Gotta admit. Tarantino can catch me.
Here’s an analogy for you that might or might not be appropriate. Tarantino movies are a bit like The Black Crowes. They might not be the most original things around (both riff on existing canon and styles quite a bit) but damn if they’re not fun to spend time with.
And I just saw the second trailer for Inglourious Basterds. That one looks awesome, baby.
I won’t argue about them being good or not but they are a lot of fun to watch. I can watch Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill a million times and never get bored of them. Also, while the visuals are great, I can have the movie playing in the background of my computer and just listen to the dialogue while surfing the web.
Plus, he comes off as a nerd/geek, which is kind of cool.
Er, do you mean before Mia ODs in Pulp Fiction?
Er, I didn’t think that’s what I meant, but upon further research… :smack: You’re right. I could have sworn I heard the melody from that song in the theme that plays in Kill Bill.
Perhaps I watch too many Tarantino films. 
Inglourious Basterds might actually appeal to me - given the subject matter.
I’ll give it a try…
Q
Or look at Big Lebowski, with the completely unneeded death of Donnie, or the climactic clusterfuck in Burn After Reading. Time and time again “average citizens” get involved in the world of criminals and killers in the Coens’ movies, and time and time again bad stuff happens.
On the Tarantino side, let’s not forget the jewelry store customers Mr. Blonde shoots in Reservoir Dogs, as well as the cop. There are innocent victims in From Dusk Till Dawn, but then again that’s a vampire movie.
Man, it took me too long to write this.
Shoot the Piano Player directed by Francois Truffaut is widely regarded as the inspiration for the “gangsters casually discuss minutiae while committing crimes” thing, except Tarantino makes a whole movie out of the idea instead of a couple funny scenes. Jean-Paul Belmondo casually murders a cop and continues committing crimes throughout Breathless That sublime dancing scene in the diner? Straight out of Band of Outsiders.
Anyone who thinks Tarrantino makes “nauseating” films don’t watch enough films. Go watch some Rape/Revenge films from the 70’s to see what a truly nauseating film is - Last House on the Left, Lipstick, I Spit On Your Grave, etc. For more modern nauseating films, watch any Japanese action/slasher/horror film of the last ten years, especially Takashi Miike. That is gore.
I don’t think you should try to get too deeply into a Tarantino movie. They’re intentionally not deep - they’re more elemental.
Tarantino makes movies that are about movies. I don’t see them as satire because Tarantino obviously loves his subject. I see them as a distillation of the essense of pop action movies.
And on a seperate note, I have tremendous respect for Tarantino as a director because he has consistenly brought forth some great performances from actors who are not naturally great. Look at the performances people like David Carradine or Pam Grier or Daryl Hannah or Lucy Liu and compare them to the performances they’ve given in other movies. Tarantino is able to elevate them to a higher level.
For the record, I did not say Mr. Tarantino makes “nauseating films”, I said they nauseate me.
For me to say that, would be to make a sweeping generalization, and as a former English teacher, I know better.
Yes, I know it’s “splitting hairs”, but if you read all my responses here in this thread, then you know I can admit I may be wrong and I have said as much.
I’ll take another look.
Okay?
Soft:)
Q
Also good examples. Although, curiously enough, one movie where this doesn’t happen is their gangland epic, Miller’s Crossing, which I believe has the highest body count of any of their films - but everyone who gets killed is in the mob, or affiliated with it.
It’s been too long since I’ve seen it, but don’t the other crooks react negatively to Mr. Blonde shooting the customers? I seem to recall them being pissed over him acting “unprofessional,” but I might be conflating the undercover cop’s reaction with the other characters.
[spoiler]Mr. White (Harvey Keitel) is straight-up livid about Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen) turning the robbery into a bloodbath. Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi) however, while not at all happy with Mr. Blonde’s actions, rationalizes it as proof positive that he can’t be the rat that Mr. Pink is sure is among them.
When Mr. Blonde shows up at the rendezvous things quickly come to a head with Mr. White and Mr. Blonde. Mr. Pink’s rationalization for Mr. Blonde’s actions being the thing that stops it from getting bloody,
This line sums up Mr. White on Mr. Blonde,
and he did,
Mr. White’s strategy for dealing with “real people” was simply being brutal,
Interestingly the only other time we see a “real person” shot is after Mr. Brown is shot and crashes the getaway car,
Mr. Orange (Tim Roth) being the undercover cop.
I’ve always been curious, and maybe one of fine lawyers might comment, just what kind of trouble would Det. Newandyke have been in for the shooting if he had survived?[/spoiler]CMC fnord!
I get Tarantino most of the time, the Grindhouse thing being the exception.
That kind of depravity is all over the place. That’s how violent career criminals think. It’s work. If you watch any interviews with mob dudes, they talk about murder and torture as if it were commonplace for all of us.
I agree. I didn’t even like that song before Tarantino used it in the movie. I hear it with a whole new appreciation now.
Tarantino is a very skilled writer director, but he is also a bit of a movie fanatic. These things create an unusual temporal phenomenon.
For contrast, consider Kevin Smith. He is also a huge movie geek, but he’s not super duper skilled as a director. I’m not saying his movies are bad, I just mean (and he’s admitted this) he’s by no means an envelope-pushing director. So, when he makes his geeky movie-reference movies, they are funny and appealing to fellow geeks but not masterpieces of film, so they stay in their niche.
Tarantino, on the other hand, is very good at the art of directing. So, when he makes his geeky movie-reference movies, they are exhaled as masterpieces by everyone and expand beyond their niche. After a few years of this, he’s basically been given a free pass to do whatever he wants. So he can write and direct movies that might only make sense to him, but since he wraps them in enough references and pseudo-satire, they are generally well-loved.
I never really understood him until I recently saw True Romance. He didn’t direct it, but he wrote it, and it’s sort of what launched his career. Watching the film, knowing Tarantino wrote it, is very telling. It’s about a late-20s schlub who works at a comic book store and could talk about them all day, and watches old kung fu movies and could talk about them all day, but who is somehow so charming that a woman falls so madly in love with him after a few hours of listening to him talk about comics and kung fu movies, despite his lack of money/ambition/skill/practical knowledge, that they are married within days. Can you say ‘wish fulfillment’? Tarantino basically wrote himself into a world where all of his nerdy quirks are, fantastically, exactly what every beautiful woman wants.
The rest of his career is just that. He makes movies that take place in a fantasy inside his head where the things he likes are the most important things in the world. For this reason, most movie nerds love his movies, because they so long to live in that fantasy land as well.
So to answer the OP’s question, you not “getting” Tarantino films doesn’t really say anything about you except that you’re not a nerd who seeks out that fantasy world.
As far as the gore, I think the best way to classify it is to say it’s “ironic.” The quotes around “ironic” are necessary, to connote that the word ironic itself is being used ironically. It’s “ironically” gory. A statement upon or a reference to a concept that doesn’t exist.
I have mixed feelings about his other movies, but **Reservoir Dogs **is up there in my top three movies ever. It stands apart and above his others to me. It’s just so perfect. The tone is consistent, the story is told in a great way, and everything wraps up in the end. It’s gorgeous.
Maybe I was supposed to take it less seriously, but taking it straight, I loved it.
IMHO, Tarantino and Scorcese two of the only directors who so fully immerse you in the criminal underworld that murder, violence and torture seem ordinary and commonplace. Probably because it is done with the spectacle of, say, Tony Scott (who directed the Tarantino written True Romance). You go from a stupid ordinary conversation about nothing to someone has their brains blown out in a matter of seconds. And it’s all overlayed over what appears to be the ordinary and mundane.
**wierdaaron **- See I don’t see the romance between Clarence (Christian Slater) and Alabama (Patricia Arquette) as a hot bombshell falling in love with some dork. Clarence a bit psychotic or at the very least has trouble distinguishing reality from fantasy (he talks to the ghost of Elvis who tells him to kill people). Alabama is emotionally needy and a bit naive. She clings to Clarence not because he is such a great catch but because in the 4 days since she arrived in Detroit he is the only one who doesn’t treat her like a whore.
'Bama interprets Clarence’s killing of Drexl as protecting her but it is really just fulfilling some wish fullfillment revenge fantasy that ultimately brings the mob down on their asses.
In many ways their relationships strongly parallels the relationship between Iris and Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver.
Anyhow, I can’t wait to see Inglourious Basterds. I always enjoy Hebrew revenge movies.
The bits of Quentin Tarantino that I have seen have a lot of technical affects. I’m rather turned off by technical affects - this is just my thing. I prefer old European and Japanese movies.
OP might want to try Rossellini, Visconti, De Sica,
Actually, this is only half-true:
Unlikely, since Vincent had the face-off with Butch at Marsellus’ place after Vincent’s car was keyed.