Top 5 Tuesday: Tarantino's Ladies

It occurred to me that in the however long I've been writing this blog, I haven't mentioned Quentin Tarantino once. If you asked my former coworkers, they would be shocked - I can't count the number of times I was told to shut up about Tarantino and let them get back to work. One reason I love his films is that he writes some really bad-ass female characters. So for this week's top 5 - I'm actually already struggling with this feature - I'm listing my five favorites (in no particular order). Special shout out to Death Proof - other than Stuntman Mike, the main cast is pretty much all female, although none of them made this list

1. The Bride (Kill Bill)

Obviously. The Bride is probably one of the greatest characters ever created (Empire placed her at #66 on their top 100), so yeah, she's going to make this list. For me, there are three particularly memorable scenes that prove the Bride's all-around awesomeness. First, the battle against the Crazy 88 - yes, it's stylized and unrealistic (maybe don't take turns to fight her?), but it's a great scene that shows how tough and powerful the Bride is, particularly the fight against Gogo. Second, the scene when the Bride has been buried alive - I love the conflict between her barely controlled calmness in placing her hand in just the right way and her frustration and pain as she tries to break her way out. Third - the final scene on the bathroom floor - man, talk about cathartic. After all she's been through, she deserves that emotional purge; it's kind of shocking to see her like that after she's held it together pretty well throughout the rest of the story, but it's a perfect and real moment. 

2. O-Ren Ishii (Kill Bill)
It's been a while since I saw the Kill Bill films, but if my memory serves me right, it seems like there's a lot of attention lavished on O-Ren Ishii. Notably more than the other secondary characters, I mean, and to my mind, rightly so. She gets that stunning animated sequence, as well as two extended battle scenes and maybe the best speech of the whole film. Lucy Liu absolutely kills it, too. She's so small and delicate-looking, absolutely beautiful, but she can really let it rip. Her final fight scene is beautifully staged, and the way she dies is just incredible. And about that speech: the calm tone, the tiny steps she has to take as she runs along the table, the severed head in her hand - it's all so good. 

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3. Shosanna Dreyfus (Inglourious Basterds)
I want to be Shosanna so bad. Not the part where her whole family gets killed, and the part at the end doesn't go very well for her either, but I would be pretty happy with the bit in the middle. "Cat People" is now my official "getting ready to go out" song. But I digress. She's smart and has nerves of steel - imagine going toe-to-toe with Landa in the cafe, never being quite sure if he knows who you are or if you'll be able to leave. Her little two-person operation succeeds where the combined power of the British and American armed forces mostly failed, and if you weren't pumped up when her face was being projected on the rising smoke, I don't know what to tell you. 

4. Elle Driver (Kill Bill)
Yet another great character from Kill Bill. When Vol. One came out, we asked a few friends if they wanted to go with us, and we ended up with a group of 21. For the next couple of months, a day didn't go by without hearing one of those 21 people whistling the theme from Twisted Nerve. Considering it's a borrowed tune, it's a great fit for her - upbeat but eerie. She's so evil and underhanded, and also mysterious; the little details about her - the careful note taking, the truth about how she lost her eye, that amazing nurse's uniform - fit together brilliantly but never tell the whole story. There's so much more to find out about her, which I hope we will if the third film ever comes to fruition and if she managed to get out of the trailer and escape that snake. 

5. Melanie Ralston (Jackie Brown)
My fifth choice is maybe a weird one - beating out Mia Wallace, Bridget von Hammersmark and Jackie Brown herself - but I loved Bridget Fonda in this movie. She's a ray of sunshine in a movie I otherwise wasn't crazy about, and half of one of the most brutally funny scenes in any of Tarantino's movies - no spoilers, but I'm talking about the scene with Louis in the mall parking lot. I'm sure it says something about my mental state that I love that scene, but it's just funny.