I happened to see about an hour of Kill Bill vol. 2 on TV a while ago, which was about as much as I could stand of this bloated, sadistic, tedious stunt movie, from the world's must cunning stunt himself. The storyline is preposterous, a grab-bag of superficial conceits, gimmicks, in-jokes and references. The dialogue is self-satisfied and has none of the energy of Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction; the performances are awful. David Carradine is particularly embarrassing, and I've never understood the appeal of Uma Thurman, who looks and acts like someone's gangly big sister.
I'll be told that Kill Bill is heavily ironic, but it's not. Real irony communicates on at least two levels: on a surface level to a general audience, and on a deeper level to an audience of insiders. But no one could (or should) take the surface level of Kill Bill seriously, even for a moment; Tarantino's attempt at irony has only the deeper level, and it's as shallow as they come, all smirking and posturing, signifying nothing. Why should I bother watching such a display?
And increasingly I find myself forced to accept the blasphemy that most of the above complaints apply to Pulp Fiction as well. Yes, I too revered it during my undergrad years, and yes, it has lots of cool dialogue (as well as lots of bad dialogue elevated by its surroundings); like you, I spent so much time quoting it and riffing on it that I never realised how bad it is. Now, in the sober light of day, I see a weak movie limping by on its soundtrack and other attention-seeking gimmicks, none of which can hide the lack of a coherent story, and the lack of a single believable human character or relationship. Even the good dialogue seems worn out through over-familiarity, and unworthy of its earlier canonization. In fact, Pulp Fiction already looks badly dated, an unwelcome remnant from an unlamented era, like your dad's 70s tank tops. Critics in 1994 wrote about the resurrection of Travolta's career, but in truth even Saturday Night Fever has weathered the years a bit better.
Pulp Fiction is the central work of 90s culture, which is not a culture I look back on with much fondness. Indeed, it is my earnest hope that future generations will look on the era as the beginning of a new cultural low. The 90s saw a rapid acceleration in such trends as in-jokery, "retro", packaged "diversity", emphasis on "styles" over individual expression. 90s pop culture was a series of pastiches of earlier pop cultures, 60s rehash followed by 70s rehash followed by 80s rehash, all delivered with a failed by-default irony. The pose of the artist was the smirk, the domain of the artist was the surface, the goal of the artist was slickness. Tarantino and Pulp Fiction typified all these trends.
Worse, Tarantino, wittingly or not, became the poster boy for a new anti-intellectualism that became fashionable in left-wing academic circles. "Knowledge", according to this definition, was really just a tool for those in power; it was really all about "getting the reference", the exchange of knowing winks, being part of the smug circle. To the true egalitarian, one bit of knowledge was as good as any other; an intimate knowledge of 70s trash cinema was as valuable as an intimate knowledge of something worthwhile, any random geek obsession as valuable as what passed for serious culture in previous eras. Knowledge was reduced to a flat plane; something easily chopped up, packaged and commodified, something you can acquire, and sell. The new left didn't want to "privilege" one piece of knowledge over any other; they were content to let them all fight for themselves on the free market.
The timing of these trends was no accident. With the increasing decrepitude and collapse of the USSR, widely hailed as the "end of history", large sections of the left decided to throw in their lot with capitalism. Essentially, they adopted the culture of Thatcher and Reagan as their own. The new radical could score brownie points by embracing consumer culture, and the false diversity it offered, its populist appeal, and contrasting it favourably with the exclusive, privileged, eurocentric (etc.) concepts of "culture" that went before. This attitude found its perfect expression in Pulp Fiction, a superstore of lovingly presented trash, lowbrow junk served up with a knowing wink. Undemanding, goes down easy, lots of academic cred; nothing made the 90s radicals feel more pleased with themselves.
Kill Bill is more of the same, but ten years down the line, it leaves behind a worse stink. It reeks of the complacency of certain types under the Clinton administration, and we can all see now where that has taken us. The 90s liberals, in sacrificing all for the profit system, contributed directly to the current global situation. The values they promoted led to the current dismal cultural level of even most educated people, the widespread dismantling of social systems, and a populace too disoriented and dumbed-down to care, and too inert to do anything about it even if they did. When push came to shove, the liberals all bowed down before the American far right, and the generation of slackers, mallrats and fanboys they cultivated were in no position to offer any resistance.