Quentin Tarantino Overated?

[Park Life 71]

Don't get me wrong. He's deffo someone I'd love to have a few beers with and talk films.

You numpty.

 

What the hell do you think HE'D get out of that conversation? You've sighed your oh so world weary disappointments of his stellar career, but what have you done yourself? People think critiquing a film is somehow like MAKING a film. They are in fact....different.

 

I can understand people not *liking* his movies, but to dismiss them as if he hasn't been THE SINGLE MOST INFLUENTIAL DIRECTOR of the last 15 years is a little rich.

 

 

 

 

I'm at the point now where I dismiss all his work.

 

Please provide evidence of your superior output.

 

Thx.

 

Not sure what your point is?

 

Nobody allowed to banter about anything unless they prove they are superior in various things??

 

Again, I dismiss all his work.

 

What are you going to do about it fucknuts?

 

Talking like he's such a DISAPPOINTMENT! I mean really. It's like me saying John Lennon was over rated.

 

Why don't you go and write an angst ridden song about it with your frog bird?

[Asprilla 96]

Don't get me wrong. He's deffo someone I'd love to have a few beers with and talk films.

You numpty.

 

What the hell do you think HE'D get out of that conversation? You've sighed your oh so world weary disappointments of his stellar career, but what have you done yourself? People think critiquing a film is somehow like MAKING a film. They are in fact....different.

 

I can understand people not *liking* his movies, but to dismiss them as if he hasn't been THE SINGLE MOST INFLUENTIAL DIRECTOR of the last 15 years is a little rich.

 

 

 

 

I'm at the point now where I dismiss all his work.

 

Please provide evidence of your superior output.

 

Thx.

 

Not sure what your point is?

 

Nobody allowed to banter about anything unless they prove they are superior in various things??

 

Again, I dismiss all his work.

 

What are you going to do about it fucknuts?

 

Talking like he's such a DISAPPOINTMENT! I mean really. It's like me saying John Lennon was over rated.

 

Why don't you go and write an angst ridden song about it with your frog bird?

 

Nice comeback!

 

 

I'm only pulling yer chain you freak ...I can't see for a second how you can have a pop at Tarantino when 90% of all films made are worse that's all.

[Park Life 71]

Don't get me wrong. He's deffo someone I'd love to have a few beers with and talk films.

You numpty.

 

What the hell do you think HE'D get out of that conversation? You've sighed your oh so world weary disappointments of his stellar career, but what have you done yourself? People think critiquing a film is somehow like MAKING a film. They are in fact....different.

 

I can understand people not *liking* his movies, but to dismiss them as if he hasn't been THE SINGLE MOST INFLUENTIAL DIRECTOR of the last 15 years is a little rich.

 

 

 

 

I'm at the point now where I dismiss all his work.

 

Please provide evidence of your superior output.

 

Thx.

 

Not sure what your point is?

 

Nobody allowed to banter about anything unless they prove they are superior in various things??

 

Again, I dismiss all his work.

 

What are you going to do about it fucknuts?

 

Talking like he's such a DISAPPOINTMENT! I mean really. It's like me saying John Lennon was over rated.

 

Why don't you go and write an angst ridden song about it with your frog bird?

 

Nice comeback!

 

 

I'm only pulling yer chain you freak ...I can't see for a second how you can have a pop at Tarantino when 90% of all films made are worse that's all.

 

Back in yer box.

[Happy Face 29]

The reviews are in for Inglorious Basterds....

 

"a violent fairy tale in which the history of World War II is wildly re-imagined"

 

"Surprising, nutty, windy, audacious. The picture is a completely distinctive piece of American pop art with a strong Euro flavour."

 

"It was hard to miss Tarantino's skilled embrace of the elements that make theatrical moviegoing just plain great: scenes filled with dramatic tension, performances with depth and humor, rich and witty scoring choices, multi-lingual dialogue that Tarantino still stamps as his own, and knowing nods at cinematic history and the power of the medium he loves so well... As Brad Pitt says in the very last frame of the film, looking straight into the camera after a gruesome, signature task: 'This might be my masterpiece.'"

 

"Tarantino remains the king of trashy cinema."

 

"Vintage Tarantino to be sure"

 

"This unashamed slice of Second World War hokum finds Quentin Tarantino in mischievous form as he takes on the Second World War with the driving force of a roller coaster ride."

 

"Quentin Tarantino has made a glorious, silly, blood-spattered return."

 

On the other hand....

 

Quentin Tarantino's cod-second world war adventure is a transcendentally disappointing dud, in which Brad Pitt delivers his most charmless performance to date. By Peter Bradshaw

* (one star)

 

Quentin Tarantino is having what Martin Amis readers might call a "Yellow Dog" moment - something which happens when, following a worrying, mid-to-late period of creative uncertainty, a once dazzlingly exciting artist suddenly and catastrophically belly-flops, to the dismay of his admirers.

 

His new film is a cod-second world war adventure about a Jewish-American revenge squad sent into occupied France to spread terror among Nazis. Brad Pitt plays their leader, Lt Aldo Raine, and Eli Roth, the director of Hostel, is his ferocious second-in-command Sgt Donny Donowitz; Diane Kruger plays a German movie star called Bridget Von Hammersmark who has secret quasi-Dietrich sympathies with the Allies, and Michael Fassbender plays Lt Archie Hicox, a cucumber-cool British commando who in civvy street was, of all things, a film critic. Mélanie Laurent plays Shosanna Dreyfus, a beautiful young Jewish woman who has had to change what in France is a resonant surname; she owns the Parisian cinema at which the Nazi top brass, including the Führer himself, will assemble for one of Goebbels's propaganda movies. Here is where the Basterds hope to make their hit: but opposing them is the chilling SS Colonel Hans Landa, nicely played by Tarantino's personal casting discovery Christoph Waltz, who won the best actor award at Cannes for this performance.

 

It is notionally inspired by a 1970s B-movie called Quel Maledetto Treno Blindato, otherwise The Damned Armoured Train, renamed Inglorious Bastards for its American release: a war picture in the Dirty Dozen style by Italian director Enzo Castellari. But Tarantino's debt is much more obviously to Sergio Leone, weirdly mulched in with Mel Brooks. Having seen it once in Cannes earlier this year, and again for its UK release I was struck afresh by how exasperatingly awful and transcendentally disappointing it is: a colossal, complacent, long-winded dud, a gigantic two-and-a-half-hour anti-climax, like a Quentin Tarantino film in form and mannerism but with the crucial element of genius mysteriously amputated. Over-stretched scene follows over-stretched scene in plonkingly conventional narrative order and each is stuffed with dull dialogue which made it feel like Mogadon was somehow being pumped into the cinema's air-conditioning. The cut is now marginally different from that which premiered in Cannes, slightly longer in fact, and there appears to be a new introduction to the unendurably, unbelievably tedious scene set in a beer cellar where the actors play a guessing-game with playing cards.

 

There's no doubt that the 52-year-old Waltz - an Austrian-born actor who had been plying his trade on TV until Tarantino plucked him from the ranks - is a real find, and Mélanie Laurent also deserves this leg-up to stardom. But they can't make any real difference, and Brad Pitt gives the most wooden and charmless performance of his life; he acts and speaks as if the lower half of his face is set in concrete. Now, it is misleading to complain about boredom, when we all know how Tarantino can alchemise this into something special. In Pulp Fiction two hitmen famously put the exciting business of murder on hold while they discussed dull things like what Europeans call a quarter-pounder.

 

But there the ostensible banality was sexy, funny and above all intentional, and the director could in any case turn the action on a sixpence into something thrilling or horrifying whenever and wherever he felt like it. He exemplified Don DeLillo's maxim about America being "the only country in the world with funny violence". But here the boringness is just boring, and the violence doesn't get gasps of shock, just winces of bafflement and distaste - and boredom. Tarantino just seems to have lost his cool, lost his mojo.

 

When I saw Inglourious Basterds at Cannes, my traumatised complaint was that it fails as conventional war movie, as genre spoof, as trash and as pulp. Since then, its defenders have claimed that the point of the film is that it is "kosher porn": an over-the-top revenge fantasy for Jews. Well, erm, maybe. But it might simply have the highly un-porny effect of reminding us what actually happened. And if "kosher porn" was the point, wouldn't it have been better to make the Basterds' leader actually Jewish? Instead of which, their CO is Brad Pitt, the good ol' boy from Tennessee, a part of the world in which progressive sympathies with European Jewry are - how can I put it? - atypical. Even this, moreover, isn't exactly the point. Wildly bad-taste ahistorical fantasies about Nazi Germany are great: but here they are nullified by middlebrow good-taste cinephile stuff referencing UFA, Emil Jannings etc, in which the details of course have to be exactly right.

 

Tarantino's genius always lay, for me, in his audacious and provocative adventures in style, making generic textures bubble and react. His great riffs were sublime, similar to what Godard saw in Nicholas Ray: pure cinema. What happens when these surfaces fail to fizz? You get what you have here: great heavy lumps of nothing. I have always deprecated the growing and rather supercilious critical consensus that the Master's best film is Jackie Brown - a good film, yes, but uncharacteristic, and without the brash inspiration of Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction or the late-flowering delirium of Kill Bill. Yet maybe this is the sort of thing that Tarantino should now work on: solid adaptations to steady and re-settle his greatness. That could be a way to put his mojo-loss into remission and return to the glory days.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/aug/19...entin-tarantino

Edited August 19, 2009 by Happy Face

[Guest alex]

Given the subject matter, will Parky like this or not?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Park Life 71]

"When I saw Inglourious Basterds at Cannes, my traumatised complaint was that it fails as conventional war movie, as genre spoof, as trash and as pulp."

 

It's shit but not even as good as Tarantino shit. Save your money.

[Cid_MCDP 0]

"When I saw Inglourious Basterds at Cannes, my traumatised complaint was that it fails as conventional war movie, as genre spoof, as trash and as pulp."

 

It's shit but not even as good as Tarantino shit. Save your money.

 

So this Bradshaw guy gives Inglorius 1 star, but then gives Aliens in the Attic and Bandslam 2 stars? And I'm supposed to take him seriously?

 

Also like how IB is noted as an editor's pick on their page...

 

Shit it may be, I haven't seen it yet, but this dude is obviously another one of those reviewers who much like every single retard on those movie review sites like rottentomatoes, has decided to rile up the internet by hating everything that's fun or cool.

 

I see he gave the Blues Brothers 4 stars. Who else thinks that's a bit revisionist?

[Ayatollah Hermione 13762]

Seen it today and generally enjoyed it. He has a point that some scenes drag on without ever reaching any sort of climax and some of the dialogue is wooly in the extreme. There's a great scene in a bar though and the actor that plays Landa manages to be the over-the-top character he needs to be while retaining some subtlety, something that Pitt doesn't.

 

It's far from his best but it has its good moments

[Park Life 71]

Tarantino is now like a dead dog: No bark and no bite.

[Guest alex]

It's shit but not even as good as Tarantino shit. Save your money.

Nice review

I must admit I'll not be rushing out to see it.

[Happy Face 29]

Tarantino is now like a dead dog: No bark and no bite.

 

"Are you gonna bark all day little doggy? Or are you gonna bite?"

[Billy Castell 0]

Mark Kermode's review of Inglorious Bastards. Complete with impressions of Tarrantino

[Park Life 71]

Mark Kermode's review of Inglorious Bastards. Complete with impressions of Tarrantino

 

Pretty much agree with that.

[Happy Face 29]

Mark Kermode's review of Inglorious Bastards. Complete with impressions of Tarrantino

 

Pretty much agree with that.

 

 

..having not seen it of course.

 

[Tooj 17]

[Renton 21052]

I can't recall a film with more mixed reviews than Inglourious Basterds, guess I'll have to see it to make up my own mind.

[JaMoUsE 0]

Inglourious Basterds is class, really enjoyed it and im pretty hard to please with films

[Happy Face 29]

Django Unchained trailer out tonight.

 

January 2013 release.

[Kevin S. Assilleekunt 1]

It sounds like it'll be a fun movie. The only thing I've seen of tarantino's which I thought was utterly shit was the road kill one with Snake Pliskin. I don't think he's overrated, people just take him too seriously and approach his films as though they are serious works of cinema. He provides mindless entertainment.

[catmag 336]

I've never seen a Tarantino film.

[Kevin S. Assilleekunt 1]

I've not seen Inglorious Bastards, but

 

Resevoir Dogs

Pulp Fiction

Jackie Brown

Killbill 1 + 2

 

Were all fun enough. The critics jizzed themselves into a fury over his films because of the stupid dialogue, "OH MY GOD! THE CHARACTERS TALK LIKE PEOPLE REALLY TALK! THIS IS A REVOLUTION!" No one sits in a fucking car going, "royallleeee with cheeesseeee, yeah: that's what they call it in france. How about a foot massage?" QT is obviously a massive stoner; he gets stoned, pretends to be a black guy from the Bronx, and writes dumb screenplays. I like it.

[jonasjuice 0]

No, he makes entertaining, usually pretty original films. Even the ones that aren't all that e.g. Kill Bill are at least something different to the norm and more interesting to go see than yer average 'must-see' film.

 

I hate the word overrated btw especially in cinema/music, because how much you rate something is entirely down to personal preference. If someone else likes a film less than I do, big woop, it's not that I'm overrating it, it's just that it's more suited to my personal preference.

[Happy Face 29]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUdM9vrCbow

[ADP 0]

I thought that Death Proof was a canny good film to be honest.

[Happy Face 29]

The problem with Taranteeny now is that he's been using basically the same story to exercise his genre muscles in film after film. Kung Fu, War, to a lesser extent car chase, and now western....they're all just about people killing lots of people to get to a final showdown for ultimate vengeance. There's nothing wrong with a vengeance trilogy/quadrilogy (I love Chan Wook Park's), but after Kill Bill 1 which I thought was excellent, I think QTs have offered diminishing returns.

 

Since Reservoir Dogs where he was constrained by finance, he's been much better with a co-writer keeping things reined in (Pulp Fiction & Jackie Brown) that allows him to apply his visual and dialogue style to something tighter and more interesting.