Tusk

Tea for two and two for tea…

(2014) Twisted Horror (A24) Michael Parks, Justin Long, Haley Joel Osment, Genesis Rodriguez, Johnny Depp, Harley Morenstein, Ralph Garman, Jennifer Schwalbach Smith, Harley Quinn Smith, Lily-Rose Melody Depp, Ashley Greene, Douglas Banks, Matthew Shively, Zak Knutson, Bill Bennett, Randy Grazio, Paula Jiling, Todd Davis, Bonnie Cole. Directed by Kevin Smith

What separates humans from animals? There are those who believe that animals are far nobler than humans, that at our core we are rotten, vicious, callous creatures who wreak havoc on each other and the environment. It really is hard to argue the point.

Wallace Bryton (Long) is a podcaster who webcasts with his good buddy Teddy Craft (Osment) on something he calls The Not See Party (say it out loud if you want to get the joke). They specialize in commenting on videos that you can’t un-see, like the Kill Bill kid (Banks) – a Winnipeg teen who accidentally lops off his own leg while filming himself playing with an actual sword. Not smart.

Which is why Wallace flies to Winnipeg to get an interview with the kid. While there he espies on a bathroom wall of a bar an ad by a man named Howard Howe (Parks) looking for someone to live in his mansion for free in exchange for listening to his sea-faring tales and doing some light housework. The ad captures Wallace’s imagination and he calls Howe and arranges to meet. He drives off to Bifrost, a municipality that is about a two hour drive from Winnipeg in the Interlake district (Manitoba has a crapload of lakes for those unfamiliar with Canada’s plains province).

He discovers that Howard has a penchant for walruses…and is more than a little bit deranged. A panicked phone call to his girlfriend Ally (Rodriguez) gets her and Teddy out to Canada, where the police are more or less sympathetic but not too interested in helping them. One such sympathetic cop (Garman) gives the two the card of a disgraced Quebecois detective with a thick accent named Guy Lapointe (Depp) who tells them a bone-chilling tale about the serial killer he’s been chasing for ten years – and who might well be Howard Howe.

The movie began life as an idea on Smith’s SModcast which he riffed with producer Scott Mosier after seeing an ad on Gumtree for free lodging if the lodger was willing to dress up as a walrus. The two extrapolated a twisted plot based on the ad, then gave listeners the option of voting on whether he should make the movie for real by voting #WalrusYes or not by voting #WalrusNo. The votes were overwhelmingly yes.

Smith has always been a great writer, particularly of dialogue although here the dialogue is curiously flat for him. However, he crafts a fast-paced horror comedy that has moments that are genuinely disturbing. Parks, who was memorable as the maniacal Evangelical Christian preacher in Smith’s last film Red State exceeds even that performance with the quiet insanity of one who has been pushed around the bend by a life more harrowing than you or I could ever imagine. Had we lived the life Parks narrates, chances are we’d be all be a bit grumpy at the very least.

Depp, who is listed in the credits as “Guy Lapointe” playing “Guy Lapointe,” has always done well with oddball characters and he allows himself to go over-the-top in a way that is reminiscent of Captain Jack Sparrow. His daughter Lily, as well as Smith’s daughter Harley, have small roles in this film and reportedly will be the leads on Yoga Hosers, Smith’s next film in his True North trilogy (Smith’s wife Jennifer also makes a brief appearance).

Long is sharp in giving us a thoroughly unlikable character; he’s mean, he cheats on his girlfriend and treats his partner condescendingly. Still, he also manages to elicit some pathos particularly near the movie’s end. It’s a thankless role and Long does it pretty well.

Cinematographer James Laxton does a great job of ramping up the creepy factor in Howe’s mansion and capturing a kind of autumnal feel. And it’s clear that Smith has a great affection for the Great White North even as he occasionally skewers their pronunciation of the word “about” as well as their reputation for politeness.

I describe the movie as “twisted horror” for good reason. Yes, you will see it described as “horror comedy” elsewhere and they’re not wrong, but this has the feel of a cult classic and I wouldn’t be surprised if ten years from now it is a regular on the midnight madness circuit. Not everything here works but enough of it does to make this a satisfying but strange film that I can recommend to those who have a twisted streak of their own.

REASONS TO GO: Twisted in the right way. Parks is brilliant. Depp gives a whale of a performance.
REASONS TO STAY: The dialogue is undistinguished, unusual for a Kevin Smith film. Feels rushed.
FAMILY VALUES:  There is a surfeit of profanity, as well as some fairly disturbing violence and gore. There’s also a bit of sexual content as well.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Where to begin? The fictional hockey player Gregory Gumtree that Guy Lapointe refers to is a sly reference to the website where the original ad that caught Smith’s attention was found. Lapointe’s name is itself a reference to a hockey player from the Montreal Canadiens. The framed photo of the dog on Ally’s wall is actually Smith’s dog Shecky. And while the movie is set in Winnipeg, not a single frame was filmed there; it was filmed in North Carolina.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 9/26/14: Rotten Tomatoes: 40% positive reviews. Metacritic: 53/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Misery
FINAL RATING: 6.5/10
NEXT: A Bag of Hammers

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New Releases for the Week of September 19, 2014

THE MAZE RUNNER

(20th Century Fox) Dylan O’Brien, Kaya Scodelario, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Ami Ameen, Will Poulter, Patricia Clarkson, Ki Hong Lee. Directed by Wes Ball

A young boy awakens in a glade surrounded by an incredible and seemingly near-endless maze with no memory of who he is or how he got there. He finds himself in the same boat as a large number of other boys. Some very bad things lurk in the maze and despite the best efforts of those glade-dwellers to navigate the maze, no exit has yet been found but the boy’s arrival seems to trigger a change in things. For one thing, the appearance of a girl who seems to know who the boy is. But just as it seems the glade dwellers are on the verge of solving the maze, it becomes clear that there are those who don’t want the maze solved and will stop at nothing to keep the boys – and girl – right where they are.

See the trailer and a featurette here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard (opens Thursday)

Genre: Young Adult Sci-Fi

Rating: PG-13 (for thematic elements and intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, including some disturbing images)

A Walk Among the Tombstones

(Universal) Liam Neeson, Dan Stevens, David Harbour, Adam David Thompson. An ex-cop with a tragic past now works as an outside-the-law private investigator who is engaged by a drug lord to find the man who kidnapped and murdered his wife after the ransom was paid. What the detective finds is a team of serial murders so ruthless and sadistic that they go beyond anything he’s ever encountered – and now that they are aware of his investigation, he may end up being next on their list.

See the trailer, clips, interviews and B-roll video here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard (opens Thursday)

Genre: Thriller

Rating: R (for strong violence, disturbing images, language and brief nudity)

Aagadu

(Eros International) Mahesh Babu, Tamannah Bhatia, Sonu Sood, Rajendra Prasad. Typically, very little plot detail has been released in advance of the film. All we know is that it is a police actioner with two police officers on a dangerous case together becoming romantically involved. I think.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Bollywood

Rating: NR

Daawat-E-Ishq

(Yash Raj) Aditya Roy Kapoor, Parineeti Chopra, Anupam Kher, Sunny Deol. A shoe sales girl from Hyderabad disillusioned with love due to all the dowry-seeking men who don’t give a fig for her one way or the other discovers the alluring charm of a young Lucknawi chef who becomes besotted with her. With two very dissimilar cultures in their way, the two will have to come up with their own powerful recipe for love.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Romantic Comedy

Rating: NR

Life After Beth

(A24) Aubrey Plaza, Dane DeHaan, John C. Reilly, Anna Kendrick. A teen boy’s life is destroyed when his girlfriend dies unexpectedly. When she miraculously returns, he determines to do and share all the things he failed to do before the close call. When she begins acting a bit oddly, he thinks nothing of it but soon she develops some unhealthy appetites and he slowly reaches the realization that his girlfriend is a zombie.

See the trailer and clips here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Zom-Com

Rating: R (for pervasive language, some horror violence, sexual content, nudity and brief drug use)

My Old Lady

(Cohen Media Group) Kevin Kline, Maggie Smith, Kristin Scott Thomas, Dominique Pinon. A down on his luck American seems to have his luck change when he inherits a Parisian apartment. When he arrives in France he discovers that there is an elderly woman already living there and due to the labyrinthine real estate laws, he is unable to sell the apartment for the money he so desperately needs. Worse yet, he is required to pay her a fee until she dies. With no more money left, he is forced to move in with her and her daughter and in doing so, a strange bond begins to develop between the three.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Dramedy

Rating: PG-13 (for thematic material and some sexual references)

This is Where I Leave You

(Warner Brothers) Jason Bateman, Tina Fey, Jane Fonda, Adam Driver. Four siblings, estranged from their parents, are brought together following their father’s death. His last wish is for them to live under the same roof for a week and so they do, never dreaming that this week will help them to heal old wounds, establish better relationships and help them find their best possible selves.

See the trailer, clips, interviews and B-roll video here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard (opens Thursday)

Genre: Ensemble Comedy

Rating: R (for language, sexual content and some drug use)

Tusk

(A24) Justin Long, Michael Parks, Haley Joel Osment, Genesis Rodriguez. An ambitious blog reporter has stumbled on the scoop of a lifetime. Reclusive adventurer Howe is willing to give him an interview but as the reporter finds Howe’s obsession with walruses disturbing, he has no idea just how obsessed Howe is – and what plans he has for the reporter.

See the trailer and a clip here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard (opens Thursday)

Genre: Horror

Rating: R (for some disturbing violence/gore, language and sexual content)

Red State

What Pastor Abin Cooper REALLY wants to be is Vulcan.

(2011) Horror (SModcast) Melissa Leo, Kyle Gallner, Michael Angarano, Michael Parks, Ralph Garman, Kerry Bishe, Jennifer Schwalbach, Stephen Root, John Goodman, James Parks, Molly Livingston, Catherine McCord, Alexa Nikolas, Ronnie Connell, Haley Ramm, Nicholas Braun, Cooper Thornton, Kevin Pollak, John Lacy, Anna Gunn, Kaylee DeFer. Directed by Kevin Smith

Life is full of it’s real horrors. Both conservative and liberal alike are outraged and disgusted by the antics of Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church whose fundamentalist Christian zealotry borders on the batshit crazy. More accurately, is full on over the border and deep in crazy territory. You have to wonder what goes on in a congregation like that.

Travis (Angarano), Billy-Ray (Braun) and Jared (Gallner) are three horny high school buddies who answer a Craigslist ad from an older woman (Leo) who wants to have sex with three guys at once. They drive to her trailer where she serves them some beer before the festivities begin – except the festivities never begin since the beer is drugged and the boys pass out.

When they awaken they are in the church of Pastor Abin Cooper (M. Parks) who makes Fred Phelps look like a Girl Scout. They are treated to one of his fire-breathing sermons of hating sin and hating the sinners, ranting against the evils of homosexuality, adultery and premarital sex. Basically, against anything fun I suppose.

When a gay teen who was similarly entrapped is executed while immobilized and tied to a cross with saran wrap, the three boys realize they are in mortal danger. Travis is being bound to the cross when a deputy rolls up looking for the boys car which had sideswiped the Sheriff’s car while the Sheriff (Root) was parked on the side of the road having sex with his partner. Billy-Ray is able to free himself and manages to escape into the armory where he gets into a shoot-out with Caleb (Garman). This attracts attention of the deputy who calls in the shots fired to the Sheriff, who in turn calls in the ATF in the form of Agent Keenan (Goodman).

Soon the compound is surrounded and a standoff of Branch Davidian proportions; the well-armed zealots facing off against the might of a government which wants the situation ended without any surviving witnesses. Horny teenage boys, take note.

This is very much unlike any other Kevin Smith film; while there are humorous elements here it is most definitely not a comedy. This was also distributed in a unique way – for the most part, Smith took the film on tour with Q&A sessions following the screenings. There was also a one-day screening of the film just prior to its VOD and home video releases.

Smith is a well-known fan of genre films and while he doesn’t have the encyclopedic knowledge of B-movies like a Quentin Tarantino I do believe his affection for horror, action and comic book genres is just as passionate. He has tackled religious themes before in Dogma albeit in a much more satirical vein. He also is one of the finest writers in the business in my opinion with dialogue that is second to none in making onscreen characters talk like people you’d run into at the grocery store. Believe me, that’s a lot more difficult than it sounds.

The part of Pastor Abin Cooper was written specifically for Michael Parks and he delivers a blistering performance that will chill you to the bone and stay with you for a long while afterwards. His delivery is so smooth and so gentle that you are almost fooled into buying his message which you come to realize is absolutely whacko.

Goodman is solid as usual as the government stormtrooper who is tasked with bringing a situation that has spiraled wildly out of control back in control and who has no problems with carrying out orders that to you and me might seem immoral. In many ways, Cooper and Keenan are opposite ends of the same coin.

There is plenty of violence here and while I would hesitate to label it strictly as a horror film mainly because the gore and level of terror isn’t in line with, say, a Hostel movie. As thrillers go however, it is on the gruesome side. To my mind the movie winds up being somewhere in the middle – call it throrror. The overall tone is pretty bleak so be aware of that and the body count is high; if you like to play the game of “who’s still standing at the end credits” chances are you’re gonna be wrong. Some main characters barely make the second act and some surprising characters are still around when the dust settles.

There is a lot of things going on here of a topical nature, dealing with religious fanaticism, government overkill and homophobia which makes for entertaining viewing. However, the movie lacks a strong center – Gallner as Jared kind of assumes that role by default but is never really fleshed out enough to get the audience intrigued. Still, it IS Kevin Smith and the guy can write so there is entertainment value here. Hell, ALL of his movies have entertainment value (except for maybe Cop Out) of at least some degree. Still, one wonders what direction he is going to head in next – genial raconteur or all-out revenge film slasher found footage supernatural thriller.

WHY RENT THIS: Terrifying portrayal of religious fanaticism. Very topical.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Too tame to be good horror, too bloody to be a thriller.

FAMILY VALUES: The content here is awfully disturbing and violent with plenty of foul language and sexuality. There’s also a bit of nudity.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The character of Abin Cooper was named after Abin Sur from the Green Lantern comic book series.

NOTABLE HOME VIDEO EXTRAS: There’s an informative interview with Michael Parks, a Q&A session with Smith from Sundance and a making-of feature which includes the Westboro Baptist Church’s reaction to the film and finally a series of Smith podcasts recorded while the film was shot, in post-production and finally in theaters.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $1.1M on a $4M production budget.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Children of the Corn

FINAL RATING: 6/10

NEXT: Blackfish

Kill Bill: Vol. 2

Uma Thurman is astonished to find a white-haired Chinese master growing out of the end of her stick.

(2004) Action (Miramax) Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Michael Madsen, Daryl Hannah, Gordon Liu, Michael Parks, Bo Svenson, Samuel L. Jackson, Sid Haig, Perla Haney-Jardine, Caitlin Keats, Jeannie Epper, Vivica A. Fox, Lucy Liu, Stephanie L. Moore, Shana Stein. Directed by Quentin Tarantino

 

The first Kill Bill was an action-heavy revenge flick that sent the Bride (Thurman) after her fellow members of an elite assassination squad who had participated in murdering her groom at the altar, massacring everyone in attendance at the wedding and leaving her for dead. She is working her way up to Bill (Carradine), the leader of the squad and her former lover.

First she’s going after Budd (Madsen), aka Sidewinder, Bill’s brother and a member of the Deadly Vipers Assassination Squad. However, after the demises of the various members in the first film, Budd is waiting for her with a double barreled shotgun packed with rock salt. The force of the blast knocks out the Bride, whom Budd proceeds to bury alive. He offers to sell the Hattori Hanzo sword she had made in the first film to Elle Driver (Hannah) aka California Mountain Snake for a million bucks. However, Elle double crosses him and leads a deadly Black Mamba viper in the satchel with the cash, which bites Budd and finishes him off.

However, the Bride during her training with Pai Mei (G. Liu) – told in flashbacks – learned how to break wooden planks with her bare hands from short distances away (most martial artists use the full extension of their arms to break boards) and she does so, allowing her to break the planks and claw through the dirt to freedom.

More than a little hacked off she returns to the double wide where Budd shot her and finds him dead there with Elle still there gathering up her cash and the sword. The Bride gets in an epic battle with the one-eyed Elle and eventually beats her, plucking out her remaining eye and leaving her for the Mamba which is loose in the trailer.

Now it is time for her to take on her nemesis, her former lover and former employer. When she finally meets up with Bill, things won’t go as expected; she’ll be forced to confront some truths about herself and about her life and make peace with who she is before she can Kill Bill.

If anything, this is even better than the first film which was a non-stop action funfest that paid homage to nearly every genre of modern grindhouse movie imaginable, from samurai films, wu shu epics,  blaxploitation to anime. This one has a few more homages but to be honest, this is where the meat and potatoes of the storytelling lies. It is here where you get the emotional payoff that the first movie was leading up to.

Thurman is less robotic here and while she isn’t the most expressive actress ever, this is one of her better performances. Carradine, the “Kung Fu” veteran who had largely been forgotten in the 90s showing up in cameo appearances in cheesy exploitation films, gives the performance of his career here. Mainly an off-screen presence in the first film, he shows both the tender and murderous sides of his character, and demonstrates the cunning that  a hunter of human beings would have. The conversation between him and his former lover that makes up most of the end of the film is really one of the most compelling confrontations in cinematic history – and there really isn’t a whole lot of action going for it, but what action there is pays off big time.

The two films do stand alone pretty well individually, but really to get the maximum effectiveness from Vol. 2 you have to at least have some knowledge from Vol. 1. Those who haven’t seen the first film at all may be a little bit lost throughout the film and certainly the emotional wallop of the last scenes won’t be as intense.

Although Tarantino has gone on to direct some amazing films both before this and after it, to my way of thinking this remains his magnum opus and maybe the masterpiece that will always define his career. What distinguishes him here is that while he has always been a fan of movies first and foremost, he never loses sight of the power of good storytelling. In other words, he doesn’t just mimic a few genres for film geek cred; he understands what makes those genres work and links them together with a story of epic grandeur, one that shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that a woman wronged is nobody you want to mess with.

WHY RENT THIS: One of the most amazing action films of all time. Carradine gives a career-reviving performance.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: You really need to at least be familiar with Vol. 1 in order to appreciate this.

FAMILY VALUES:  As with the first volume, there is a whole lot of violence and a whole lot of bad language; there’s also a bit of drug use.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The two volumes were always meant to be seen as one film. However, it has only been screened as such just twice – at Cannes and then in 2010

NOTABLE HOME VIDEO EXTRAS: There is a performance from the movie’s premiere by Chingon, the band fronted by director Robert Rodriguez (who contributed some music for the film).

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $152.2M on a $30M production budget; the movie was a blockbuster.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Kill Bill: Vol. 1

FINAL RATING: 10/10

NEXT: Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

Kill Bill: Vol. 1

Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!

(2003) Action (Miramax) Uma Thurman, Michael Madsen, Darryl Hannah, Lucy Liu, Vivica A. Fox, Sonny Chiba, David Carradine, Julie Dreyfus, Chiaki Kuriyama, Gordon Liu, Michael Parks, Michael Bowen, Jun Kunimura, Kenji Oba, Yuki Kazamatsuri. Directed by Quentin Tarantino

 

Quentin Tarantino is hipper than just about everybody, and he knows it. That’s OK, though; the guy knows movies. He understands the art that is the “B” movie, the kind of stuff at which most critics turn up their noses, or use to play the trash hip.

Kill Bill is Tarantino’s magnum opus, a loving tribute to movies he loves and admires, from Japanese samurai flicks to film noir to anime to blaxploitation to Hong Kong martial arts movies. And he delivers it with impeachable visual sense and a crafty sense of humor. The movie is so long and complex that it was divided into two separate movies and released a year apart. While that can be absolutely fatal for certain films that have tried much the same thing (I’m looking at you, last two movies of the Matrix trilogy), the two Kill Bill films each stand on their own.

The story: The Bride (Thurman) used to be Black Mamba, a lethal assassin and a member of the Deadly Vipers Assassination Squad, but has decided to leave the business and get married. Bill (Carradine, whose face is never seen in the first film), her former employer, disagrees and appoints her former cohorts Copperhead (Fox), Cottonmouth (Liu), California Mountain Snake (Hannah) and Sidewinder (Madsen) to send his regards. After a savage beating of the Bride and her Groom, Bill delivers the coup de grace – a bullet to her head – personally.

Fast forward four years. The Bride awakens to find everyone she loves murdered and her life over. Having been an assassin, she decides to put her talents to use against those who wronged her, leading up to her former employer. As she goes after each member of the squad, she is aided by a retired Japanese sword maker, Hattori Hanzo (Chiba), who makes her a special weapon to use in her quest.

The story is not told sequentially; it begins at the second name on her death list and goes from there. Tarantino’s jumping around in time makes sense; the first name on the list, Cottonmouth – otherwise known as O-Ren Ishii, is the more spectacular and difficult “hit” of the two presented here, and makes a far more fitting finale for this volume than would the second, which is almost anti-climactic.

Tarantino also divides the movie into chapters, with each in a different genre; from the Samurai style (the sword making sequence) to anime (the Cottonmouth backstory), blaxploitation (the Copperhead sequence) and a good, old-fashioned Hong Kong swordfight (The House of the Blue Leaves sequence that closes the film).

At each turn, Tarantino pays tribute to heroes and genres of the ’60s and ’70s, from the casting of Carradine, Liu and Chiba to the use of Bruce Lee’s yellow tracksuit (from his final film Game of Death) in the House of Blue Leaves chapter (of course, it’s not the actual tracksuit).

Part of the mandate for Tarrantino here is to inspire people to see the second portion of the movie, and he does that. There are interesting twists, and the fight sequences are nothing short of astonishing, particularly the House of Blue Leaves portion, and the one-on-one dual between Liu and Thurman that follows immediately thereafter. There is some wire work, yes, but it’s kept to a minimum.

The violence is gratuitous and often graphic, although sometimes almost cartoonish in nature. There are a few moments that will make squeamish sorts squirm (particularly the aftermath of the Blue Leaves portion) but the blood that fountains out of the Bride’s victims is thinner than water, for what may be a subtle joke by the filmmaker.

Thurman is almost wooden, which I think is purposeful. Her beauty and glamour are stripped away in favor of a soulless killing machine, for whom revenge has become the single point of life. Unfortunately, most of the rest of the actors either join Thurman in emotion-free fashion (Liu) or are so over the top you’d think they were making an assault on Everest (Hannah, Fox). Veterans Chiba and Carradine give restrained performances. Chiba shows why many consider him to be a gem of cinematic history. Liu, who often shows up as the old wise man with flowing white eyebrows in chop sockey films, plays much the same part.

This is a movie I admire more than I like, although I like it a lot more now than I did when I first saw it. Da Queen said that she felt like she was in a room full of master painters — Matisse, Gaugin, Monet, Rembrandt — and she had only crayons. Tarantino’s massive knowledge of film is put to good use here.

This isn’t so much a tribute, or homage as an attempt to wrap all these diverse styles into one coherent story to make a new art form, and it works most of the time. One of the calculated risks Tarantino took when he agreed to splice his film in two is that some may wind up liking the first volume only after seeing the second, and some may wind up confused or overwhelmed enough by the first to completely skip the second. That would be a shame. There will be more on the second volume in a future edition of Cinema365 but let’s just say that both movies work best in tandem with one another and while each stands alone on their own, it’s like having peanut butter without jam on your sandwich. Good, but could be better.

If you love exploitation films of the 50s, 60s and 70s, or even if you don’t, this is one of the finest action movies to come out in the first decade of the 21st century. The more often I see it, the more I like it and that certainly marks it as a classic film.

WHY RENT THIS: House of Blue Leaves sequence one of the greatest action sequences ever filmed. Tarantino’s extensive knowlege of genre films is utilized perfectly. Seeing faded action stars like Chiba, Carradine and Gordon Liu does the heart good.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Some of the acting is a bit wooden. The dizzying array of styles may be too much for most.

FAMILY VALUES: This is as graphically violent and bloody a movie as you’re likely to see. There are a few bad words and some sexuality as well.

TRIVIAL PURSUITS: The start of production was delayed due to Uma Thurman’s pregnancy. Tarantino never considered recasting; the part of The Bride was intended for her and her alone.

NOTABLE HOME VIDEO FEATURES: There are a couple of music videos by The 5s, 6s, 7s, 8s, the Japanese band that played during the House of Blue Leaves sequence.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $181M on a $30M production budget; the movie was a blockbuster through and through.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Game of Death

FINAL RATING: 8.5/10

NEXT:Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted