Kill swill
Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill: Vol. 1 is about as basic as you can get-- The Bride (Uma Thurman) once upon a time badly beaten and shot in the head by people she once worked with and loved; falls into a coma, sleeps a couple of years, wakes up demanding payback, big time.
Semi-crouching Tiger
Amazing how under certain circumstances critics' reactions are so ridiculously uniform, so hilariously predictable down to specific complaints on specific titles. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny (2016) is the acknowledged sequel to Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), so naturally mainstream reviewers compare the former to the latter, almost always unfavorably; Ang Lee is an award-winning director, so folks rhapsodize about his poetry elegance subtlety (often to the sequel's disadvantage); Lee did not direct the sequel (translated: turned down the offer) and the job went instead to the first film's action choreographer, so of course they pooh-pooh the action as being more vulgar, less lyrically staged and shot.
It helps I think to be a fan of the cinema with at least passing familiarity, instead of a clueless gwai lo sampling the picture only because it's the follow-up (translated: shameless cash grab) to a Best Picture nominee. The original Crouching Tiger was in my book one of the biggest swindles in recent years, a movie that took everything fun about the genre--the outrageous choreography, the seesawing emotional tone (from low slapstick to high tragedy and back), the no-nonsense fast-paced filmmaking--and ground it all down via emery board to a tonier more Oscar-worthy gleam.
