Quentin Tarantino is to cinema what Miles Davis is to jazz – the “King of Cool.” With his movies “Reservoir Dogs” and “Pulp Fiction,” Tarantino effectively reinvented cinema in the mid-1990s, setting unprecedented stylistic standards. His movies burst with cool dialogue and exaggerated violence and turned the former video store clerk into one of the most important living Hollywood directors ever.
In addition, as a screenwriter, he was responsible for the script of “True Romance” and wrote the plot for Oliver Stone’s “Natural Born Killers” – both films are also true milestones of 90s cinema. However, Tarantino’s work as a whole is still viewed critically. The accusation that the director has not yet made a film of his own, but has always chosen only the best from all his favorite films, is still around today. In this article, we want to take a look at the best Quentin Tarantino that you should watch before you die!
Quentin Tarantino became the man who had Adolf Hitler and Josef Goebbels shredded by machine-gun bullets. Nobody had ever done that to Hitler and Goebbels before him. So those who had seen “Inglourious Basterds” would know that Tarantino can tell fairy tales, that he can rewrite history, and that this works. There was a reason why the working title of that “Once Upon a Time …” film was called “Once Upon a Time … in Nazi-occupied France.”
Now he has made “Once Upon a Time … In Hollywood,” which means another fairy tale. But Tarantino won’t get away with the trick of making the villains lose a second time – so why should he be allowed to get away with the attempt alone?
The expectations of the 56-year-old, who has never repeated himself within his works, is high. But one has never been at the anticipated, even feared film ending as quickly as here, his tenth (Tarantino speaks of his ninth) work. A Tarantino film whose cliffhanger can be guessed at? Heaven, help.
He chose to link his declaration of love for the Los Angeles of his childhood, to the city itself, and also to the serial TV and western cinema of the 1960s, with the “Manson Family” and their murders of five people, including the pregnant Sharon Tate. The event was also so drastic because, combined with the drama of the Altamont Festival in the same year, it has been described to this day as “the end of the peaceful hippie dream”.
But Tarantino would probably have done better if at all, developing two films from the material. Hollywood’s end of the “Golden Era” – plus the nightmare born out of the Spahn Ranch, where Manson’s hippie commune had set up shop.
It is not always clear what he is trying to communicate with his parallel chronicles that happen to come together, that is, when two jaded “Old Hollywood” characters, Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and its stuntman Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), make mincemeat and barbecue, respectfully, of Manson’s gang – before their bloody forays into Polanski’s house – including with the use of props taken from their own trash movies.
Is that what Tarantino wants us to know: Before the 1970s, “New Hollywood” replaces “Old Hollywood,” is it at least the old-school heroes who are able to take out the killer hippies? Tarantino has said that he misses the old punchy, consequent men of Hollywood, those who were replaced by the more ambivalent, conversational brooders (Pacino, Hoffman) with the dawn of auteur cinema.
In Booth (Pitt), he now has his own alpha-male veteran on paper. But must he then sic his attack dog on the Manson morons, of all things? Before the Cannes premiere, Tarantino told journalists not to spoil anything about the ending. Of course, that just gave away the fact that he’s rewriting the story.
