The Movies

[Mark E. Hurling]

Final analysis: Taranto is hands down the most overrated director of the last 50 years.

Yep. I lost a couple of hours of my life I'll never get back with Inglorious Basterds. I never liked his shtick and had I known some friends we were visiting had that rental on tap when we came over, I'd have stayed home. Better he had stuck to dispensing rented videos in Manhattan Beach.

[Jeffrey Hunter]

I recently watched the 'The Road to Peredition' for the first time and thought it was pretty great. Jude Law was good at playing the creep who kills and photographs his victims. The revenge story was great and I'm surprised it took me this long to see this "gangster" film. I also did not know this was a Sam Mendes movie, which explains a lot about why 'Skyfall' was so damn good.

It led me to watch '1917' which was incredible, I always forget about WWI and just how brutal that war was. The long camera shots really put you in the action and it holds you there until the very end.

[Sawyer]

Tarantino doesn’t really make serious films so the characters are somewhat allowed to be massively over the top, stupid and act in 10 different ways.

You can call this bad writing or style over substance, others would just call it entertainment.

These are not serious movies where everything better makes sense in order for the movie to work. His movies are kind of a pulp fiction 😀

He is more a creative director with crazy, stylish and funny ideas and often interesting or cool dialogue, but he‘s not really a serious director like Michael Mann was for Heat.

I liked Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown and after that I think his movies never lived up to the hype again.

But even Pulp Fiction obviously isn’t a serious movie with believable characters or a plot that makes sense. It’s not a documentary.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Yep. I lost a couple of hours of my life I'll never get back with Inglorious Basterds.

Probably his worst movie.

[Jeffrey Hunter]

I also recently ordered 'Fire and Ice' and have never seen it all the way through, really into Frank Frazetta right now.

[Raw Power]

Sukiyaki Western Django has not yet been mentioned. I don't know if its technically a Tarantino film or not. He is in it, but it's a Japanese movie (with the actors speaking engrish).

I feel anyone who enjoys Tarantino movies, especially Kill Bill, would be a fan of anime. Superhero fans will also appreciate it. I myself didn't get into anime until my 30's, and man, I had no idea what I was missing. My personal favorites would be Attack on Titan and Death Note, both on Netflix. They are more like crime thrillers with lots of deception, intrigue and political drama. Naruto is also a beautiful story with a ton of depth, but there is hours upon hours of filler which is often silly and pointless to the main storyline. It took me years to get through all 700 episodes but it was worth it.

[Raw Power]

I see attack on titan has been mentioned before. I want to clarify that I'm referring to the animated series in regards to both death note and attack on titan, not the live action movies which I haven't seen.

[Brodie Butland]

Re-watched Thank You for Smoking. I've long believed that it, V for Vendetta, and Terminator 2 were the three best examples of movies that were made as polemics for their time, which became even more relevant as time went on.

And they've all aged pretty well too...hard to believe that T2 has been out for almost 30 years, yet its action sequences hold up far better today than a lot of what is put out with so-called better technology...the consequence of a solid director and only sparing use of CGI.

[Brodie Butland]

Tarantino doesn’t really make serious films so the characters are somewhat allowed to be massively over the top, stupid and act in 10 different ways.

You can call this bad writing or style over substance, others would just call it entertainment.

I think this is why Tarantino is so polarizing...most people either really enjoy fabulist absurdity or think it's moronic, but there's not a lot in between. Although even from that framework, I think that Tarantino is still hit and miss...he's had some solid ones like Pulp Fiction or Django, but then you have abominations like Hateful Eight or From Dusk Till Dawn. But I'll always thank him for giving us the gift of Christoph Waltz.

[Sawyer]

I didn’t like Django and like From Dusk Till Dawn.

Watched Bullets over Broadway from Woody Allen again last night. Such an awesome movie! Still one of my all time favorites.

Also watched 12 years a slave recently. Good film, horrible times. How easily people are programmed by irrational cultural norms is quite frightening.