Film
Kill Bill Vol. 2 is cool; the direction is slick and the editing is masterful. Tarantino's trademark razor-sharp dialogue is back, but whether this film is better than its prequel is up for debate. The casting is spot-on and all the players fulfil the potential handed to them by the script. David Carradine is superb as the elusive Bill while Michael Madsen gives depth within limited screen time to Bill's brother Budd, gone from controlled killer to a seemingly down and out bum. As the Bride, Uma Thurman allows for the complexities of her character , not least the moral conflict arising from being both serial killer and caring mother. To the Bride's steely determination, she adds extra poignancy where a lesser actress might have flattened out the character. As Elle, Daryl Hannah is so stylishly sadistic that you simultaneously hate her and want to be her; her climactic 'bitch fight' with Uma is certainly everything the director promised, and he even treats us to an authentically claustrophobic live burial. The sick, dark humour of the scene is classic Tarantino.
This is a director who knows his audience. He plays with the generic conventions of samurai films, Japanese cinema and westerns, cutting between black and white and colour in a way that can be appreciated even by those who don't classify themselves as film-geeks. If you don't like Tarantino's style, his penchant for 'cool violence' or his deft twisting of narrative structures then chances are you won't like this film. Although Kill Bill Vol. 2 has a noticeably different approach in some ways to his previous output, watch it anyway: it would still make a worthwhile introduction to his work.
The film picks up from the point where Vol. 1 left off. The Bride is still seeking bloody revenge on her enemies and former compadres, the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, following the massacre at her wedding. But Tarantino adds another twist to the tale - her daughter is still alive. This time we are given precise details of the events which led to the massacre, but it is not until the extraordinary dénouement that all is revealed. Only then does the film move from an emphasis on a violent past and an uncertain present to hint at a possible future beyond her revenge.
Kill Bill Vol. 2 is not for everyone, but it is made by people who know film, know how to use it and aren't prepared to compromise on its realisation.
Being quirky is a risky business; producing scripts that veer away from the narrow path laid down by the Hollywood production machine is something that you can only do if you're a recognised genius. Charlie Kaufman, with the critically claimed Being John Malkovich and Adaptation under his belt, now has, in Hollywood's eyes, a licence to print money - albeit quirky money with his own face on.
As a man resentful of success, I longed for Charlie Kaufman to fall flat on his big idiosyncratic face with this latest offering, and entered the cinema in such a frame of mind. What I was presented with, however, was a very human screenplay. While Kaufman experimented with this in Being John Malkovich, the quirk was still the driving plot force, and once that was gone, there was no hope of an ending. In Sunshine, however, Kaufman manages to keep the plot going by the concentration on the characters, which goes beyond the novelty of pecularity.
The direction is effective, and although the continual jump cuts do show up the music video pedigree of the director, they also serve to underline the intense confusion that blights Carrey's character for the majority of the film. Carrey plays the part subdued; this is far more the Jim Carrey of The Truman Show than of The Mask and Ace Ventura.
I thought that quirky movies either worked or they didn't, but today I found out that they can just be all right: the film entertains, and keeps the viewer engaged, but the only message that seems to come out seems too trite to need the 108 minutes to explicate.
Branded by some as a poor man's The Talented Mr Ripley, I feared that Taking Lives, the film that famously landed French dreamboat Olivier Martinez in hot water with Kylie, might prove to be a horrendous hybrid of Silence of the Lambs and The Gift. I left pleasantly surprised.
In this taut thriller, Angelina Jolie turns in her finest performance since Girl, Interrupted, as the G-woman drafted into help the Canadian boys in blue in their hunt for a killer, who "would kill to be you". Director Caruso puts the natural intensity of a lady who routinely hangs vials of blood around her neck in preference to pearls to good use: we are introduced to her as she lies in a suitably spooky grave, making Holmesian deductions about the serial killer faster than her new colleagues can mumble, "witch". Whilst Caruso's previous efforts are confined to episodes of Dark Angel and Smallville, this slick film not only boasts an impressive cast (Ethan Hawke, Keifer Sutherland), it actually lets them act, and delivers some decent tension to boot - certain scenes found this hardened reviewer hiding behind her trusty notebook.
The soundtrack was thumping and the score, by Phillip'The Hours' Glass, was a perfect compliment to both The X Files moments and the cinematography that read like a love poem to Montréal.
So the credits were too gritty, the dead bodies came falling from the ceiling with clichéd rapidity and it was straightforward-to-spot whodunnit. But you get the feeling that this was all pulled off with the script-writer's tongue firmly in their cheek, putting a splendidly smoky new spin on the classic Bogart-and-the-femme-fatale routine.
29th Apr 2004