1978 - INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, Tarantino's World War II film

Well either you like Tarantino or you don't like Tarantino because it's all here in his World War II fantasy. The violence, lots of talk and a really crazy story.

Tarantino, one of the few directors who can actually channel cinema history into something original was clearly influenced by Robert Aldrich's The Dirty Dozen, Italian director Enzo G. Castellari's The Inglorious Bastards and The White Hell of Pitz Palu by German directors Arnold Fanck and G.W. Pabst.  I'm sure I missed a bunch of film references, but Tarantino knows his movies.

 

Tarantino's casting is equally entertaining. Brad Pitt as Lt Aldo Raine sporting a southern accent, horror director Eli Roth, Mike Meyers as an allied general and coming out of retirement actor Rod Taylor as Winston Churchill.  Other equally important performances are Christoph Waltz as a very smart Nazi officer, Mélanie Laurent as a Jewish woman out for revenge, Michael Fassbender as a film critic turned British commando and Diane Kruger playing an actress turned double agent.  

 

The plot has Pitt and his commando unit creating havoc behind enemy lines which somehow dovetails into an encounter with Adolph Hitler and his high command.  With Tarantino the fun isn't the climax but how you get to the climax.

One of Tarantino's most entertaining films. the running time is 153 minutes and as usual Quentin Tarantino wrote the screenplay.

1994 - PULP FICTION, still very entertaining

I probably haven't seen since Pulp Fiction since it was first released around Christmas time in 1994.  That was back when after spending the Holidays with your family you were desperate to get away from them for a couple of hours by running out to a movie.

Pulp Fiction was Tarantino's follow up to Reservoir Dogs a film which got him attention from the critics and the audience.  Pulp Fiction really cemented his reputation as the preeminent maker of cool guy films.  In spite of a few slow moments the film still holds up and is still incredibly entertaining.

Tarantino put together an impressive cast anyway you cut it.  Samuel Jackson is great as the philosophy spouting killer.  John Travolta's career was revitalized with this film.  Uma Thurman went on to work with Tarantino in Kill Bill Vol's 1 & 2.  Harvey Keitel, Christopher Walken, Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer all contribute amusing bits to this film.  It's kind of like the actors sensed they had good roles for a change and really ran with the parts when they showed up in film.

 

The film had a unique structure like chapters in a book,  Tarantino boldly jumped back and forth in time something audiences never really saw in a mainstream film. I enjoyed revisiting this film again.

 

The running time is 154 minutes, the screenplay was by Tarantino with a story assist from Roger Avery.

2012 - DJANGO UNCHAINED, more Tarantino more of the same

Guess I wasn't in the mood for another Tarantino genre mash up.  This time Tarantino mixes spaghetti westerns with blaxploitation films in a tale of a bounty hunting ex-slave searching for his wife somewhere down south before the Civil War. The slave Django hooks up with another bounty hunter a German speaking dentist.  They shoot a lot of guys before the even more  bloody climax at some southern plantation called "Candyland. 

As usual Tarantino has loaded the film up with lots of actors most of them who are past their prime.  These actors starred in the exploitation junk that Tarantino grew up on.  Tarantino also has lots of his hipster dialog and situations that he has channeled from watching LOTS of other films.  Tarantino seems to be making some point that slavery in the old South was bad, like I needed to be told that.

The problem I had with this film was the constant over the top violence.  People just don't get shot they get shot and erupt in geysers of blood.  I mean really?  Although it can be fun listening to good actors delivery his dialog, there were long stretches where some of these dialog scenes seemed unusually indulgent even for him.  I'm starting to wonder if Tarantino has finally hit the wall rehashing genre films.

Django by the way is also a restaurant in Des Moines, Iowa,  They specialize in a sort of French cusine, but I looked at the menu and it looks like a mash up of French food, Italian food and burgers. It's kind of like Django Unchained.

165 minutes.

2007 - DEATH PROOF, Tarantino's tribute to Drive In movies.

Tarantino carefully recreates the drive in genre films he grew up on complete with crappy photography and scratches on the film.  He probably creates it maybe a little too carefully as he kind of sucks the life out of the film. 

Kurt Russell is stuntman Mike whose idea of kicks is to crash into cars full of beautiful women.  His character is rather undeveloped although in Tarantino's world he gabs away about old TV shows.  In fact everyone chatters away in this film.  Tarantino likes to load up his films with a lot of talk.  Death Proof has lots of his patented dialog and in this film lots of comely women to oogle. 

Everything leads up to a big improbable car chase done without digital computer tricks which was a major selling point for the film.

The critical consensus was that Tarantino who was good at mixing his B movie sensibilities along with love of film trivia didn't pull it off this time.  He has seen every film in the world but he wasn't able to channel it all into something interesting.

This was the film that Tarantino tried to make a star out of a stuntwoman named Zoe Bell.  She might have been a great stand in for Zena the Warrior Princess but as an actor she sucked.

Over indulgence does Death Proof in but his devoted fans would probably crawl across glass to defend it anyway.

114 minutes