[!@#$%!]

oh man the grindhouse one was utter shit yeah. a pointless jerkoff. rodriguez blew him out of the water on that one.

and yes that’s exactly what i meant. when you said the this meets that i thought “he’s no scorsese and he’s no mamet.”

yeah pulp fiction is THE movie that defines him, and it’s the movie of a great video store clerk, a great pastiche of references and homages and quotations, a movie made of other movies, but it’s something else too, and yes it’s great, it was epoch-making and nothing was like it at a time. for sure.

but then the gimmick started wearing off for me. like he tries to be too clever and gets stuck there. there’s little or nothing behind his style and it doesn’t fly further. and then you realize it’s not the 90s anymore and you already woke up to all that and don’t need waking up again. yes the blood it’s all ketchup. movies are made of other movies.

the problem is that dream ultimately leads me nowhere. there’s a nihilistic core in it that leaves me cold. the excitement wears off and there’s nothing. maybe a cult of violence and machismo that no longer does it for me.

i liked jackie brown, but i think demonyo is the true fan of that one. wasn’t that one written by the guy he likes? whatsisname... it will come to me. the simple prose guy. [eta: elmore leonard]

anyway yeah it’s... for me pulp fiction is the one where his gimmick truly worked. but he never surpassed it, and now repeats himself. kill bill was already nausea territory for me—so cloying. and it makes 2 movies of it.

i did like django unchained though i’ve forgotten most of it now and inglorious basterds was okay, i didn’t hate it. it’s just... eh. the gimmick is all i see now. revenge/gimmick/revenge/gimmick yawn.

and guess what—i tried rewatching reservoir dogs the other day thinking “oh this was the first one, cool” and 20 minutes into it i just wanted the now-obvious characters to shut the fuck up.

—

eta i have not seen hateful eight

[!@#$%!]

i guess it’s a bit like this

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BPlsqo2bk2M

[LifeDistortion]

 

This was really good.

[Severian]

Reservoir Dogs is problematic for many reasons. I’m with you there.

I tend to think of myself as an appreciator of Tarantino, but not, like a Tarantino *fan* per se. Not anymore.

For me, he had a corner on the market of breakout indie crime stuff until about ‘97 when the Coens released Fargo. And Fargo is better than any Tarantino movie. And while Tarantino is, as you said, firmly sticking to his schtick, the Coens have expanded — No Country for Old Men over here, Burn After Reading and Hail Caesar over there. Heck, I might even say David O. Russel has proven to be more adept at repurposing Scorsese than Tarantino has.

That said, I can’t thjnk of any of his movies that I don’t like. And when another one comes out (Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio are starting in a new one about a murder in Hollywood in the 1950s or something), I’ll wait for it and it’ll be a big deal when I see it.

I don’t know. You’re probably right about him, but I’m just so totally *of* that generation. And Kill Bill was so much fun for me. Really got me back into him actually.

[Severian]

Originally Posted by LifeDistortion

 

This was really good.

That’s the girl from the Witch, yes?

I know nothing about this movie. Hmm.

[!@#$%!]

well sure the coens blow tarantino out of the water (i really like that expression) but for that reason they’ve always had less mass apeal.

before fargo though barton fink had been a great success, at least critically, and i think raising arizona too must have done well as a demented comedy. i don’t know when i first saw raising arizona (sometime in the 90s) but i can still watch it and have fun with it.

as for “crime” per se i guess fargo i suppose but pulp fiction wasnt really about crime— it was about style. it was a movie made solely of style. there were stories in them but— what was the point of them? it doesn’t matter. whereas fargo has a story and a morality and all those things we know and expect.

ok i have to go watch david attenborough now which is some great footage.

[noisereductions]

I love Tarantino which should prove he's garbage.

[tw2113]

Originally Posted by noisereductions

I love Tarantino which should prove he's garbage.

Good enough reason for me to believe it

[Severian]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

well sure the coens blow tarantino out of the water (i really like that expression) but for that reason they’ve always had less mass apeal.

before fargo though barton fink had been a great success, at least critically, and i think raising arizona too must have done well as a demented comedy. i don’t know when i first saw raising arizona (sometime in the 90s) but i can still watch it and have fun with it.

as for “crime” per se i guess fargo i suppose but pulp fiction wasnt really about crime— it was about style. it was a movie made solely of style. there were stories in them but— what was the point of them? it doesn’t matter. whereas fargo has a story and a morality and all those things we know and expect.

ok i have to go watch david attenborough now which is some great footage.

Yes, Barron Fink is extremely great, one of the best movies of the era, and it won the palm d’orr or whatever at Cannes. For good fucking reason.

Blood Simple is also excellent. And so is Miller’s Crossing. And Raising Arizona.

I mention Fargo in comparison to Pulp Fiction because it’s from that era when EVERYONE was looking for the “next pulp fiction,” and you had studios dropping hints like A Simple Plan and Get Shorty (the former is actually a really good movie) promoting the hell out of them to hit than sweet spot. Then Fargo came along and... Christ. Like a frigid Midwest winter, it just blew through everything.

And it’s actually a very stylish film. All Coen efforts rely heavily on style. Though I think you’re talking about a different kind of style.

Anyway, yeah, Coens are better.

But I do love Tarantino. I don’t worship at his altar, and I’m not a fanboy (let’s face it, he’s no Christopher Nolan baaaahahah fuck y’all!!) but everything with the exception of Reservoir Dpgs and that Grindhouse shit I’ve never seen is solid filmmaking. Rarely transcendent anymore (Inglorious Basterds had a few moments of genuine *AAHHHH!* (angels singing, that), but the rest of it is just ... good, fun, smart entertainment. Also dumb entertainment, but yeah

[Severian]

Originally Posted by noisereductions

I love Tarantino which should prove he's garbage.

Oh stop it, ya silly. You’re super cool and everyone knows it.

Now if you tell me you’re a huge McG or Michael Bay fan, ima whistle a different tune.

[!@#$%!]

no, the coens have their style of course but they rely mainly on story. the story is always the same: an evil or questionable deed that blows up on the face of the perpetrator and opens the door to a greater evil.

that’s the story the coens always tell.

more or less. with variations, and some exceptions, but mainly.

their great style always has a moral core. not moralistic, just moral. it has almost a metaphysic, like there’s some improbable randomness that causes things to go that way. like an avenging god.

the taratino stories however are pretty hollow, and that’s okay. they’re more about the spectacle. they’re about entertainment. and that’s okay.

but i find the ultraviolence in peckinpah more appealing for example. at the end of the wild bunch, for example, there is an existential embrace of their path and a transcendence of their criminality and self-interest and everything else.

at the end of pulp fiction samuel l. jackson realizes he’s the baddie and does not shoot a guy. and they walk away. big woopty i guess. even though before that (after that) travolta dies gutshot in a crapper. which is like, hilarious and terrible.

the tarantino universe is more random and nihilistic. which is fine, and postmodern, and all that. but what comes to the forefront is not some sort of meditation on the absurdity of it all, no— what comes to the forefront is the style itself, which is the point itself of the film. the looks. the attitudes. the walks. the lines. the suits. the music. the coffee.

early tarantino was very much a master of style. the latter i am not sure. i have not thought much about the stuff he did after kill bill. but i can see this trajectory. reservoir dogs was the prelude. pulp ficttion was perfection of the form. kill bill was the decadent overladed abuse of the form where the dog chases its tail over & over & over & over.

i suppose the latter ones about ‘revenge” use a schlocky motivation for this most righteous revenge paths: the holocaust, or slavery. hey, who can argue for the holocaust. who can argue for slavery. now the aestheticized violence is justified.

but yeah i’ll take peckinpah’s violence because the spectacle points to something greater than the spectacle itself, even if the spectacle is just a consoling fiction like “the meaning of life.”

somehow the taste i get from tarantino is that life has no meaning, and not that he addresses that, just covers it up with things.

[noisereductions]

Originally Posted by Severian

Oh stop it, ya silly. You’re super cool and everyone knows it.

Now if you tell me you’re a huge McG or Michael Bay fan, ima whistle a different tune.

I was just self deprecating for fun.

Michael Bay... I enjoy the new TMNT movies, but I'm a lifer on them. Anyone could direct and I'd like it.

Mcg ... I don't remember who that is but I feel like I saw one movie by him and maybe liked it. What did he direct?

[noisereductions]

Nevermind looked it up. We Are Marshall was good haha

[dirty bunny]

I've enjoyed- and mostly really enjoyed- all the Tarantino films I'd seen. I can't say I remember much about Reservoir Dogs, but I love the dialogue in his films, the soundtrack, the style. And the violence!

Easily one of my favourite directors.

[Peterpuff]

Watched quite a bit of stuff over the weekend. Was very bored and stayed in.

Rented that What We Do In the Shadows. Thought it was absolutely great.

Watched The Shape of Water. Meh. I actually, really, really was digging it until that certain moment in the movie when all the cool, fun stuff ended and it became a cliche, predictable, love-fest jerk-off. Holy crap that last 30-45 minutes or so just totally bored me. Michael Shannon rocked it though (as he does in basically every role he plays).

Also finished Altered Carbon (which should go in the other thread I suppose, ha).

About Tarantino... I really like his movies, and am a fan, but I have a really hard time getting past his foot fetish thing. Not judging his actual fetish, just his tendency to "bring it to work" with him. We all have certain perversions, I am sure, but (hopefully) most of us have the self-control to keep them private and not make careers out of them, ha. I can't help but picture him sitting alone at his comp, writing, getting hard just thinking about his cleverness in finding "creative" ways to film women's feet. He writes his fetish into virtually every one of his fucking movies, even developing plot-points around it. I just find that a bit skeevy, and it does not allow me a chance to totally get immersed in his worlds.

[Rob Instigator]

especially when Tarantino focuses on the single ugliest pair of feet in Hollywood, Uma Thurman's. so gross.

feet are gross.


Watched an older film called The Crew, about old wiseguys living retired in Miami Beach. Burt Reynolds was hilarious in it. silly film, but funny, and enjoyable.

Also watched the 1st part of Olive Kittridge, because my wife wanted me to. It was very well-done, very honest, and the acting in it is amazing, but fuck if it was NOT entertaining to me in the least. I do not understand watching something like that for pleasure. I discussed this with my wife and we came to the conclusion that, for various sundry reasons, I have a deep inability to understand inner emotions by reading the face of someone. so, movies like this, where the most important stuff goes unsaid and is instead conveyed by subtext and visual cues and facial expressions mean nothing to me.

I find them to be attempts at making an audience feel as shitty as the writer of the story felt while writing it. hahaha. I could care less.

My wife says the next two parts are different, that the first part deals solely with depression, but I am in no way drawn to continue down that path.

[Severian]

 

This was really fun and good. Actually looked like a lot of the Thor comics. Lots of neon and color. The humor was weird for a superhero movie, but it worked. Definitely one of the best of the Marvel movies.

Lots of cool in-jokes for comic buffs too. They fucked with source material like crazy and just mashed everything up but I didn’t care because it was a fucking blast.

Also, it was proof that a Thor movie doesn’t have to feel like a poor man’s Superman. This was Thor! Loved it. Will watch it again.

[Rob Instigator]

Only thing I wished about the newest Thor was that I missed the haughty self-confidence that Thor displays in the comics.

[Severian]

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

Only thing I wished about the newest Thor was that I missed the haughty self-confidence that Thor displays in the comics.

It was definitely a different tone, but I felt like the arrogance was still there. He just kept getting put in check by... well, comic timing and slapstick.

To me it’s weird that he lost his eye. Technically, he’s not supposed to take over for Odin until millennia from now. At least that’s how the current (and legit AMAZING) run of “The Mighty Thor” and it’s predecessor “Thor: God of Thunder” tells it. At the literal end of time, Thor is sitting in the throne of Asgard, and has been there for something like a thousand years like. But that’s millions of years in the future.

Anyhoodles... I liked the nods to Walt Simonson’s iconic ‘80s run (“I’m sorry I turned you into a frog!”) and I loved Korg, even though that’s avsolutely nothing like the Korg of Planet Hulk and World War Hulk.

Still... best Thor movie. One of the best Marvel movies. Better than Guardians 2, that’s for goddamn sure.

Nice depiction of Hela and Surtur.

[noisereductions]

Originally Posted by Severian

 

This was really fun and good. Actually looked like a lot of the Thor comics. Lots of neon and color. The humor was weird for a superhero movie, but it worked. Definitely one of the best of the Marvel movies.

Lots of cool in-jokes for comic buffs too. They fucked with source material like crazy and just mashed everything up but I didn’t care because it was a fucking blast.

Also, it was proof that a Thor movie doesn’t have to feel like a poor man’s Superman. This was Thor! Loved it. Will watch it again.

Watched it yesterday and agree.