The Final Take with Parker Mott

Now, you have my attention: Django (Foxx) confronts Candie (DiCaprio) – the cigarette stands in as referee – in "Django Unchained".

Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained is full of dialogue, genre homage, eclectic tunes, and savage violence – typical ‘Tarantinoisms’ – but it’s stuck in a fake-epic deprived of any real forward drive or momentum. It’s even downright mechanical at times, for a lot of what Django Unchained offers early is a basic, personality-hungry inciting incident where its bland antihero and ex-slave, Django (a stoic-faced Jamie Foxx) colludes with German dentist/bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz, essentially recycling his Jew Hunter flippancy from Inglourious Basterds). (continue reading…)

4 Stars out of 4
(100 minutes)

The Reservoir Dogs.

My immediate reaction when watching the opening to Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs is “who are these guys?” Why is one of them, Mr. Brown (Tarantino himself) so fascinated by the meaning of Madonna’s ‘Like A Virgin’? Why won’t one tip? – that is Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi). The characters are drenched in black attire, but act like a knitting group, discussing the nitty gritty of pop culture. Reservoir Dogs is an aimless movie, not necessarily interested in accomplishing itself as drama, but more about revealing its characters bit by bit. That answers my initial question.

It’s pyrotechnics galore. Tarantino then cuts to a montage of the cohorts parading down an alley way to Little Green Bag by the George Baker Selection. We meet them all, framed in a closeup to distinguish them from the crowd and get a reaction. You have Mr. White (Harvey Keitel), Mr. Orange (Tim Roth), Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen), the aforementioned Mr. Brown and Mr. Pink, Nice Guy Eddie (Chris Penn), Mr. Blue (Eddie Bunker), and Joe Cabot (Lawrence Tierney). That’s an ensemble for you. Some of these characters we get to know very well, almost too much so and others are more in the background and a commentary on our racing thoughts. (continue reading…)

3.5 Stars out of 4
(152 minutes)

Eli Roth and Brad Pitt are basterds.

It disheartens me when critics claim that Tarantino’s new film Inglourious Basterds hasn’t broken new ground or toppled the fine line drawn from the immaculate creation of Pulp Fiction. It really sickens me. Because this new film by Tarantino exudes
a sensation never felt in his other films, nay, any films: a Romanticization of the Third Reich’s destruction. Where the real result of the Second World War was the Russians vanquishing Germany and Hitler putting a bullet through his skull, Inglourious Basterds introduces a result which ends in many ‘a bullets and bloodshed. Revenge at its finest. Tarantino…well almost at his finest. It is a quixotic fairy tale, something Tarantino has in most of his films but diversified this idea in so many ways. (continue reading…)