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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
64
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xx
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77
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82
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53
RocknRolla
57
Sixty Six
85
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57
Special
79
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67
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82
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83
Trouble the Water
43
Tru Loved
83
U2 3D
59
We Are Wizards
55
What Just Happened?
89
Man on Wire
85
Slumdog Millionaire
84
Momma's Man
84
Christmas Tale, A
84
Happy-Go-Lucky
83
Trouble the Water
83
U2 3D
82
Tell No One
82
Rachel Getting Married
82
Frozen River
82
Let the Right One In
81
Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
79
Stranded: I Have Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains
78
I've Loved You So Long
77
Pray the Devil Back to Hell
76
Betrayal - Nerakhoon, The
75
Pool, The
73
Girl Cut in Two, A
72
I Served the King of England
71
Frost/Nixon
70
I.O.U.S. A
69
Ashes of Time Redux
69
Fear(s) of the Dark
68
August Evening
68
Hunger
67
Synecdoche, New York
64
Appaloosa
63
JCVD
63
Eden
63
Changeling
62
Duchess, The
59
We Are Wizards
57
Special
57
Sixty Six
56
Religulous
55
Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The
55
What Just Happened?
54
Battle in Seattle
54
Good Dick
53
RocknRolla
51
Morning Light
50
Breakfast with Scot
47
How About You
47
Choke
46
Dukes, The
43
Tru Loved
43
Gardens of the Night
41
Cthulhu
40
Igor
40
Other End of the Line, The
34
My Name Is Bruce
34
Otto; or Up with Dead People
32
Repo! The Genetic Opera
31
Hounddog
30
Guitar, The
28
Fireproof
27
Lake City
26
House of the Sleeping Beauties
26
Filth and Wisdom
xx
Dostana
xx
Black Balloon, The
xx
Let Them Chirp Awhile
xx
Local Color
xx
Nobel Son
xx
Extreme Movie
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Kill Bill: Volume 1
Miramax Films
FILM:
BOOKS:
MPAA RATING: R for strong bloody violence, language and some sexual content
Starring
Uma Thurman,
David Carradine,
Daryl Hannah,
Michael Madsen,
Vivica A. Fox,
Lucy Liu,
Michael Jai White,
and
Chia Hui Liu
An epic tale of one woman's quest for justice presented in two installments. (Miramax)
| GENRE(S): |
Action
|
Comedy
|
Crime
|
Drama
|
Suspense/Thriller
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Quentin Tarantino
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Quentin Tarantino
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: April 13, 2004
Video: April 13, 2004
Theatrical: October 10, 2003
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
96 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA |
| LANGUAGE(S): |
English / Japanese |
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
100
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
Kill Bill: Volume 1 shows Quentin Tarantino so effortlessly and brilliantly in command of his technique that he reminds me of a virtuoso violinist racing through "Flight of the Bumble Bee" -- or maybe an accordion prodigy setting a speed record for "Lady of Spain."
100
Boston Globe
Wesley Morris
The worst thing about the first Quentin Tarantino picture in five years is that after 93 minutes of some of the most luscious violence and spellbinding storytelling you're likely to see this year, Kill Bill ends.
100
Washington Post
Stephen Hunter
Delivered with such high panache and brio, it's mesmerizing.
100
Premiere
Glenn Kenny
Although this installment is a beautiful stand-alone thang (check out how its chronology-juggling storyline creates a perfect circle, structure-wise).
100
Time
Richard Corliss
By next semester, some grad student will be writing a thesis on the B-movie influences on this A+ film.
100
Baltimore Sun
Chris Kaltenbach
"His eye is incredibly sharp and amazing, in regard to visceral cinema," says Uma Thurman, who has worked with Tarantino on both Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill. "He's a great storyteller. He's very seductive as a filmmaker."
91
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
The film may be bloody, but it's also bloody gorgeous: a grandly fetishized epic of cinematic aggression. It's a tale of vengeance that hinges on Tarantino's love of ferocity as spectacle -- his immersion in action and exploitation, his addiction to the jazzy catharsis of junk-film kicks.
90
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
Reconfirms Tarantino's status as the master of pop cinema and puts a sense of excitement into the year. He has matched, if not eclipsed, the power and scope of 1994's "Pulp Fiction," though not its human charm.
89
Austin Chronicle
Marc Savlov
Don’t leave until the final credits finish rolling or you’ll miss what many are considering Kill Bill: Vol. 1’s best bit. Trust us on this one.
88
USA Today
Mike Clark
Bill re-establishes that Tarantino ranks with "Boogie Nights'" Paul Thomas Anderson as one of the few Hollywood filmmakers of the past 25 years with the stuff to win a lifetime achievement award.
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Rick Groen
Simultaneously a spectacular act of movie-making and a slight movie. Or is that impossible: When the means are so gloriously abundant, can the end ever be merely trivial?
88
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
In Kill Bill, Tarantino brings delicious sin back to movies -- the thrill you get from something down, dirty and dangerous.
80
LA Weekly
John Powers
At once an astonishing piece of filmmaking and, quite possibly, an Olympian folly.
80
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Scott Tobias
It remains to be seen whether Kill Bill is merely a skilled slice of juvenilia or a pastiche with real emotional and thematic underpinnings, but based on Tarantino's storytelling command in the first half, it's worth giving him the benefit of the doubt.
80
Empire
Colin Kennedy
There is much to admire in Vol. 1, not least a performance from Uma Thurman as steely as the plate in her character’s head and a knowing soundtrack that effortlessly smears the boundaries between east and west.
75
Portland Oregonian
Shawn Levy
What we've got is a mixed though certainly entertaining bag.
75
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
Self-indulgent, overwrought, shallow and ridiculous. It is also brilliant, a blast of cinematic lunacy and as much of a guilty pleasure as the schlocky movies Tarantino adores, which was probably the point. Sometimes, only a Big Mac will do.
75
Chicago Tribune
Mark Caro
There's no question that Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill, Vol. 1 is a virtuoso piece of filmmaking. What's questionable is whether it's more than that.
75
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
One of the most violent films this year, it's no more so than many of the Asian kung fu flicks it pays homage to. Don't be surprised if it slaughters its action-film competition in this overcrowded movie season.
75
New York Post
Lou Lumenick
An overstuffed menu from a master chef who's trying way too hard to please himself.
70
TV Guide
Maitland McDonagh
His epic reworking of their lurid conventions proved so long that it was divided into two parts, and this one ends on a hell of a cliff-hanger.
70
Film Threat
Michael Dequina
Without a doubt, making the most substantial impact is Thurman. While she has proven her versatility over the years, her work as The Bride shows that her talent is matched by her fearlessness.
70
Los Angeles Times
Manohla Dargis
The movie love can make it hard to hear the human pulse beneath the noise (it's there, if faint), much less see if there's anything new going on.
70
The New York Times
Dana Stevens
Mr. Tarantino is an irrepressible showoff, recklessly flaunting his formal skills as a choreographer of high-concept violence, but he is also an unabashed cinephile, and the sincerity of his enthusiasm gives this messy, uneven spectacle an odd, feverish integrity.
70
Dallas Observer
Robert Wilonsky
Though it's a blast to watch, it becomes tiresome over the long haul--25 minutes of Thurman hacking her way through the crowd to get to a woman whose fate we're informed of early on. It's the most climactic anti-climax in recent film history, a no-d'uh coda awaiting the ending it really deserves but never gets. Not this year, anyway.
70
Newsweek
David Ansen
Brilliant, but shallow.
70
Film Threat
Jim Agnew
A hyper-violent, hyper-gory, kung-fu grindhouse flick. And there’s nothing at all wrong with that.
70
The Hollywood Reporter
Kirk Honeycutt
Is Kill Bill a homage to great Asian action movies? Yes. Is Tarantino trying to outdo his cherished masters (on a budget that dwarfs their films)? Of course. Is there any other point of any of this? Let's see "Vol. 2."
70
Variety
Todd McCarthy
A strange, fun and densely textured work that gets better as it goes along.
67
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
William Arnold
It's bound to be the love-it-or-hate-it movie of 2003.
63
New York Daily News
Jami Bernard
This long-awaited movie has been unwisely chopped into two pieces -- the second is due in February -- when it really needed to be one long, delirious ride.
63
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
An incomplete movie, artlessly cleft in the middle. Cinema interruptus.
60
Village Voice
J. Hoberman
Fun and smart, but undeniably thin, the first installment of Tarantino's action epic is a fanboy fever dream. The clichés are out in maximum force, tempting any critic fool enough to go one-on-one with the master. (The prize: a Ph.D. in Tarantinology.)
60
Salon.com
Stephanie Zacharek
As visually arresting as Kill Bill often is, there's a stultifying blankness about it. Despite Tarantino's obvious enthusiasms, he comes off jaded and cynical: He's seen plenty of movies, and this is his proof.
60
Slate
David Edelstein
Kill Bill is about nothing more (or less) than its director's passion for the mindless action pictures that got him through adolescence. It isn't sex without love: It's an orgy with just enough love.
60
Chicago Reader
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Quentin Tarantino's lively and show-offy tribute to Asian martial-arts flicks, bloody anime, and spaghetti westerns he soaked up as a teenager is even more gory and adolescent than its models, which explains both the fun and the unpleasantness of this globe-trotting romp.
50
New York Magazine
Peter Rainer
When French New Wave directors like Truffaut and Godard paid tribute to Hollywood pulp, they poeticized it and gave it an infusion of feeling. Tarantino’s tributes are, for the most part, far less complicated: He’s a fan, and Kill Bill is his mash note.
50
Philadelphia Inquirer
Carrie Rickey
Structurally and narratively amputated, Volume 1 retains head and guts but loses its heart and gams to the second installment. Maybe Tarantino figured that Thurman's legs, as long as the Mississippi, were sufficient to carry this half of a movie.
38
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
The problem isn't that Tarantino's in love with death; it's that he's deadly dull. Even "Natural Born Killers" made a stab at social commentary and satire of America?s celebrity-mad media. Kill Bill merely giggles through gore and asks you to smile at its style.
30
The New Yorker
David Denby
Kill Bill is what’s formally known as decadence and commonly known as crap...Coming out of this dazzling, whirling movie, I felt nothing--not anger, not dismay, not amusement. Nothing. [13 October 2003, p. 113]
30
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill inflicts intolerable cruelty on its characters, and on its audience -- though I'd like to believe that there is no mainstream audience for what has already been described, quite correctly, as the most violent movie ever released by an American studio.
30
The New Republic
Stanley Kauffmann
The really relevant defect of this thriller is that it isn't scary.
25
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
It boggles the mind that after six years of silence, all Tarantino has to offer is this garbage.
 The average user rating for this movie is 6.2 (out of 10) based on 390 User Votes
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