6. Kill Bill Volume 2
The lesser half of the Kill Bill saga feels like a slight comedown after the frantic brilliance of the first instalment, even if it is probably truer to the director's filmmaking sensibilities on the whole. If Kill Bill's first volume is an over-the-top, ultra-violent homage to Eastern action films, then Kill Bill 2 feels more attuned to the talkier, less action-focused dramas the director made early in his career, such as Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown. After the mammoth twist unfurls at the end of the first film, that The Bride's daughter is, in fact, still alive, we deal with the fallout of this as well as her continued efforts to eliminate the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, consisting of Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah), Budd (Michael Madsen), and the final boss himself, Bill (David Carradine). While the various means through which she dispatches the foes is electrifying, the finale of the film was a touch underwhelming, if only because it had been clearly been marketed with the supposition that The Bride and Bill would have an epic swordfight showdown, when in reality, this is not what happened at all. Performing the famed five-point-palm-exploding-heart-technique, she kills Bill without even leaving her chair, ironically confounding our expectations and admittedly disappointing us a little bit. Still, in retrospect, it is a great film, and as a paean to motherhood, also Tarantino's sweetest yarn by a country mile.