Reservoir Dogs (1992)

“Somebody's shoved a red hot poker up our ass, and I want to know whose name is on the handle."

 This is where it all began for Quentin Tarantino, and the first of his films I watched, rented from a video store in Barwell, Leicestershire in about '94ish. I enjoyed it just as much now, but the passing of a couple of decades has added quite a bit of context.

What makes this film stand out from all of Tarantino's other films is the fact that he made it before he had a reputation; it's much cheaper, with an obviously limited number of sets and locations, shorter (definitely a big difference!) and Tarantino himself, while his direction is superb, is not able to show his flashier directorial side with such a low budget film. He excels, much more obviously, with the phenomenal script, filled with all the joyously cool pop culture-related dialogue of his early period, yes, but also masterfully plotted and structured. Famously a heist movie that doesn't show the actual heist, it actually feels an awful lot like a stage play, not something you could often say for a Tarantino film. But there are masterful directorial touches in that we are shown the plot with the minimum of exposition.

The plot is simple, elegant and, while non-linear, has a clarity that belies its complexity- a sign of very good writing. We're left guessing as to the identity of the traitor right up to the unexpected reveal, the violence is cool and stylish, and the cast is perfect. Not even that annoying song from Stealer's Wheel (featuring the late Gerry Rafferty, who would later inflict on us the AOR awfulness of "Baker Street") can spoil it. The first of many Tarantino classics.

Pulp Fiction (1994)

"I'm gonna get mediaeval on your ass!"

This is, quite alarmingly, the 384th film I've done for this blog. Just as alarmingly, it's the first of those 384 films to have been directed by Quentin Tarantino. The odds were against this- I'm quite a fan of his, and this is THE film for those of my generation- but here we are; I've finally got around to blogging the finest film of the '90s.

So what makes Pulp Fiction so superlatively good? Well, part of it is just bloody good directing- take the syringe sequence- but there's more to it than this. Tarantino famously appeals both to the Cannes-attending intellectual crowd and to those who just like to be entertained by a couple of hours of violence and cool, two things which Tarantino is very good at. How does he keep both groups happy?

Well, I tend to say that Tarantino is the Jimi Hendrix of cinema- a true virtuoso, but you could never call him pretentious. Clever though he is, he always retains that lightness of touch. There's a line he doesn't touch. So Pulp Fiction may have a non-linear narrative and a complex ensemble plot with multiple perspectives, but at the same time it manages to be easy to follow, an achievement in both scriptwriting and directing which is not easy. Also, the allusions to cinematic history may be many, but they never overshadow the film itself.

But, I think, what Tarantino does with Pulp Fiction in particular is to use dialogue differently. It's not just that the dialogue is cool and quotable, although it's both of those things, but that it is allowed to breathe. Conversations are allowed to meander and reach a natural end, as per real life, from that first conversation between Jules and Vincent about Amsterdam through the entire film. They are not truncated to fit the narrative and rhythm of the plot; rather, the dialogue sets the rhythm and is used to make sudden moments of action more dramatic.

So many performances deserve praise- Uma Thurman as the tantalising Mia, Samuel L. Jackson as the compelling Jules, comeback kid John Travolta actually being quite good (and getting top billing after all those years of obscurity), Harvey Keitel doing the cool character that probably inspired those recent insurance adverts (something I've only just realised). Not only that, but even Bruce Willis manages to be more-or-less acceptable.

This is one of the greatest films ever, end of. It shouldn't be so long until I blog my next Tarantino film...

From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)

"Yeah, he's right. Peter Cushing does that all the time.

It's been twenty-odd years since I last saw this film and it is, in hindsight, even better now than it was then, courtesy of some truly splendid direction and a sparkling script from the premier exponent of metatextual hyper-violence, Mr Quentin Tarantino.

The film is, of course, famous for feeling like typically Tarantinoesque crime caper until the final forty-five minutes of the film where it suddenly pivots genre and introduces a load of vampires and magnificently rattles through a load of vampire tropes like a boss. Throughout it all both the dialogue and the delightful levels of violence make the film an absolute pleasure to watch, and the acting (Clooney excepted as the pretty face but Tarantino very much included) is top notch throughout.

The whole thing really does come across as just effortlessly masterful and splendidly cinema-literate to boot, and that's before a particularly alluring Salma Hayek and all her mates at the Titty Twister (love the name) turn into vamps. But the final scene provides a superb explanation of exactly why the place has always been home to vampires leeching off the public. Magnificent in every way.

Little Nicky (2000)

"Remember you have to shove a pineapple up Hitler's ass at 4pm..."

Every so often I just have to blog an utterly crap film to provide balance and, well, this "comedy" is as awful as they come and completely unfunny. It stars Adam Sandler. Oh, wait... that's a tautology.

Literally the only funny joke in the entire film concerns the turning of Coke into Pepsi, and that was only worth a mild titter; how this ever got made with any serious expectations of at all being funny is utterly beyond me. And, even more incredibly, beyond the awful Sandler this turd of a script actually managed to attract a decent cast who would all, doubtless, have been more gainfully employed elsewhere. It's a shame, as the central conceit- a power struggle on Earth between the three sons of Satan- is a good one.

Reese Witherspoon deserves praise as Nicky's valley girl Angel mother, and Harvey Keitel is good even when phoning it in as he is here, and rightly so. But no amount of polishing can save this turd.

This is the worst film I've seen in 2016. Yes; worse even than The Black Knight.

Taxi Driver (1976)

"Some day real rain will come and wash these scum off the streets."

What to say about Taxi Driver that hasn't been said already? That it's a towering cinematic study of loneliness and of the kind of dangerously alienated outsider who will one day explode horribly, that Robert De Niro's performance here is one of the greatest performances ever?

There's not much new to say about this justifiably acclaimed film, really. But I'll try.

Travis isn't just alienated and alone- he talks to lots of people but connects with none of them- he's stuck in a dead end job with no hope, probably a virgin, and left with nothing but his macho fantasies, his dislike of what he doesn't understand and his need to find people to whom he can feel superior. The taxi, with its separation from the passengers, is a fitting metaphor for Travis' disconnection from the world.

There are some superb performances from a young Jodie Foster and Harvey Keitel, but the film relies on De Niro as much as any production of Hamlet relies on the actor playing the Dane, and he's just as good here as any of the best screen performances in that role. It's something about his eyes, his delivery. He inhabits Travis, perhaps the most frightening character in cinema, a character who is wound up tight and inevitably going to unravel.

The film gives us a surprising and unexpected "happy" ending as Travis escapes in caught from his clumsy attempt at political assassination and instead ends up lauded as a fifteen minute hero for violently rescuing the twelve year old Iris from her pimp, but even this makes us uneasy. Travis' life is no better than before. He's snapped before and he'll snap again. We end the film with all the tension of a time bomb waiting to happen.

As usual for Scorsese we get a superb soundtrack and impeccable direction for this art film about working class alienation, which sounds almost Marxist for a Hollywood film. 

Red Dragon (2002)

"Any rational society would either kill me or put me to some use."

I ought to confess, before anything else, that I haven't seen Manhunter. But this is a different adaptation of the novel, not a remake, so it doesn't break my "no remakes before I've done the original" rule. Besides, the film is deeply entwined with the two predecessors to which it is a sequel, dovetailing very nicely into The Silence of the Lambs.

It's also bloody good, and even manages to pull of the trick of Anthony Hopkins, eleven years older than we first saw him, playing the intellectual, civilised Hannibal Lecter of 1980. Well, aside from the small point that he's feeding his guests human flesh, but it's fascinating to watch a Lecter whose proclivities are as yet unknown. Even more interestingly he's a psychiatric expert in psychopathic killers, and regularly consulted by FBI agent Will Graham, but we quickly move, over the opening titles, to Graham catching him, his trial, and his nine consecutive life sentences, followed by Graham's retirement, although we just know that the cliche of his coming out of retirement is upcoming. 

Interestingly, Lecter is again not the main villain here. The Buffalo Bill this time, the Tooth Fairy, is left mysterious for a bit, and eventually Graham is forced to consult the esteemed Mr Lecter, the approach to the cell echoing The Silence of the Lambs. The twist is, rather nicely, that the Tooth Fairy is a big fan of Hannibal's. The plot is, perhaps, predictable, but it is sufficiently well-realised and well-acted to get away with it. 

The killer's final tragic end eventually comes after a few twists and turns, revelations of a life of abuse and a twist in which we find that he is not, as we had thought, dead. There are lots of jolts and moments of excitement amongst the violence and yet the film still seems to maintain a certain sense of quality, of being more than just a violent thriller. This is yet another sequel which is in fact more than decent.