Cinematic Throwbacks: April 2004/2014

2004:

Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill was of course originally meant to be one film. But then it became so long that he basically had to cut it into a two-parter. Now, the uncut film does exist (dubbed "The Whole Bloody Affair") but I have never watched it that way. For me, they exist as two films.

Part one (covered last October) was quite simply a mind-blowing game changer, nearly on par with Pulp Fiction (covered this October). Halfing the film meant ending on the deliriously high of the Crazy 88's fight sequence, with the promise of more thrills to come. 

Wait 6 months and here comes part 2. This wasn't Endgame-like hype, but the expectations could not have been higher. I did know that the odds of it measuring up were small, given the caliber of actors remaining for Uma Thurman to face (particularly Michael Madsen and Daryl Hannah, plus David Carradine's Bill).

And yeah, it wasn't Vol. 1. Not close. Now, we ARE talking Tarantino here. Vol. 2 is usually my pick for my least favorite of his films. But Tarantino's worst still wipes the floor with most filmmakers best. And this was and is still one of my favorites of 2004.

Not to say Vol. 1 didn't have dialogue-heavy stretches. It was just mixed in with wild, exhilarating action. Vol. 2 is considerably slower paced and driven by dialogue. 

Again separated into chapters, the film opens with the moments before Bill and the Deadly Vipers massacred The Bride and her wedding party. Then we move on to The Bride going after Madsen, only to wind up buried alive. We flash back to her training under Master Pai Mei, then cut back to the present to see Hannah kill Madsen before she and Thurman have an epic trailer throwdown. And then at last Beatrix (we finally learn her name) goes to meet and kill Bill, but not before learning that her daughter is alive and has been being raised by Bill.

Each step of this half of the story does have amazing stuff in it. I particularly love the sequence with Pai Mei, hilariously played by Gordon Liu (who also had a key role in Vol. 1). The fight with Hannah is a classic, even with the monumentally icky shot of the eye being squished. And the final moments with Bill are just spot on perfect.

But I do think this is one time Tarantino needed to, as they say, kill some of his darlings. Some dialogue exchanges, particularly in the Madsen and Carradine sections, drag on far too long. It was also a misfire casting Beatrix's kid. That little girl is just annoying.

The music is not as memorable as it was in Vol. 1, which birthed a few iconic needle drops.

No complaints with the performances. It is absolutely criminal that Thurman did not receive any awards for her career peak work in these movies. Vol. 2 asks even more from her and she is up for every task.

Carradine is fantastic as Bill, another of Tarantino's sadistic bad guys you can't help but find charming.

I mentioned Liu already.

Hannah and Madsen are the weak links. Madsen kind of just mumbles a lot. Hannah is just not someone I ever thought was much of an actress. I don't recognize a single thing on her post-Kill Bill filmography. 

I think it worked out that this became two films. Vol. 1 remains my #2 favorite Tarantino movie. Vol. 2 is like the dessert. Not as filling, not as delicious, but still pretty tasty. 

Hey, remember when they made a GOOD Mean Girls movie?

That rather awful musical version that came out this winter threatened to sour the reputation of the original.

Mean Girls 2004 was kind of a big deal. It felt like Lindsay Lohan's moment of arrival as a bona-fide movie star. The movie opened the same weekend she hosted Saturday Night Live (the one with the classic Debbie Downer cast break). I was all-in on her.

This pretty quickly became one of those comedies whose quotable lines were known to people even if they didn't see the movie. Honestly it might have been one of the last big screen comedies to achieve this. It still holds up on that end due the really sharp, funny script by Tina Fey.

Now, obviously, I was not the target audience for this movie. I was not then, nor have I ever been, a teenage girl. So I suppose that dulled my enjoyment of the movie a little bit. 

The original does literally everything better than that remake. All those scenes the remake tries and fails to recreate hit here. 

It's a damn shame what became of Lohan, and so soon after this movie. She had it.

The movie was also the big breakout for Rachel McAdams, dazzling as ever and stealing the movie completely. At the time I was stoked to see Lacey Chabert, who I think deserved better than the Hallmark movie slop she wound up doing. This was Amanda Seyfried's 1st significant movie, and who would have guessed she would wind up having a big-ish career? And who knew that Lizzy Caplan would go from playing alt chick to sex bomb? 

The SNL pedigree gave us Fey, Amy Poehler as the cool mom, and my personal favorite Tim Meadows, deadpan brilliant as the principal.

It's still a funny movie. I have no idea why this became a musical at all, but it's good enough to survive a bad remake. It's still pretty fetch. 

2014:

Not that the MCU was ever in any actual danger (yes, even now, morons), but following The Avengers we had Iron Man 3 (which made a fortune but disappointed most people) and Thor: The Dark World (which I loved but seem to forever be in the minority). So sure, the big team up movie was a sensation. and there would obviously be more of them, but could these solo movies match them?

With The Winter.Soldier, we got a resounding yes.

I wasn't even that big a fan of the 1st Captain America movie at the time (I've come to like it more retroactively). But Cap was a highlight of The Avengers, and then all the trailers for this looked absolutely awesome. A modern day Cap movie with political intrigue and paranoia? Let's go!

This film was huge for the MCU in several ways. At the time, the twist that SHIELD had long been infiltrated by HYDRA was kind of mind-blowing, since this film came out during season one of Agents of SHIELD, and at that point the movies and shows still linked up. 

The film introduced Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson aka Falcon. His friendship with Steve, established in that terrific opening scene ("on your left"...wonder if we'll hear that again?) is instantly compelling. 

And perhaps most important of all, it was the first MCU film directed by the Russo Brothers. I don't know how Feige knew to pick these guys. They had only done a bunch of TV and a couple mediocre films, with nothing to indicate they were the guys to hand a major franchise piece to.

The movie didn't introduce Bucky, but that 1st movie had made such a minor impact on me that I barely even remembered who he was coming into this. Obviously he got fleshed out as a character in future films, but here he gets to just be a very imposing adversary.

Making Steve into the good soldier made to question authority was a brilliant move. Also fantastic was pairing him with Black Widow for much if the film. This movie has probably my favorite Natasha of any of them, and not just cause Scarlett looked her absolute hottest here.

It was very cool that they got Robert Redford to do this, and he delivers a real performance too. It's not just stunt casting. Samuel L. Jackson delivers maybe his best MCU performance too. Yeah, I hate that they did the fake out death thing.

The movie also gave us Emily Van Camp and Frank Grillo, both of whom played big parts in the future.

The film is really a masterpiece. Every step of this works, from the early setup, to the Cap on the run stuff, to the HYDRA reveal, to the Bucky reveal, to the whole climax. Fantastic action scenes and fights. There's real grit and substance to this.

There is a reason why this film has held up as one of the very best solo entries of the entire MCU. 

Other non-deep dive flicks:

1974:

-Sugarland Express: Steven Spielberg's 1st theatrically released film. 

-Foxy Brown: Iconic Pam Grier blaxsploitation. 

-The Conversation: The film Francis Ford Coppola made between the first 2 Godfathers. 

1994:

-Surviving The Game: Such a cool flick. Ernest Dickerson followed up Juice with this movie where Ice-T is hunted out in the wilderness by a group of guys. Gary Busey's monologue about him and his childhood dog is some peak cinema. 

-PCU: A pretty blatant Animal Hoise ripoff. I went to see this in theaters and kinda liked it. Jeremy Piven is funny. Had a big crush at the time on Megan Ward  

-Threesome: Yes there was a threesome in one scene. The rest deserved to exist in the shadow of Reality Bites. 

-With Honors: Joe Pesci is a homeless man. Brendan Fraser is a college student. Peak Moira Kelly. Great Madonna song on the soundtrack. 

-Serial Mom: Kathleen Turner is a suburban housewife who kills people. One of my most hated films ever at the time. 

-Cops and Robbersons: Terrible Chevy Chase/Jack Palance comedy. 

-The Inkwell: Saw this in theaters. A change of place black film at the time, a laid back drama with Larenz Tate and Jada Pinkett. 

-Bad Girls: Female western. Not a great film, but hard to beat the eye candy of Madeleine Stowe and young Drew Barrymore. 

2004:

-The Girl Next Door: That old chestnut where an age appropriate porn star moves in next door. Look, this comedy is pretty funny and has a couple perfect needle drops, but this one is all about Elisha Cuthbert at her absolute peak of her powers. Few women have ever been this irresistible. How did she not become a big star? 

-Hellboy: Guillermo Del Toro's big passion project comic book adaptation. I liked it more than loved it, but Ron Perlman is perfect casting and the film is packed with creative character designs. 

-Man On Fire: This Denzel Washington-Tony Scott collab was a big disappointment at the time. But I decided to give it another chance this month, and yeah, it still doesn't work. The relationship between Denzel and Dakota Fanning (one of the best kid performances maybe ever) is so charming and compelling, but then when she gets kidnapped and the revenge quest starts the film just plummets. 

-13 Going On 30: Ripoff of Big where Jennifer Garner is actually a kid. Much as I Iove Garner this one didn't work at all for me. 

-Ella Enchanted: Anne Hathaway's last movie before she got to move on to adult roles. 

-Walking Tall: Dwayne Johnson action movie. 

-The Alamo: Ron Howard doing a film about the fight at the Alamo (where there is no basement) should have been a big deal. But I recall it being pretty boring. 

-The Punisher: One of several cracks at this character, this time played by Thomas Jane, with John Travolta as the bad guy  

-The Whole Ten Yards: Sure, make a sequel to the Bruce Willis hit man comedy. 

2014:

-Draft Day: Very little of this movie is realistic at all (other than the Jaguars screwing up), but Ivan Reitman's final film is quite zippy and fun, with a hell of an ensemble 

-Transcendence: A big flop in which Johnny Depp turns into an A.I. 

-Brick Mansions: A posthumous Paul Walker action movie. 

Coming in May...

Well, there is the small matter of marking the 25th anniversary of a little movie called The Phantom Menace. Mesa excited to see it on the big screen again. 

Beyond that, Spike Lee's Crooklyn hits 30. The Day After Tomorrow turns 20. And both X-Men: Days of Future Past and the, yes, underappreciated Amazing Spiderman 2 turn 10.