Laurel Canyon

Quest for the Egg Salad

'House Of The Dead' (Artisan, 2003)

Directed by Uwe Boll

Somewhere, sometime a while back I read a review of this movie and the guy was raving about how good it was.  HA.  NOT A CHANCE!!!  Some raver type losers go to a remote island to attend a super huge party with lots of beer, drugs and tits.  Well, they get there, and there is no one else there, but we already know that all the missing attendees are the victims of a roaming zombie cult.  Soon enough the zombies attack the new groups of party goers and stupidity ensues (more than it already had at this point).  Some bad things about this movie would be... everything.  The acting is sub WB drama quality and the pacing is dull.  The characters are stupid.  So stupid, in fact, that I didn’t even care about wanting to see them die, I just wanted to leave.  The special effects are very unspecial, as the zombie make ups are dull and boring and the gore is almost non existent.  There is also some annoying matrix-esque violence, like slow motion shootings and karate garbage.  And to top it off the scenes are intercut with scenes from the video games that this complete disaster of a movie is based on.  The good things about this movie?  Nothing.  I have sat through the worst shit ever, from the most boring Jess Franco movies to the slowest Lucio Fulci mysteries to the most dull 80's slasher films, and none of them even come as close to boring me as much as this did.  I wanted out.  And so I left about halfway through.  This is just insulting garbage passed off on people in an attempt to rake in some dollars because of the recent money making tendencies of horror movies. (Edward Black)

‘Kill Bill’ (Miramax, 2003)

Directed by Quentin Tarantino 

Quentin Tarantino wants to show us all something really cool.  He wants you to know about the rich history of Japanese samurai film, Shaw Brothers chop sockey flicks, 70’s blaxploitation and every other genre of confined to the ghetto of American filmmaking.  It’s a noble cause.  He’s clearly a knowledgeable man.  While his films have always skirted the line between homage and rip-off, none are more derivative than Kill Bill.  It takes everything QT knows about the history of cinema and rolls it up into a messy four hour, two part ball of celluloid that is, at times amazing, but often stunningly bad. 

As usual time is not linear in a QT film.  Never has this device seemed so needless as it does here.  It was perfected in Pulp Fiction and used to great effect in Reservoir Dogs, but only serves to break up the narrative here.  That’s assuming that there is a narrative, because none is offered in the first 110 minutes of this two part epic.  Certain elements are hinted at, but what this really boils down to is two extended revenge killings and a couple of weak attempts at character establishment.  One such section tells the story of O-ren Ishii played by Lucy Liu.  It’s filmed entirely in anime style.  A fan boy’s dream come true I’m sure.  Admittedly it is a fantastic sequence and something that is rarely done in cinema (although done fairly recently in Hedwig and the Angry Inch.)  However it’s just one of many things in Tarantino’s cinema of cool that’s all style over substance. 

The music is always a hallmark of a Tarantino film.  His choices here are all over the place, but mostly borrowed from other movie soundtracks.  There are Isaac Hayes blaxploitation jams, Spaghetti western ballads, and kitschy pop.  Kudos for the live performance from Japan’s garage queens the 5,6,7,8’s.  I love all this music too, but there’s just so much of it awkwardly thrown all over film.   

Hell yeah, I’m psyched to see Sonny Chiba and Gordon Liu in an American movie.  No other director in Hollywood is willing and most importantly able to do something like that.  With Miramax Quentin’s always had the green light.  Hence the film is excessively violent, unbelievably long, heavily subtitled and exquisitely well shot.  But someone should have reeled him in just a little bit here.  This thing is in dire need of an editor.  The first forty minutes seem like deleted scenes from Pulp Fiction with silly breakfast cereal jokes, sight gag vehicles and ridiculous carnage.  Once the scene shifts to Japan it changes tone drastically and ends up with one of the most amazing extended fight scenes ever seen in an American film. 

So what do we have here; anime, exploitation, martial artists and samurai’s, cool and strange music.  This ain’t a movie it’s a pop culture crash course.  Are the final scenes enough to salvage the film?  Well the answer is unknown because just as Kill Bill gets good, it ends.  My gripe with the decision to release this in two parts is one for another day.  So if I had to give Kill Bill a grade at this point it would be an incomplete. (Dave Ignizio)