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The past two days have restored my faith in filmmaking.
On Monday I saw Kill Bill: Volume 1, Quentin Tarantino's first writing and directing project in six years. Some have complained that it was just Tarantino showing off how cool he is, but I don't really have a problem with that. The violence in some places is childish, but overall I must say that the film is beautiful. One particular fight scene between Lucy Liu and Uma Thurman stands out in my mind, a combination of stark white with flowing red, and the back and forth play is genius. While it may be nothing "new," and the story is a classic one of revenge, it works profoundly well. Like Shakespeare, Tarantino can take an old story and make it a masterpiece.
When randomly perusing the cheap DVD bins at Wal-Mart a couple of weeks ago, I picked up Drop Dead Gorgeous for $5.99. Last night I finally watched it. It is, without a doubt, one of the smartest comedies I have ever seen. What works most is it's subtlety. Most of the jokes go unstated, picked up one layer beneath what's happening on screen. I would recommend this film to anyone who's humour has a more sinister side. For example, the main character's mother stumbles in while her 17-year old daughter is being interviewed by a documentary crew about the town's beauty pagent. In response to "they're from L.A.," her mother casually says as she leaves the room that that "if they want you to take your top off, make sure you get the money first." In a way, the film is both a celebration of white trash culture, and a piss-take on our beauty based society.
In short, good movies ... go see them.
Posted by Owen at October 15, 2003 10:26 AM | TrackBackSpeaking as that "some" person, I feel that I should elaborate.
Kill Bill is a very cool demo, but that's all it is. The movie has absolutely no story, which in itself wouldn't be a problem: most action movies don't. However, the action movies usually compensate for this by linking the action together in some sort of a coherent fashion. Kill Bill, on the other hand, is just a collection of disjointed scenes. Each scene has a different style, different feel, and yes, each of them is technically superb. However, these scenes do not stick together in any way, and they don't leave much of an impression beyound "huh, this must have cost a lot of money".
Compare and contrast (I always wanted to say that) this approach with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. That movie also relied heavily on special techniques (in this case, wire-fu) for success. However, Crouching Tiger picked one technique and stuck with it throughout the movie. It also had a story, actual acting in addition to the martial arts, and it had a wonderful rhythm. Action scenes and dialogue were woven together in an elegant fashion, and, as the result, the movie feels like a coherent whole, more than just a sum of its parts. Unfortunately, Quentin Tarantino was clearly uninterested in this result.
Note again that I am not saying that the Kill Bill demo was bad: I am merely saying that it was an excellent collection of directing/filmmaking techniques, but that's all. What would be really great is if Quentin Tarantino took one technique and stuck with it for an entire movie, with a bit of actual story to spice things up. It worked for Pulp Fiction and Reservour Dogs, so we know it's a valid approach.
By the way, Salon agrees with me: http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2003/10/10/kill_bill/index.html
Posted by: Bugmaster at October 16, 2003 06:47 AMSee "Equilibrium"
It is a great film. Good ratings. It is the "Dark City" of 2002.
Posted by: MAlex at October 16, 2003 03:34 PMI saw it, actually. It sucked. Note that I am saying that it actually sucked, unlike Kill Bill which at least had some originality in it. Equilibrium is a blatant ripoff of Farenheit 451 (that's a book... you might have heard of those) and The Matrix, only it's not nearly as good as either work. Comparing this movie to Dark City, which had an excellent plot, good acting, and amazing cinematorgraphy, is... well... kind of pathetic. Though I suppose the rendering software for Equilibrium pushed more megatexels around or whatever, so I guess it wins by that metric. Bah.
Posted by: Bugmaster at October 17, 2003 07:13 AM