The current cinema, bitter disappointment edition

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• rotch says:

  December 20, 2012 at 1:58 pm

  That has got to be the most dis­heart­en­ing head­line I’ve ever read in this blog.

• Ali Arikan says:

  December 20, 2012 at 2:01 pm

  I must say I am dread­ing this.

• David Ehrenstein says:

  December 20, 2012 at 2:06 pm

  I don’t know what you’re dis­ap­poin­ted about. Tarantino’s entire career is devoted to juevnile genre pas­tiches of 70’s obscur­it­ies. This is just anoth­er one.

• Not David Bordwell says:

  December 20, 2012 at 2:29 pm

  Yeah, this review has me kinda fucked up, since Glenn found things to like (his wife even more so, appar­ently) about the crit­ic­ally reviled DEATH PROOF and was over the moon about INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, which more or less repro­duce my own feel­ings (and, oddly, those of my wife, go figure).

• Noam Sane says:

  December 20, 2012 at 3:12 pm

  “Juvenile genre pas­tiches of 70’s obscur­it­ies” seems to be the go-to hater line on Tarantino. I don’t buy the “juven­ile”; I’m guess­ing you are going with the 3^rd Random House defin­i­tion, “imma­ture; child­ish; infant­ile.” I don’t see his “pas­tiches” as being any more imma­ture, child­ish, or infant­ile than their inspir­a­tions, which is to say, not. And, not all of his numer­ous inspir­a­tions are obscure. So, rais­ing the bull­shit flag on your pithy bon mot, David.
  He makes big, broad, unsubtle films. Parts work, parts don’t maybe. I see a lot of films and I gen­er­ally appre­ci­ate his enthu­si­ast­ic bor­row­ings and glee­ful mind­fuck­ery. Mileage will vary, but I find your gen­er­al­ized con­dem­na­tion to be, in a word, doo-doo.
  The pre­views have been intriguing and I will look for­ward to see­ing this. I prob­ably will be let down, as I was by the Killer Car and Nazi efforts, but he’s one of a kind and I root for him.

• Wolfmansrazor says:

  December 20, 2012 at 3:25 pm

  Glenn’s review of the film makes it sound like it emphas­izes Tarantino’s biggest weak­nesses, par­tic­u­larly his tend­ency to draw out cer­tain dialogue-based scenes – espe­cially dia­logue scenes that ostens­ibly high­light QT’s clev­erness – well past the break­ing point and his tend­ency to cast himself.
  However, I gotta tell ya, as an abstract pro­pos­i­tion, a three-hour homage to Blazing Saddles dir­ec­ted by Quentin Tarantino does­n’t sound too bad to me.

• That Fuzzy Bastard says:

  December 20, 2012 at 3:39 pm

  Dammit, this is the first QT film I’ve been look­ing for­ward to in years. Here’s hop­ing it’s not as bad as all that.

• David Ehrenstein says:

  December 20, 2012 at 5:15 pm

  “Mileage will vary, but I find your gen­er­al­ized con­dem­na­tion to be, in a word, doo-doo.”
  You’re clearly as juven­ile as the auteur whose ass you so eagerly kiss.

• Graig says:

  December 20, 2012 at 5:59 pm

  I can­’t bring myself to read this yet. I will, I prom­ise. But not yet.

• Jack Laughing says:

  December 20, 2012 at 6:01 pm

  @David Ehrenstein: I’ve been quietly read­ing your com­ments here for quite some time and a num­ber of times you’ve lead me to think “Wow, what an arrog­ant dick­head.” But this one takes the cake. Just wish­ing a Happy Holidays to you and I wanted you to know that I will be not only boy­cot­ting your reviews going for­ward, but boy­cot­ting the pub­lic­a­tions fool­ish enough to employ your boor­ish opin­ions. Happy New Year!

• David Ehrenstein says:

  December 20, 2012 at 8:39 pm

  Fuck You Too!

• Not David Bordwell says:

  December 20, 2012 at 9:58 pm

  Oh, come on, Jack Laughing. We all already know that David Ehrenstein is the Joan Collins of GK’s com­ments sec­tion. Get over it.

• David Ehrenstein says:

  December 20, 2012 at 10:46 pm

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxZV8HZElKo

• rob humanick says:

  December 20, 2012 at 11:34 pm

  David’s first com­ment reads as an oppor­tun­ist­ic grab at Glenn’s dis­ap­point­ment with this film to sug­gest that, hahaha, he’s been right all along that it’s dir­ect­or isn’t worth the hype, as if that opin­ion is self-evident upon even the slight­est infrac­tion. And it reads that way because it is. This com­men­cing war of words is already remind­ing me of O’Reilly and Stewart, and the one who self-consciously invoked feces is def­in­itely the more mature of the two.
  I can­’t believe I just watched that whole video.

• Hedwig says:

  December 21, 2012 at 7:28 am

  Thank you, Glenn. I walked away feel­ing vaguely dis­ap­poin­ted (amidst hosan­nas from basic­ally every­one else at the screen­ing), but I could­n’t quite put my fin­ger on why. This helps, though I think I’m less neg­at­ive over­all – I did think there were inter­est­ing them­at­ic under­cur­rents, espe­cially in the dif­fer­ence between how the viol­ence against slaves and the viol­ence against slavers are depic­ted and framed.

• I.B. says:

  December 21, 2012 at 9:52 am

  Any Miike connection?

• Josh Z says:

  December 21, 2012 at 12:23 pm

  From the review:
  “Only why, oh why, is the char­ac­ter­’s name spelled as that of a comic-strip char­ac­ter instead? The fig­ure of German legend is called Brunhild, or Brünnhilde. Maybe Tarantino’s oper­at­ing at a level of met­a­tex­tu­al­ity that’s bey­ond me.”
  It seems to me that you just explained the met­a­tex­tu­al­ity right there. “Broomhilda” is a bas­tard­iz­a­tion of Brünnhilde with a wink towards the com­ic strip char­ac­ter, because… I don’t know, why not? Since when have Tarantino’s hodge­podge of pop cul­ture ref­er­ences ever needed to be logical?

• Glenn Kenny says:

  December 21, 2012 at 12:31 pm

  Josh Z: I wrote that in a sense that gave an impres­sion that I actu­ally did not know to what “Broomhilda” referred. But yes, I do know the ref­er­ence. You ask “since when have Tarantino’s hodge­podge of pop cul­ture ref­er­ences ever needed to be logic­al?” I can­’t answer that ques­tion, but more often than not, they have parsed, even the bit about “Douglas Sirk steak.” The wink at the com­ic strip char­ac­ter, in this con­text, struck me as deeply, deeply stu­pid. Might as well have dropped winks to Marmaduke and Heathcliff while he was at it. Why not Scooby Doo? Etcetera. In oth­er words, like so many of the oth­er jokes in “Django Unchained,” a bad one, a tinny one, one that annoys more the more it is repeated.

• Josh Z says:

  December 21, 2012 at 2:12 pm

  Fair enough. Wasn’t try­ing to defend the film. I haven’t seen it yet. And frankly, I did­n’t care much for Inglourious Basterds for many of the same com­plaints you leveled against this one. (Yes, I’m aware that you were a fan of Basterds.)

• David Ehrenstein says:

  December 21, 2012 at 7:47 pm

  “Broomhilda” is also a (snide nat­ur­ally) ref­er­ence to the mar­it­al rights freed Afriacn-Americans eagerly embraced. Getting mar­ried was known as “Jumping the Broom.”

• Dan Coyle says:

  December 25, 2012 at 6:38 pm

  I dunno, I thought it was pretty good.

• MDL says:

  December 26, 2012 at 12:25 am

  I enjoyed it quite a bit. Good fun. Crowd sure seemed to like it too. (Hint don’t go in with expectations).

• Clayton Sutherland says:

  December 27, 2012 at 3:18 pm

  Yeah, I actu­ally found the film to be far more emo­tion­ally potent than Basterds, which I watched again on Saturday night in pre­par­a­tion for this. Perhaps that was down to the sub­ject mat­ter being less famil­i­ar (Nazis, and even Hitler, are used as dra­mat­ic can­non fod­der with much great­er reg­u­lar­ity), to some degree.
  But when the open­ing cred­its rolled, I was reminded of Menke’s passing, and wondered how it would affect the film. To be hon­est, I felt the exten­ded scenes car­ried con­sid­er­ably more ten­sion than in IB, and it may be the first time since Jackie Brown that I was genu­inely emo­tion­ally involved in the con­tent of a QT fim, rather than just being gen­er­ally enter­tained by it.
  As anoth­er review noted, it’s a bit of a sick joke that the white man most sens­it­ive to Django’s racial suf­fer­ing is a German, but damned if Waltz isn’t the most love­able hired killer I’ve seen in a film in some time. And the pre-KKK scene was hys­ter­ic­al; the theat­er I atten­ded was rolling with laughter; it’s broad, but it works, IMO.
  It’s inter­est­ing that you felt the tim­ing was off here, Glenn, as most of your com­plaints seem to echo those of many indi­vidu­als to QT’s pre­vi­ous films, which you actu­ally enjoyed. So I guess it’s just a YMMV sort of deal. And folks who haven’t been taken with any of QT’s pre­vi­ous endeav­ours cer­tainly won’t be swayed by this one.
  I agree that QT’s pres­ence as an act­or in this was jar­ring, but at least he had the good sense to take the piss out of him­self rather quickly, and aggress­ively. There’s some­thing to be said for that.

• jbryant says:

  December 27, 2012 at 7:12 pm

  Still haven’t seen the film, but I’ve seen at least one review some­where that said “Broomhilda” was a slaver­’s mis­pro­nun­ci­ation that stuck. But since no one else seems to have picked up on that, maybe that review­er was just mak­ing an assumption.

• Michael Webster says:

  December 27, 2012 at 7:43 pm

  Going off on a Spike Lee related aside, I too thought Tarantino’s act­ing turn in the movie was atro­cious. Of course there were plenty of oth­er poorly real­ized scenes that it did­n’t sig­ni­fic­antly detract detract from the over­all qual­ity of the film (which was not great. In short, I found it suf­fi­ciently enter­tain­ing to not bitch and moan about hav­ing to pay big bucks to sit through anoth­er bor­ing movie, but not great, not any­where close to great, with the pos­sible excep­tion of of Samuel L. Jackson’s performance).
  I thought Spike Lee’s even more idi­ot­ic act­ing appear­ance in Red Hook Summer did very much detract from the over­all qual­ity of that film. Without Mookie, I think RHS would have been much fur­ther up the best of 2012 lists, pos­sibly even awards worthy.
  Anyway, giv­en that those two seem to be some­how etern­ally entwined, I thought it some­what inter­est­ing that with­in a few months of each oth­er they both some­what fucked up their movies by insert­ing them­selves into them.