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!
The Hateful Eight (2015)
In this Western set up like a play, there are nine people debating vigilante justice, taking self-defense, using firearms, and racism. A snowstorm rages outside the cabin, with the sheriff, one bounty hunter, soldiers, and a prisoner sentenced to death all going at it. There are clear political references to the current race riots in America, where innocents – especially black ones – are shot by police officers time and again. Here, even more so, since public servants meet outcasts.
Under the burden of socially critical quotes (“Blacks only feel safe when whites are disarmed”), the 189-minute drama, which is Tarantino’s longest film, at times threatens to collapse. The cast is also not consistently successful. Michael Madsen has played the ponderous, spiritless smack-talker role probably a few too many times for Tarantino’s liking; Tim Roth acts alienated and full of mannerisms, as jittery as if he were standing in for an incapacitated Christoph Waltz.
However, something even a mediocre Tarantino can do halfway well. Samuel L. Jackson relates an extremely funny tale of the freezing prisoner who can only save himself via a blowjob; one unexpected twist reveals the identities of four of the mystery-mongers of the “Hateful Eight.”
Tarantino also presents his work in an ultra-widescreen format (70 MM) that was reportedly last used in cinema in 1966. Thus, “Minnie’s Corsetry Shop,” in which much of the action takes place, is a place full of small details that, all stung as if, be it a gun, a pot or a coffee cup, invite analysis.
Django Unchained (2012)
There’s nothing worse than repetition or predictability, not even in Tarantino’s world. And we do experience that quite often with his most successful film of all (more than $400 million box office, second screenplay Oscar for Tarantino). An example is a rather laboriously constructed prologue, where Christoph Waltz first wraps people around his finger in a Landa variation and then plays the friendly murderer.
“Django Unchained” begins like a Tarantino parody. With reference to the Italo-western hero in the title and the 1966 “Django” title song that just jumps in your face, it all comes across as over-the-top as it is simple. But when the real Django, as played by Franco Nero, makes a cameo appearance, of all things the director doesn’t know how to take advantage of it – Nero simply introduces himself as “Django” at a bar.
Of course, the first thing a Tarantino disciple who has matured over the years thinks of when he thinks about Tarantino and a) westerns b) guitar and c) the soundtrack? Johnny Cash, obviously. This is why the trailer was already hard to take, the music choice too obvious. The songs of this man resound from every “Urban Outfitters” dressing room these days.
When it became known that Will Smith, who is rarely convincing in dramas, was not going to take on the role of Django after all, every one had reason to rejoice. But his replacement, Jamie Foxx, can never really get to grips with the character.
He is strangely inhibited, and even his – inner – liberation at the end bears the mark of his mentor Dr King Schultz, who is played by Waltz. Who is, of course, bounty hunter and German and dentist. Schultz and his stupid wiggly tooth on the carriage. It is not fastidious about wishing that historical portrayals were reasonably accurate. This fun vehicle is completely out of the ordinary.
Don Johnson and Jonah Hill are irritating with their “we just want to be in Tarantino’s movie” roles. However, whether Leonardo DiCaprio, as plantation owner Calvin Candie realized that he showed more potential in his tragicomic portrayal than in his serious roles? Ever since Scorsese’s 2004 “Aviator,” he has been subscribed to the sweating maniac type, an apparently voluntary restriction, all just to finally get that Oscar.
Then his racist table speech comes, and he theorizes as only Bill from “Kill Bill” did before, and all this ends in crescendo and violence – which could have been anticipated for minutes. At the same time, Calvin Candie is not without curiosity-inducing secrets: Will he be sexually aroused by his slaves’ mandingo fights?
At least the violence, often depicted in an almost pornographic way in Tarantino’s work, is made for this film. And where else could it be more meaningful than here to draw attention to the living conditions of the slaves? Each brutality is shown rightly hurts the viewer, torture, whipping, glowing iron.
In the most impressive scene of the film, the normally sober Schultz spontaneously decides, at the last minute, to become an avenger because flashbacks plague him. One slave was torn apart by dogs in front of him – and we believed that left him cold. “Django Unchained”, with a duration of 168 minutes, was Tarantino’s longest film to date and the first – apart from small flashbacks – completely linear narrative. That paid off; it feels very long indeed.
Still, there was enough here for a nice side-narrative: Tarantino’s linking of his “Southern” to the history of the Germanic tribes, the story of the slaves with that of the Nibelungs, is simply too beautiful. It is a fairy tale that would make a great cinematic narrative. Director hints that Django and his wife Broomhilda von Schaft (Kerry Washington) are the ancestors of a man with a changed last name: John Shaft, The Private Investigator, famous from 1971 Blaxploitation film.
Once upon a Time … in Hollywood (2019)
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.
Reservoir Dogs (1992)
In seventh place, that sounds like mediocrity. But actually, one Tarantino hit follows the next in this list, starting with “Reservoir Dogs.” For probably one of the best debuts of all time, this diamond-robbery-goes-wrong drama, the one-time video store clerk Tarantino immediately succeeded in getting some of the best actors of the nineties in front of the camera. Only those who see the noir film again today realize how long 1992 was: Tim Roth, Harvey Keitel (one of Tarantino’s biggest supporters), Michael Madsen, and above all, the young Steve Buscemi, all still fully in the juice.
These days, it is mainly the smart alecks among the (amateur) critics who call “Reservoir Dogs” the then 29-year-old’s greatest feat to date because here, he quotes relatively little from film history. As if tributes otherwise only arise out of laziness!
In a more recent interview, the director Kevin Smith noted that “Reservoir Dogs” allowed him and other young filmmakers freedom. If killers in suits philosophize about Madonna’s “Material Girl,” and Tarantino gets away with it – so much the better. The director’s trademark non-linear narrative style and endless discussions about seemingly trivial things are not only applied here but perfected right away.
Then there are the sudden outbursts of violence – nobody stains car backseats more beautifully with bodily fluids than Tarantino, and nobody shows the wretchedness of tuxedo wearers bleeding from every orifice as drastically as he does.
Tarantino also made a kick out of the risky pairing of beautiful songs with unbearable images in his debut. As Mr Blonde (Michael Madsen) cuts off poor Nash’s ear during a torture scene, “Stuck in the Middle with You” plays from Stealers Wheel. An alienation of purpose formula that leads to traumatic viewing experiences, it is impossible to imagine today’s cinema without it.
Jackie Brown (1997)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlAECQzTkfY
After the global success of “Pulp Fiction”, everybody in Hollywood was lining up to become part of the Tarantino cosmos. However, he took three years and finally decided to film a novel, Elmore Leonard’s “Rum Punch”, for the first and only time in his career. He slowed down his storytelling to an extraordinary degree and created “Jackie Brown,” which is an elegiac story about growing older, of dreams and new beginnings.
This time Tarantino’s “digs” included former blaxploitation star Pam “Foxy Brown” Grier, then 48, and Robert Forster, at the time 56, who had never been a star but had stolen everyone’s thunder in “The Black Hole” as well as “Delta Force,” one time as a sci-fi hero, another as an Arab terrorist. The fact that Tarantino, who had been the hottest director of the nineties, had immediately cast him in the leading male role? Insane.
The chemistry between Grier and Forster is spot on, and the director illustrates their breakup at the end with a shot that couldn’t be sadder. Running into a future that Forster must spend alone, the picture gradually blurs; as the man buries his head in his arms, Bobby Womack sings his song about losers, “Across 110th Street,” in time with and off-screen.
After Pulp Fiction, there were many doors open for Tarantino, everyone was eager to become a companion, and maybe that explains why he reached out to people who didn’t fit into the film. Michael Keaton makes a fool of himself; Chris “Get In the Trunk” tucker is a foreign body, and de Niro in a role as a dull permanent toner gives it away. That “Chicks with Guns” long-distance interlude would have fit in the gaudy “Pulp Fiction,” it comes across here as an outtake from another film.
After “Jackie Brown,” it would take six years for his next movie to hit theaters with “Kill Bill Vol. 1” – Tarantino’s longest hiatus to date.
Death Proof (2007)
The Kill Bill films brought Tarantino back into the game after a break of six years – but with them, he almost immediately put himself out of business. His Grindhouse contribution (in a double feature with director friend Robert Rodriguez, who delivered worse with Planet Terror) has been misunderstood by critics and audiences. Some complained about the long dialogues, while others believed that the story was too short.
But here, we experience Tarantino as liberated as never before. In the trash field of the grindhouse genre, Tarantino plays with ideas that may or may not work, which is inherent in the subject matter. Lighting and color changes jump in quality in the film, and soundtrack interruptions form the framework for some of his most pointed ideas. In particular, conversations between women sound like they were thought up by women and not the male screenwriter.
Not least, “Death Proof” is a feminist film, a Revenge Movie with two groups of eight women (four of whom must die), headed by the as always competent Rosario Dawson. The chase scenes are curious, filmed entirely with stuntwomen, including the one who participates as an actress, Zoe Bell.
The fun the car races must have given Tarantino is revealed in a making-of, where the director reports how Australian chase sequences differ from American ones in his own euphoric way. That difference is in the camera’s position – in the desert, no houses to put it on.
Tarantino had found an ideal cast in Kurt Russell as murderous stuntman Mike, capable of being playboy, creep, sunshine and victim all in one; it is hard to imagine that the originally intended Mickey Rourke would have done anything similar with his masked face. Watching Russell’s wink in the direction of the audience, of his breaking the fourth wall, might be the scariest shot in Tarantino’s oeuvre.
The director recounted the sober reactions to “Death Proof” in a more recent interview with “Vulture.” When people in Hollywood started sending him foreign scripts again so that he would act as a script doctor, as he had last done in the early nineties, he says he suspected: Now they want to banish him from the director’s chair for good. Fortunately, that did not happen.
Kill Bill Vol 2 (2004)
Though shot as one feature-length film, Tarantino decided to bring “Kill Bil” into theaters in two parts. This made sense from a stylistic point of view. While “Vol 1” was still the kung-fu homage relocated to an Asian metropolis, in which everything glittered neon green and black, “Vol 2” took its cue from the spaghetti western, in which everything is dusty and yellow and on fire.
Not so much an action film as a homecoming drama, the longer second film, with stronger dialogue, we learn more of Bill (David Carradine), the education of the “bride” (Uma Thurman), and the fate of their shared daughter. Unparalleled oppressive staged is the martyrdom of the fighter buried alive in a coffin, and the five finger death punch is one of Tarantino’s most fascinating inventions to this day.
In the end, moments between the united mother and daughter showed an empathy that had not been seen from the director before. “Vol. 2” also provides a real “aha” factor that could be used to shine at any party conversation: Bill’s theories about the morality of various comic book superheroes, as well as why his “bride” is most like Superman. Who is, in fact, a fraud.
Kill Bill Vol 1 (2003)
There were six years – they marked Tarantino’s longest hiatus to date – between “Jackie Brown” to the first instalment of his revenge drama about the “Bride” (Uma Thurman), who more or less rose from the dead and has a score to settle with her ex-lover Bill (David Carradine). But was anyone else on Tarantino’s mind? At the start of the millennium, the internet was still a long way from today’s social media buzz, with the buzz around the director has long since died down after the rather soberly received “Jackie Brown.”
When word got out that Tarantino would be making martial arts films, there were fears that the new work would only be about action. And then this return, featuring the most complex of all his main characters, plus fairy-tale settings, Anime sequences in a bloodlust, and breathtaking fight scenes with the Crazy 88 that don’t have to hide behind those of Hong Kong cinema.
Most of all, “Kill Bill Vol. I” also marked the beginning of Tarantino’s set-piece cinema phase, blending the ages and costumes of different eras. His films from then on looked like the reports of a child traveling the world.
Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Just what does it say about German filmmakers when it takes an American to elicit the best performances from “our” actors? The glow in the eyes of August Diehl, Christoph Waltz, and even in those of Til Schweiger, and especially in those of one of our best, Daniel Brühl, was never stronger than under Tarantino’s direction.
Any of the five acts in this drama set in Nazi-occupied France contains more wit, sharpness and twists than anything that hit theaters in the same year. Tarantino had long been tweaking the story, beginning the script back in the nineties and lugging it around. So when producer Harvey Weinstein said in 2008 that there was actually a window of opportunity to start shooting, Tarantino reportedly replied, “Why not?”
Several German directors, for example, have failed in their attempts to parody Adolf Hitler and National Socialism. Tarantino pulled it off in a sweep. Simply by a single tracking shot, panning to the giant poodle at Goebbels’ restaurant table, that mutt cackles just as stupidly as the Nazis.
The acting ensemble is flanked by British officer Michael Fassbender and Southern “Basterd” Brad Pitt (also these two in their best roles), directing the assault on the cinema where Adolf Hitler and henchmen watch their propaganda film. This finale, revolving around lit film footage and a later exploding movie theater, also functions as a reminder: of the Nazis’ diabolical misuse of cinema.
After the commercial failure of “Death Proof,” Tarantino was thus back in the game with “Inglorious Basterds”: more than $200 million in box-office receipts, its biggest hit to date. And there were the first Oscar nominations (director, screenplay) for him since “Pulp Fiction.”
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Quentin Tarantino asked critic Roger Ebert for his opinion when “Pulp Fiction” premiered in Cannes. Ebert told him that it was either the best film he had ever seen or the worst. Because Pulp Fiction was many things but did not belong to any genre, each category capitulates against this film. Crime thriller, comedy, thriller, noir, drug epic, road movie, sadomaso, “Pulp Fiction” exploded the golden frame that Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman) drew in the sky with her pointing fingers.
In director and co-screenwriter Tarantino’s world, there is no good and evil; everything is as harmless as it is heavy. The fairy tale world has its laws. The posse about how to clean the bloodstained back seat of a limousine is devoted by Tarantino to similar detail as a lecture about women’s feet and the metric system of the hamburger.
And with Pulp Fiction, Tarantino didn’t just re-popularize song scores – he established a system of new confidence in actors who had been written off. To this day, Travolta can be grateful to him for that.
