The Hateful Eight (2015)

The name of the game in Quentin Tarantino’s latest film, The Hateful Eight, is not race relations in America, nor is it the thoughtful interrogation of justice it thinks it is. It’s not a postwar state of the union, a snowbound Twelve Angry Men, or even a claustrophobic Django Unchained. No, the name of the game is exorbitance, an immoderate superfluity indulging in the most colorful – and overfull – version of the story. When the characters on screen play raconteur, it’s charming and engaging, but Tarantino’s intemperance in the same suggests a contempt for his audience which is, frankly, wearisome.

En route to deliver his prisoner Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to the hangman’s noose, John Ruth (Kurt Russell) finds his carriage occupied by fellow bounty hunter Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) and the sheriff (Walton Goggins) of Red Rock, the foursome’s destination. A blizzard, however, detours the carriage to Minnie’s Haberdashery, an insular cabin already populated by four quirky characters – a hangman (Tim Roth), a Confederate general (Bruce Dern), a writer (Michael Madsen), and caretaker Señor Bob (Demián Bichir). As the snow falls, tensions rise when the occupants of Minnie’s find that not all of them are telling the full truth.

That’s a really keen premise. Armond White took the words right out of my mouth when he called The Hateful Eight a cross between Agatha Christie and John Ford (those are, however, the only words we have in common). It’s akin to an adaptation of And Then There Were None as filmed on the set of Bonanza with the profanity filter set to Deadwood. And in the hands of a screenwriter who could restrain himself in the way that he restricts the setting, The Hateful Eight could have been a masterclass in a lot of ways that would make Sidney Lumet smile with admiration.

Tarantino is not, however, that filmmaker. It’s very nearly accurate to refer to The Hateful Eight as his most narcissistic film, as in love with the sound of his own dialogue as he clearly is, but he’s equally enamored of the Wyoming landscape which must look a treat in 70mm (which I didn’t see) but otherwise come off as sideshow decoration, and there are only so many lingering shots of landscape one can bear before the weight of three hours feels a punishing burden. The fact is that The Hateful Eight might have been a much stronger film had it been pruned much more tightly. Of its six chapters, for example, one (the fifth) is entirely negligible, consisting as it does of yet another mindless slaughter whose particulars any thinking audience would rightly have inferred. Rendered in its full Technicolor glory (and gory), however, it’s one more note of excess in a film that is grossly (and I use the term advisedly) bloated.

That’s not to say there isn’t anything to be enjoyed in The Hateful Eight. Jackson is, as ever, charismatic and a joy to watch; there’s a surprising chemistry between Jackson and Russell, poignant at both ends of the spectrum from their lukewarm greeting to the simmering disappointment between them. And there’s a knockout sequence at the beginning of Chapter Four where the tension is at fever pitch, recalling the tensest moments of Inglourious Basterds when the narrator – in a gimmick I usually loathe but here can’t imagine a better deployment – reveals that all is not as it seems because someone knows something the others in the room don’t. As Minnie’s descends into amateur sleuthing and chaotic distrust, we get glimpses of the dynamite that The Hateful Eight could have been.

Instead, we get a film that sags under its own weight. There are good performances in it, memorable moments, but what ought to be the standout feature – Tarantino’s dialogue – is utterly and disappointingly unmemorable. (I defy you to quote a line from it, the way you could after Django or Pulp Fiction.) Tarantino has said that he’s only going to direct two more films, and if that’s the case he may need a new editor (apologies to Fred Raskin, who did a good job on Django but didn’t nay-say enough here). Something’s gotta give, and at three hours with The Hateful Eight, this time it was me.

Is it some kind of perverse pattern that I’m destined not to enjoy fully the first film I review each year?

The Hateful Eight is rated R for “strong bloody violence, a scene of violent sexual content, language and some graphic nudity.” It’s a Tarantino movie, so you’ve got your usual (read: exorbitant) quantity of N-words, F-bombs, and strawberry-colored effluvium. A man is seen fully nude while another man narrates about sexually assaulting him, with colorful prose.

Django Unchained (2012)

It’s all been building to this:  I’ve spent the last few months revisiting the oeuvre of Quentin Tarantino here at The Cinema King, all in preparation for Django Unchained – Tarantino’s eighth directorial feature.  Django Unchained is, at worst, an odd film; at best, it’s another wickedly entertaining entry from one of this generation’s most vivid and unique filmmakers.

Django Unchained stars Jamie Foxx as the eponymous freeman, liberated from slavery in order to assist the theatrical bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) in tracking his prey.  Django and Schultz make a deal:  if Django helps Schultz track the nefarious Brittle Brothers, Schultz will help Django free his wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), a promise which leads the pair to the plantation of Calvin J. Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio).  At Candieland, Django and Schultz pretend they are shopping for slaves, though Candie’s house slave Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson, by way of Uncle Ben) suspects the pair are being less than honest.

In many ways, Django is a kind of departure for Tarantino.  For one, the film isn’t littered with blood and guts like some of his earlier works, though there’s still enough of the old ultra-violence (especially at the end) to interest even Alex DeLarge.  Moreover, the film is told in a straightforward linear fashion, without the temporal hijinks we’ve come to expect since Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill.  Finally, and possibly most surprisingly, Django is the first Tarantino film to deal with “serious” issues like slavery instead of stopping short at visceral themes like revenge (an overarching theme, though, of all Tarantino films).

All of this, however, is to say what the film doesn’t do.  What the film does do is provide a snappy and engaging romp through a dark chapter in American history, a kind of Gone With the Wind for our generation.  As with Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino explodes his setting, touring the entirety of the antebellum South (circa 1858) with Foxx and Waltz as our tour guides.  Django is a “spaghetti southern” in this regard, as we follow two eclectic protagonists on a deeply personal quest through a perilous landscape.

Of these two protagonists, Waltz is (perhaps unexpectedly) the far more compelling.  Foxx is serviceable as Django; his determination to save his wife is tangible, but his deeper personality is never really accessible (a subplot about his humanity ebbing while he impersonates a black slaver, for example, never really pans out).  As Schultz, though, Waltz steals the show with his garrulous and gregarious performance; much as he did as Hans Landa in Basterds, Waltz brings this character to explosive life, deftly handling Tarantino’s tricky dialogue and humanizing Schultz’s contempt for the institution of slavery in the way that I wanted to see done in Lincoln.  (In this respect, then, Django is more honest with its audience than Lincoln was – a sentence I never thought I’d write!)

The third trademark of a Tarantino film, aside from extreme violence and peppy prose, is a solid supporting cast.  And in this Django does not disappoint.  We’ve got the “unlikely choice” – Don Johnson as a slaveowner a la Colonel Sanders.  We’ve got the “big name” – DiCaprio, who drips detestability as the film’s ostensible antagonist.  Though his Southern accent seems a garish caricature, I suspect that’s the point; Tarantino villains are seldom subtle, and the broad strokes surrounding Calvin J. Candie make it all the easier for us to hate him.  Finally, there’s the “veteran collaborator” – Samuel L. Jackson as Stephen.  If Waltz steals the show from Foxx, Jackson steals it right back in the film’s third act, making Stephen a nuanced menace somewhere between Stepin Fetchit and Darth Vader.  The gross stereotyping in his early scenes may elicit laughs, but those laughs quickly give way to fear when we see the true cruel danger he poses.  Jackson handles both aspects well and doesn’t forget to chew the scenery along the way.

Indeed, Foxx aside, most of the players in the film seem to be having a great deal of fun with the picture, which helps the audience have fun, too.  Django is probably not the “important film” Tarantino hoped it would be by tackling such a weighty issue as slavery, but it does so in a mature way without preaching a sermon the audience already believes.  Instead, Tarantino tries to have some fun with the material, and the film he’s created steps far enough out of the boundaries of realism that the audience can have an uncomplicatedly good time.

Django Unchained is rated R “for strong graphic violence throughout, a vicious fight, language and some nudity.”  There are several cartoonishly bloody shootouts, a scene of two slaves being forced to fight to the death, F-bombs and N-words galore, and two fleeting glimpses of naked slaves being tortured.

Monday at the Movies - December 3, 2012

Welcome to Week Forty-Three of “Monday at the Movies.”  This week, in anticipation of Django Unchained we’re finishing up the last two Quentin Tarantino movies that haven’t been reviewed on the site; as we did with our Christopher Nolan retrospective, links are provided to the reviews of the other films, in order of release.

Reservoir Dogs (1992)

Pulp Fiction (1994)

Jackie Brown (1997) – I’ve long considered this my least favorite Quentin Tarantino movie, in part because it’s the least flashy in his oeuvre.  But as I get older I’m looking at the film differently, and I think it’s actually one of his better films because of its aesthetic restraint.  Adapted from an Elmore Leonard novel (the only entry in Tarantino’s filmography not based on an original screenplay), Jackie Brown stars Pam Grier as the eponymous stewardess who schemes with bail bondsman Max Cherry (Robert Forster) and the ATF to take down kingpin Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson).  The three leads are all in fine form – Grier is believable as the kick-ass protagonist, Forster plays romantic but subdued, and Jackson is pitch-perfect as the villain – but the highlight here is how well Tarantino makes his homage to the blaxploitation genre without being consumed by it.  Tarantino has had a difficult relationship with homage, with some “loving references” feeling a lot like plagiarism (the burial of The Bride in Kill Bill, Vol. 2, for example), but here he seems tapped into the feeling of a blaxploitation movie (and even, with Grier and Sid Haig, some of the familiar faces) without sacrificing watchability for self-indulgence.  The film is smart and spirited, witty without being too wild.  The smaller parts from the ensemble cast – which includes Robert DeNiro, Bridget Fonda, and Michael Keaton – make this movie feel quite full, but it’s a fullness that gives the film depth and relevance.  Rather than exist just as an homage, Jackie Brown is one of Tarantino’s more accomplished films, perhaps out of place in an otherwise exhaustively exuberant catalogue, but at the same time perhaps the most mature (in sensibility, not in rating) of his films.

Kill Bill, Vol. 1 (2003)

Kill Bill, Vol. 2 (2004)

Death Proof (2007) – Tarantino recently noted that he wants Death Proof to be regarded as his worst film, which prompted me to revisit it.  Originally part of the double-feature experiment Grindhouse with Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror, Death Proof stars Kurt Russell as Stuntman Mike, a serial murderer who victimizes two groups of women with his invincible stunt car.  The first group (including Sydney Poitier and Vanessa Ferlito) succumbs to Mike’s car and the objectifying male gaze of the camera; this is Tarantino at his most exploitive, and it seems that the lusty way he films these women is less an homage to the genre of female revenge film and more a personal fetish given celluloid life.  Though Russell is better and more badass in this first half, the problematic treatment of women borders on deplorable.  The second half attempts to redeem these sins, with another group of women (including Rosario Dawson, stuntwoman Zoë Bell as herself, and Tracie Thoms, who’s like a cross between Wanda Sykes and Samuel L. Jackson) taking on the task of revenge.  This group is more fun, in part because we spend more time with them and know them better, but that attention leaves Russell by the wayside, giving the film a very uneven feeling.  Tarantino’s dialogue is punchy, but everyone talks like everyone else.  The result is a film that on the surface is peppy and poppy in the “grindhouse” tradition, but if you look deeper the film is fraught with problems – of representation, of balance, of identity.  I enjoyed the film enthusiastically as a high schooler, but age has somewhat cooled me on this movie; if it ends up being the worst Tarantino film, I can live with that.

Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Be sure to check back later this month for a full review of Django Unchained, but for now that does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.”  Between finals week and The Dark Knight Rises on DVD tomorrow, I’m gonna be pretty busy, but next Monday we’ll have a look at a few movies that wrestle with sanity (opportune timing for those of us going crazy for finals).

Pulp Fiction (1994)

You know, it’s movies like this that make me realize how much I need a “Top 10 Movies of All Time” list on this site.  What qualifies a movie for that list?  A spot-on script, top notch performances, flair without being too flashy, no moment wasted, unending rewatchability, and a smile on my face the whole way through.

My friends, Pulp Fiction delivers the goods, as securely as if Jules Winnfield himself were the bagman.

I’m reviewing this movie now because I recently had the opportunity to watch the movie with someone who’d never seen it before, and it helped me to recapture a lot of what I love about Pulp Fiction without simply resorting to Nostalgia Glasses that allow me to effectively tune out the movie and revel in the reminiscence of the dozens of times previous that I’d seen this film.  (I’m also reviewing it in the context of being Quentin Tarantino’s second, and perhaps best, film, in the run-up to December’s Django Unchained.)

What, then, is Pulp Fiction about?  Many things, really.  It’s a nonlinear narrative about a group of Californians who lead lives dominated or surrounded by violence – Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield (John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson), a pair of hitmen; their boss, Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames); his wife Mia (Uma Thurman); boxer Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis); and Pumpkin & Honey Bunny (Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer), the two robbers and lovers who frame the piece.  Pulp Fiction is about these people and the meaningful – and often surprising – ways their lives intersect, but it’s also about how these people are confronted by opportunities to change their lives before the violence gets them, too.  In strange ways, it’s about the importance of love, about divine intervention and the power of miracles, about how much pop culture matters to us, and about following codes that make no earthly sense but have a ring of the divine to them.

It’s about so many things that some critics have charged Pulp Fiction with being about nothing.  Perhaps they’re right – perhaps Pulp Fiction is just the Seinfeld of the movie world.  But for a multiplicity of reasons – philosophical, aesthetic, existential, etc. – I refuse to believe that a movie this sublime, this enjoyable, this... perfect could be an exercise in nihilism.  What about Pulp Fiction merits so much revisiting?

Much of the film’s strength comes from the stellar cast of once-was and would-be-yet stars.  As one of only three characters to appear in all three segments of the film (Marsellus and Mia Wallace being the other two), John Travolta is a fantastic “leading man” for an ensemble cast such as this.  His role as the “comeback kid” in the behind-the-scenes mythos of the film takes a backseat to his perfect fit as an accessibility point for the audience; he shepherds us through the film, feeling dread when we’re supposed to feel dread, breaking the tension when it needs it, and entering the film as a kind of outsider who needs to relearn the game after a stint in Amsterdam.  And, boy, can he dance.  The impromptu dance sequence with Uma Thurman is a real treat – for better or for worse the film’s most recognizable moment – a spontaneous and exuberant indulgence in the film’s own pop sensibility.  The two dance for no other reason than Mia’s “I wanna dance” logic, a perfect analogue for why I still watch this movie:  because I wanna.

Travolta’s counterpart is Samuel L. Jackson, the devout Protestant to Travolta’s lapsed Catholic.  (There’s no specific invocation of religious denominations here, but I contend that the whole movie comes down to miracles and how the characters respond to them – the subject, perhaps, for another article on here.)  Jules Winnfield is a career-making role for Jackson, establishing his trademark hybrid of the sacred and the profane with the almost lyrical way in which he drops an F-bomb.  Yet Jackson is gifted enough to oscillate between irreverent comedy (“I’m a mushroom-cloud layin’ motherf--ker, motherf--ker”) and intense introspection (“I felt the touch of God”), making Jules perhaps the most human of the film’s characters.  His quiet monologue in the film’s concluding diner scene is almost chilling for its earnestness; it ought to be difficult to believe that the same cheeseburger-gobbling gangster from the first ten minutes has become a contemplative amateur theologian, but Jackson makes that transition palpable and cues himself for the well-deserved success he’s enjoyed in his career thus far.

Then there’s Bruce Willis, the star of the film’s middle third.  It seems odd to say it, but I always forget that he’s in this movie until I start watching it.  Perhaps this is due to the fact that the Butch Coolidge section isn’t exclusively Tarantino’s script (co-written with Roger Avary), or perhaps it’s that “The Gold Watch” is such a traumatic and trippy piece that I psychologically block it out.  It’s not that I actively dislike “The Gold Watch” – indeed, Willis does some great work here as the sympathetic boxer, and the unforgettable Christopher Walken monologue that opens this chapter is equal parts touching, spooky, and weird (meaning it’s yet another Christopher Walken performance).  But “The Gold Watch” veers so hard and fast into disturbing territory that moviegoers likely won’t be prepared for where the film takes them.

“The Gold Watch,” though, is often underrated because it’s sandwiched between two classically Tarantino pieces – Travolta’s dance number with Thurman and the infamous bloody car cleanup.  But as with Inglourious Basterds, “The Gold Watch” is a segment where Tarantino displays his impeccable gift for generating tension; danger is around every corner in this portion of Pulp Fiction, with death or worse fates awaiting Butch and ensnaring those close to him.  The sensitive scenes with Maria de Medeiros (as Butch’s naïve lover Fabienne) are haunted by her question, “We’re in a lot of danger, aren’t we?”  Honey, you don’t know the half of it; “The Gold Watch” is dogged by the sense of impending and unrelenting doom.  It makes for uncomfortable viewing, especially when you find out what Zed and Maynard are really up to, but aesthetically it’s genius filmmaking as Tarantino pulls back on his trademark peppy dialogue and lets the visual language – long takes and intimate close-ups – do all the talking.

But lest you get the wrong idea, Pulp Fiction really is a barrel of laughs.  (Or, if it’s not, I’ve just outed myself as some kind of nut.)  It’s either genius or bizarre filmmaking when Tarantino turns an exploding head into one of the most riotous scenes in the film, allowing that trademark snappy dialogue to take over as Travolta and Jackson degenerate into a shouting match.  The film is told out of chronological order, which allows some of the more difficult bits to go down easier – as when a deceased character returns to the film in scenes from before his death – and it allows the film to reach a comfortable happy ending without sacrificing the danger that still waits for violent men who continue to act violently.

Though Inglourious Basterds concluded with the not-so-subtle intimation that it was Tarantino’s masterpiece, but I argue that Pulp Fiction retains that place in his oeuvre.  It’s quite simply a perfect film.

Pulp Fiction is rated R “for strong graphic violence and drug use, pervasive strong language and some sexuality.”  Where do we begin?  This film is unflinching in its depiction of shootings and their oh-so-bloody aftermath; profanity flows liberally with almost 300 F-words and nearly every other indecent verbiage included.  Drugs include alcohol, tobacco, heroin, cocaine, and marijuana, with numerous nicknames given.  Butch and Fabienne share an extremely intimate but fully clothed rendezvous which runs for a very long time, and there’s a scene of semi-graphic nonconsensual homosexual intercourse (everything seen but the body parts in question) that might be the film’s most disturbing scene of all.

Thanks for sticking with us all week, and have a very Happy Thanksgiving with your near and dear ones!  Come back here next week for our regularly-scheduled “Monday at the Movies,” as well as a review of Denzel Washington in Flight for Wednesday.

Monday at the Movies - October 1, 2012

Welcome to Week Thirty-Six of “Monday at the Movies.”  In recognition of the impending release of Django Unchained, and having already reviewed some of his films here before, we’re going to take a look at the rest of the oeuvre of Quentin Tarantino.

Reservoir Dogs (1992) – The auteur’s debut film, Reservoir Dogs is an odd case for me.  I’ve seen it at least twenty times, and when I was younger I was madly in love with it.  It’s the story of a jewel heist gone wrong, with the bandits interrogating each other to identify which is a police informant.  The plot is not quite original, but it’s an entry point for audiences into the oddball flair of Quentin Tarantino – the snappy dialogue, the unflinching violence, the romanticized nostalgia for the Seventies.  Honestly, this time out the film seemed more boring (but not unwatchable) than I remembered; there are long stretches where the characters do nothing but talk, and while this is fabulous for an enthusiast of the written word it doesn’t make for the most engaging moving pictures (this in a post-Avengers world, which also used an ensemble cast, but to more thrilling success).  What I must have loved as a young’un is Michael Madsen’s turn as the cold psychopath Mr. Blonde, which still works, as does Steve Buscemi as the rattled Mr. Pink.  But on the most recent watch, the real treasure isn’t the trademark Tarantino screenplay; it’s the performance of Harvey Keitel as Mr. White, whose dedication to the dying Mr. Orange (Tim Roth) meant more to me now than it could have as a child.  Looking back on Reservoir Dogs as a “first film,” it does what a first film ought to – demonstrate the potential of a new filmmaker with promise but without peaking.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!

Inglourious Basterds (2009)

It's not spoiling anything to reveal that Quentin Tarantino's most recent film, Inglourious Basterds [sic], closes with one character remarking to another, "I think this just might be my masterpiece." The film is punctuated with moments like this, when one character says to another (as Hitler to Goebbels, for another example), that the other has just achieved his crowning glory. While I'm not convinced that Inglourious Basterds is Tarantino's magnum opus (it's tough to top Pulp Fiction, for my money), it does represent a return to form after indulgent experiments like Kill Bill and Death Proof.

Inglourious Basterds is, per Tarantino's description, a spaghetti western with World War II imagery, with the story divided into five semi-standalone chapters, each revolving around one set of character interactions. The film follows, separately, a ragtag team of Jewish-American soldiers scalping Nazis on the orders of their quirky Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt, channelling Foghorn Leghorn); Jewish fugitive Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent), who plans to use her movie theater to kill Nazis during the premiere of war hero Fredrick Zoller's (Daniel Brühl) biopic; British Lieutenant Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender), commissioned by Winston Churchill to aid German actress-turned-secret-agent Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) in an attempt to blow up the Nazi premiere, ignorant of Shosanna's plot; and SS Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz, in a performance well-deserving of its Supporting Actor Oscar), the ranking Nazi official standing between Hitler himself and all these plots, which converge in a stellar finale that's as fun as it is fantastic.


I've voiced my discomfort with labeling Inglourious Basterds Tarantino's masterpiece, but if it's not Number One it's certainly Number Two (although I may change my tune once I rewatch Reservoir Dogs). The screenplay is one of Tarantino's best, in the "interconnected disconnect" tradition of Pulp Fiction and, to a lesser extent, Kill Bill, in which vignettes are tied together as part of a narrative thread but are easily (re)watchable outside the context of the film as a whole. The script is a taut exercise in dramatic tension, deceptively composed of long scenes of dialogue (often subtitled from German or French) but which bring to a simmer intense anxiety about if and when each character's deception will be revealed and cause events to boil over into a brutally gory yet classically Tarantino shoot-'em-up sequence (which, don't worry, happens more often than not).

Perhaps, then, we can ascribe a masterpiece to Tarantino, but with the caveat that it isn't his only one. If we're hellbent on labeling Inglourious Basterds the masterpiece, we can always excuse Pulp Fiction for being partially co-authored by Roger Avery. But Basterds is all Tarantino, showing a maturity level that heretofore has been absent (but, in retrospect, showed signs of nascency in Death Proof); rather than clutter his work with blatant homages and showy stylization, Tarantino wisely pulls back on both, creating a work that's more subtle than I think most of us knew Tarantino could produce. It's not for nothing the film nabbed a Best Picture nomination, you see. It stands as the perfect intersection of a first-rate screenplay and a more-than-capable cast.

The true star of the film is Tarantino's dialogue, which manages to transcend the drudgery of subtitles by leaping off the screen without calling attention to its own built-in flair (from what I've been told, the translation work isn't bad, either). But the members of the cast are all so good that it's difficult to find a star made of flesh and blood. Is it Pitt, who takes first billing bcause of his name recognition but whose star power is dwarfed by the comparatively small role he plays? Is it Laurent, a protagonist in the tradition of The Bride who does a solid job portraying all her character's fears and determination? Is it Waltz, who obviously dominated the public imagination about the film with a delightfully nuanced and delectably wicked performance as the Nazi with as many cards up his sleeve as held close to his chest? Or should we merely throw our hands up in uncertainty by saying it's an ensemble cast? Well, it is. But they're all so good that you won't notice, for example, that Pitt is absent for the first, third, and most of the fourth acts; actors like Fassbender and especially Waltz take control of their screen time such that you'll forget that it isn't entirely their movie.

It's a movie that isn't really about anything. It's about World War II, sure, but it's more the story of a group of very radical figures fighting it on different terms, on different fronts, and for different reasons. One of the most significant features for me is the way in which the film brilliantly cheats itself; it contains the single most creative way I've ever seen for dealing with a film in which the objective is to assassinate Hitler - even though we know Hitler was never assassinated (Bryan Singer did an equally solid but different job with Valkyrie, though it's nothing on the scale of audaciousness that Basterds brings to the table). Hint: the first major clue comes before the first scene of the film; pay attention.

Oh, what the heck. High tension, tight scripting, fantastic performances - maybe it is his masterpiece, after all.
Inglourious Basterds is, like every Quentin Tarantino movie, rated "R for strong graphic violence, language and brief sexuality." Obviously, the language and the violence are pretty extreme, with F-bombs and scalpings all over the place, as well as the sporadic bloody shoot-out. There's an implied sexual liasion between Goebbels and his translator, and Fredrick flirts heavily with Shosanna, but it's pretty tame compared to other Tarantino films in this regard.

Trailer Park: Inglourious Basterds (2009) [Trailer #2]

For starters, I'm reviewing the second trailer for this video, though I'll be taking for granted a slight familiarity with the first trailer (and that one's embedded at the bottom of this post).

We've been waiting since Kill Bill for the next Quentin Tarantino movie (okay, Grindhouse fans, Death Proof counts) and here it is. We've been hearing about Inglourious Basterds (back when it was spelled Inglorious Bastards) for some time now, and I was just about to relegate it into the dead pool where The Vega Brothers currently tends bar. Thankfully, Tarantino managed to get his script put together and filmed in time for the 2009 movie season.

This one looks like what every Tarantino fan loves - kitsch, violence, and hyperstylized dialogue. Furthermore, Brad Pitt devotees will probably have much to enjoy when it comes to his distinctive characterization of Lt. Aldo Ray (an interesting combination, one reviewer has noticed, of Cary Grant and Foghorn Leghorn), whose every movement is in step with a unique character - the kind for which Tarantino is best known.

Inglourious Basterds probably isn't landmark cinema, but it looks like it'll be a lot of fun. Plus, Mike Meyers is doing an accent again, and Hitler is wearing a cape. Like I said, a lot of fun.

Kill Bill, Vol. 2 (2004)

I've made no bones about my gripe that the Kill Bill duology should have been one film. I think that, as independent films, the series is total rubbish, a series of uneven vignettes, and much like watching any ten consecutive episodes of 24.

Watching them back to back is a more liberating experience, giving the more even feel that I'm sure Quentin Tarantino intended when he made his ten-chapter revenge epic. On its own, though, Kill Bill, Vol. 2 is much more even than its predecessor.

After dispatching the first two names on her list, the still-unnamed Bride (Uma Thurman, who flexes her acting muscles here more than in Vol. 1) has three more to go - retired Budd (Michael Madsen), who had some sort of fall-out with his brother, presumably over the killings at El Paso; "hateful bitch" Elle Driver (the brutal Daryl Hannah), who is every much the Bride's match sans one eye; and finally Bill (David Carradine), Budd's brother, the leader of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad. Flashbacks tell the story of the killings in the El Paso wedding chapel that "put this whole gory story into motion" and the training that the Bride endured under the merciless white-eyebrowed Pai Mei.

Vol. 2 is certainly more judicious in its use of nondiegetic music than Vol. 1, which at times felt more like a songbook of Tarantino's favorites (I'm thinking specifically of his use of Santa Esmeralda's "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" during the final battle with Lucy Liu's O-Ren Ishii, which should be a tense battle scene between equals but gets thrown off by the catchy/hip Latin beat). Malcolm MacLaren's "About Her" doesn't seem to fit in Vol. 2, but the rest of the soundtrack - which is dominated by Ennio Morricone's spaghetti western scores like A Fistful of Dollars - lends the film that epic feel that perhaps the more modern Vol. 1 was lacking.

The acting is also... well, it's present. Vol. 1 is more of a popcorn film, with samurai swords and quick action cuts, while Vol. 2 relies on acting and character development to move the plot forward. With the flashbacks, it feels more like a complete story, especially since the "Last Chapter" gives us the ultimate confrontation between Bill and the Bride (who, yes, is finally named in Vol. 2) and closes the story [even though QT has said he's got plans for a third film]. The dialogue, too, is more even, with characters consistently remaining in a set speech pattern, without the fluctuations that made Vol. 1 so distracting.

If I have an overarching complaint about Vol. 2, it's that Bill, the assassin mastermind we spent so much time hating, becomes too sympathetic - or at the very least, too interesting of a character to kill off. Maybe that's my own personal hang-up, but Bill seems to be the only character who expresses any degree of remorse over what he did to the Bride (Budd does say that she deserves her revenge, but he's not above shooting her with rock salt and burying her alive... so that negates that idea). Plus, the Bride has tears in her eyes as {perhaps this is a spoiler, but the movie is four years old, as well as pretty much telling you how it ends in the freaking title of the film} she delivers the killing blow to Bill. What should have been a moment of finality is instead an ambiguous note of "Is this the right way to end?"

Perhaps the Bride got her emotions too involved with Bill. Ah, well. Revenge is, after all, a dish best served cold.

Kill Bill, Vol. 1 (2003)

In mining for films to review, I've been digging back into movies that I love but haven't seen in a while. Quentin Tarantino's fourth film, the first volume of his Kill Bill revenge epic, fell squarely in that category, so I felt it needed to be viewed again.

I'm almost sorry I did that. KB1 is not as good as I remember it being. Though it's still rip-roaring good fun, it's not exactly high cinema. Is there anything wrong with that? Not really... but this is one of those postmodernist moments where the simulation - my memory of the film - is better than the actual thing.

What I loved about the movie - and still do - is its unique structure, which divides the story into ten nonchronological chapters over two movies. The basic throughline of the movie is the story of The Bride's quest for revenge against her assassin cohorts who tried to kill her when she left their organization. The Bride (Uma Thurman) has five names on her list, and in the first volume she gets to two of them - O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu) and Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox).

It's tricky to review Vol. 1 without acknowledging Vol. 2, so at least some comparisons are necessary. Vol. 1 is a lot more action-packed and a lot more colorful than its successor, but I'm not sure that makes it a great movie. It's a lot of fun, for sure; the action scenes, incredibly violent though they are, are rousing at a visceral level, instilling "Ew" and "Ah" at all the right moments, even on subsequent viewings. The direction, despite being lifted as "homages" to other works, is visually stimulating, with angles conveying more at times than the performances.

Of course, this being a Tarantino movie, we expect two things: a powerhouse of a soundtrack and snarky dialogue that predates Diablo Cody by more than a decade. On the first count, Vol. 1 delivers in a big way; the songs Tarantino chooses fit perfectly with the scenes on screen, but at times it seems like too much of a good thing, at times overtly showy. Then again, this is the film that introduced "Battle Without Honor or Humanity" and "Woo Hoo" to American listeners, so it's certainly not all bad.

As for the dialogue, I used to love its snappiness. Now I look at Vol. 1 and realize just how uneven it is. The Bride (whose name is cleverly never mentioned in the first film, although you can see it if you freeze-frame her plane ticket) alternates between intellectualism and street speak, sometimes distractingly so within the same scene. Though the writing is clever and well-organized, it's this dialectic disparity (which fortunately seems rectified in the second installment) that hurts the overall authorial reputation Tarantino earned from the likes of Pulp Fiction.

I suppose I would like Vol. 1 more if it were coupled with Vol. 2 in one movie-going experience; that would probably launch into great movie status, since a four-hour movie wouldn't be as easily dwarfed by these shortcomings. The thing is, I don't believe Tarantino set out to make an enduring classic of cinema. I believe he wanted to make his own movie that captured all the fun and excitement of the campy flicks he grew up with. And in that endeavor, he succeded. "A roaring rampage of revenge," the film describes itself. Oh, it roars, and it rampages, and it leaves the audience slightly breathless.

Perfect it isn't, but bloody satisfying? You betcha, kiddo.