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reviews in brief.
Kill Bill Vol. 1
R.93 minutes, South Wind 12
Near the end of Kill Bill Vol.1, director Quentin Tarantino stages the fight scene of the decade. We're at the House of Blue Leaves, a Tokyo club and eatery, where The Bride (Uma Thurman) squares off against the Crazy 88 Fighters. As the blades swoop down and the room begins to rain with blood and limbs, the film becomes beyond kinetic. It's closer to volcanic.
Still, it would be a mistake to dismiss Tarantino's shoot-the-moon kung-fu extravaganza as an ultra-violent exercise in style. In Kill Bill, the director's unparalleled knowledge of film lore is on its grandest display yet. The result is a hyperrealized dreamland for movie lovers.
The Bride is a former member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, or the DiVAS. After waking up from a four-year coma, she's out to exact revenge on her former associates for massacring her loved ones. The Bride's ultimate target is Bill (David Carradine), the DiVAS boss who showed up on her wedding day and put a bullet in her head.
As a one-victim-now-the-next tale of revenge, Kill Bill is no more complex than Alex Proyas' The Crow. The storyteller rather than the story generates the movie's thrills. Tarantino uses split screens, classic movie music from Hitchcock composer Bernard Herrmann, an anime sequence reminiscent of HBO's explicit Spawn series, and even black-and-white footage in some of the gorier parts, presumably to
avoid an NC-17 rating.
The film is not without its flaws. Tarantino overplays his signature title cards, and there's a long, self-indulgent scene with martial-arts star Sonny Chiba that all but collapses under the weight of geek worship. But no one is making movies with more emotion than Tarantino, or with more passion for the art. He even devised an intensely satisfying conclusion to hold us over until Vol. 2 is released in February, which is more than could be said for that ridiculous coda to The Matrix Reloaded.
—Stephen Shupe Grade: A-
House of the Dead R. 92 minutes, South Wind 12
This is an astonishingly awful horror movie, boasting some of the worst film-making since Heather, Josh and Mike picked up a few cameras and headed into the woods in search of the Blair Witch.
Based on a Sega video game of the same name, House of the Dead is set on an island where mutated freaks run around terrorizing extremely stupid people. The action sequences recall the technical brilliance displayed in soft-core porn. The film's giggle-inducing incompetence may have made for a good drinking game at Liberty Hall, which serves Free State beer, but alas, it's playing at South Wind 12.
The real houses of the dead are theaters filled with consumer-age zombies who buy tickets to see this commercialized crap. House of the Dead is more proof that studios will one day be able to slap a trailer over a movie filmed in the director's backyard and expect sheep to line up around the block to see it. Take it from me sheep: You're ruining cinema.
—Stephen Shupe
Grade: F
Intolerable Cruelty PG-13, 110 minutes, South Wind 12
Uma Thurman is an assassin with a heart set on revenge in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill.
Dear George Clooney,
From the moment this film began and you checked your impeccable teeth in the mirror, everyone with a pulse was smitten. I mean even the guys couldn't deny it. Watching you razzle and dazzle Catherine Zeta-Jones made them want to be a man like you. And your good friends the Coen Brothers, who gave you the award-winning turn in O Brother, Where Art Thou?, must be in awe of you. That must be why they gave you the role of Miles Massey, a slick divorce lawyer out to cut Catherine Zeta-Jones' Marylin Rexroth out of everything she worked so hard for. Even when she tried to turn the tables on you by marrying another millionaire, a hilarious Billy Bob Thornton, you sailed through victorious. As a gold-digger, Ms. Zeta-Jones was no match for your wily ways. You hooked, lined and sunk her with your winning personality and your even more winning smile. Congratulations on making Intolerable Cruelty such a funny, stylish and somewhat cartoonish romance. Thank you for bringing a quirkiness to the film that only the Coens could have brought out of you.
Grade: B
Love, Lindsey Ramsey
contributed photo
Legally Blonde 2: Red. White, and Blonde PG-13. 95 minutes. Woodruff Auditorium Kansas Union
The charm of the first Legally Blonde film laid completely in Reese Witherspoon's hands. Her charm and quick wit drove us through sorority stereotypes, mean old Harvard students and anything else that stood in Elle's way.
In her second outing as Elle Woods, a hint of her charm remains but her quick
wit has vanished and has been replaced with a dumber, but better- dressed Elle.
This time, Elle is busy planning her dream wedding when she discovers that the mother of her beloved Chihuahua is being used for animal testing. In order to liberate her, Elle hops on board an animal rights bill with Rep. Rudd (Sally Field), and challenges all that oppose her in mean old Washington D.C. Now I'm all for animal rights, but Elle's motivation for her animal crusade isn't really that animal testing is wrong, it is that her dog's mom is unable to attend Elle's wedding.
What?
The ridiculousness of this premise speaks for itself. Where the film should have been an inspiring, "go get 'em Elle" Washington campaign, it turned as just an "OK, whatever Elle" Washington romp.
—Lindsey Ramsey
Grade: C
Magdalene Sisters R.119 minutes, Liberty Hall (closes tonight)
In the 2002 Irish film, The Magdalene Sisters, director Peter Mullan (Orphans) subjects the audience to two bleak hours of Catholic oppression.
The director focuses the story on three women living in 1960s Ireland: Margaret, Bernadette and Rose. Because of circumstances beyond their control, the women are placed in the Magdalene Sisterhood asylum. The asylum houses women who have gone wayward by societal standards and is ruled by the Nurse Ratched-esque Sister Bridget. The women learn they must bond and maintain hope in the face of their habit-wearing oppressors.
The movie features strong acting from its three protagonists and excellent camera work by Mullan. The camera's pervasive views force the audience to experience the humility the residents of the Magdalene asylum experience.
While the movie is well made, it presents some trite territory. It combines thematic elements from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Picnic at Hanging Rock. Mullan also lifts stylistic elements as he presents the asylum in a creepy manner similar to Peter Weir's presentation of the Australian boarding school in Hanging Rock.
—Cal Creek
Grade: B-
20 jayplay
thursday. october 16, 2003