Will you go see the new Quentin Tarantino film?

[Professor Zoom]

Concerning the violence supposedly more gruesome on women than men, Tex’s balls are getting chomped by a dog with a heavy emphasis on sound before Tex ends up curb stomping him. I do think these days people tend to look at that as something more cartoonish than horribly violent, but QT has always featured and viewed emasculation as possibly being the worst thing that can happen to a man, whether it’s Django being threatened to have them snipped off as he’s being dangled upside down naked or all the various characters getting shot directly in the crotch before they’re either captured or killed.

Balls chomped by a dog or having your face smashed in on the edge of a mantle then burned alive.... hm....

 

[MakeshiftPython]

Balls chomped by a dog or having your face smashed in on the edge of a mantle then burned alive.... hm....

One got burned alive, and the other got its head smashed into a mantel. Not the same person.

At my theater it mostly consisted of people over 60, and the biggest reaction to the violence was the bowling ball smashing into the face of Sadie, to the point an old woman sitting next to me began to briefly clap at that moment. I assume she knows the atrocity that particular person (Sadie) committed in real life.

 

[Professor Zoom]

“It’s”?

Both women suffered much more graphic violence than Tex did.

 

[MakeshiftPython]

I understand your point, I just disagree.

 

[Mudd]

I really enjoyed it, but man it's problematic. Too long and self indulgent yes, though oddly that's endearing. DiCaprio and Pitt are so damn endearing it's no chore to watch them tootle around LA. Doesn't really have a plot and whereas in most films the idea is to have characters change and grow this is kinda the reverse, rather than move on from his early success the film ends with Dalton (potentially) reclaiming that kudos.

The main things that drag it down for me are:

• 
  
  Spoiler: spoilers

  [*]Bruce Lee, man whatever Quentin wanted to do with that scene doesn't matter, he made the one non white character in the film (and a real person) look like an arrogant arsehole.
  [*]Changing history (though actually this didn't bother me as much as I thought it would, but still feeds into the self indulgent fan fiction element.)
  [*]The portrayal of women. Robbie is great, but Tate is little more than a cipher. Every other woman is either a psychopath, or a nagging wife straight out of central casting. The only exception is the precocious child actress, but even she is only there to flatter Dalton's ego. The violence bothered me too, I mean it's highly graphic when meted out to the female Manson members, yet Tex's demise seems far more oblique. I know this is QT's signature, just wish it'd been a little more equal.
  [*]Cliff's history. I'm sorry but I don't get why Tarantino did this. The crux of the film seems to be: middle aged white man who had his Hollywood career derailed due to allegations of violence against women saves the day by, er, committing actions of violence against women?? Given #metoo, and coming from a director who was one of many to turn a blind eye to Weinstein that seems tone deaf--the fact that Cliff's wife was played by Rebecca Gayheart (an actor whose career was derailed after a vehicular manslaughter charge) really does make it seem like QT is trolling!

Sorry this makes it seem like I didn't like the film, and that's the furthest from the truth because I really enjoyed it, but due to the above it frustrated me way more than it might have done otherwise.

Yeah, none of that bothered me at all.

And the fact that the "bad guys" met over-the-top, Hollywood exploitation-grizzly ends was kind of the point IMO. However sincere Tarantino is in his admiration for the movie industry's vision of tough guys and no matter how much he truly, deeply loves exploitation cinema - and he is, and he does - when I watch his movies I'm pretty sure that he wants you to never forget the fact that you're watching a movie, and to pay attention to what a popular movie is.

All narrative is true, and all narrative is a lie. Hollywood stories, doubly so.

 

[Starkers]

Read an interesting article that made the point that most of his films are revenge flicks, and he utilises the most heinous foes to justify the extreme violence that's meted out to them; Manson family, slave owners, Nazis, rapists. In the end it's kinda cheap and exploitative. Saving Tate just feeds into that, it's a cheap pop from the crowd, which is a shame because he's a genuinely talented filmmaker, he just frustrates me by so often aiming low. I get that’s his schtick, and why so many people love his films, and I need to stress, I really enjoyed this, but at the end of the day it’s wish fulfilment fan fiction where Quentin’s Mary Sues save the day and probably wind up Roman Polanski’s best buds.

And as for the feet thing, maybe he’s trolling us now, but it seems pretty clear he does indeed have a thing about bare feet, and given how many pretty actresses he gets to go barefoot in this film that is kinda icky.

It’s weird, the further away from this I get the more I think I love it, but also the more it perturbs me.

 

[Mudd]

Having seen this, I don't think he aims low at all. He's got a certain set of tropes, his core enthusiasms, an apparently encyclopedic knowledge of film and the talent and skills to make good use of it. And he's using it to describe the elephant in the room to a blind man.

I think his movies are about "the movies," which can be dismissed as trivial if one likes - but the popular entertainment industry is the single most pervasive influence on the minds and frames of reference of everyone living in the West for the last century or so, and we just accept it as a given.

You know, "it's just entertainment, and most of it's not very good and the stuff that sucks is the least important," right?

Well, the "bad stuff" has probably shaped our lives.

I had a similar, if less compelling, sense of Anderson's aims when I first saw Boogie Nights not long ago (I get way behind on these things): what's running Jack Horner and Dirk's lives is what's running yours and mine, and I'm not talking about sex.

 

[MakeshiftPython]

You don’t have to suspect he has a foot fetish, it’s been most obvious since the movie FROM DUSK TIL DAWN where Selma Hayek pours tequila down her leg so it trickles down to her foot and into his mouth.

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[Professor Zoom]

You don’t have to suspect he has a foot fetish, it’s been most obvious since the movie FROM DUSK TIL DAWN where Selma Hayek pours tequila down her leg so it trickles down to her foot and into his mouth.

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He certainly let his foot fetish fly in Hollywood.