Dead Horse Interchange

Yeah, I don't know why people are in love with the second half, other than campy schlock for campy schlock sakes (and I guess it coming out of nowhere). Outside of the general swerve and strangeness it's actually pretty boring and stilted scene. Poor editing, terrible choreography and the vampires possess no threat or presence. Worse still is the baggage for the first half, you have Tarentino's paedophile rapist murderer character being given a teary farewell death scene and the children who remove any intensity from the scene. I like the first half simply for George Clooney, he does a really good performance and he and the dad are the only memorable characters apart from a naked Salma Hayek.

Clooney is pretty good in it. I'm half convinced that it was a vehicle for him to get rid of that schmalzy ER stink of being Dreamy McDreamyboy at the time.

Guest wrote: ↑

Tue Jul 21, 2020 8:11 pm

His westerns are unimaginative dreck, but then again that goes for every western past the 70s.

Unforgiven, motherfucker. Deadwood, Buster Scruggs...

I don't think Clint's directed a western since Unforgiven (depends on how you feel about A Perfect World, whether its a western or not) - but Pale Rider is also good and that was in the 80's.

There were good westerns made after the 70s. Hell, Tombstone was made in the 90s

That's another one - that's true.
TL;DR - guestposting was a mistake.

Tarantino's best films are the ones that aren't trying to be anime or a shitty ripoff of something he's seen before.

Jackie Brown
Inglorious Bastards
Reservoir Dogs

These are probably his three best. They can stand on their own without reference to their inspiration. You don't need to be a tarantino "fan" to enjoy them. Jackie Brown is a novel adaptation, and a good one. It has believable characters and many memorable moments. The action is subdued and realistic.

Inglorious Bastards is the kind of world war 2 movie that doesn't get made. It spends no time at all on the war itself and focuses on the occupation, espionage and personal stories surrounding the war, with an eye towards the world of film. Since tarantino is a film fan himself, this is a natural fit. Notice how in all the movies I've mentioned so far, Tarantino does NOT have an acting role. He is a fucking awful actor.

Reservoir Dogs gets a pass for me because it was one of his first films and it shows surprising imagination. He invested his limited funds into exactly the correct areas to make a great movie: the actors. The tiny sets ultimately don't matter, since the scope of the story is small. Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction were both made before he got a big head, and it shows. Pulp Fiction is another that could have been on this list, but it's probably a tad overrated by this point.

Hateful Eight was interesting, but it can't hold a candle to the westerns from which it derived. I'm never sad to see Walter Goggins in a leading role, however.

I'd argue there were more excellent westerns made after 1960 than before. The only really good one that comes to mind from the old days is High Noon. Most westerns prior to spaghetti western's reinvention of the genre were stale, formulaic and dull. They had more in common with episodes of Bonanza than anything challenging. The reinvention of the western gave us The Wild Bunch, Unforgiven, 3:10 to Yuma, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, Fistfull of Dollars, Once Upon a Time in the West, Tombstone and even television shows like Justified. All of which have more going on than the John Wayne bullshit which came before.

I'll stick up for the "John Wayne bullshit." The ones I've seen (The Searchers, Stagecoach, Rio Bravo, and Red River) were all pretty good. Of course, by post-spaghetti Western standards, they're fairly sanitized, and elements of them now seem pretty cliche since they've been endlessly ripped off over the decades, but they all have some interesting characters and/or stories. The Searchers is the best of the bunch; its grandiose cinematography very clearly had a huge influence on Leone and countless other Western directors, and Wayne's character in it is a real bastard, not at all the rugged but kind heroic role that has come to stereotype his legacy. I would go as far as to say it's a must watch for any Western fan, even if you tend to dislike old Hollywood Westerns.

I saw The Searchers. I sought that one out specifically because everyone said how good it was. I wasn't impressed at all. Very sanitized, boring "injuns are villains story" (used in all westerns of this period that ran out of ideas), and most of the characters were rote. Wayne was better than he usually is, but he wasn't Toshiro Mifune, Clint Eastwood or any other name that spring to mind when I think of a charismatic actor who dominates the screen. I would actually argue The Hateful Eight is a better movie than The Searchers, as flawed as Hateful Eight is. I found more to like in that one. The Searchers had me bored and the story was so obvious I knew what was going to happen as soon as they unfolded the premise.

Lest you think I'm a newfag who hates old movies, The Great Escape is fantastic. There are many movies from that era that are still amazing.

rabidtictac wrote: ↑

Fri Jul 24, 2020 4:22 am

The Searchers had me bored and the story was so obvious I knew what was going to happen as soon as they unfolded the premise.

That's not a fair criticism to a 60 years old movie.

All this talk about western reminds me that the best westerns are Made in Germany.