Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

In 1969, Hollywood legend Judy Garland died of an accidental barbiturate overdose. With her death and with Midnight Cowboy soon becoming the first X-rated film to win Best Picture, it was the end of the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood and the birth of a new, less innocent era. A new, edgier actor named Al Pacino, who appears in this film as a Hollywood agent, made his debut that same year. And Sharon Tate, the actress and model who was married to Roman Polanski, was murdered (along with her unborn baby and guests) in her home by the Charles Manson gang.

This is the setting for the newest film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. It is quite unlike his previous films. Controversial and a little goofy, sure, but fantastically acted and more or less engaging.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt are the two main stars here, and they are the best part. DiCaprio is Rick Dalton, a fictitious actor going through a bit of a midlife crisis as he realizes he might have peaked and his acting talent might actually be minimal. He's got a slick leather jacket and a cool necklace, but he's a mess, constantly drinking, smoking, and married to the idea that he's a has-been. Pitt is Cliff Booth, his stunt double who these days essentially makes his living by driving Dalton around and taking care of his other errands. While they live in different economic worlds, they rely on each other and have tremendous loyalty. Their stories essentially split into two as Dalton goes to film a guest appearance on a pilot as the heavy opposite real-life James Stacey, who is played here by Timothy Olyphant. In this sequence, which some might find superfluous, DiCaprio screams, weeps, and seems to be having as much fun as he ever has had as an actor.

While Rick is busy filming, his old buddy Cliff is roaming around the streets of Hollywood, where he runs across a young cohort of followers of the real-lie Charles Manson, who appears briefly here stumbling on Polanski's property. (Manson is played by Australian actor Damon Herriman.) This real-life event--the murders at the hands of the Manson Gang--looms large over the entire story, though the film itself is essentially Tarantino's love letter to the movie business.

One undeniably positive aspect of Once Upon A Time in Hollywood is the cast. DiCaprio and Pitt are fantastic together. They both essentially came of cinematic age around the same time, and it's nice that they work so well together. Accents are not DiCaprio's strong suit, but it doesn't matter. His work here is among his finest. Robbie hits all the right notes as Tate, although there has been considerable criticism about her lack of screen time and how much she is given to do. The appearances of veterans like Pacino, Bruce Dern, and Kurt Russell are also enjoyable. But the breakout star is Mike Moh, who portrays Bruce Lee. Lee is rather braggadocios on set, and Cliff, who finally gets some work as a stunt man on the set, is not impressed in the slightest. A fight breaks out between the two, and it's one of the best parts of the film. (It should be noted, however, that Lee's daughter has strongly objected to the way her father was portrayed.)

Other conflicts appear throughout, particularly in what is likely its most notable (and perhaps controversial) scene. It shoots out of nowhere and feels like Tarantino being Tarantino but for all the wrong reasons. But it is Tanatino, and it's also a fairy tale, one that drags on too long. It's his first post-Weinstein film, and part of the deal he negotiated with Sony was to have final cut over the finished product. That was unfortunate, because a lot of what's included has no place being there. We've seen a lot of this stuff before from this director; do we really need to see it all again?

Read More →

Jackie Brown

“AK-47, the very best there is. When you absolutely, positively got to kill every mother fucker in the room, except no substitutes.”

Jackie Brown was the third film Quentin Tarantino directed, serving as an interesting, albeit less memorable, conclusion to his 1990s quasi-trilogy that included Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. Unlike his other movies, this is an adapted work from the novel Rum Punch by Elmer Leonard, and like his films before and after, he assembled a terrific cast, one of the finest of the 90s: Pam Grier, Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Forster, Bridget Fonda, Michael Keaton, and Robert De Niro, an ensemble weaker directors would either not think of or would mishandle.

The McGuffin of the film is half a million dollars being smuggled into the country from Mexico by a flight attendant named Jackie Brown (played by Pam Grier) for an arms dealer played by Jackson. Jackie gets caught at the airport by an ATF officer named Ray Nicollete (Michael Keaton), who teams with a local cop played by Michael Bowen. Nicolette wants to take down Ordell, and he plans to use Jackie to achieve those aims. For his part, Ordell can be cautious to the point where he believes Jackie needs to be warned, but Jackie puts up a fight. She plans on playing both Ray and Ordell, with an eye on the money herself.

Ordell sort of leads an unlikely trio – he's joined by his bank robbing accomplice Lois (De Niro) and Ordell's beach bunny girlfriend (Fonda), who fancies Lois. (The characters Ordell and Lois also appear in the 2014 Leonard adaptation Life of Crime. Additionally, Miramax agreed to waive the fee for allowing Keaton to reprise his role in a cameo in Sony's adaptation of Leonard's Out of Sight in 1998.)

While it may be the least appreciated Tarantino-directed film, it is not devoid of problems, chief among them an aspect that also appeared in The Hateful Eight and to a lesser degree Reservoir Dogs: violence against women that, it seems, is meant to be humerous. Mix in a lot of N-word dropping, and it of course constitutes a normally controversial film directed by Tarantino. 

But love him or hate him, the evidence suggests he's an actor's director. Many of these stars, particularly Grier, Fonda, and Forster, delivered some of their very best work. Forster in particular delivers one of the most natural performances captured on film. Fonda hits ever note perfectly, and Grier was, simply put, robbed of an Oscar nomination.

Read More →

The Hateful Eight

A vast, snowy landscape is the introduction to the eighth film directed by Quentin Tarantino, The Hateful Eight. Reuniting him with some old pals like Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Bruce Dern, Walton Goggins and being joined by Demian Bachir, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Channing Tatum, this is his most violent film in a decade. It is also the first time (not including Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Vol. 2) that Tarantino has done two films of the same genre back to back. That genre is one that has influenced his entire career: Spaghetti Westerns.

It is unfortunate that the western has fallen from grace around the world, for it was once, as Andre Bazin (the father of the "auteur theory") wrote, that the western is cinema par excellence. Why? Because cinema is movement, and the galloping horses and fights were "usual ingredients" in these films. How ironic it is that Tarantino is the one who might resurrect the genre, for his films are very talky with (for the most part) few fights. Here, the vast majority of The Hateful Eight takes place in a wooden mountain pass in the midst of a terrible blizzard. It's not a tale of morals, as many famous American westerns are, but instead a mystery featuring the most vile, violent humans imaginable. This is appropriate because the Wild West was a horrifyingly violent, despicable time in human history, not some romantic period in which we should strive to return to. Tarantino gets this. He's a director (or, if you must, auteur) who understands that details are important. He is helped enormously in this regard by utilizing a score by legendary composer Ennio Morricone, the 87-year-old musical genius returning to the genre after a 40-year absence. His score here is awesome, helping to immediately set the mood in which our roughly eight or so characters find themselves trapped together.

The first two we meet are Daisy Domergue and John Ruth. Daisy is played by Leigh, and it's one of her very best performances. She's a notorious gang member captured by the bounty hunter Ruth (Russell), a rugged monster with a gravely voice and a John Wayne-like way of speaking. Ruth may be a cruel animal (it's probably Russell's most diabolical role ever), but he's on par with Daisy in viciousness. Ruth is transporting Daisy to a town called Red Rock, where she will be hanged. The trouble is he is trying to outrace a terrible storm. Along the way, he is joined by another bounty hunter, Major Marquis Warren (Jackson), who is also transporting persons (though these ones happen to be dead), and a man claiming to be the sheriff of Red Rock, Chris Mannix (Goggins) joins as well. While Ruth seems to like Warren, Mannix and Daisy are both explicit racists, and they make it known. Speaking of racists, at the mountain pass, the elderly Confederate general Sandy Smithers (Dern) is resting, as is a British hangman named Oswaldo Mobray (Roth), the quiet "cow puncher" Joe Gage (Madsen), and a Mexican employee of the mountain pass named Bob (Bachir). They're all cold characters in a cold world.  

Say what you will about Tarantino, but few other writers can create dialogue like him, and perhaps even fewer directors have such nostalgic love for the traditional looks of classic Hollywood. He and his cinematographer Robert Richardson filmed this in 70 mm, which also is a bit ironic considering there are not a whole lot of landscape shots of rural Wyoming but instead a claustrophobic cabin (though this 70 mm is effective for the close-ups of the eyes, an important feature of Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Westerns). That being said, Tarantino also frequently uses violence that will disturb many viewers; it's not Greek-like and unseen like in Reservoir Dogs. With The Hateful Eight, the violence is quite explicit, and the movie itself is inferior to his previous Western, Django Unchained, and his revisionist World War II drama Inglorious Basterds.

Act Two is when the movie suffers a bit as it falls into a pit of exposition for practically each character; in essence, there is too much telling and not enough showing. This is, for better or worse, the talkiest Tarantino film ever. There is unnecessary repetition of a "comic" scene involving the opening and shutting of the door. After an hour, we finally have all of our characters assembled in this room, and one of the most interesting to watch is Dern's fiery Confederate general and his feud with Warren. Dern is a master of acting and a joy to watch. Madsen is gruff, and yet his scene where he is humiliated by Ruth is actually rather touching. Roth is hyperbolic, but there's a point to it, revealed in the third act. Tarantino rarely (if ever) is political, but when Roth's character tells Warren that slavery "was a long time ago," Tarantino makes it clear that he embraces Black Lives Matter (and that he has been vocal in his criticism of police brutality). Finally, Tarantino's movies are not for everyone. His films have malicious characters spewing loads of vile lexis (for lack of a better word) out of their mouths. Speaking of spewing, there is a particularly memorable scene involving such a literal act, and it demonstrates perhaps Eli Roth's influence over Tarantino's recent works.

Channing Tatum shows up and there's still 45 minutes left in the movie. Indeed, the film sometimes feels more like we're reading a mystery novel than watching a Western. And despite a less interesting second act, the final section of the The Hateful Eight really helps save it, making the film holistically quite a good one. Perhaps one day Tarantino will be thought of as one of the individuals who helped resurrect the Western to excellence.         

Read More →

On Violence in Movies

Last year, as his "Inglourious Basterds" was setting itself up for at least one Oscar win for the following March, Quentin Tarantino was asked to discuss his favorite twenty films since 1992 (the year in which his first film, "Reservoir Dogs," was released). The films varied from Korean drama/thrillers like Park Chan-wook's "Joint Security Area" to Paul Thomas Anderson's brilliant "Boogie Nights" to Trey Parker and Matt Stone's masterpiece "Team America: World Police." His favorite film was the 2000 Japanese film "Battle Royale," directed by Kinji Fukasaku. It was a movie Tarantino wished he had made.

The movie, based on a novel by Koshun Takami, takes place in a future Japan in which violence and rebellious youths have provoked the government to make laws requiring students to be gathered up and sent to an island in which they will participate in a competition to eliminate one another until there is only one left. The last survivor wins the game; the losers are dead. Both the book and the movie have generated a fair share of criticism for their violent content.

Fukasaku's film is epic and operatic, horrifying and yet beautiful, as these Japanese students struggle for survival to. What I appreciated the most in this film was the symbolism. Having difficulty attempting to figure out the allegories behind the film, I discovered one through a review (though I have not been able to find it again to give it proper citation) from a viewer who teaches in Japan. He discussed the unfortunate reality that Japanese youths face enormous pressure to succeed, especially in their education, and this is what sometimes inspires cheating at worst and uncreative teaching at best. Having spent close to a year teaching in South Korea, in which I have become acutely aware of this Asian youth competition and the strict and at times unethical expectations of students, I deeply appreciated Fukasaku's film and its allegory. I will concede though that Korean and Japanese students are different in some aspects. Scott Aubrey's essay on the two groups discusses the differences: Korean students tend to speak English in class regardless of grammar mistakes in an effort to communicate their ideas, while Japanese students tend to avoid speaking English unless they are perfectly confident they will deliver a perfect sentence. Aubrey also describes the level of patriotism between the two, as Koreans are incredibly proud of their enormous accomplishments in the face of so much tragedy, whereas Japan, after centuries of being the "aggressor," has now embraced pacifism and its students lack the nationalism of their Korean counterparts. This is a bit of digression, isn't it? Regardless, the metaphor found by this viewer was profound to me and elevated my experience of the film.

I couldn't help but notice, though, that Tarantino probably did not have the same reaction. For a man who has crafted his films with dialogue as witty and quick as Ben Hecht's, with a style and tone as entertaining as Sergio Leone's, and influences such as blaxploitation and Martin Scorsese, Tarantino has never seemed interested with societal themes. His other films on his list included ultra-violet movies like Japan's "Audition" and Korea's "Oldboy," and so it can be concluded that what attracted Tarantino to "Battle Royale" was its story, characters, and especially its violence.

Many find Tarantino to be obsessed with violence. His "Kill Bill," influenced by Japanese cinema, was criticized for being too violent. "Kill Bill" is a bit difficult to defend (I didn't care for it anyway, so defend I shall not), but his finer films like "Reservoir Dogs," "Pulp Fiction," and "Jackie Brown" have notably not shied away from violent characters or situations, but have been Greek-like in their portrayal of violence. The infamous ear scene in "Reservoir Dogs," for example, was not seen, as Tarantino's camera shifted to the left, away from the imagery. Not too dissimilar from "Oedipus," no?

The violence of "Battle Royale," though, is one aspect of the film I found difficult to forgive. Martin Scorsese defended violence in his films in an interview with NPR in 2002 for his movie "Gangs of New York." Scorsese claimed that violence is justified in films if it is honest. The violence of "Battle Royale" is, similar to countless Japanese films, hyperbolic. What is unusual, however, is that the violence is directed towards children. Gene Siskel said in his review of "Aliens" that one of the cheapest effects employed in films is to show a child in peril. Siskel would be absolutely disgusted by this film, because the violence is practically exclusive to teenagers, and unlike many Hollywood films in which older, adult actors play teenagers, these are genuine fifteen-year-olds playing these characters. Violence against children, in movies or not, has never been attractive to me, and these teenage characters are frightened, confused, and the vast, vast majority of them are killed in a terrible way. The first two executions in particular are such awful images and if they deserve some defense, it cannot be found from this reviewer. Tarantino will forever be more of an authority figure on motion pictures, and so it would be interesting to hear his thoughts on this.

Until then, it strikes the question of whether or not violence is always necessary in films, or if the world's filmmakers, like Tarantino, are obsessed with images of violence. If Scorsese is right that violence is necessary in movies if it is honest, then both American and Japanese filmmakers do not always fall in line with that, especially the makers of "Battle Royale."

Read More →