April 16, 2004

The saga of Kill Bill: Volume 2 will surely continue for me through this weekend and for at least a whole week, until people move along to tearing into or praising Van Helsing for deconstructing great genre characters in this way or that. But with the exception of ROTDs, I suspect that the discussion has already worn out its welcome with many readers.

That said, I think the specific discussion speaks to a bigger discussion.

My comments on Kill Bill: Volume 2 were directly from the heart, as anyone within shouting distance of my after the screening can tell you. And if you were sitting next to me in the theater, you could have seen me check my watch at around the 30 minute mark and then again at the 60 minute mark, stunned that the story of Volume 2 still had not begun in earnest. Once they got over the reams of V1-repetitive prologue, I found a number of things to smirk at and very little to love about the film. I never made an emotional connection with the story of The Bride. The movies, in the end, have all the redemptive depth of the Sex & The City finale… which is to say, none that last longer than a bull's orgasm. (Make sure to see the documentary Dirty Work if you get the chance… fascinating… with more humanity than Kill Bill, Volumes 1 through 250.)

When I ran to a few friends outside of the Arclight looking for an answer to what was redeeming about this film, I was sincerely looking for answers, even if my sense of disconnect effectively bulldozed some of the answers I might have heard in greater depth. It was about an hour after the movie that I really thought about the overall arc of the "epic" and was hit by the great combination of indulgence and cynicism that the enterprise represents. There is some real genius in the manipulative separation of this work into two films, the visceral and verbal. Unlike the more sincere effort of Saving Private Ryan, whether one likes the result or not, where the insane opening 20 minutes informs the relatively docile following two hours, Volume 1 and 2 offer very different experiences that only inform one another if you want them to and are willing to work to have them do so in your head. In this era of cinema, managing expectation has overwhelmed the art of filmmaking and no more so than here.

Anyway, my sense after the last couple of days is that I feel I have to restate the nature of this column.

I am a film critic. I am also an industry analyst. I am also a nice guy. I am also an arrogant prick. I am many things to many people. I am many things to myself. I see literally hundreds of movies every single year. And each year, I usually find two movies that I consider "sucker's bet" movies… movies that draw my comrades-in-arms into a heated frenzy that will leave them hung over in the light of a new morning and lead hundreds of thousands of unsuspecting film lovers into applauding the emperor's new nudity. When I make these calls, I am inevitably pelted by people on both side of the aisle.

I have to admit, my first instinct as I wrote the piece that ran on Wednesday was to scream, "I cannot have any respect for a critic who thinks this thing is brilliant." I restrained that thought because, in the end, it isn't true. I want to confront Todd McCarthy in a parking lot with a chair and a knife and "Stuck in the Middle With You" blasting on my car radio and force him to explain what he really loves about this movie under threat of Earl Dittman taking over as chief critic at Variety. Does taking a chainsaw to Roger Ebert's way up thumb mean that I no longer have any respect for him as a critic? Does agreeing with Roeper on In America mean that I now have gained respect for him as a critic? No one film… and no 10 films… are enough to define a relationship with a critic that produces as much as these guys. And in the end, we agree, we disagree… the whole point is the debate.

I am aware of the power of language and, in specific, my ability to delight or destroy egos with the turn of a phrase. The outpouring of mail when I do get into one of my rare publicly aggressively confrontive moods is, I think, a reaction to the sense that I have somehow turned on the readership…. that I am challenging you for your beliefs and like some schoolyard bully, holding my (written) fist an inch away from your face, waiting to pound you if you disagree with me.

And I guess, on some level, that is true. But sitting in this seat, I'm just another kid on the playground who has to get out a baseball bat every once in a while to fight the bullies of complacency and fear of not being cool and brilliant marketing that creates trends that might not naturally exist.

I am not aiming that bat at your head if you are not a professional critic or marketer. Quentin's head, like those of most directors, is inflated enough to absorb the blow of the bat and never even know he was hit. But on the other hand, the experience of this column is meant to be personal. I am writing it for you, individually. Except when I'm not. And I guess at times that is like having a friend take out their problems on you even though you are not the source of the trouble. Sorry about that. The line is blurry. And for this column, which mixes so many journalistic "specialties," it is a daily Rorschach (with due respect to the now vilified Dennis Miller, who has a segment on his show named just that)..

We are in the midst of a huge transition in the film crit game, as well as in the industry at large. Roger Ebert is the master of the domain, yet he now presides over a show that is becoming less and less about serious criticism. And that is his prerogative. It is his legacy to deal with. The irony is that the briefer my media interludes with Roger get, the more of him I want. Rich Roeper is fine as a TV personality and he has worked to increase his depth of knowledge about film. But he is not a real film critic and unless the show is still on the air in 2010, he never will be. Roger's mind is both lithe and loaded with information and I would love to see him tearing things up again. But he is on a TV show that needs to draw viewers and mining the challenging minds of Rosenbaum and Wilimington and Pride (and that's just in Chicago) is not going to do the job.

I know that Richard will be given this by some friend or another and will probably feel that I am attacking him. I am not. It is not personal. It is not about me being in that chair. My life's journey did not take me there and I am long past accepting that fact and moving along in my life. He carries no guilt because there has been no crime. But he is a representation - the most obvious one - of the rift between the past of film criticism and the current situation.

What is the job of a film critic now? Can any person with a rich knowledge of popular culture just ramp up the number of films they see and be a legitimate critic? Does one need to have a thorough knowledge of the works of Budd Boetticher in order to be worthy? Must one be a daily Ain't It Cool reader? Do you have to read the NY Times Sunday Arts section and like it… or hate it? Are critics here to serve film or their readership or the wider palate of The Arts?

Of course, there is no correct answer... though once gainfully employed as a critic, you should at least be able to pronounce Boetticher. Being on a payroll means that you do not live in Eden and you have people to answer to… and you also answer to your own career motives.

But to me, the standard bearers serve an absolutely critical role in defining the role of the critic. When their standards become diluted, we all suffer. The arts suffer. It is not enough for these men and women to "like" something. There are thousands of websites loaded with people who like this or love that or despise whatever. And I honor their place in the conversation. But these people are not Roger Ebert or Variety or Time Magazine. (Neither am I.) Not only don't they have the power… they don't carry any of the responsibility.

So, when Roger and Variety and The Hollywood Reporter and slutty Peter Travers proclaim early and often, thanks to Miramax's savvy marketing, that a movie that I found stunningly meaningless (in its own context and the larger one), I have a responsibility to throw down and shout "Put up something more than 'Tarantino's great!' or shut the fuck up!"

The question of whether I am Jack Nicholson or Tom Cruise in the A Few Good Men courtroom exchange is yours to decide. Personally, I think the genius of that scene - and it is one of Aaron Sorkin's few moments of real genius - is that the audience is ambivalent about who they are rooting for. We do need Nicholson and his men on that wall and we don't want to think about it. But when they exceed their authority - when absolute power corrupts absolutely - we also need Cruise and his team pulling the rug out from under them.

I want the truth. And I can't handle the truth.

One source of sanity in this insane world is Joe Morgenstern. I don't know him well, but I suspect that he could deliver a baby in a taxi, if you know what I mean. I believe that the last time I felt the sky was falling - and it would have fallen, had Columbia gotten away with it - was on Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. And there was Joe, assuring that the world would go on. It did… despite critics giving it a pass, audiences stayed away in summer-you-can-make-many-millions-and-still-be-a-bomb droves. And once again, Joe assures, "Mr. Tarantino is anything but self-referential, and 'Vol. 2' is anything but dull." I couldn't disagree more, but reading his full review today, his praise is in context of a sane universe and not loaded with hyperbole, though I am sure that Miramax can still squeeze a quote out of it.

Of one section, he writes: "Watching it, I flashed back on myself as a boy in the Teaneck Theater, enthralled by a serial called "Don Winslow Of the Navy." At the end of one chapter, Commander Winslow was obviously a goner, since he'd just been buried in the rubble of a collapsed smokestack. When the next chapter began the following Saturday afternoon, one brick in the pile moved, then another. Suddenly Winslow emerged, not just alive but undaunted, and dashing in his uncreased white uniform."

I would rather see "Don Winslow of the Navy" rather than QT's pale imitation myself. But that's me.

One of the delights of the upcoming 13 Going On 30 is a surprise sequence in which a large group of jaded New Yorkers engage in a massive sense memory exercise in a nightclub. (That's all I'll say… you can see it for yourself.) Remembering that joy brings them joy. And I get that. But for me, the power of that moment, dramatically, is in the utter lack of irony. When I look at a movie like Zhang Yimou's Hero or Chinese Odyssey 2002, which are unapologetic and don't hide behind the curtain of irony, that is when I see brilliance. They make us self-conscious about their lack of hipness, yet we go with them anyway, because they are so damned good. It is, indeed, the difference between The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Kill Bill: Vol. 1. It is the difference between American Beauty and Fight Club. It is the difference between being on the wall and judging those on the wall.

Don't get me wrong. I adore Reservoir Dogs. I love QT's script for Natural Born Killers. True Romance is one of my favorites. Pulp Fiction has magnificently memorable parts… though I think that the deconstructionist nature of that film is what has "ruined" Tarantino. Jackie Brown was the first reaction…. scaling back. Good movie… better script. And Kill Bill is a wild re-reaction. It is, in my opinion, shockingly precious, regurgitated without adding a new idea (which has not been the case with his genre obsession in the past) and indeed, I found V2 mostly boring.

I will continue to anticipate Tarantino movies with great hope. The best thing he could do right now is to make a movie a year for the next three or four years. He needs to so masturbating in the mirror. Of course, his work is better than many filmmakers work, even when it is bad. But that doesn't make him above artistic failure. By protecting our beloveds, critics tend to kill off the next generation. Tarantino took a wonderful idea… The Woman With No Name… and then Harvey Weinstein forgot that he's just another fucking filmmaker and the result is a bunch of frogs falling from the sky for three and a half hours. I still thing that I would like the 2 hour 20 minute version of Kill Bill: The Real Movie. But that opportunity has been taken away from me. And all that's left is an early director's cut of a promising movie that desperately needs editing.

I just read Roger's print review and it is filled with breathtaking leaps of his long-established logic based on one simple fact… he likes it. He likes Quentin. He is excited. For some reason, repetitive, not terribly memorable dialogue, written by Tarantino, is transformative. The most simple rule of good drama - don't say it, show it - is given a day off because "such speeches function in Tarantino not as long-winded detours, but as a way of setting up characters and situations with dimensions it would be difficult to establish dramatically."

Okay.

I wish that these ways of setting up characters and situations with dimensions it would be difficult to establish dramatically were half as memorable as any dozen things from previous Tarantino scripts. I wish that one of them in this film was as memorable as the simple sight of Go Go Yubari. I wish that Elle Driver or Budd were half as interesting as they were set up to be and that they acted like human beings would when confronted with their challenges in this film (which O-Ren and Vernita did in the last film, however steeped in manga and blaxploitation). I wish that Roger acknowledged that the secret name of The Bride meant absolutely nothing in some way other than to drop her name in his review like it wasn't a secret that turned out to be meaningless. I wish phrases like " would be unsettling in another kind of movie, but here all the action is so ironically heightened that we may cringe and laugh at the same time" didn't bother me so much… not so much because Tarantino gets a pass, but because other filmmakers will be trashed by Ebert for the same squish with the same motives. I wish that Kill Bill didn't feel like your beautiful high school crush who would never look at you twice, but who now wants to performs any number of sodomic acts on you because you can name five Shaw Bros. movies without help from imdb.

And if you disagree, all I ask is that you pick up your gun and get on the wall with me. We can disagree, but so long as we don't shoot one another, we'll be okay.

P.S. If you liked My Big Fat Greek Weddding, you'll enjoy Connie and Carla. It is infinitely less cringeworthy, though it is still just a couple of eggs away from being a country breakfast.

P.S.S. Be-tik-ker.

E ME: Kill Dave, Volume 17.