There we are! - good example of the big world I was talking about, I guess. And actually I could have done this review the other way around - I know people who hated Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which I thought was terrific. He really is a strange filmmaker in some ways...
First Punch Drunk Love, then the Meyerowitz Chroniciles, and now this - compared to what I thought of him twenty years ago, Adam Sandler has really grown on me...
Tarantino and Nolan are very similar -- they're both men of immense technical talent with absolutely nothing to say. The first 40ish minutes of Inglourious Basterds are some of the best ever committed to film, but of course Tarantino was too vapid to realise that and had to ruin it.
Interesting comparison... Maybe it's the style that works, and they go off on the wrong subject matter they get derailed. I genuinely like some of the films of both, but most definitely not all. I'd say they definitely provoke unusually strong reactions.
Never seen it - don't like any Tarantino films - despise Pauline Kael who accused Welles of not writing Citizen Kane & I believe Mia Farrow when she said Woody Allen nonced her kids...
I like some, but I certainly wouldn't recommend this one. I actually think Allen's opinion of Kael is spot on (notwithstanding his scandals) - she often praised not very good films and failed to see merit in very bad ones...
This is all so well put that I wish I could agree, but I thought IG was totally great. At first I thought this was just because I watched it on a plane, where my standards are so much lower because I'm drunk and afraid, but when I saw it again on TV recently I thought it was just as good. I love how outrageously long all the scenes are and how unapologetically it slides into fantasy. Maybe Hitchens was from a pre-irony generation (or possibly he was on some deep level irony-free) but I can't imagine any of Tarantino's movies offending me that much (even the bad ones like Kill Bill) because something tells me immediately I just don't have to take them seriously.
A big world! - as I say, I know a lot of people who would same as you. If I'd gone on longer in this piece I probably would have had to admit that aspects of it probably did offend me, in spite of its being Tarantino and not worth taking very seriously. Something about the revenge-fulfilment seems a bit ugly... But then again, I'm not sure I can even defend that, since I did like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood which does much the same thing.
To me Quentin Tarantino is unbelievably overrated. The only film I like of his is Pulp fiction; everything else he made I did not like at all. To the extent that there is any merit at all to his films, it is really just the performances he is able to get from the actors who for a mysterious reason (probably just money) want to work with him. The directing and the writing is so juvenile and rests on a single original idea - a post-modern twist of American B-movies - that he does again and again. Inglorious basterds is like it was written by a thirteen year old who just watched a documentary about WWII; there was nothing clever about it and just made a mockery of the most destructive event in human history thus far. Even for pulp fiction there is a good case to be made that his friend Roger Avary made all the calls that made the film original - him having the idea of splicing the storylines together out of order - but he got next to no credit for it. It does not help that Tarantino has a ludicrously inflated ego in that he sees himself as one of the best filmmakers of all time and he just makes himself into this total jerk, as can be most recently seen with the whole Paul Dano fiasco.
Thank you for reading - I’m glad the piece resonated! I like more of Tarantino films than you do (as I said to another commenter, I loved Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), but I definitely agree with a lot of this… The phrase ‘homage to 1970s exploitation films’ spells instant boredom for me and (it sounds) for you too. And I agree that as a public figure Tarantino can be—let’s say—off-putting.
I suppose the pretentious way to explain why I hated this film is that, to make any sense at all, the film seems premised on a very clear moral distinction; and yet its cinematic language says, continuously, that there is no such distinction to be made.
I agree. IB is clumsy and dull.
Yes - its dull factor is underestimated, in fact...
My first big disagreement with a capsule review (and no, I don't have a piss fetish). I admit I've only seen the movie once: I wonder if it holds up?
There we are! - good example of the big world I was talking about, I guess. And actually I could have done this review the other way around - I know people who hated Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which I thought was terrific. He really is a strange filmmaker in some ways...
Adam Sandler was, the tale is told, the actor for whom Tarantino wrote the Bear Jew role. Sandler turned it down. Smart man!
First Punch Drunk Love, then the Meyerowitz Chroniciles, and now this - compared to what I thought of him twenty years ago, Adam Sandler has really grown on me...
I used to be a Sandler hater as well. But I’ve been a Sandler truther for a few years now!—the truth that he’s a great American comic artist.
Tarantino and Nolan are very similar -- they're both men of immense technical talent with absolutely nothing to say. The first 40ish minutes of Inglourious Basterds are some of the best ever committed to film, but of course Tarantino was too vapid to realise that and had to ruin it.
Interesting comparison... Maybe it's the style that works, and they go off on the wrong subject matter they get derailed. I genuinely like some of the films of both, but most definitely not all. I'd say they definitely provoke unusually strong reactions.
Yep, big wide queer world, and not enough spare time for bad movies.
Very true, alas. I try to extract at least something even from the bad ones. (Maybe the worst film is the one I can't even enjoy disliking...)
Never seen it - don't like any Tarantino films - despise Pauline Kael who accused Welles of not writing Citizen Kane & I believe Mia Farrow when she said Woody Allen nonced her kids...
I like some, but I certainly wouldn't recommend this one. I actually think Allen's opinion of Kael is spot on (notwithstanding his scandals) - she often praised not very good films and failed to see merit in very bad ones...
This is all so well put that I wish I could agree, but I thought IG was totally great. At first I thought this was just because I watched it on a plane, where my standards are so much lower because I'm drunk and afraid, but when I saw it again on TV recently I thought it was just as good. I love how outrageously long all the scenes are and how unapologetically it slides into fantasy. Maybe Hitchens was from a pre-irony generation (or possibly he was on some deep level irony-free) but I can't imagine any of Tarantino's movies offending me that much (even the bad ones like Kill Bill) because something tells me immediately I just don't have to take them seriously.
A big world! - as I say, I know a lot of people who would same as you. If I'd gone on longer in this piece I probably would have had to admit that aspects of it probably did offend me, in spite of its being Tarantino and not worth taking very seriously. Something about the revenge-fulfilment seems a bit ugly... But then again, I'm not sure I can even defend that, since I did like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood which does much the same thing.
To me Quentin Tarantino is unbelievably overrated. The only film I like of his is Pulp fiction; everything else he made I did not like at all. To the extent that there is any merit at all to his films, it is really just the performances he is able to get from the actors who for a mysterious reason (probably just money) want to work with him. The directing and the writing is so juvenile and rests on a single original idea - a post-modern twist of American B-movies - that he does again and again. Inglorious basterds is like it was written by a thirteen year old who just watched a documentary about WWII; there was nothing clever about it and just made a mockery of the most destructive event in human history thus far. Even for pulp fiction there is a good case to be made that his friend Roger Avary made all the calls that made the film original - him having the idea of splicing the storylines together out of order - but he got next to no credit for it. It does not help that Tarantino has a ludicrously inflated ego in that he sees himself as one of the best filmmakers of all time and he just makes himself into this total jerk, as can be most recently seen with the whole Paul Dano fiasco.
Thank you for reading - I’m glad the piece resonated! I like more of Tarantino films than you do (as I said to another commenter, I loved Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), but I definitely agree with a lot of this… The phrase ‘homage to 1970s exploitation films’ spells instant boredom for me and (it sounds) for you too. And I agree that as a public figure Tarantino can be—let’s say—off-putting.
I suppose the pretentious way to explain why I hated this film is that, to make any sense at all, the film seems premised on a very clear moral distinction; and yet its cinematic language says, continuously, that there is no such distinction to be made.
That’s very well put, yes! Excellent summary of the queasiness I feel at watching the non Nazis acting like the Nazis…