Today if you ask people who the best director around today is. They will most probably come out with one of two names. Stephen Spielberg or Quentin Tarantino. Personally I wouldn’t choose either of them, but there you go. But looking at those two choices, I can understand completely why someone would choose Stephen Spielberg for this title. He has directed many classic films such as ‘E.T’, ‘Jaws’, ‘Close Encounters’ and my personal favourite ‘Duel’.

Before I start this off, I have to admit that I haven’t seen Reservoir Dogs. Although from what I’ve heard from others it’s pretty much unanimous that it is a good film. But I have seen every film he has directed since (his work as a producer doesn’t count).

In my personal opinion I think that Tarantino is the most overrated director in movie history and some of his films are just plain bad. Granted they’re not on the same level of shit as an Ed Wood film. But I’d still say that they’re rather bad. Anyway let’s start with a classic film…

Pulp Fiction (1994)

Ok I’m not gonna lie this is a fantastic film. It was even mentioned on my top 5 list (although not actually in the top 5). It is one of the best films of the 1990s, which in my humble opinion is when film was at its best.

The plot is expertly woven together through a series of short anecdotes that are told in non-chronological order to tell the story of two gangsters Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) doing the bidding of an LA crime lord, and a local boxer Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis) who runs into trouble with the same crime lord.

Since this film was made many filmmakers have used the idea of non-chronological story telling. My favourites being Memento and Sin City (which Tarantino is credited as ‘Guest Director’, so he probably carried the bucket for the real directors to piss in). But what really makes this great is that the film borrows from nearly all parts of popular culture, particularly in “Vincent Vega and Marsellus Wallace’s Wife”. The dialogue really steals the show, with Samuel L. Jackson’s wonderful line ‘A cornerstone of any nutritious breakfast’ or his wallet with ‘bad mother fucker’ written on it.

Personally what I love about this film is how well Tarantino creates a truly bizarre situation. For example the scene in ‘The Gold Watch’ with Butch Coolidge an Marsellus in the basement of a pawn shop or the entirety of ‘The Bonnie Situation’.

This film is extremely well acted and revitalised John Travolta’s career and gaining Uma Thurman and Samuel L. Jackson Academy Award nominations. But above all it proves that Tarantino is a fantastic writer and director, which makes these next films all the more painful to watch.

My rating: 5 starts out of 5.

Jackie Brown (1997)

It wasn’t until years after I saw Pulp Fiction that I saw Jackie Brown, and before that it was pretty much cemented into my brain that Tarantino was one of the great directors of all time. But when I saw this I was rather disappointed as many others were.

Jackie Brown (Pam Grier) is a flight attendant that smuggles drugs money in from Mexico to the USA for Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson). From there Jackie is caught in the act and is taken to prison until Ordell pays her bail and she is released. But then Jackie decides to take $500,000 from Ordell and then run off with it. And from there the plot focuses around Ordell’s efforts to retain the money and working out who took it from him.

On its own this film is mediocre. It takes its main influence from 1970s blaxploitation films, which is a genre that boasts such ‘classics’ as ‘Blacula’ or ‘Black Mamma, White Mamma’, or some even more ridiculous than that. The only acceptable film that arguably comes from this genre is ‘Shaft’. So already in going for this genre Tarantino is onto a major loser.

The plot and acting aren’t bad, but this film fails because it completely loses the feel and sheer spontaneous and exciting feel of Pulp Fiction. The only part that really does seem to grasp the true feel of Pulp Fiction is the ending with the scene been shown from the different points of view from the various characters. But still, it was better in Pulp Fiction and I got the feeling that he did just wedge it in there because it worked in his last film.

I wouldn’t say that this is a BAD film as such, but not a classic and for this reason starts the decline of Tarantino films.

My rating: 3 and a half out of 5.




Kill Bill Volume 1 (2003)

This film was a much better idea than Jackie Brown. Right away Tarantino returns to what worked in Pulp Fiction by separating the film into non-chronological chapters. And when I saw ‘Chapter One’ imposed on the screen after ‘Revenge is a dish best served cold’ I was expecting a lot from this film.

I have to say that the action sequences in this film are very good, and the cinematography is just plain great. This time Tarantino pays homage to Eastern Chanbara (Samauri to normal people) and Martial Arts films, which instantly improves on the idea of using blaxploitation as the basis for a film.

But where this one fails is when the order of the chapters makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. First Uma Thurman fights a woman in a scene where her character’s name is beeped out. Which isn’t clever and doesn’t make you laugh it’s just plain annoying. Then she’s in a hospital where a one eyed woman comes along with a sword, who is then told not to stab her by a guy on a phone and then she kills so many Chinese gangsters it should most probably be considered genocide.

Now at the end of this there is no real explanation as to why she has done this…

I am aware that it was always intended for there to be a sequel to this, but there should never be any film in which you haven’t missed anything or failed to understand anything and still think ‘WHAT WAS THAT?’ It’s not clever or inspired; it’s just bad storytelling.

Although I did like little parts in the film such as ‘Buck’. Who is a creation that does go back to the days of Pulp Fiction era Tarantino. And the fight scenes in the film were in fact so good that it really satisfied me and made me think of Tarantino quite positively.

Overall, I must admit that I liked this the first time I saw it. But sadly after seeing the second one and knowing how the whole thing panned out I really no longer enjoy this film. There is so much violence all over the place but nowhere does it explain why anything happening is happening. But volume 2 really made up for that.

My Rating: 3 stars out of 5


Kill Bill Volume 2 (2004)

This is the film where I really think that Tarantino took a nosedive. Whereas the first film spends so much time on violence that you don’t know what’s happening, this one spends so long on tedious back-story that you don’t even care and get bored.

After a very long opening scene in which Tarantino wedges Samuel L. Jackson into this film, something finally happens when it cuts to a guy in a trailer. This bloke who Is basically the main guy’s bitch manages to outsmart Uma Thurman and stick her in a coffin which she punches her way out of, among flashbacks to her training with her martial arts master. The one eyed woman then comes along, and there’s a fight and then there’s a really bad anti climax.

For me endings are extremely important, it’s the reason why I hate the critically and commercially successful 28 days later. But the ending to this film is just diabolical. I sat through two hours of film, enjoying the violence but not really knowing what’s happening. Then the next two hours I wanted to see more violence, but got bored of waiting and saw some really drawn out story which did not need to be there.

What really annoys me about these two films is that there is enough there to make a truly fantastic and fun film. It just doesn’t need to be four hours long. If it had been condensed down into one film and had the big fight scene at the end rather than having a stupid and boring technique to kill off the main villain I would have been happy. But it didn’t.

Why couldn’t Tarantino have changed this, I mean after all it was his film? Well it’s apparently because even though it was directed and ‘written’ by him. The actual story is stolen from the 1971 Japanese film ‘Lady Snowblood’ in which a woman takes revenge on the bandits that killed her father. The only differences in Kill Bill are that it’s the fiancé that is killed, the main character is American who visits the Far East, and that Kill Bill is four hours long and Lady Snowblood is 97 minutes long.

So really even though he basically just made an American remake of a film and tagged his own title on it, he still made it four hours long. That’s what I call idiocy.

My Rating: 2 stars out of 5


Death Proof (2007)


Tarantino’s most recent film is without doubt the worst. This time Tarantino rips off the Grindhouse genre working with fellow director Robert Rodriguez to recreate some over the top gory films much like what were seen in cinemas in the 1970s. Tarantino and Rodriguez made one film each. Tarantino’s was Death Proof and Rodriguez’s was Planet Terror (a zombie movie that was actually quite amusing).

Now after seeing this I think I have seen my very least favourite film of all time. The plot is basically needless with all characterisation of very little consequence to the rest of the film. Basically a former stunt driver arrives in a small town where he meets some slutty models in a bar who are very unkind to one girl in particular who he takes in a car who he kills with rough driving. He then goes onto drive straight into the car with the models inside after which you see a slight glimpse of gore.

You might accept this, but it takes about 45 minutes for this to actually happen, and most of the time what’s happening is a bunch of whiny pretty boys are begging the slutty girls for sex. It’s just boring. After that’s happened the film then goes to a group of normal girls who are just going on a road trip who are then attacked by the stuntman in his car. Then for the rest of the film there is a car chase where nothing really gets smashed and basically all that happens is that you see two cars driving side by side.

To make matters worse, in the first half you get the feeling that maybe this driver wants to punish immoral women, as he does take a very long time to talk to the slutty girls. But in the second half he never meets them until he drives straight into them, so that idea just goes straight out of the window.

What Tarantino says about this car chase is that he wanted to create the best car chase ever. But he seems to have totally missed the point of a good car chase. Things need to get smashed to pieces. And all that happens here is that two cars drive side by side and occasionally bump into each other. If this happened on the motorway the most you’d get would be a honk from the other driver and then you’d be able to lip read ‘fuck off’ from the guy through your window I mean compared to this, Junction 27 is like Death Race 2000. Although the majority of Spielberg’s ‘Duel’ takes place with only two vehicles, what makes that good is the development of the driver who becomes genuinely afraid of the other driver chasing him.

The film even fails to emulate a grindhouse film. The whole idea of grindhouse was that it would show very graphic images and off the wall ideas, showing dubbed martial arts films or extreme gore (such as George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead). But there is no gore, or graphic images in Death Proof. It’s just boring. Planet Terror on the other hand, had lots of gore and funny ideas (like a woman with a gun for a leg) it even mad the nice touch of cutting out a roll of film (much like grindhouse theatres often did).

My advice is to see Planet Terror if you like a stupid films and don’t mind zombie films. But NEVER EVER see Death Proof. It is the worst film ever.

My Rating: Negative 5 out of 5.



These days Tarantino is a lot like Metallica. He used to be brilliant, but now he’s just awful. The difference is that a lot of people just refuse to see that Tarantino is now shit.

I think his problem really lies in the fact that he’s just pretentious, and tries too hard to be clever. For example he saw that people thought he was really clever with his non-chronological story lines in Pulp Fiction and tried to apply it elsewhere (for example Kill Bill) and it just didn’t have the same effect. His other problem is that he tries to genre switch, but switches to really bizarre and obscure genres that most people don’t know because they’re just not very good.

Personally I just think he’s trying to be Stanley Kubrick, who could switch from Sci Fi (2001: A Space Odyssey), to Horror (The Shining), to war (Full Metal Jacket), to political comedy (Dr Strangelove) or even film noir (A Clockwork Orange). This is a rare gift that Tarantino just doesn’t have. In his mind he’s trying to rub against the rave of the late Kubrick hoping that some day he may evolve into a likeness of him but in reality he’s neglected the fact that he can actually make a pretty good damn film and needs to stick to what he’s good at.

However, later on this month his new film ‘Inglorious Basterds’ shall be released which shall be a war film based in France. Sadly Tarantino says that this film shall be his ‘Spaghetti Western’ and will also be influenced by… wait for it… ‘French New Wave Cinema’. A war film idea wouldn’t be a bad idea but the other two really are bad ideas. I will review this film, and hopefully he will be like Metallica and after years of shit will release his very own ‘Death Magnetic’…