Tag Archives: quentin tarantino

Mar 07 2024
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Movies

Classic Movie Review – Jackie Brown (1997)

Across 110th street, I’m bringing this review to my 3.5 readers.

This oldie but goodie popped up on Netflix and I couldn’t help but watch it. IMO, it’s one of Quentin Tarantino’s best though in history, it tends to be forgotten when ranked up against the likes of his more popular works like Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs.

The plot? I’ll be honest, I’ve seen this movie a few times since it first came out in the late 1990s and it still confuses me but my best description is its like The Sting but at a shopping mall and with shopping bags instead of briefcases. Money is changing hands and you’ve got to follow where it’s going.

Jackie Brown (Pam Grier) is a mid-forties stewardess for an airline that flies between Mexico and California. She makes low-pay and subsidizes her $16,000 a year salary by running cash for illegal gun runner Oddell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson.) Robbie keeps his cash stored in safety deposit boxes at a bank in Mexico to keep it from being confiscated in case he is ever arrested. He brings it up as needed from time to time with Brown’s help and her stewardess gig is the perfect cover.

Or so they thought. ATF agent Ray Nicollette (Michael Keaton) is onto the scam and pinches Jackie on a money run. When Brown is bailed out by grumpy yet kindly, middle-aged bail bondsman Max Cherry (Robert Forster), Nicollette gives her an option – she can either go to jail for a long time or she can help with a sting operation and catch Odell in the act of accepting the illicit cash.

The problem? Jackie could dummy up and do her time but Odell has a bad habit of bailing out past accomplices who have been pinched through Cherry and killing them before they can testify. Cherry sees the pattern and fears he’s being used. Brown sees the pattern and fears she’ll end up DOA like ex-Odell accomplice Beaumont (Chris Tucker).

And so, a crazy, convoluted plot begins, one in which Jackie and Max conspire to bring in the cash, keep it for themselves, yet still somehow con Odell into thinking Jackie is on his side and con the Feds into thinking she’s on their side, fulfill the requirements of the Feds’ sting and get off the hook while evading Odell’s tendency to murder potential witnesses.

Robert DeNiro and Bridget Fonda round out the cast as Odell’s henchman and girlfriend.

So, where to begin?

Pam Grier was at the height of her career in the 1970s with several funky blacksploitation films. Go check out some of those films and she is truly a foxy mama. However, the 1970s was an era of low standards in Hollywood. Many 70s flicks, when looked at through today’s eyes, come across as glorified student films with all kinds of crazy, nonsensical things going on.

Tarantino loved those films dearly and brought 70s nostalgia to his 90s filmmaking and gave Grier a film made with modern techniques that she so greatly deserved. Though she’ll be remembered for classics like Foxy Brown and Coffy, this movie is a love letter to those films lone gone by. She’s absolutely beautiful in this, a tragic figure, someone who is smart but obviously had some bad breaks, wishes she had achieved more and is finally given a chance to run off with a score that will change everything late in life if everything goes off without a hitch.

Cherry’s character is the same. He’s spent his life running down crooks and is tired of it. He wants out of the bond game and could use a cash infusion. My one criticism is it’s implied early in the film that he’s going to retire after the scam but doesn’t. I can see why he doesn’t but I don’t want to say here so as to not give it away. At least I assume he doesn’t retire. It looks like he doesn’t at the end of the film. The romance between Cherry and Brown is touching and understated, much different than say, the young love you see on film. Young love, the stakes aren’t that high. If it doesn’t work out, they’ll find someone else but Cherry and Brown, you want them to end up together yet understand there are many obstacles in their path. At the same time, they are at an age where this is their last chance for love.

Quite literally, this may be the best movie for all the actors involved. Jackson is legendary but he’s Jackson in every film. He’s Jackson here too but Tarantino creates a menacing character in the form of a man who has spent his whole life amassing a fortune through evil deeds and isn’t about to lose it lying down.

SIDENOTE: Jackson wears a different Kangol hat in every scene in this flick. When I saw it as a young man, I thought those hats were so awesome that I bought a couple, wore them often, then eventually realized I was the only white guy I knew wearing them, felt a bit pretentious and self-conscious and stopped. Alas, I never made them look cool, but Jackson surely did. I’ll be honest though, looking at this movie through modern eyes, I realize, yeah, Kangol probably gave Tarantino a boat load of money to turn this movie into a commercial. In one scene, Jackie and Odell both wear Kangols and its like, come on, even back then no one was wearing that many Kangols.

Tarantino was the great resurrectionist of 70s careers. He did it with Travolta in Pulp Fiction and did it again with Grier and Forster, who was a 70s tough guy. Sadly, I don’t recall Grier going on to do too many things though I think she was in a few more 90s flicks after this. Forster went on to do a ton of movies after this up until his recent passing.

Keaton’s career had cooled in the 90s so this movie was good for him though I’d say his rehash happened more recently.

DeNiro is also legendary but like Jackson, he just plays DeNiro, except he’s different here. He really comes across as a dumb guy who is easily miffed and annoyed by little things. I won’t say how that feeds into the plot.

And then there’s Bridget Fonda. Ahh Bridget. I think this will be the part she is long remembered for. She’s so beautiful and naughty in this. She had a lot of parts in the 90s and then went away and I was sorry to see online that she got fat. Hey, I can’t complain. I’m fat myself. Time is a real SOB. At least she had this movie though. What did I have?

I think this is the first or maybe one of the first movies I saw Chris Tucker in too.

STATUS: Shelf -worthy. God, it feels like I saw this movie yesterday.

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Jul 29 2019
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Movies, Uncategorized

Movie Review – Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)

Grab your time travel machine, 3.5 readers.  It’s time to go back all the way to 1969.

BQB here with a review of Quentin Tarantino’s ninth film.

I’ve been a longtime Tarantino fan, 3.5 readers.  I suppose most Gen Xers are.  His films have always been known for 1) time jumps, i.e. starting at the end and working back to the beginning, so that the end of the movie becomes essentially how the whole mess started 2) long pieces of expository dialogue where characters drop key plot points by word of mouth in passing and 3) 1960s and 1970s pop culture references galore.

Remember Inglourious Bastards?  This film is another alternate history project.  Just as Tarantino rewrote WWII, so too does he give the infamously terrifying Manson family murder of actress Sharon Tate a rewrite.  The tale centers around down on his luck actor Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his trusty stuntman/errand boy Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt.)  Together, they are a pair of old Hollywood legends who once put out a popular 1950s cowboy show, only to fizzle in the middle of their lives.  Rick is having a tough time finding work, and if he can’t work then Cliff can stunt.

Long story short, Sharon Tate and her husband, director (later turned on the run pervert) Roman Polanski, are Rick’s neighbors, and I could tell you more but suffice to say, during their quest to restart their careers, Rick and Cliff get sucked into the Manson family madness in a big way.

Having studied Tarantino’s movies for a long time, I have to say this one is far different.  His 1960s pop culture references are there, but there a but more subtle, with the occasional hint toward what is being referred to for the millennial generation.  Tarantino’s adoration of the 1960s and 1970s was already a bit stale in the 1990s when he got his start, and I remember as a teenager, watching his films was the first time I learned of some of the 60s/70s references to which he was referring.  So, his work is cut out for him in trying to stay afloat in a sea that is now dominated by young adults who were in short pants at the turn of the century.

Somehow, he pulls it off.  And he also, much to my surprise, refrains from the heavy, heady dialogue that is his trademark.  True, his dialogues were often a joy to behold, but here, he focuses more on showing rather than telling.  Ironically, it’s almost like this grandmaster blew up all the writing rules in his youth, only to begin grabbing hold of them in his old age.

It’s in the showing where this movie excels.  We see Leo as Dalton sitting on a float in his backyard pool, reviewing his lines for a part in a movie that he needs to remain relevant in the acting game.  This shows us that Dalton is desperate.  He’s old but he isn’t ready to quit just yet, and wants to give it his all before his final curtain call.

We see Cliff Booth sitting alone in a dingy trailer, his only friend a big dumb dog.  His house is a mess, looking as though he never cleans.  He cooks a pot of mac and cheese, then sits down before the TV to eat it straight out of the pot.  He is a consummate bachelor.  Unlike Dalton, he is used to a shit life.  Aspirations of anything else don’t compute with him.

And finally, we see Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate.  So proud of herself for making it in the movie business is she that she goes to a cinema and takes in one of her films, in awe of her accomplishment.  It’s a sweet moment.

Overall, this is Tarantino’s love letter to his favorite flicks, genres, actors, directors…really, his kiss for that period of time in Hollywood history that formed the foundation of his work.

Ultimately, Rick and Cliff have to take everything they thought they knew about the movie business and turn it up on its ear to keep going in a world that’s changing, and Tarantino does that here as well.

After all, this is a movie that starts at the beginning and ends at the end.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.

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Feb 03 2018
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Movies

New York Times Article – Uma Thurman Talks About Harvey Weinstein and Quentin Tarantino

Hey 3.5 movie buffs.

BQB here.

The New York Times interview of Uma Thurman is a must read for fans of 1990s cinema.  Alas, our darling Uma, who wowed us as the foxy Mia Wallace, with those two fingers being dragged across her face in that song and dance routine, was, alas, also having to deal with Hollywood uber perv Harvey Weinstein.

I’ll let you read the sordid details but alas, she was perved upon by the Harv-ster and perved upon big time.

Meanwhile, when I saw that the article also talks about Tarantino, my heart sank.  Tarantino is an inspiration for any 1990s kid who wanted to be a writer.  He is, after all, the writer who told us all that it’s ok to not start your story at the beginning.  You can start at the end or even in the middle.  Give us the big ending up front then show us how it all happened.  Here’s some candy up front, but now you’ll have to eat your dinner.

Tarantino has always been very eccentric, almost kind of manic in the over energetic way he speaks, plus I mean, all of his movies are blood and sex galore so I was like, “Ugh…yeah he’s like my writing hero so please I hope he didn’t do anything pervy but oh God, he does fit the pervy profile and…..”

Anyway, SPOILER ALERT, he’s not alleged to be a pervert.  Uma, however, says on the set of Kill Bill, he made her drive an unsafe car that wasn’t put together well and despite warnings the car was unsafe, she was required to drive it and it ended up in a big crash that left her with life long knee damage.

We’re in a sorry state of affairs when you’re like, “Oh thank God my writing hero Quentin isn’t a shameful pervert, he’s just an overzealous, totally negligent jerk who put a good shot over a human being’s safety.”

 

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