Posts tagged Tarantino
“Django Unchained” Is Typical Tarantino Overindulgence
Jan 6th
“Typical Tarantino Overindulgence”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Django Unchained was written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, and it is a terrific movie for the first two hours.
Unfortunately, the movie is three hours long, and the last hour is full of Tarantino’s self-indulgence at its worst.
Some people would say that all of Tarantino’s movies are self-indulgent.
Jamie Foxx plays Django, he is a slave, and the time is 1858, or two years before the start of the Civil War, as a title so conveniently informs the audience, along with the fact that we are in Texas.
Django is in a group with four other slaves who are being marched on foot by two white men on horses when they are encountered by Dr. King Schultz, played by Christoph Waltz.
Dr. Schultz has been looking for the group, and he asks if any of the slaves is named Django.
When Django speaks up, Dr. Schultz says, “Then you’re exactly the one I am looking for.”
Dr. Schultz buys Django for $125, but the transaction is much more complicated than that.
You see, Dr. Schultz is German, he used to be a dentist, but now he is a bounty hunter, and he is looking for three men known as the Brittle brothers, but he doesn’t know what they look like, and somehow he knows that Django can identify them.
Logic in his storytelling is not one of Tarantino’s strong points, not that he cares.
So, Dr. Schultz tells Django that he will make him a free man if Django will help Dr. Schultz find the Brittle brothers and capture them dead or alive.
After a couple of encounters with the law that have surprise endings that are also humorous, Dr. Schultz and Django are in Tennessee on a plantation owned by Big Daddy, played by Don Johnson, which has another surprise ending.
In return for Django’s help as his partner, Dr. Schultz agrees to help Django find his wife, Broomhilda, whose name intrigues the German dentist.
So their travels now take them to Mississippi and a plantation owned by Calvin Candie, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, whose head slave is played by Samuel L. Jackson.
Here is where the movie falls apart with blood, gore, and excessive length and self-indulgence.
Django Unchained is typical Tarantino overindulgence, and as I said, you can walk out after two hours.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
Django Unchained – Movie Trailer
Dec 30th
Set in the South two years before the Civil War, Django Unchained stars Jamie Foxx as Django, a slave whose brutal history with his former owners lands him face-to-face with German-born bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz). Schultz is on the trail of the murderous Brittle brothers, and only Django can lead him to his bounty. Honing vital hunting skills, Django remains focused on one goal: finding and rescuing Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), the wife he lost to the slave trade long ago. Django and Schultz’s search ultimately leads them to Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), the proprietor of “Candyland,” an infamous plantation. Exploring the compound under false pretenses, Django and Schultz arouse the suspicion of Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson), Candie’s trusted house slave.
“Inglourious Basterds” Ostentatious Self-Indulgence
Aug 27th
Ostentatious Self-Indulgence
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS is intentionally misspelled, because writer-director Quentin Tarantino wanted that title for his latest movie, but also wanted to differentiate it from the 1978 Italian movie of the same name, which just shows how easily he could have given it a unique title.
I’ll tell you what that unique title could have been later on.
The film is divided into five chapters, which are identified at the beginning of each section, and Chapter 1 takes place in 1941 in Nazi-occupied France.
Col. Hans Landa, a German SS officer played brilliantly by Austrian actor Christoph Waltz, shows up with his men at a small dairy farm to question the owner in private.
Waltz has already won the Best Actor award at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, and he is sure to be nominated for and to win many more similar awards for this role.
Col. Landa is charged with finding and killing Jews in France, and he suspects that the farm owner he is questioning can provide him with information about the last Jewish family unaccounted for in the neighborhood.
Chapter 2 then shows the title characters, who are a squad of Jewish- American soldiers who have been dropped behind enemy lines in France and are led by Lt. Aldo Raine, played by Brad Pitt in a surprisingly comic role.
Lt. Raine tells his men, “We’re here to do one thing and one thing only: Killing Nazis.”
Well, that’s not entirely true, because they also scalp the German soldiers that they kill in order to send a message to whoever finds the soldiers’ bodies.
Chapter 3 then jumps to 1944 in Paris, and we meet Shosanna Dreyfus, a young Jewish woman who owns a movie theater, and here is where Tarantino really starts to show off his cinematic knowledge, so much so that the audience can get the impression that this is a lecture on the history of cinema instead of a movie itself.
Col. Landa shows up again, and then later Lt. Raine and the Inglourious Basterds show up, too, but by now this is no longer a war movie, but an elaborate hoax on the audience because of Tarantino’s rewriting of well-known history.
And remember how I said that Tarantino could have given it a unique title?
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS could easily have been called OSTENTATIOUS SELF-INDULGENCE.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”