I would say they are almost their own genre, but they are often related to other classic genres, or are his love letter to a classic genre, like explotations films, or B movie horror films, or samurai films. Generally they consist of:
An homage to some other type of film - Kill Bil is an homage to martial arts films, Basterds is an homage to Deadly Dozen and Italian WWII films, Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs to crime flicks, etc. The homages extend to certain types of scenes, storylines, music, choreography, art direction, directing/editing/filming styles.
Focus on dialogue. Tarantino loves his dialogue, much of which consists of long set ups for cheesy but cool punch lines and in character philosophical rants and post modern observations and otherwise clever turns of phrase.
Things which are just kick ass in their own right whether or not they have any other value to the story. Like women with machine guns for a leg.
Gratuitous things - sex, gore, violence, balls and fart humor.
An odd mix of apparent misogyny and kick ass strong women characters.
Ambivilancy with regards to who is a good guy or a bad guy and happy or tragic endings.
He loves watching films and he love making films. He loves elements of what are traditionally considered bad films and what are considered good films. He sees no reason not to celebrate great dialogue and unconventional plot in the same movie that has tits and gore.
If you are having trouble understanding it, don’t try to. They don’t follow conventional movie rules. Enjoy the style, the dialogue, the atmosphere, the kick ass cool shit, and the fact that really anyone could do anything and anything could happen.
While I agree with your post these two points I had issue with. The woman with a machine gun for a leg was in the Robert Rodriquez half of “Grindhouse.”
The other is most likely my mistake but I don’t recall Tarantino ever having to rest on “balls and fart humor”. I am usually turned off by and find the inclusion of that type of humor in films made for adults off-putting. Mayhap I am just blocking it out because of my love and respect for him as a director.
I knew someone would harp on that. It’s just such a good example that I had to use it even if it wasn’t technically true lol. Real Quentin examples of cool for cools sake would be slightly more sublime I guess.
There’s certainly scatalogical humor, but it’s not usually done in such a sophomoric way. And 75% of the time it’s in the dialogue rather than acted out. It’s not a reliance on such things, but rather a lack of being afraid to steer away from any sort of humor in a moment where it works.
I happen to like Tarantino movies because if he ever gets off the coke and grows up and matures they show enormous promise for a truly great movie. IMHO Jackie Brown is his best. Tarantino takes enormous care in everything he does in a movie. Nothing is just good enough. Each shot and cut and edit is exactly the way he wants it and he has thought about it in advance, like Hitchcock or Kubrick, but without the obsessive compulsive disorder that kept Kubrick from working at a reasonable pace. He gets the best damn performance out of an actor that they are capable of, and usually better than they thought they could do. And apparently he doesn’t abuse them to do it.
As for storytelling, well, he likes to tell the story of the video clerk who finally got to be a director and he puts in a lot of old movie references. That’s cute and a shtick that he has to make less obvious. But it is potentially much better than Hitchcock’s putting himself in a shot in every movie. He also loves each character that has lines. All the characters are thought out carefully to the point that they follow their motivations. The SS Col. in the new film is his most complex character yet, and I don’t yet know why he does what he does. His dialogue is worth listening to and memorizing and he gets better at individualizing the dialogue for each character in each movie.
He also is very careful with his music in exactly the same way Kubrick was. I will never hear The Mickey Mouse Club theme without thinking of Full Metal Jacket, nor Stuck in the Middle With You without Reservoir Dogs or 110th Street w/o Jackie Brown.
The violence? Well, it is really ugly unless its supposed to be cartoony. In Jackie Brown when Melanie is mouthing off to Louis in the parking lot we know what is going to happen and we don’t want it for either of them. But goes down with no glorification and exactly how ugly it should be. Not glamorizing violence like the Godfather movies. Same with the guy shot at the start of the movie in the trunk of the car. Ugly, quick and brutal.
I don’t know about effects, but he does have some technical affects. Changing cinemotography for instance, or creative use of captioning, as well as little touches like the light in the briefcase in Pulp Fiction, The little dotted square that Uma Thurman makes with her hands in the same movie, the split screen in Jackie Brown, jump cuts and scratchiness to evoke B movies in Kill Bill and Deathproof, and the iris shot showing the hidden bombs in Inglourious Basterds.
None of these are anything close to extraordinary effects, but they are entertaining and artful affects. They could have a potential to become overdone and annoying, but so far he’s been good at using a light touch.