The Film Thread

[Cappy]

@Jordan Cole Thank you for posting! Yours hating the film so much makes me want to see it even more.

(Wouldn't that make an interesting and fun thread? The films we hated the most? Off the top of my head, I could name Avatar, The Last Jedi, The Rise of Skywalker, Gotti... When I was younger, I really hated The Cotton Club, but I'm now eager to see the Encore version. I might make a list someday soon.)

I won't read the whole review yet, since I'm afraid of spoilers, but I'll come back and reply after seeing both mother! and The Whale myself. That might be difficult, though, since a few days ago I started both a Robert Bresson and a Hal Hartley marathon, so I'm getting caught up in their work.

I love a lot of Star Trek, but I do sort of hate “The Motion Picture” and ST 5.

I will probably never watch them again. I don’t even think I’ve ever been able to stay awake through one sitting of “The Motion Picture”, tbh.

Just my take though, sorry if that bugs any fans of these two.

 

[shadowtakemedown]

My gripes with NBK and True Romance are pretty specific--the music reduces certain scenes to cliche, melodrama and schmaltz. I've sort of gone up and down with my estimation of Tarantino over the years, but I absolutely believe he's the only one that knows how to elevate his scripts, I'd wager largely because of his music choices.

Roger Ebert called True Romance "a fire sale down at the cliche factory."

 

[mtwentz]

I like Tarantino's work, but honestly, none of it has really stuck with me throughout the years. In the case of Pulp Fiction, I think it's just that I watched it sooooo many times, I burned out on it. I do still like Reservoir Dogs though.

 

[Cappy]

I do have a weird sentimental fondness for Reservoir Dogs — I still remember being blown away by it the first time I saw it. My young mind never thought movies could be like THAT.

 

[baxter]

I always found Tarantino to be way overhyped. I got into Lynch first, and that sort of ruined his films for me - they aren't weird enough! I also made the mistake of seeing a Q&A event after a screening of Death Proof. He was incredibly arrogant as always and said that his dialogue was his gift. I always find it very cliched, one note and the same in every film! He never seems to build character, just insert the same "voice" into everyone. Rant over. When you compare him to really great directors active in the 90s such as Atom Egoyan and Gregg Araki, he suffers in my view.

To be fair, there's lots of his stuff I've not bothered to watch, I could be completely wrong and please don't shoot me :-D

 

[secretlettermkr]

ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD is a Masterpiece

 

[baxter]

I've heard that from my bandmate who absolutely raved about it. I'll definitely check it out, then I'll slink back here and slag off my post ;-)

 

[baxter]

Complete tangent, but a helpful tip: I take a lot of long haul flights, and recently took a VR headset on the journey. This allowed me to sit in the cinema for hours instead of being on the plane, and you can actually watch stuff that would get you arrested otherwise. I watched some early Paul Verhoeven films (e.g. Turkish Delight) that would have been totally off limits otherwise! Maybe I'll do a Tarantino festival on the next one.

The only thin you have to do is turn off tracking asap, otherwise the cinema moves up and down and makes you seasick.

 

[Agent Earle]

Personally, I never saw a movie of Tarantino that I didn't at least moderately like but I will agree he is somewhat overrated. I do believe his true masterpieces were his first three films - what I think of as the "Mob Trilogy" -, ie. Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Jackie Brown. Those are the ones I've watched countless times over the years and I can still pop them in any day, any time and completely sink in like it's the first time I'm watching. The rest are when I feel he started to think of himself as an institution and it kinda shows in the movies - a sort of smug, self-absorbed attitutude permeating everything on the screen. I still mainly had a blast with them at the cinema (starting with Death Proof, I saw all his films in a movie theater) but never felt the need to return to any of them.

P.S.: One movie I always appreciated and enjoys the same status with me as his early trilogy is From Dusk till Dawn - I know he only wrote and starred in it but to me, that one always felt like a through-and-through Tarantino movie. It's one of the best horror comedies of all time as far as I'm concerned - standing out more for coming out in the middle of the horror-lite 90s - and those vamps are simply to die for (if you're a horror genre aficionado like me ).

 

[baxter]

"a sort of smug, self-absorbed attitutude permeating everything on the screen"

Right! That's what I thought when watching Death Proof. You said it way better than I could.

 

[Jordan Cole]

I always found Tarantino to be way overhyped. I got into Lynch first, and that sort of ruined his films for me - they aren't weird enough! I also made the mistake of seeing a Q&A event after a screening of Death Proof. He was incredibly arrogant as always and said that his dialogue was his gift. I always find it very cliched, one note and the same in every film! He never seems to build character, just insert the same "voice" into everyone. Rant over. When you compare him to really great directors active in the 90s such as Atom Egoyan and Gregg Araki, he suffers in my view.

To be fair, there's lots of his stuff I've not bothered to watch, I could be completely wrong and please don't shoot me :-D

I don't think the characters in Tarantino's films don't have different voices, starting with Reservoir Dogs (a character study?) and going right until Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (another character study?) How could anyone see Inglourious Basterds and think that? Even Hateful Eight, which is exclusively a character piece, smashing different types together? Jules and Vincent in Pulp Fiction have entirely different inner lives, ways of speaking, points of view, just watch the last scene of them in the diner. And they're NOTHING like Bruce Willis's character, or etc, etc.

What you may be responding to, on top of that this is theatrical writing and not realism (Lynch does that same thing), is that Tarantino's characters are often (not always) funny, chatty, cool and confident. THAT is Tarantino's "gift" and it's something I absolutely love about his films. I get tired of indie films about awkward pathetic losers. Sure, I love a lot of those films (Happiness, etc) but it takes a really, really good writer to make funny, cool, confident characters that you actually WANT TO HANG OUT WITH.

A friend in college once went on a rant to me about how cool Tarantino's characters are. "They're fun people you want to hang out with." I've always agreed with that. Think about what good writing is. How many times have you seen a movie or TV show where a character is SUPPOSED to be fun and cool but the writing is just dogshit and so stupid? It's actually a really hard thing to pull off.

It reminds me of my criticism of comic artist Adrian Tomine, which I touched on in the books thread. Like...he's good, but all his characters are pathetic, stumbling, awkward losers. And I find it's kind of easy to write that way. But when I read something where the characters are *actually* funny and enjoyable to spend time with? A lot of writers simply can't do that.

Inglourious Basterds is an absolute masterpiece. Once Upon A Time I saw three times in the theater and cried every single time. It blows my mind people on a David Lynch forum (cinema's finest!) can dismiss Tarantino's films so easily. I see him and Lynch's work as so similar. This thread is getting to me!

 

[mtwentz]

oh yeah, forgot about Dusk To Dawn. That is a really fun movie and I love how it merges genres so well.

 

[Jordan Cole]

"a sort of smug, self-absorbed attitutude permeating everything on the screen"

Right! That's what I thought when watching Death Proof. You said it way better than I could.

Or is it a fun, funny, confident, cool attitude by a gifted filmmaker who knows what he's doing and won't apologize or act humble about it? Is it so wrong to be confident and assured in your work? We're not talking about Michael Bay here. Tarantino has a unique talent for shooting, directing, lighting, editing, music, etc. His films radically changed the world of cinema in the 90s, with tons and tons of Tarantino rip-off movies clogging up the cinemas.

He's earned the confidence.

 

[Rainwater]

I'm not a big Tarantino fan, I appreciate and admire his skills as a filmmaker, and I like some of his movies just fine, but I've never loved them, and the only thing I can say is I feel like I'm just not quite on the same wavelength. Our sensibilities just don't match. But, to my surprise, I LOVED Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I've only seen it once so far(watched it last year) but it has to be my favorite movie of his. Will probably watch it again soon.

 

[mtwentz]

I just don't find much of Tarantino's work thought provoking. I like movies that make me think, and Tarantino's don't really do that for me. (at least the ones I've seen)

But there is no doubt they are entertaining.

 

[baxter]

Or is it a fun, funny, confident, cool attitude by a gifted filmmaker who knows what he's doing and won't apologize or act humble about it? Is it so wrong to be confident and assured in your work? We're not talking about Michael Bay here. Tarantino has a unique talent for shooting, directing, lighting, editing, music, etc. His films radically changed the world of cinema in the 90s, with tons and tons of Tarantino rip-off movies clogging up the cinemas.

He's earned the confidence.

Yeah, that's fair.

 

[Jordan Cole]

I just don't find much of Tarantino's work thought provoking. I like movies that make me think, and Tarantino's don't really do that for me. (at least the ones I've seen)

But there is no doubt they are entertaining.

Have you seen Inglourious Basterds?

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood?

(I'm not saying these are the only two thought-provoking works, but they stand out to me as particularly layered.)

 

[AXX°N N.]

Once Upon A Time I saw three times in the theater and cried every single time.

Not sure how to ask this with the intended good nature, but what sparked the tears? I've only seen it once and need to reevaluate, as my memory is really murky and I'm not sure I responded much.

 

[LateReg]

Not sure how to ask this with the intended good nature, but what sparked the tears? I've only seen it once and need to reevaluate, as my memory is really murky and I'm not sure I responded much.

Speaking for myself as someone who has seen the film five or six times, I think it's Tarantino's most emotional film, and one of the more sneakily emotional films in recent memory. It also happens to function a lot like Twin Peaks: The Return. It meanders loosely through a collection of scenes and barely hints at what the overarching plot/endgame really is until the very end, it immerses itself in the complicated nature of nostalgia, and it follows a narrative typical of the western while being only tangentially related to the genre. Sneaky stuff.

Every time I watch it, I feel it more deeply and tear up within the last few minutes, as all that the film represents and mourns creeps up and suddenly overwhelms me (that's how the film is meticulously built, in my experience): the senseless death of human beings, the premature end of an era, the eternal what-if of how things might have been different, and the power of storytelling--particularly cinema in a film about cinema with a bittersweet title that evokes both classic Leone films and fairy tale lore--to resurrect the past and evoke all of this at once.

PS - I agree with your earlier comment about Tarantino being the only one who truly knows how to elevate his own scripts. Both because of his way with music and with actors, as you and Jordan said. It's a complete vision from top to bottom. Of course, he may have also sensed that True Romance and Natural Born Killers were not his best work, anyway, and therefore kept the scripts he felt had the most potential.

 

[Jordan Cole]

Not sure how to ask this with the intended good nature, but what sparked the tears? I've only seen it once and need to reevaluate, as my memory is really murky and I'm not sure I responded much.

The incredibly sad need for a "fairy tale" when the reality is so much more horrible and tragic. That need that fills up the final moments of the movie as the camera pulls away from the house and the fairy-tale like title fades in (for the first time.) It's deeply sad, and Tarantino's spoken pretty directly about his intentions there. The idea of denial and wishing so hard things were better but they just never can be, except only In Dreams...

If I were to compare it to a Lynch work, it's not far off from the final moments of Mulholland Drive, with Diane's tragic life in full view, but the image of Betty fading into the sun-filled skies right at the end. There's reality and then there's the way we all wish things were.

It's like when you have a dream about a dog or a friend or a parent who has died, and then you wake up, and you just cry because it felt so real. And in a way it was? But it's also not. (This has happened to me a lot lately.)

Both films evoke this in different ways, and both about Hollywood, and using Hollywood not just as location but as metaphor for the idea of fantasy storytelling. Tarantino does similar things with the end of Basterds, as the movie theater goes up in flames and we even feel conflicted towards the horrific and violent and not very funny death of the nazis in the crowd, people enjoying a movie just like we are, we're forced to confront the various true and untrue things as we're sitting in a theater not unlike the one on screen. It's a head trip, man.