Dave Kehr was an excellent movie critic for the Chicago Reader from 1974 to 1985; he helped established the tone of the Reader's reviews as being the beachhead against the Pauline Kael style of movie criticism that would later dominate all of movie-reviewing; he created the mold for Jonathan Rosenbaum to fill at a later date.
Kehr left his Chicago, like everyone does, to arrive already obscelent in New York City. Where the reader gave him pages and pages (and love!), The New York Times gives him 4 paragraphs to review whatever A.O. Scott and Stephen Holden pass over (for instance, he got to review The Rock's latest movie).
Kehr gives as good as a stab at explaining what Tarantino is up to in Kill Bill as anyone I've seen. And he knows more than enough to walk you through some of the more rocky references; things like the difference between the skillful Chinese martial arts movie tradition versus the sloppy and blood-soaked Japanese tradition , and where spaghetti westerns fit into it all. He also catches a lot that I missed (confession: I had no idea that David Carradine was the monk from the TV series Kung-Fu that is brought up in Pulp Fiction). If the second part is actually focused on various forms of westerns it gives me hope that the Vol. split in the movie wasn't just a marketing decision or a last minute hesitation but actually fits into the overall project.
And damn if that Uma Thurman as John Wayne in "Searchers" shot doesn't make me want to simultaneously hug and slap the guy.