Entertainment Forum General Chat Thread • Page 145

Tarantino learned all the worst lessons from the success of Inglourious Basterds.

 

Can you expound on that?

 

The Hateful Eight is well acted but absolutely bloated and has very forgettable characters, which is rare for one of his films. The entire climax is built off of SLJ's story, which boils down to a very dumb homophobic joke that doesn't land at all.

 

I disagree that it’s bloated or has forgettable characters. I think they each had at least one thing interesting about them, for the most part. And I think the mystery of all the different lies was interesting enough to make the long run time fly by for me.

 

While Tarantino had made some very good films after Pulp Fiction, they did not have the critical or commercial success. Tarantino is a tremendous narcissist, so when something like the Grindhouse experiment did not work out, it makes him change course.

Inglourious Basterds was that success he was looking for, winning awards and making a lot of money. Django Unchained was an attempt to make Inglourious Basterds 2; substitute the Holocaust for slavery (instant audience sympathy), theme the movie on revenge, and even use Hans Landa again. The Hateful Eight tries to capture the brilliance of the scene in Inglourious Basterds when the underground bar is full of Nazis and the tension that made, spread out over three hours. By the time you get to the flashback where a whole other group of people show up, it is exhausting.

What made Inglourious Basterds so powerful was the way in which it reinvented what we expect from war films or revenge fantasies. He had obviously already started that way with Kill Bill and the way the tables turn in Death Proof, but Inglourious Basterds has a very clever way of dividing the story up into segments that ultimately add up to the catharsis of something as ridiculous sounding as a director playing a character named The Bear Jew ripping apart Adolf Hitler's face with a machine gun. That act of killing off Hitler in such an ahistorical way is a bold move, and is so audacious when you consider how much reverence films usually put when talking about the Holocaust.

Django Unchained thinks it is being as bold with a former slave killing off the manor, but not only does it happen twice for no reason, Calvin Candie is not up to the task as a character. Django Unchained, like some other early Tarantino films, sometimes feels like an excuse to use the word ****** as much as possible. Why, of all the minor characters, did Tarantino choose to play the guy who says "dead ****** storage" in Pulp Fiction? Comparatively, Inglourious Basterds feels like a celebration of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust (which is woefully undertaught), as the Bear Jew and Shoshanna are both responsible for destroying the ultimate symbol of anti-Semitism. In Django Unchained, a lot of the other black characters are portrayed as stupid or largely useless, and of course the real villain of the movie turns out to be Samuel L. Jackson's Uncle Tom character.

 

Always blows my mind when people like Tarantino but not Inglorious Basterds. The Shosanna/Landa scenes and the basement bar scene are as engrossing as anything in Pulp Fiction, and the Basterds scenes as humorous

 

I agree with nearly all of this except that I don’t think Hateful Eight was exhausting. I have a thing for movies that are practically all set in one location and I think he did a great job of keeping it varied and interesting.

 

I’ve never obsessed over QT like so many people do. He’s made some good stuff and some really boring stuff too.

PTA is the best filmmaker that developed out of the 90’s

 

I’d probably agree with PTA being up there.

I think Denis Villeneuve is the best director of the last 5 or 10 years or so.

 

Paul Thomas Anderson is arguably the best filmmaker currently working, so that is hard to top.

 

I'd go 100% the best, although PT was a step down from the Master, but that was his opus

 

What is exciting about Paul Thomas Anderson is that he is still very much developing his style after switching from the Scorsese influences. I prefer Terrence Malick, but without seeing his new film yet it seems like he may have peaked with The Tree of Life and has been making different versions of it.

 

I enjoyed Phantom Thread more than Inherent Vice. It’s definitely the most straightforward PTA film but makes up for it by being one of his most intimate. I see it as a kind of spiritual successor to Punch Drunk Love, which is my personal favorite of his

 

Inherent Vice is so inessential that I forgot it was in between them

 

I think the Hateful Eight has merit and a stronger thematic goal than Django, but it's bloated and falls flat a few times. My favorite part might be the Channing Tatum reveal/quick death. Both movies have some super strong moments but Inglourious Basterds is probably what I'd put up as his best, with Jackie Brown and Pulp Fiction fighting for a very close second, and the Kill Bills/Reservoir Dogs a very close third.

 

Aside from the two I find less than great (8/Django) everything else, for me, are within a hair of each other (yes, including Death Proof, which I really think is basically perfect).

 

I also wanna throw my boy Harmony Korine in the ring for one of the best working

 

I need to see more of his stuff, but I don't think I could agree with that. I've seen bits and pieces of most of his movies and watched all of Trash Humpers.

I appreciate that he sticks with his vision all the way through, but it doesn't equate to being entertaining or worth watching for me.

 

Haha wait so you've only seen his weirdest, least "film-like" movie? Of course you can't agree

 

Harmony Korine is not quite up there yet. If we are talking about English-language directors, the Coens are in the conversation, Scorsese is working at a very high level, Todd Haynes is incredible, Kenneth Lonergan has been flawless, and Linklater was on a roll before Last Flag Flying. Barry Jenkins is a rising star, and Tarantino, Sofia Coppola, and Wes Anderson are still capable of making another great film.

 

Judging Korine based on Trash Humpers would be like judging The Beatles on Revolution 9.

 

I still need to see Julien Donkey Boy and Mister Lonely. I also need to revisit Gummo after watching more of the influences and not being a dumb teenager. I will say that my initial viewing of it free On Demand was pretty revolutionary. As much as I love Spring Breakers, Gummo seems to be the film that he will be remembered for. The Beach Bum has me a bit worried that he's leaning too far into actual filmmaking, but we will see.

 

I said I've seen bits and pieces of his other stuff. I watched Kids forever ago, but don't remember much of it and watched about half of Gummo and Spring Breakers and turned them both off.

 

I hated Kids and Gummo so much when I saw them, but that was almost fifteen years ago. Definitely think I need to revisit, since I loved Spring Breakers.

 

Also, his next film stars McConaughey, Zac Efron, Isla Fisher, Jonah Hill, Snoop Dogg, Martin Lawrence and...Jimmy Buffett? Really taking the leap, huh?