Kill Bill Volume 1 Spellbound

The most anticipated film of the week was Quentin Tarantino's first release since Jackie Brown in 1997. Kill Bill, starring Uma Thurman and Lucy Liu, "is a geek's wet dream", packed with "Hong Kong kung fu ... spaghetti westerns ... gangster pics and anime - as filtered through the pulpy pop sensibility of an American film obsessive", reckoned Cosmo Landesman in the Sunday Times.

For Jonathan Romney in the Independent on Sunday, Kill Bill is Tarantino's "most adolescent film yet", while the Sunday Telegraph's Jenny McCartney found the "blood-spattered" movie "patchy, rather nasty and frequently dull", saying it "smells like the work of an ageing enfant terrible ". While admitting "the film does have a certain brutish style", the Daily Mail's Christopher Tookey felt its multiple movie genre references betrayed "the arrogance of the sociopathically insulated film buff".

In the Independent, Anthony Quinn found Thurman, playing the "the Bride" - a former secret agent seeking to kill the eponymous Bill - to be "athletic, cool-headed and as implacable as a Fury". Overall, though, he was disappointed: "One can hardly deny that it is 'well-made', but it's tempting to wonder what sort of film this might have been if Tarantino had devoted as much energy to psychological involvement as he does to the intricacies of style and music."

On a gentler note, the documentary Spellbound, which follows the progress of a group of US children through a televised spelling contest, united critics in praise. It is a "riveting and revealing look at the motives and backgrounds of a diverse group of young people, and their parents", said Philip French in the Observer, and is about "chasing the American Dream". In dealing with his child subjects, the director, Jeff Blitz, is "neither cute nor condescending", said Landesman in the Sunday Times, and he is also "a natural-born storyteller". The Mail on Sunday's Jason Solomon joined in the praise: "Spellbound is often moving, strangely exciting and very funny - and a brilliant illustration of the way human beings can give frivolity a lethal importance."

Theatre

Life is Rhythm

The Camut Band's blend of dance and drumming, Life is Rhythm, arrived in the West End at the Lyric after a run at the Edinburgh Fringe. TheTimes's Clive Davis found the Catalan troupe's efforts "spirited" and having "the spontaneous ambience of the best of street theatre" but felt with "a running time of barely 90 minutes, the production ultimately feels like one half of a promising double bill".

Kate Kellaway in the Observer likened the show to a "low-budget version of the hit dance show Stomp", which "sounds like the charge of the heavy brigade", with the dancers spending much of their time dancing on the drums themselves.

"The company don't always have the variety of dance movements to bring off what are essentially long drum-solos," said the Independent's Zoe Anderson, but she still reckoned it was "an energetic show, with much more dance style than many of its rivals".

Less impressed was Charles Spencer, who complained in the Daily Telegraph that he had to endure "six men from Barcelona tap-dance and beat the hell out of drums in a show that has grotesquely outstayed its welcome after 15 of its 90 minutes".