I’ll go on a serious note on this one and, not to sound a prude:
Pulp Fiction. And, no it’s not because of the violence but the whole picture and attitude. Yes, the critics gulped it up, Oh wow, he’s playing with the timing of the plot, Oh wow, Tarantino is mixing low-brow with high-brow. Even some of my Catholic friends (more religious than I) loved it. I didn’t, and I am not one that understands movies as having to be morally edifying. I love relaxing, joking. But I really think Tarantino is overrated. He just likes putting funny, little, violent comic-book characters together in odd situations and mixing it all up. His acting on top of that is 10 times worse than his directing. Recently, some English newspaper sat down for an interview with him and questioned the man’s sanity in his newest movie, which I won’t bother to see, and I haven’t had the slightest inkling to waste 2 hours on Kill Bill (either, ahem, volume). In his new movie Inglorious Basterds, apparently there is a great and drawn out scene where somebody’s scalp is lacerated nicely with a knife with just enough gruesome detail to satisfy even the most extreme voyeur of violence and humiliation.
Another one that might get the cognoscenti furious with dumb me: I choose Madonna’s husband’s Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. I know there is some really great camera work with the cards and all and I did go with a friend who is in the movie industry who wanted to see it. But I told him truthfully, for the first time in a movie theater, I saw people laughing out load to really brutal violent scenes. It was the first time I encountered the Torture as Comedy routine. (Yes, it was done before in Hollywood but it was silly back then and of a different kind not degree; here movies appeared to be entering into the gratuitous upon further gratuitous upon further gratuitous violence inside a not-so-funny comic collage genre of movie). Yeah, I know people will say “Oh, you just don’t get it”.
But I am also aware of how “cool” it is for the critic or watcher to approve of this whole genre because it’s just so “revolutionary chique”
breaking barriers and hey, they say to themselves, I belong to these trend setters. After awhile, hearing a bunch of guys swear profusely for the whole movie to establish their street cred, you almost feel you’re watching a teen producer trying to show how cool he is with it all (i.e how many dirty little words can I come up with before mommy hits me). It becomes, for lack of a better term, incredibly childish and puerile. When there is no redeeming plot or character, it is the film equivalent of “shock art” and basically only reinforces the notion of the banality of the violence on the screen. I hate this trend in recent movies.
Just my 2 cents. And on that note, back to the fun
