KILL BILL REVIEW BY FLETCH...
Tarantino's fourth film is clearly his most passionate.
Style on a very big stick from the master of cool, Tarantino has been working on this martial art baby for years and when you sit down and experience it you can see why.
It's an assault on the senses from the start as very early on we learn of the minimal plot and full on violence toward Uma, and see exactly where Quentin wants to take us. Think Crouching Tiger, think The Matrix throw in From Dusk Til Dawn for its anarchic attack of the unexpected and that is just a peppering of what Kill Bill part 1 is going to do to you!
The violence and fight sequences are visually relentless as we see the director take his influences from his 60's and 70's martial arts film (You know the ones where the colour is faded and the lip synch is out, but the fighting is awesome). It is without a doubt his personal homage to the films he holds dear as we see the care he has put into the detail and attention to each move in every frame of film.
Blended together with the snappy dialogue and too cool for words characters that have been written with the funkiest spot on music that seems to just fit with the moment. Tarantino is the best in the business at making a sequence click with his use of music - be it Jackie Brown, Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction - and he does it again with @*!ing ease (Bas$!rd) it doesn't matter whether it is a frenzied fight scene or a spiritual calm before a blood storm, straight away he nails it with the script, camera and tunes – Masterful!
The whole look of the film is great, it has a different look around every corner be it glossy Tokyo or grainy middle America. The cinematographer has worked well with his director to please the expectant audience, nice work with the saturation of colour during the over the top limb-losing fight sequences that has rivers of crimson turn black and white and a great animation section that introduces a main character. The film is pretty much filmed in a studio environment to get the choreography just right so you kind of forget where you are at times because the background is just that – background. With a second and third viewing we will learn how damned detailed this (already) cult classic is.
Wildly daring and at times risky but with a maverick studio like Miramax behind you, you feel you can jump with the Weinstein safety net!
Uma et al are great, Part Two will introduce more of the bunch as the first film only really concentrates on the women of the ensemble, but as the film comes to its climax you don't want it to end, but kind of feel it's right to stop there because you can't take too much more of what has just happened! (I hope this makes sense? When you watch it, I think you will agree). The humour is necessary at times and is welcomed when it's effortlessly introduced as we mix up the fighting with the clear use of flashback and character history.
Kill Bill is full on and not for the faint hearted but wow, what a visual treat. You're left wanting more but exhausted from what has just happened. Your senses are numbed but for all the right reasons!
Film fans line up and wait patiently for the cult classic to be...KILL BILL
4/5
Fletch out.

EXTRAORDINARY L EAGUE OF GENTLEMEN (LXG) BY FLETCH...

Think X-Men. Think Sherlock Holmes. Throw in some pantomime acting and LXG is starting to form before your eyes...
Sean Connery plays Alan Quartermain (The famous British adventurer), who is asked by way of her Majesty to bring together a team of elite individuals to join, and fight an evil mastermind who is ...guess what? Trying to run the world (Cue Dr Evil laugh...)
Set in Victorian times (I think!) Quartermains' freaks include Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Mina Harker (Dracula's first wife!), Captain Nemo and Tom Sawyer (who is working for American Intelligence but just happens to be in London at the turn of the century). Are you still with me or like me in the cinema are you laughing? I have missed a few out, but you have the main core of extraordinary gentlemen even if one of them is a woman. Will they all get on? Will they save the day? Will you carry on reading - or watching?
Based on the graphic novel, The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen (LXG) is a messy film that fails to make you believe right from the start, cliché after cliché fit together as the script speeds through the pages in a way that tells me a number of people have been involved - You barely have time to absorb what is happening from scene to scene.
Steve "Blade" Norrington takes the helm in this big budget live action cartoon of a film, the look of the movie was a concern to me - I think the idea was to make it as realistic as possible but what Norrington and his team of SFX guys have done is tint it too much and colour it to the point of matt overload, which gives it that awkward obvious fake look. Matt work can look great - eg Minority Report where Spielberg gave the whole film the industrial hues that enhanced the futuristic feel - but LXG it has an adverse effect making it look like the Avengers meets Spawn!
Connery and crew are all OK but I expect the reported feuds between director and star were true with Sean getting all the good lines and camera angles! The sets are fine and Prague doubles nicely for old Blighty but you know that wherever they could, they faked the shot and this does tamper your view.
Norrington can direct but here you get the impression he was rushed and forced to compromise his project due to the studio already committing to a release date, so even before the cameras were rolling the pressure was on and that ultimately affected the finished film.
League could have been another franchise for Fox and raised the bar set by Bryan Singer but for whatever reason this just limps across the line and will disappear into the "could of" archive.
I have no doubt the comic book fans will have something to enjoy from it and of course the key teen market but for it to really have worked it needed to cross over to all ages and this certainly does not. Shame.
If you must leave your brain in the car.
2/5
Fletch out.