THE PROBLEM WITH KILL BILL: It's the anime sequence--it just doesn't fit. It gives Lucy Liu's character a degree of sympathy none of the others got, and makes her future alliance with Bill inexplicable. It's not particularly interesting as anime, either. I don't quite understand why he put it in there.

My theory is: The other genres Tarantino built Kill Bill out of--samurai, kung fu, Italian Western, a little Italian horror; all the seventies schlock genres--that was the stuff he grew up on. But he couldn't have been exposed to anime in great quantities until much later, since it was only sparsely available in this country until fairly recently. It's not something he lives and breathes like he does the rest of the films he uses. It certainly isn't "grindhouse cinema"--it's "your parents' basement" cinema. So--I mean--that explains why it sort of sticks out like a sore thumb in what is otherwise an incredible movie. Why he made the decision to use something he didn't have such a strong command of, when he made so many other good choices in 1 and 2, that I can't explain.