting part of the
whole equation'.
The New York Daily News, meanwhile, felt that 'there's
a lot to admire in Kill Bill, and a lot that should have been
lopped off like the arms and legs and scalps that go flying'.
While the San Francisco Chronicle went a little worse,
stating that 'it boggles the mind that after six years of silence,
all Tarantino has to offer is this garbage'.
The positives return with the Detroit Free Press, however,
which observed that 'Vol. 1 is a shot of pure adrenalin on celluloid,
headed for the heart and the gut, not the head'.
While the New York Post wrote that it is 'a maddeningly
uneven spaghetti Eastern that's well worth seeing for his technical
mastery, even as it challenges you with the geeky auteur's boundless
self-indulgence'.
And the Toronto Star concluded that 'not only is this
the work of a major and vital talent in full bloom, it's the most
thrillingly entertaining American movie so far this year'.
The final word, however, goes to the Washington Post,
which declared that Kill Bill: Volume One 'has matched, if not
eclipsed, the power and scope of 1994's Pulp Fiction'.
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