#111 Kill Bill Vol. 1

It's been eleven years since I first experienced a Quentin Tarantino flick. Since then copycats have done their best to tarnish the director's reputation. The hundreds of half-assed Pulp Fiction rip-offs that we've been plagued with has made it easy to forget what made QT's movies so great; Tarantino has a bone-deep love for movies. Not just the classics, the Oscar winners and the critic's faves. No, Quentin loves trash. He loves movies that take cheap shots. Movies that thrill you like a shot in the arm or draw your eye like a smoldering car crash on the side of the road. I was incredibly relieved last Friday to find that that Quentin's filmmaking still could make me grin from ear-to-ear.

Somewhere along the line my faith in Quentin Tarantino faltered. I started second-guessing my interest in his first films. I harbored a mild embarrassment that my walls were once covered floor to ceiling with his movie posters. I figured that I'd grown up since then. The funny thing is that Tarantino has grown too. He's a better filmmaker than he's ever been. Kill Bill Vol. 1 is beautifully shot, brilliantly scored (with a killer mix job by The RZA) and most importantly, incredibly well conceived. Kill Bill Vol. 1 is a love letter to the off-beat genre film. It's a revenge picture that hopscotches across the bloody sidewalks of grindhouse, samurai and kung-fu films with glee. The film is unrepentantly exploitative. It's violent. It's gory. And, believe it or not, it's quite funny.

After my first viewing of Kill Bill Vol. 1, I walked out of the theater and told my friends, "This is how every movie should be." I stand by that statement. I'd love to live in a world where every Friday another exhilarating serving of celluloid junk-food was served up at the local multiplex. Movies have become sanitized and safe. Stylists have polished action down to the nub, snipping away the visceral punch the films of the '70s and '80s once had. Fans of gonzo horror and nutty karate have been forced underground. The dusty aisles of mom and pop video stores and the bootleg bins at comic book conventions are the only place to find films that once openly bled on theater screens. Kill Bill Vol 1. is a glorious return to a time when an R rating actually meant something. The MPAA's Restricted label meant that you'd probably see some titties. It meant that you'd better be a grown-up, and even if you were, you still might just barf all over yourself, be scared shitless or at the very least feel a little uncomfortable.

There may be more artistic movies out there. God knows, there are definitely bigger and better moviegoing experiences coming. But I still don't think any of them have a shot at making me as happy as Kill Bill Vol. 1 has.