Django unchained is easily the most overrated movie since

[Beco]

Samuel L. was fucking hilarious in this movie!

He was so good in this film, that he had me on edge when he discovered the Kerri Washington character's plot to gain her freedom. That's good acting....

 

[KingOrfeo]

From James Howard Kunstler's "Clusterfuck Nation":

Going To the Movies

By James Howard Kunstler
on January 14, 2013 9:26 AM

I don't go to the movies much anymore, alas, because the nearest mall cineplex -- owned by a company named Regal that runs the place like a self-storage facility -- is a dump with broken seats and teenage employees who forget to turn out the lights when the movie starts. But the weekend weather here was sloppy, and this is the movie awards season, and I wanted to get an idea of what Hollywood thinks America is about these days, so I hauled my carcass over to see Django Unchained and Zero Dark Thirty, in that order.

Years ago I rather admired Tarantino's Pulp Fiction for its rococo storytelling method and comic expansiveness. The sheer volume of gore and mayhem strained my suspension of disbelief, but I was charmed by the audacity -- for instance the scene where a character played by Quentin himself repeats to the two hit men with a dead body that he's not in the business of "dead nigger storage," which was in there, I'm sure, just to rub a lot of sanctimonious minds the wrong way.

Django Unchained is something else: perhaps the most incoherent movie ever made, but in a way that nicely represents the culture that it comes out of. For the uninitiated, the movie tells the tale of a slave named Django ("the D is silent," actor Jamie Foxx informs another character) rescued from a slave coffle by a German bounty hunter named Schultz posing as an itinerant dentist. Together they ride forth to slaughter white people involved in the slavery business to 1) make a lot of money off bounties, 2) free Django's captive wife Broomhilda, and 3) enjoy many acts of bloody revenge.

What you notice right away is that the filmmaker has no sense of American history or geography. One moment you're in the Sonoran Desert, the next moment the Montana Rockies. Huh? Of course the line on Tarantino by film savants is that his weltanschauung is a gleeful composition of movie history pastiche. That is, his ideas come only from other movies (or television), not from the so-called real world and the record of goings-on there. So in this case they are derived from previous movies made by earlier auteurs who got the details wrong about mid-19th century life. That may be so, but the difference is that the earlier movie directors, however mis-educated or befuddled by convention, might have cared about the milieu they attempted to represent. Tarantino is content to be wildly wrong about just about everything. Or rather, the details don't matter as long as the fantasy satisfies portions of the brain where ideas are not processed.

What interests me about all this is how perfectly Tarantino's mental universe reflects the current situation in our nation, in particular the infantile disregard for the facts of life, the self-referential inanity of our culture, and the complete absence of authenticity in anything. What disturbed me about the movie was the sense that Tarantino has set the table for race war, like a jolly arsonist playing with matches and gasoline in a foreclosed house. He won a Golden Globe award for directing last night.

Zero Dark Thirty tells the tale of a CIA unit based in Pakistan and its laborious efforts to track down Osama bin Laden, perpetrator of the 9/11 airplane attacks on the USA and other misdeeds. It focuses on the doings of a female American agent, uncelebrated in the annals of this long, strange "War on Terror," who pored over the minutiae of cell phone records for a decade before locating the messenger who led CIA watchers to bin Laden's hideout in Abbottabad, where Navy SEALs finally sent him to his eternal reward of feasts and virgins.

The movie, directed by Kathryn Bigalow, is a bloodless recounting of some very grim and bloody business from recent history. The controversy around it comes from the extensive scenes of "extreme interrogation" carried out by American officials against captured jihadists in "dark" locations. Critics have objected to the movie's lack of a moral position about these brutal activities. Was it right? Was it wrong? The movie simply asserts that it happened that way. Some politicians have objected as to whether the depiction of all these matters is correct in the first place. Nor is the killing of bin Laden treated as an occasion for fist-pumping histrionics. If anything, the event leaves you with a hollow feeling and a bad taste for the time we live in. I admired especially - for the first time in many a movie - the absence of techno-triumphalism involving computers.

The contrast between the two movies is extremely interesting to me: Tarantino the populist, shall we say, reveling in a splatter-film Americana with barely a tenuous connection to reality, either historical, cultural, or emotional; and the assiduous Bigalow laying out the very serious business of capable adults engaging with a world that consistently terrifies and disappoints. Kathryn Bigalow didn't win an award for directing at the Golden Globes.

 

[LiFeNdEaTh]

Samuel L. was fucking hilarious in this movie!

i like him in the movie PULP FICTION

 

[Mischka]

fun about covers it. he makes beautiful trash and that's why i love him.

Did you see Reservoir Dogs when they showed it in the theaters earlier this year? The commentary before the film was worth the ticket price. Listening to everyone who knew and helped Tarrantino start his career, plus seeing clips from the movies that inspired him, which are heavily borrowed from in his own movies. Such a treat.

Edited because I confusingly said Usual Suspects instead of Reservoir Dogs.

 

[pointless]

i did not. i had no idea that even happened until now. in fact, i'm kinda confused right now, but i am very, very tired so that probably isn't helping me any.

 

[evesdream]

What does Tarantino have to do with the Usual Suspects?

 

[pointless]

that is the source of my confusion.

 

[Mischka]

What does Tarantino have to do with the Usual Suspects?

that is the source of my confusion.

Understandable. I meant Reservoir Dogs. No idea how I got those two mixed up.

 

[pointless]

just say you're super tired. best brain fart cop out ever.

and no, i did not.

sadly.

 

[KingOrfeo]

What does Tarantino have to do with the Usual Suspects?

That's actually happens to be the industry name for one of his casting calls.

 

[pointless]

be fucking quiet!

 

[jomar]

I took an auteur director's course back in the day. That James Howard Kunstler dude could sling it for an A.

 

[XXplorher]

No question about it.

Atrocious piece of shit.


I'm completely unable to fathom how that crap got nominated for anything. It's almost as if Quentin was playing a sick joke on the entire industry, just to see if they would bite down hard on a turd.

And the verdict is in. They will.

 

[XXplorher]

Addendum to other comments:

-Tarrantino is a monster among a bunch of gnats. I’m not questioning his ability, only shitting on this particular film.

-The Hurt Locker was tremendous. Brave in its insistence for patience (all the more reason for a female Director to win a landmark award). It’s not a movie like any other you’ve seen. And it most definitely had a whole lot to say beneath the quiet tension.

I loved it. And concur for sure it was the very best of that year. If not many others.

 

[XXplorher]

Almost forgot…

ARGO sucked a pile of dung up its nostril also. Shamefully over-rated. (I never left Ben Afflek as a person I appreciated. His personal life has no affect on me whatsoever. Nor Tom Cruise, for that matter (he god weird on a couch, so you completely forgot that he’s been busting his ass to successfully entertain you for 2 decades? I tend to think that makes all of you a lot weirder than he’ll ever be)).

BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD was unique to anything I’ve ever seen. I was entrenched. And properly moved by a concept I hadn’t quite seen correctly prior, maybe.

THE SESSIONS was surprisingly fantastic on all levels. That’s my choice for best film, hands down. And I guarantee you that’s not a sympathy vote. The film did not play that way, and that’s why it’s great.


I have not seen SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK. Cuz I know I’ll love it too much and can’t afford my very first viewing to be ruined by some… um, because it will prolly resonate within me to a great degree, and I can’t have someone next to me while it does that. I can’t be protecting myself like that.

I’m sure that will be my favorite once I’ve seen it. Until then – The Sessions is.

 

[marshalt]

That is, his ideas come only from other movies (or television), not from the so-called real world and the record of goings-on there. So in this case they are derived from previous movies made by earlier auteurs who got the details wrong about mid-19th century life. That may be so, but the difference is that the earlier movie directors, however mis-educated or befuddled by convention, might have cared about the milieu they attempted to represent. Tarantino is content to be wildly wrong about just about everything. Or rather, the details don't matter as long as the fantasy satisfies portions of the brain where ideas are not processed.

That about sums it up. If Tarantino were not a director, he'd probably be a youtube reviewer, making fun of direct to video movies like the Nostalgia Critic or some shit.

 

[KyleW]

That about sums it up. If Tarantino were not a director, he'd probably be a youtube reviewer, making fun of direct to video movies like the Nostalgia Critic or some shit.

I don't think he's trying for historical accuracy. Everything is derivative these days.

I do think he is overrated. And he uses a lot of the same camera tricks over and over.

However, I loved reservoir dogs.

Django was ok but overrated.

I liked inglorious bastards, but felt that was also overrated.

 

[XXplorher]

It's never been about his 'shots', I don't believe.

It's the situational brilliance. And if not that, the absolutely inSANE magnificence of his dialogue.

Django had neither. It's vomit.

 

[marshalt]

I don't think he's trying for historical accuracy. Everything is derivative these days.

The difference is that other film makers are influenced by earlier works. But he's made a career out of homages.

 

[Beco]

His fast zoom camera tricks are tired. Like when they meet dicaprrio.

I just think Tarentino is copying a technique one would see in many of those 70's genre films he grew up with, that's why he does that. He may have brought this genre back, but he's no Sergio Leone', although I'm sure he thinks he is....

But, I'm a big fan of Pulp Fiction, nothing will top that, glad Tarantino is around...

 

[evesdream]

Almost forgot…

ARGO sucked a pile of dung up its nostril also. Shamefully over-rated. (I never left Ben Afflek as a person I appreciated. His personal life has no affect on me whatsoever. Nor Tom Cruise, for that matter (he god weird on a couch, so you completely forgot that he’s been busting his ass to successfully entertain you for 2 decades? I tend to think that makes all of you a lot weirder than he’ll ever be)).

BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD was unique to anything I’ve ever seen. I was entrenched. And properly moved by a concept I hadn’t quite seen correctly prior, maybe.

THE SESSIONS was surprisingly fantastic on all levels. That’s my choice for best film, hands down. And I guarantee you that’s not a sympathy vote. The film did not play that way, and that’s why it’s great.


I have not seen SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK. Cuz I know I’ll love it too much and can’t afford my very first viewing to be ruined by some… um, because it will prolly resonate within me to a great degree, and I can’t have someone next to me while it does that. I can’t be protecting myself like that.

I’m sure that will be my favorite once I’ve seen it. Until then – The Sessions is.

Django was a bad movie...disguised as a good movie, disguised as a bad movie. WOooooAH, man


ARGO Imperialist propaganda.


BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD Meh. Nothing new about condescension I guess.


THE SESSIONS If you get an opportunity to watch this: Scarlet Road. You'd love it and it's so much better. If you're in Canada you can watch it on the CBC/Passionate Eye website.

SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK It never occurred to me to see this. I have a fear of pleh pleh. Maybe it's worth a shot though.

 

[pointless]

silver linings playbook is alright, but that's about it really. i get why some people like it, but i'll never get the hype.

 

[evesdream]

silver linings playbook is alright, but that's about it really. i get why some people like it, but i'll never get the hype.

Ditto for Paranormal Activity, Wall-E, Harold & Maud, and Blair Witch Project - except for the i get why people like it part.

 

[pointless]

hey, harold and maud introduced me to cat stevens, man. sure, i only like like five of his songs, but that's something.

 

[Beco]

Django was a bad movie...disguised as a good movie, disguised as a bad movie. WOooooAH, man


ARGO Imperialist propaganda.


BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD Meh. Nothing new about condescension I guess.

Alan Arkin was great, decent movie, still not sure its worth an Oscar, same with Django, perhaps our standards have sunk lower than I thought.....