First hot-off-the-presses thoughts on Kill Bill: Vol. 2: For me, it basically renders the first movie irrelevant. The whole story is in the second movie, and now Vol. 1 (which I had some problems with, see here) looks even more like a collection of footnotes and digressions. If you didn't see the first one, that's no reason to skip Vol. 2 - it stands alone just fine. It's still just a revenge tale and pastiche of 70s B-movie styles, but this one is more enjoyable because:

a) It has a beginning, middle and end

b) It has Tarantino's latest resurrection of a 70s drive-in star, David Carradine, who was barely glimpsed in the first movie but is all over this one. He's fabulous, too - all gnarled and leathery, but cool as a cucumber. He has a big Superman speech that was cribbed (I think) from Jules Pfeiffer and adapted to Tarantino's rhythms - you can easily picture the geeky way QT would have delivered it, but Carradine transcends the dorkiness with his dry, raspy delivery.

c) As you might deduce from the above, it has more of the trademark Tarantino dialogue, as opposed to the stilted badly-translated-Japanese style of the first movie, maybe because most of this one takes place in the USA.

d) Instead of the boring-ass samurai sword-maker from the first one, there's a cranky, kickass kung fu master with eyebrows in homage to the Master of the Flying Guillotine.

e) Instead of boring Lucy Liu, a midget.

f) Uma Thurman/Daryl Hannah deathmatch.

In conclusion, I like.