Tarantino’s Top Twenty Since 1992

The moment he mentions politics in his work is when he jumps the shark in my eyes.

Love that he loves Unbreakable! I totally agree with him about Bruce Willis in that movie. One of my favs. Also, I laughed when he talks about Speed, because I remember watching it in the theater and gripping my seat for most of the movie. It was an amazing ride when it first came out.

Listen to what he says about the Matirix "mythology." He's on our side. I use the Matrix analogy to smash lefties all the time.

I don't know where he is politically. I don't want to know. But just for fun, here is a funny pro-gun debate scene from "Death Proof."

http://hbhls.blogspot.com/2009/07/gun-control-deb...

It's nice to hear Tarantino mention Team America, but I wish he had more to say about it. I always find his opinions interesting even when I don't agree with them.

He didn't seem to be very happy when he was head of the jury at Cannes and he had to give the Palme d'Or to Michael Moore — I'm sure he hadn't cast his vote for him. I think he was more offended artistically than politically, if he was offended — there were no doubt many better films at Cannes that year, and having to give an award for artistic achievement to an obvious hack can't have been easy.

I loved Unbreakable as well and besides the hubster, could never find anyone else who did. It's nice to know I'm in good company.

Can someone please explain to me why "Lost in Translation" is supposed to be such a wonderful movie? Beyond the flirting with adultery plot that left me cold, I've actually lived in Tokyo and because of how it was shot, I got little sense of Tokyo from it. It wasn't awful but I don't see what all of the fuss was about.

Ignoring politics in one's work when one's work is not political in nature does not make one a conservative. If I did have to guess his political leanings, given the nihilism in his work and narcissism in his behavior, I would say he is a Left-leaning Libertine.

And he is certainly no NRA supporter or believer in the 2nd Amendment. Here he is in a '94 Playboy interview:

Playboy: Does the government have the right to tell citizens whether, they can own guns?

Tarantino: I don't own a gun. But if gun control were to happen in America, I would have no problem with it whatsoever. Gun control would probably do wonders here. The street violence in America is horrific. When you go to Europe, you actually feel like you take a vacation from the threat of violence. Not that people don't get killed and raped in Europe, but it seems like they don't in comparison with here. But I also feel there's a slight hypocrisy about gun control. America was founded on people grabbing guns and just taking it. We are basically a nation of warriors. We're very easily pumped up. For good reasons, sometimes.

The guy is so wrapped up in his own self-importance he doesn't have time to figure out what he believes.

LOL! Here! Here!

Thank you! I've never liked that movie. Some people say that Tarantino is an overrated director, but I think Sofia Coppola is the one that's overrated. Lost in Translation, The Virgin Suicides, and Marie Antoinette are such boring self-indulgent messes.

'The Host' was a sorta decent monster flick, but the horrific (not in a scare way) ending was banality itself.

Imagine 'the Thing' ending with an invasion of clowns dressing up the monster with silly hats and a carnival with elephants throwing gymnasts in the air climaxing the movie…

Imagine 'Braveheart' ending with the quartering of Mel Gibson screaming out "Oweeeee! That stings!!!".

Imagine 'No Country for Old Men' ending the movie by having a bunch of old decrepit men whining about how America is a rotten place and then a crane pull back out of the house with the background is covered in Mountains of garbage and thrown away copies of 'No Country fro Old Men' DvDs.

Imagine all that and you'll get the idea about how 'the Host' ended.

Unbreakable is the best movie that Shamalama-ding-dong has done. It had all the elements of a comic book story (for obvious reasons) without being an over the top comic book movie.

There's an entire genre dedicated to "positive" portrayals of criminals that LONG predates Tarantino. If you actually read/watch them beyond the surface, you are never allowed to forget that these are bad guys, not role models by any stretch. I guess you must hate The Sopranos, too.

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QT is one of a kind…scenes in his movies could be made into movies…as crazy as he may be, I'll take his stuff over any piece of crap movie out there today…

Let me try to explain my love for "Translation."

Watching the movie, I felt in myself the shock of not fitting in ~ of being surrounded by people in a place and still feeling lonely. Bill Murray is there to make a quick buck on a whisky commercial, and this scene is one of my favorites, where the Japanese language goes on for 30 seconds and is translated into "Life your chin" or something like that. Bill is clearly out of his element. When someone says "You drink Suntory" he responds "As soon as we're finished here." His dry humor just gets to me. Scarlett's character is a recent Yale grad, newly married, bored and confused. They meet at the hotel bar and become friends ~ not physical lovers, more as two people in a strange place sharing confusion in their lives as much as the bright neon lights and confusion of Tokyo. Japanese culture is very, very different from American and European culture, and I think Sophia Coppolla did an excellent job showing that.

Looking back now, it's Bill Murrays humor that does it for me. I feel it more than I can explain it, obviously, but I remember walking out of the movie feeling better than I'd felt in a long, long time.

"Can someone please explain to me why 'Lost in Translation' is supposed to be such a wonderful movie?"

I have no idea. Maybe critics and hipsters are still so taken with New Wave cinema that they think being slow and pointless is a sign of intelligence.

I have a better question: why does the formerly great Bill Murray think you have to stop being funny once you start doing serious movies? His natural comedic gifts still shine through, but he seems to be intentionally suppressing them, especially in Jim Jarmusch films.

I had the feeling walking out of "Unbreakable" that it'd only be effective once, and I was right. Unlike with "The Sixth Sense," where you could pick up all the little hints that Willis was dead the second time around, there was nothing to be gained by a second viewing. Everything was right there in the open. Moves way, way too slow once you know.

Can't say the scenes were very enjoyable in themselves, apart from the larger mystery. Maybe the part where he sees how much he can bench press. His moment as heroic savior is small in retrospect. Were we really building up to one little fight? No real confrontation with the villain. The climax consisted instead of us finding out Jackson was responsible for the train derailment, which was chillingly effective the first time, but again, ho-hum the second.

How many more "NAZI" movies can be made?
This is ridiculous,Stalin killed 20 times as many as did Hitler,yet we hear absolutely nothing about that monster.
My guess is that it's for two reasons:1),about 40 million Christians were killed and it takes the focus away from Jewish suffering in that era. and 2),it was the Jewish invention of communism(Marx&Engel) that these people were killed and that's not something that any group would like to be associated with.
Enough already,this is getting pathetic.

True, he spends alot of time in Austin (note Linklater "Dazed" reference) and while I was living there (until a few years ago) and I never heard him pipe up politically. I'd like to think he's smarter than that. "Team America" ah, a clue how he thinks…maybe.

Read that description and it helps a lot less than yours did. Perhaps part of the problem is that I never experienced "existential ennui" in Tokyo. I was in Tokyo! Woo, hoo! I volunteered at my company to go. Even when it terrified me, and it came pretty close when they dropped me in a residence hotel alone without all of those nice hotel amenities to see if I could cope before relocating there, I was never bored there. And after living there for a while, I'd just walk around and explore parts of the city because was an incredibly interesting place to be and live.

Shinjuku, where the movie took place, has fantastic shopping and dining options and anyone who can get bored in Shinjuku just isn't trying, though there are plenty of foreigners who do recoil from engaging with the Japanese and don't try. And to a large degree, I consider those people tragic, wasting a great opportunity and the adventure of a lifetime because they don't want to deal with something unfamiliar.

And with respect to culture shock, even though I only lived in Tokyo for less than a year and a half, in some ways I experienced as much, if not more, culture shock coming back than I did going there. How can that be? My life in Japan was safe and simple and predictable. I had to consciously suppress all of the routines I had learned living in Japan (passing people on the left, saying "sumimasen" if I bumped into someone or needed them to move out of my way, etc.) and still find them surfacing from time to time.

There are some good pictures of Shinjuku on Wikipedia, too, and they don't look like what that movie showed. I think part of why that is was revealed in the "making of" extra on the DVD. If I remember correctly, the director was trying to avoid bureaucratic approval and permitting for her outdoor shots so she shot them in guerilla fashion, which probably drove her to shooting in out of the way locations rather than pointing her camera into the heart of Shinjuku.

Wow, you guys are pretty hip to the intrerwebs. This was only on movieline.com on Tuesday.

Let me start by sincerely thanking you for explaining why you enjoyed the movie. It was a good explanation.

Perhaps a big part of the problem is that I've actually lived what it's like to be alone in Japan and I didn't relate to what I saw in the movie. My wife wasn't impressed, either, and she pretty much had to figure out what to do with herself while I was working.

I know what it's like to worry about getting lost or to be effectively illiterate but reality is that it's not that difficult to get by with English in Tokyo (particularly where they were) and while Japanese culture can be significantly different from American culture, I didn't really didn't feel like what I saw in that movie was authentic. As for the Tokyo scenes, my wife and I had to look in the credits to realize it was shot in Shinjuku even though we lived 15 minutes from Shinjuku and spent a lot of time there.

So while you may feel she did an excellent job of showing Japanese culture, I thought it was pretty awful in that regard and that the "making of" extras on the DVD did a better job of capturing Tokyo than the movie did. Maybe I simply know what it's like to be in Japan too well to enjoy that movie's take on it or maybe the movie matches someone's experience of Tokyo (and people who engage the Japanese at different economic levels do experience things differently) but it sure didn't match mine.

Thanks again for the explanation.

I really didn't dig Battle Royale at all.

I absolutely agree with you on everything you just said!!! Please Big Hollywood, stop giving this "director" the amount of space you have.

"I guess you must hate The Sopranos, too."

Don't know about Peter, but I do for many of the same reasons. Give me some real heroes I can cheer for and not these murdering losers.

And you're basing this assessment of QT's opinion of F 9/11 on what again? An interview QT gave about the movie? A video of QT bagging on Michael Moore? Anything other that your own projections again?

Not likely. But the important thing is that he doesn´t seem to be a raging liberal. I would be surprised if politics even exists in his universe. And that´s for the better..

Caddyshack, Stripes & Ghostbusters ~ not even close. Didn't see Rushmore, but Groundhog Day was pretty good.

I actually think Lost in Translation is a very well made picture. The shot compositions are very interesting and the film does a great job setting the insomniac mood of it all. Sure the script isn't the most complicated one in the world, but that's ok. Besides, Anna Faris' hack job impersonation of Cameron Diaz and Giovanni Ribisi's uncanny Spike Jonze impersonation put the picture a slight notch above Virgin Suicides.