So, I’m the biggest Pulp Fiction fan there is. And Resevoir Dogs was good. Jackie Brown had some reasonable moments.
But to be blunt, everything else sucked. Other than Cheech Marin’s “Pussy Pussy Pussy” soliloquy, From Dusk Till Dawn was junk, Natural Born Killers was ultra-junk, but still I keep coming back, really on the strength of Pulp Fiction.
So I rented Kill Bill Vol. 1. What an abortion. Or at least the first 20 minutes was, that’s all I could put up with. My wife watched the rest for whatever reason, and everytime I came back in the room, it was just dumber and bloodier than the dumb and bloody scene I’d seen before.
No great review here. Just a comment that Mr. Tarantino has sunk pretty low in this posters humble opinion.
Too bad. I loved Kill Bill (both volumes). I was familiar with a lot of his source material before going in, but I think I would have loved them even if I hadn’t been.
And I think Jackie Brown, all of it, is fantastic.
You didn’t say if your wife liked it having seen the whole thing. If she does, tell her she should see Vol. 2 in the theater.
Are you complaining about Tarantino as a director or writer, or both?
Tarantino is credited with the story for Natural Born Killers, but gets no screenplay credit. A ‘story’ credit usually means that the writer wrote the first draft, but it was extensively rewritten afterwards. He wasn’t involved in the production in any way, so it’s a little unfair to blame him if you dislike that movie. I think it’s a good movie, but I can see why many feel otherwise.
I think From Dusk till Dawn is quite good for an action movie. It was directed by Robert Rodriguez, so if your complaint is regarding his directing, it’s misplaced here.
Likewise, I liked both parts of Kill Bill and all of Jackie Brown.
Have you seen True Romance? It has a Tarantino script, with quite a few Tarantinoesque moments in it.
Both; I do know about what he’s credited for in each of his efforts, and I pin the tragedy of Natural Born Killers mainly on Oliver Stone, who I consider to be completely worthless, one of those people that I honestly can’t understand how he ever got funded to put on his socks, let alone lead a major motion picture. (well, Scarface was excellent, but that’s another story). But Tarantino was in there; he wrote the original screenplay.
Everyone does say it’s great, and I don’t know why I haven’t seen it. I’m sure I will someday, but lately I’m starting to wonder why.
I guess my love for Pulp Fiction is what you called out, “Tarantinoesque moments”. The dialogue is truly excellent. The stories and the situations are clever and interesting. There was none of that in Kill Bill, or the other tripe I mentioned. At least there wasn’t enough for me.
When I first saw** Kill Bill Vol.1** I watched it for about 20 seconds, took it out of the DVD player, placed it back in its case, and threw it across the room as far as possible without either looking or caring where it landed. When I finally came across it again (a few months later behind the dresser) I had to force myself to sit down and watch it “four times” before I could actually develope the stomach to sit through the whole thing :mad:
I hate watching women do bad things to hurt each other. ( regardless of the reason, be it acting or not )
Some movies just aren’t for everyone. Sorry you guys wasted your time. I think every Tarantino film is brilliant, and Kill Bill 1 & 2 were especially clever tributes to the spaghetti western and the martial arts revenge drama, but that’s just me.
It’s OK not to like some movies–heck, everybody and his pet cat adored Shrek, which I detested.
While I like his movies. I think he is a total jerk. I saw him one time when he said I wanted to make this movie to show off my vast talent. Whatever nerdy weirdo.
I just saw Kill Bill Vol. 1 this weekend. We loved it. I guess you have to understand him. The violence was so over the top as to be comical at times. That’s what he was looking for. I can’t wait to see II.
We may not have any common ground for even discussing this. I’m generally lukewarm on the subject of Tarantino, but I think the two volumes of Kill Bill were superior filmmaking and easily his best work.
Two is such a different animal than one. Don’t expect the same amount of action. It is more emotional I guess than one. The best part about two is Una’s karate training and the chick from splash and her one eye.
I burned myself out on Pulp Fiction; I watched it so many times in grad school I can’t sit in front of it now without saying “Oh, this part again” at the start of pretty much every scene. It’s a great film in its way, but it helps to keep in mind that QT is something of a collagist, taking bits of dialogue and action from lots of other films and pasting them into this big mad quilt of a movie. (There ought to be a new word to describe the experience of watching a 70s movie and recognizing a line of dialogue that Tarantino lifted; I was amazed to watch Charlie Varrick [an excellent film BTW] and hear a character tell someone that the mob was going to work on him “with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch.”)
I think Jackie Brown is brilliant, from start to finish. Hands-down his best movie (excepting Kill Bill which I haven’t seen).
Apart from that, Tarantino himself seems like a pretty grating individual, although he’s obviously very intelligent and perceptive, not just about movies but about human interaction too. Watching him being interviewed, I’m always torn between fuming at his cheeseball antics and applauding the often very astute things that he says.
I have to agree. If you don’t enjoy spaghetti westerns like The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, Hong Kong action films, classic kung-fu martial arts films, non-Pokeman anime, films about revenge, samuri, Yakuza, hot female assassins, and kicking people’s asses, odds are that not only will you not appreciate Kill Bill, but much of the subtileties of his use of the various genres will be lost on you.
Is it a brilliant story? Not particularly. Basically every frame is lifted from somewhere else. But that’s the point.
I just get the feeling that the Bill H. was expecting Quentin to make the same movie (his favorite movie, dammit!) and was disappointed. Hey, it happens. Some people consider this a good thing. (The part about not making the same movie, not the part about being disappointed)
I’m sure you’re right. As it turns out, I love The Good, The Bad and The Ugly amongst other spaghetti westerns, and I enjoy the occasional Bruce Lee movie (though I’m not a huge fan). But more to Kill Bill, I loathed Crouching Crap, Leaping Lizards (or whatever it was), and could never bring myself to see Charlie’s Angels, even if it did have Bill Murray or Bernie Mac. Nothing wrong with hot babes, just seeing them kicking ass isn’t my idea of a good time, and more importantly, a strong plot and good dialogue is really what makes a movie for me. Also, the ultra-violence thing isn’t entertaining here. Ironic I guess that I’ll search out a video of a real human being getting his head sawed off by savages, but not want to see a bloodlust fantasy on film.
The Controvert wrote
It’s a fair concern, but as it turns out an incorrect one. I’m not looking for Pulp Fiction part II. Just great writing, acting directing. I didn’t see that in Kill Bill, just a bunch of blood, a little skin here and there and tons of action. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that it contained explosions and car chases, and that’s not really exciting to me.
FWIW, I hate Tarentino. I think his writing stinks. He uses his characters as platforms for his "oh, arn’t I clever’ musings that would be amusing if I were a stoned high school student. His plots rely far too heavily on cussing, wearing suits, and being violent. His “I’m down with Black people” posing is grating. His movies would make better radio plays and his general attitude makes me want to slap him upside the head.
But I loved Kill Bill. In fact, I think it’s the only important film made in the last decade or so. And I was sooooo glad that (except for a breif part at the end of volume 2) WT’s distracting, transparent, semi-deep, only vaguely funny and totally tangental “witty dialogue” was absent.
I agree. I was kind of iffy on the first volume, but I carried a working hypothesis into the second volume and was pleased that my suspicions were almost entirely confirmed and the whole work came into sparkling focus. It’s meta-cinema, rather than conventional filmmaking, but it’s still brilliant.
Count me in with those who loved both parts of Kill Bill. The first one is a lot more of the “action” sequences, and the second one is more story and dialogue. Got to put them both together to get the full effect.
But a lot of the action in the first was so over the top to be humorous, as was mentioned before.
Am I the only person who loved From Dusk Til Dawn? I thought it was great. The first half was classic Tarantino mixed with film noir. Then it took a 90 degree turn into black comedy/satire/horror that was very inventive. If you take it to be serious, the dialog and scenes probably sound cheesy. But that wasn’t the intent. The second half of the movie is almost a spoof. It’s not only hilarious, but exciting. Great movie.
Chalk me up as another big fan of Jackie Brown, too.
Well, I’m not going to insist that anyone has to like any of the film’s Tarantino has directed, and I’m pretty lukewarn on Kill Bill as a whole, but both parts have some of the most stunning imagery and set-pieces I’ve ever seen. In particular, the entire extended segment in the House of Blue Leaves in Part One is surely going to go down as a classic of action cinema.
For me, they’re at least interesting films, if not totally successful. Structurally, it’s a complete mess, and just as in Pulp Fiction the scenes come off more as just a series of related vignettes rather than a coherent story, but the characters were well defined within the cartoonish world in which they existed, and there was a true emotional weight to the Thurman character’s drive to seek revenge for all the things that Bill had taken away from her.
Others have already commented on the references to martial arts films and spaghetti westerns, but I’ll just throw in that IMO the films of Sam Peckinpah, especially Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, surely were a big influence as well.
I guess Tarantino doesn’t help his case any that he so often seems to come off like an utter dumbass in interviews, but since when do we have to like the artist personally to like the art?
Yes, Sam, You are the Only one…
Although I did enjoy 3 Cheeches. I thought dusk 'til dawn was 2 different films.
Part one was a good Tarrentino-esque film and when they got to the
“Tittie-Twister”, it became a second, silly, film. The two parts were of such different genres as to leave me walking out after saying “WTF was that?”. Liked the casting. I’ll watch Harvey Keitel in most anything, tho…
