Kill Bill (vol. 1)

It's been quite a while since I walked out of a movie thinking uncertainly "that was good, right?"

I think I enjoyed the movie overall, though there were moments here and there I didn't care for. It's bloody. Very bloody. Pooling blood is one thing. Spraying blood is gratuitous. This movie even goes so far as to use animated blood and black-and-white blood. Frankly, the anime and black-and-white scenes both struck me as serving to "tone down" censorable things within the scenes more than any stylistic purpose.

I give the movie points for action, but the fight sequences seem spaced out enough that it didn't feel like an "action movie" to me. There are a lot of elements I could refer to as coming from anime, but the whole thing struck me more like a comic book. I think that came from the way the scenes were done.

And the point I expected to bother me didn't. I went into this movie thinking "They made a three-hour movie and cut in in half? Why couldn't they just release it as a three-hour movie?" I expected to feel shorted. Instead, I found myself feeling the movie was long a couple times and when I walked out it certainly didn't feel short. Maybe that was a good decision after all.

Having thought about it some, I can't help but wonder how much reputation is a part of Hollywood movies these days. If someone else had made this film, I doubt it would have seen such wide release. Would it have hit big screens at all? Would the critics still be praising it so highly? There are many things within the movie (or left out of the movie) that reviewers would usually slam a film over, yet here they call it masterful artistry. *That* I don't understand.

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