… Until last night. I had completely not noticed that KBv2 came out, then there it was, on Sky Box office. So I decided to watch it.
Overall I think it’s better than Volume one.
Tai Pei was amusing, (were those slightly dodgy camera movements deliberate?)
I particularly liked how Kiddo took that other woman’s eye out (in poetic revenge for her killing tai pei I suppose)
And then performing the 5 finger heart exploding trick.
I was quite surprised, considering how good she was in the first film, that she was taken out so easily by Madsen’s character.
Why on earth did this pass under my radar? Films don’t usually do that.
I enjoyed it very much. Daryl Hannah doesn’t work enough lately, IMHO. I hope she chooses to do more, although she’ll be hard-pressed to find a more fun role. I loved Michael Madsen’s character. He was broken without overstating it, as seen in the brutal scene with his employer.
I don’t try to figure movies out beforehand, I just go along for the ride. So, I did assume the girl was alive, but not much before she appeared. My dad, OTOH, figured it out sometime during KBv1. But he does that a lot…
That reminds me, I want my copies of them back from Dad so I can watch them again!
It’s Pai Mei. The Cruel Tutelage of Pai Mei was my favorite part in that whole movie. I grew up watch old kung fu movies. Tarantino captured it perfectly with the dodgy camera work. That’s how they were filmed. When he zeros in on Pai Mei’s face in a zigzag fashion, it was classic old kung fu style.
Pai Mei was a character in a number of old kung-fu movies.
You can get a listing of them here. The actor who plays Pai Mei in KB2 was in at least one of the older movies (not as Pai Mei, though, who was played by Lieh Loh), interestingly enough.
A Burrido said, the camera work is a perfect aping of/homage to the old kung-fu movies that he (and Tarrantino) grew up watching (I didn’t develop an appriciation of them until later, and still prefer the more recent Wu Xia movies, personally).
Beatrice actually does the exact same stunt to one of the Crazy 88 during the fight in the Tokyo restaurant in Volume One, though at the time the significance is unstated.
Personally, I thought the five-finger heart-exploding bit was contrived, but I guess they had to make some allowances for David Carradine’s age, so the final fight couldn’t be some hyperkinetic battle royale, as the Thurman/Hannah fight had been.
And how did Bill get custody of B.B., anyway? Did he kidnap her from the hospital Beatrice was taken to and presumably delivered via c-section?
Well, Tarantino was stealing ideas left and right, but the fight twixt Bill’n’Bea was downright sedate compared to the other one-on-ones in the movie. And the five touch would certainly have come in handy during her other fights, but for some reason she was saving it for Bill.
I think it was the classic powerful secret weapon gimmick. Beatrice couldn’t have beaten Bill in a sword duel, at least that is the message I got from Bill’s calm and Beatrice’s nervousness and apprehension whenever they were together (this was foreshadowed also by the ease with which Bill’s brother packaged Beatrice away and buried her alive). In order to build tension, the audience needs a foe that it believes cannot be vanquished by the heroine, then the tension is released suddenly and explosively when the heroine uses the secret weapon to win the day (instead of yet another protracted combat after effectively three hours of the same).
Not that I know anything, but I thought the reason she used the 5-finger technique was to show how she’d grown. She’s still a killer, when she needs to be, but now she’s a mother, too, and doesn’t need to have blood flying and limbs hacked off to prove her point. The mere death of her nemesis is enough.
She underestimated him, though, and that was the problem. She assumed he was already broken and wouldn’t even realize she was after him, let alone lure her into a trap. That’s how he got the advantage over her - he was smarter than she though.
Kill Bill 2 is the only movie I have ever seen that detracts from the movie it follows. I really enjoyed Kill Bill 1 and looked forward to 2 but when I saw it, it was so obvious that Tarentino was simply money-grubbing that I lowered my regard for Kill Bill I.
Revisiting the church is one of the most turgid bits of film-making of modern times.
I had exactly the opposite reaction: KBV1 left me feeling ill, even though I could get what Tarantino was working toward. I was very reluctant to see V2, until I heard that it wasn’t a 90 minute nonstop gorefest.
And I loved volume 2. Thought it was one of the best movies I saw all year. I finally managed to drag my wife to see it (she loathed volume 1), and I grinned like a monkey through the whole thing, and was delighted to see that she enjoyed it, too.
It’s some fine filmmaking, but there’s a pretty significant group of people who only like the first or the second installments, not both. If you hated V2, I tihnk it’s a matter of your personal taste, not of Tarantino’s moneygrubbingosity.
I can’t answer for don’t ask, but I, for one, thought Harvey should have told QT to get his ass back in that editing suite and make one movie, even if it was over three hours long. But then again, Harvey Weinstein is a super-rich movie producer, and I only want to be one. And QT practically built Miramax, so maybe it was hard to say “no”. I enjoyed both movies, but I still want to see what Kill Bill Vol 0 looks like.
The reason that I asked the question is because I was under the impression that QT made Kill Bill to be just one movie. It was well over 3 hours and the studio then had him make it into 2 films. I imagine that some stuff had to be added to make the 2 part aspect work, but I wonder what it would have been like as one film.
Actually, it was quite in character for the Bride. She didn’t do anything silently, but was more than brash and rash throughout the two films…
… She calls out a challenge to O-Ren in the middle of a crowded nightclub.
… Knowing that the others have been warned, she just casually pulls up in front of Vernita’s house, walks to the door, and rings the doorbell.
… She goes to Bills “father” to get information as to where Bill lives. And, again, instead of being stealthy, she pulls up to the complex, has the valet park her car, and, again, walks in the front door. Let’s not worry about whether Bill was forewarned, why don’t we?
Not to mention charging in on Budd and getting a bra-full of rock salt. Considering the amount of time she has to plan her revenge, she sure doesn’t spend a lot of it dwelling on stealth.
