Contemplating Giving Quentin Tarantino My Money

My friend Marv and I don't like Quentin Tarantino. I mean, we really don't like him. It's not that his films are terrible, it's that they are not anywhere near as good as he thinks they are. I recently stumbled upon this quote from Noah Forrest which does a great job of summarizing how I feel.

Unlike his disciple Tarantino who thinks that merely repurposing old genre movies makes it art, Scorsese actually elevates his genre films to art.

This was emphasized by something George Hamilton said in a recent interview:

I was talking to Quentin Tarantino last night, and he said, 'You know, I have two prints of your films that are pretty rare.' One was called From Hell to Victory. I said, 'That’s a horrible movie!' But he said, 'Oh, no, that could be remade today; it’s about to be bought…' No, Quentin, it’s horrible.

Of course, thinking him an arse-nugget has no bearing on the quality of his films. Tarantino deserves some credit for helping bring American independent cinema into the mainstream, for better or for worse. His films are well-made, to be sure, but I don't venerate the 1970s as he does. He takes schlock and makes it bloodier and adds a truckload of profanity on top. Everything he does is teenage fantasy. Thusly I just don't find myself particularly enamored with any of his characters nor his stories.

Despite the fact that he didn't invent the non-linear narrative, Tarantino's films can be fun to watch. Take Kill Bill as an example. I really didn't care about the hero, Uma Thurman's The Bride, and got bored with the fighting. But Bob Richardson's cinematography was fantastic. The color palette may have mostly been Tarantino's idea, but it was Richardson who brought that film to life.



And that's my conundrum. I love Bob Richardson's work. He's DP'd for Oliver Stone, Martin Scorcese, Errol Morris, and John Sayles in addition to Tarantino. I have gone to see films that he has shot purely because he was behind the camera. (Kill Bill was not one of them.)

So, Marv, should I go see Inglorious Basterds for the cinematography or avoid it because I have no interest in more of Tarantino's slop?