Quentin Tarantino is reportedly working on his final movie "The Movie Critic”. Mike ranks his 9 feature films from worst to best. Mike also gives his thoughts on Taratino retiring, his legacy, what makes his movies unique, his historically long runtimes and what he does that no other director can all off. In the movie review, Mike talks about 65 starring Adam Driver. It’s about astronaut who crash lands on a mysterious planet and quickly discovers he's actually stranded on Earth…but from 65 million years ago and he's not alone! In the Trailer Park, Mike talks abut the first real look at Disney’s live action “The Little Mermaid” after the trailer debuted at the Oscars.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome back to movie Mike's movie podcast. I
am your host Movie Mike. Today I will be ranking
all nine films from Quentin Tarantino. Whether you love him,
whether you hate him, or whether you're not even that
familiar with this work. I hope you joined me on
this journey through cinema. This is all because his tenth
and final film is being released and I might have
(00:20):
a chance of being in this movie, and I'll tell
you why. In the review, we'll talk about the sci
fi film sixty five, and in the trailer park we
now have our first look at all the characters in
the new Little Mermaid movie coming out in theaters later
this year. So if you love it when I ran
about Disney, stick around for that. Thank you for being subscribed,
Shout out to the Monday Morning Movie crew. And now
(00:41):
let's talk movies. In a world where everyone and their
mother has a podcast, one man stands to infiltrate the
ears of listeners like never before in a movie podcast,
A man with so much movie knowledge, he's basically like
a walking AUMTV with Clive from the Nastril podcast net
(01:03):
movie podinast Quentin Tarantino is reportedly working on his final movie.
It is called The Movie Critic. If there was ever
a movie I was going to be a part of,
this would be it. So Quentin Tarantino, I am available.
I will clear out my entire schedule to be a
part of this movie. In all seriousness, though, if there
(01:24):
is one director that I would like to sit down
with and talk to about movies, it would be Quentin Tarantino.
And as we are going to get into in this
entire list, I will tell you about all the things
that I love about as films, I would have to
say he is my favorite director. As basic as that
may sound, as much of a film burrow that it
may make me out to be, he is just somebody
(01:47):
whose work I look at and think that is exactly
what I want to see when I go to the movies.
I love how much of a nerd he is. This
guy loves talking about film, but not even just film
in regards to movies, literal film, the seventy millimeter film
used to make a movie. He could go on and
on about it. That's why I love listening to interviews
(02:08):
with him. So I am a little sad that he
is going to hang it up as a director after
ten movies. This is something he's been saying for a
very long time. Now he's doing ten movies and done,
but the project doesn't have a studio yet, although Sony
is rumored to be a potential candidate for this movie.
There aren't a whole lot of details out about this
movie yet, but it's set to be set in the
(02:28):
late seventies in Los Angeles, not a lot of big
surprises there. It has a female lead. Some sources have
been speculating that the movie may focus on a very
influential movie critic named Pauline Koe and I actually heard
him recently in an interview talking about her because he
was out promoting his book and he had asked her
why she had never written a book, and she said,
(02:48):
why would I write a book. I've already told my
story in every single movie review that I've done, and
that really set in with me, and I think that
is something I've tried to carry over onto this podcast
and something to you, because yes, I do this podcast
because I love movies. I like talking about why I
enjoy or dislike movies, but I also set out to
share a little slice of myself, and each of those
(03:10):
movie reviews so that quote has really stayed embedded in
my head ever since I heard him talking about her.
So if it is based on her, that would be amazing.
So before we get into this list, let's learn a
little bit about our director, Quentin Tarantino. First of all,
what exactly is a director? The term gets thrown around
so many times. Maybe at this point you're afraid to ask,
(03:30):
So that's okay, you don't have to worry about that
on this podcast. A director is the creative lead in
a film. They are the ones responsible for holding the
creative vision throughout the whole process, from the pre production
to the final edit. It all falls on their shoulders.
A movie has an executive producer or a producer, and
they are the ones who hire their director, and that
(03:53):
director ultimately becomes in charge of the entire production, so
they are the ones behind it all. They work with
the cinematographer to get the look of the movie. They're
involved in the editing sum directors will edit a movie themselves.
A director like Quentin Tarantino is very involved most of
the time, not only directing but also writing his movies.
It all goes back to him as a teenager. He
(04:14):
started writing movies at the age of fourteen, and then
he dropped out of school in sixteen to train to
be an actor. He dropped out after two years and
started working at a video rental store called Video Archives,
and that is where his true love of movies really
began to flourish because he was around him every single day.
He said, this is what influenced his directorial choices. He
(04:35):
loves seeing people come in pick out a movie and
asking them why they wanted to see this movie. Quentin
Tarantino is a two time Oscar winner, both for Original Screenplay.
He won in ninety five with Pulp Fiction and twenty
thirteen with Djengo Unchained, but he has never won an
Oscar for Best Director. So maybe for his tenth film. Maybe,
as we saw at this last Oscars, it was a
(04:57):
lot of people who have been snubbed throughout the year
finally getting their flowers. So how perfect a bookend it
would be if Quentin Tarantino put out this tenth and
final film about a movie critic, truly playing in to
the movie critics who are part of the academy that
will make this decision for him to win that at
the end of his career, allegedly that would make everything
(05:18):
come full circle. And finally, before we get into the list,
what makes a Quentin Tarantino movie a Tarantino movie. You'll
find a lot of themes when breaking down his movies
that we're going to get into. A lot of pop culture,
a lot of dark humor, a lot of nonlinear storylines,
lots of fun cameos, but most importantly, heavy use of profanity.
(05:39):
I love that every movie has a look and a
feel to it, and in my head, all of Quentin
Tarantino's movies exist in this same universe. But I'm pretty
sure he would hate that idea and never set out
to create an entire Quentin Tarantino universe. So that is
a little bit about our director. Now let's get into
the list. At number nine from twenty fifteen, I have
(06:00):
The Hateful Eight. It has the longest runtime out of
any Quentin Tarantino movie at two hours and fifty five minutes,
almost three hours long, and it is the one movie
he has that I feel does not warrant that long
of a run time. If you haven't seen it, this
movie is a Western set in the dead. It's about
a bounty hunter and his prisoner, who finds shelter in
(06:20):
a cabin and then discover all these crazy people living
there as well. The movie made one hundred and fifty
two million dollars at the box office. I feel like
this movie is about fifty five minutes too long, and
if there was one movie to be stricken from his
career that I would not miss, this would be the
only one. I don't believe he's ever made a bad movie,
(06:42):
but this is one I saw once and never had
to revisit again. He loves westerns. Every interview I see
him do, he loves talking about spaghetti westerns. It's a
very classic Hollywood concept which he is just always drawn to.
And I feel like, out of all of his movies,
even more so than Once upon a Time in Hollywood,
this was the most self indulgent of just all the
(07:05):
things he likes, and that is what nerds do. I
can respect that you are super into something you want
to make a movie completely about that subject. That's fine,
But this one just doesn't really hit for me. There
are so many plot points in this movie where I
felt like it just dragged along, and I think that's
because I just don't like westerns. It has some decent performances,
some good scenes. It's not a poorly written movie, but overall,
(07:29):
when it comes to the story in this movie, it's
the weakest of anything he's ever written. So at number
nine we are going with the Hateful Late from twenty fifteen.
At number eight from two thousand and four, I have
Kill Bill Volume two. This movie made one hundred and
fifty four million dollars at the box office. It is
the continuation the sequel of Kill Bill Volume one, where
(07:52):
the bride played by Uma Thurman continues request of vengeance
against her former boss and lover Bill, the reclusive bouncer Bud,
and the treacherous one Idol. This was a big hit
for Quentin Tarantino. It actually made more than Kill Bill
Volume one. And the thing about him, he doesn't make sequels.
And the only reason there are two parts to this
(08:13):
movie is because it was originally intended to be one big,
long movie, but he thought a three plus four hour
movie would not screen so well people wouldn't want to
be invested in that, so he decided to split it
into volume one and volume two, so if you watch
them all together, it does feel like one big movie.
But what a genius decision to split it up make
(08:34):
a lot more money off of this when essentially all
you had to do was film one big, long movie.
So I think that's why I like Volume one better.
This one has a little bit more of a slow burn.
There's some good dialogue, some solid action, but doesn't quite
compare two part one. So maybe it's a good thing
that he doesn't make sequels. He puts everything all into
one part of a movie and then that's it. So
(08:56):
that's why I put this one at number eight. At
number seven from nineteen ninety two, I'm putting Reservoir Dogs.
It has the shortest run time out of any Quentin
Tarantino movie, at only an hour and thirty nine minutes.
It is also the lowest grossing movie out of any
of his films, making only two point ninety nine million
dollars at the box office. But why is that. It's
(09:19):
because it was his directorial debut and was only shown
on a very limited amount of screens. But that didn't matter.
This movie made him what seemed like a overnight success,
so despite that small number at the box office, this
is what rose him to directorial fame. After this movie
premiered at the Cane Film Festival. He couldn't go walk
out on the street with how people recognizing him. And
(09:41):
this movie was so ahead of its time that everybody
just started doing copycat versions of Reservoir Dogs. If you
look at movies in the nineties, everybody wanted to have
a story like this. The list goes on and on
with Reservoir Dog copycats, the most famous one for me
being The Boondock Saints. That's exactly the this movie. If
you haven't seen Reservoir Dogs. The movie is about a
(10:03):
simple jewelry heighst going horribly wrong, and the surviving criminals
begin to suspect that one of them is a police informant.
And I rarely say this, especially about his movies, but
this is one I wish was longer. I remember the
first time I watched this, I was thinking, that's it,
like I want to see more. Great movie. Put them
on the map. Reservoir Dogs is in at number seven.
(10:25):
At number six from twenty nineteen, I'm going with Once
Upon a Time in Hollywood, where the runtime of two
hours and forty minutes. It is his third longest movie.
It's about a faded television actor played by Leonardo DiCaprio
and his stunt double played by Brad Pitt, trying to
make a comeback and achieve that fame and success that
he achieved in the final years of Hollywood's Golden Age
(10:48):
in nineteen sixty nine Los Angeles. The movie made three
hundred and seventy seven million dollars worldwide. And this is
part of Quentin Tarantino's revisionist tales which he is famous for.
This one follows the Manson murders and it's probably his
most sophisticated movie. And I think that's why people love
(11:08):
or hate this movie. I feel like critics love this movie,
but the average movie goer did not care for this
movie whatsoever. And I think why that is is because
this movie has a very laid back plot. It's a
lot of hanging out, it's a lot of slow action
without a big narrative over the entire thing. So it
feels unlike any other Quentin Tarantino movie. It's really his
(11:32):
love later to Hollywood again. He is fascinated with old
school Hollywood Los Angeles in the sixties seventies. That is
his jam, that is his jelly. So he set out
to make a movie have that look have that feel
if his career existed in the sixties and seventies, this
is the type of movie he would have been making
around that time. So I think the theme we see
(11:54):
here is he is self indulgent, but unlike in Hateful Eight,
where he just made a right up Western, I felt
like it lent itself to a much more fun movie
going experience, and I enjoyed watching this movie in theaters.
I will say this movie felt a little bit long
the first run through at two hours and forty minutes,
(12:14):
but for some reason, I just liked the aesthetic of it.
I like the feeling, the coloring of this movie, so
I really enjoyed this movie. I will say I completely
love it enough to put it in my top three.
The reason that is it doesn't have as much of
a rewatchability as some of his other movies. But you
can't deny having Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio together, two
(12:36):
of the biggest movie stars ever appearing like this is
what I live for. But I get why of all
the people I've told about this movie, most of them
hate it. Not me. I love Brad Pitt's performance as
this aging stuntman. I love the rewriting history Margot Robbie,
and of course it produced one of my favorite memes
(12:56):
ever of Leonardo DiCaprio pointing at the TV. So at
number six is Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. At
number five, I'm going with the movie from nineteen ninety seven,
Jackie Brown, with a runtime of two hours and thirty
four minutes. This is one of his most underrated movies
of all time. The movie is about a flight attendant
with a criminal past who gets caught by the ATF
(13:19):
for smuggling and then they enforce her to become an
informant against the drug dealer that she works for, so
she has to find a way to get out of
this entire situation without being killed. Pam Grier is amazing
in this movie, but unfortunately, this is the movie that
people are probably the most unfamiliar with from Quentin Tarantino.
(13:39):
Some people would even say it's his most forgettable movie.
And to those people, I say, what is wrong with you?
I love the movies of Quentin Tarantinos that focus on
a strong female lead, badass women, and that is exactly
what Pam Grier does playing Jackie Brown. So maybe out
of any one of his movies. It's the most straight ahead.
(14:01):
And yes, you could argue if he stayed in this style,
we would not be talking about him today. He would
just become another director that had a hit in the
nineties and then did a bunch of average movies. But
to me, out of any of his movies, this has
the best work when it comes to the writing, the
fleshing out of all these characters, from Pam Greer to
(14:22):
Samuel L. Jackson, who plays one of his most unhinged
characters out of any Quentin Tarantino movie that he's been in.
So if you have not seen Jackie Brown, or maybe
you haven't watched it since the nineties, go do it
today because this movie is great and it lands at
number five on my list at number four. Speaking of
awesome female leads, I am going with Kill Bill from
(14:45):
two thousand and three, with the runtime at one hour
and fifty one minutes. Uma Thurman plays the bride for
the very first time in this movie. She's just awoken
from a four year coma after being betrayed by a
former assassin, and she goes wreaking havoc and seeking revenge.
And Kill Bill was his first movie since Jackie Brown,
(15:05):
So there was a big gap between nineteen ninety seven
and two thousand and three, so I felt like that
was a contributing factor to They're being build up. They're
being hype around this movie, Quentin Tarantino being back with
another strong female lead, but this one took it up
on an entirely different level because he created one of
the best action movies of the two thousands. The movie
(15:27):
made one hundred and eighty million dollars worldwide on a
thirty million dollar budget, which is bizarre to me that
this movie was made with thirty million dollars, with all
of the action sequences, the amazing wardrobe in this movie,
landing a big star like Uma Thurman to play the lead,
and the entire thing playing out like a twisted, dark
bedtime story that you would tell your kids. I love
(15:49):
the narration in this movie, but I think what sets
this movie apart from every other movie that I've talked
about so far is the final scene. One of the
best third acts in any action movie. The first time
I saw that, it blew my mind. Uma Thurman in
that yellow outfit resembling Bruce Lee slicing people up left
(16:10):
and right, the bride became one of the most recognizable
female protagonists of all time. In the two thousand you
cannot escape a teenage boys bedroom without seeing a kill
Bill poster planted up on the wall. So at number four,
because of all those things, I have Kill Bill from
two thousand and three getting into the top three. Now
(16:31):
at number three, I'm going with Pulp Fiction from nineteen
ninety four, with a runtime of two hours and thirty
four minutes. The movie follows the lives of two mob hitman,
a boxer, a gangster and his wife, and a pair
of diner bandits and how all their four lives are intertwined.
The movie made two hundred and thirteen million dollars worldwide.
(16:52):
It has what I would say is the best soundtrack
out of any Quentin Tarantino movie, and it has the
most non linear narrative out of any of his movies.
And that is the best thing about Pulp Fiction. The
way I was introduced to this movie, the movie came
out in ninety four before I saw because I was
three years old. In ninety four, I saw a Simpsons
(17:13):
episode called twenty two Short Films about Springfield, which came
out in nineteen ninety six. Season seven, episode twenty one.
I have those memorized. The only TV show that I
can tell you exactly the episode title, what season, and
what episode number, because I had all the box sets
of DVDs. Anyway, in that episode, they do a parody
(17:33):
of pulp fiction, and that is how I was exposed
to it. They play out the entire thing exactly how
it's done in the movie is how it's done in
the episode. It intertwines all the wives of the people
in Springfield and they break it down. Scene for seeing,
you have snake running over Chie Wigham when he encounters
them in the street, they start fighting. They get thrown
(17:53):
into the guy's basement. So I remember watching that as
a kid and thinking, Ah, the Simpsons, they're so creative,
and then realizing, Oh, that's actually a movie. Simpsons do
that a lot. I'm exposed to a lot of their
parodies before I even realize they're an actual movie. I
should probably do an episode on that. I think what
this movie really established for him is how incredible he
(18:14):
is at creating dialogue. This movie has some of the
best dialogue out of any movie from the nineties. I
credit a lot of that to Samuel L. Jackson's character
who drops so many f words but has so many
memorable lines say what a day, I care il gare you,
I'm gonna say one more times, or even just the
(18:36):
one liners. This is a tasty burger. But most importantly,
this movie showcased how great of a storyteller he is.
It also gave us one of the best dance scenes,
and just has a really amazing cast from Quentin Tarantino
himself has a role in this. John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson,
Uma Thurman, Bruce Willis, Tim Roth, Christopher Walking, being Rames.
(19:00):
This list goes on and on and on and on
and on. Steve Bushemi and it was also one of
the first times I was introduced to how much he
pays attention to the little things in a movie. My
favorite movies of his have scenes with food that make
me want to eat whatever that character is eating, And
for this movie, it would be the big Khuna burger
(19:21):
that Samuel L. Jackson takes a big old bite out of.
This gives a tasty burger. It's a tasty burger. It's
a tasty movie. At number three is pulp fiction from
nineteen ninety four. At number two from twenty twelve, I'm
Going with Django Unchained. With a runtime of two hours
and forty five minutes, it is his second longest film
(19:43):
and the theme of this movie is revenge. With the
help of a German bounty hunter, a freed slave played
by Jamie Fox sets out to rescue his wife from
a brutal plantation owner in Mississippi. The movie made four
hundred and fifty million dollars at the box office. So
much money, I said, million weird. Four hundred and fifty
(20:03):
million dollars. It is his highest grossing film of all time.
In his movie that probably pushed the envelope the most
when it comes to the subject matter when it comes
to the dialogue, when it comes to all of the
curse words, when it comes to the use of other words.
It is probably the one that people criticize the most.
That people just had something to say about this movie.
(20:25):
It is at times hard to watch, but man, there
are so many great performances in this movie from Carrie Washington,
Christoph Waltz, Jamie Fox, who you see a side of
him come out that you've never really seen before. And
a lot of that is due to the performance that
Quentin Tarantino was able to get out of him, and
how much he worked with him on really fine tuning
(20:46):
who Django is and really getting him into the headspace
of what his character would be experiencing at this time,
so you don't really see the cool, calm collective Jamie Fox.
He was able to take that all away and take
on the role of Django. This is a movie that
opened on Christmas Day, which is I believe at the
time was the third movie Quentin Tarantino had come out
(21:08):
on Christmas Day. It was Django, Unchained, Jackie Brown, and
Hateful Late all came out on Christmas Day. I don't
necessarily think of Quentin Tarantino when it comes to Christmas,
but hey, I'll take Blood and Guts over any other
Christmas movie. The costumes in this movie are a plus.
The food imagery is also a top notch. I love
the white cake. I love the scene when Django and
(21:30):
Doctor King Schultz meet for the first time. They poured
themselves a beer. It looks all foamy. He slabs off
that foam with that little metal spoon looking thing, and
I don't drink beer anymore, but man, I would take
one of those beers right now. This movie is what
I would consider his second masterpiece. I believe what I
(21:51):
put at number two and number one are two masterpieces
that I would change nothing about these films. I think
what he created in this movie was a villain that
you just hate, you completely utterly hate. Sometimes you can
find a little shred of good in a villain, you
see some kind of humility, but there is nothing good
about Leonardo DiCaprio's character in this movie. And what I
(22:14):
loved about Django Unchained is how they were able to
create such tension, and that is something that maybe Quentin
Tarantino doesn't get enough credit for the ability to create
tension with a camera, with dialogue, with amazing actors. That's
all you need, no special effects, no really tricks to editing.
(22:34):
That's it. That is the power of dialogue. That is
the power of good writing. And I love when Quentin
tarantino movies have this moment where everything just goes down
as hits the wall and all the cards get thrown
on the table, and that's what happens in the dinner
scene where Leonardo DiCaprio's character, the villain in the movie,
completely loses it and tensions are at all time high.
(23:00):
Hi sat on that tabletop. If you lift those palms
off that tunnel shell tabletops both fails. That sought off.
That is such a powerful scene. Leonardo DiCaprio proves that
he is the best actor. He actually cut his hand
with glass while hitting the Table's continued to stay in
(23:20):
character and play out the scene with real blood. I
think the blood they actually used to smear on Kerry
Washington's face ended up being fake blood after you got
checked out, but still an amazing moment. I hated Leonardo
DiCaprio's character, but I loved the way he talked. Make
these gentlemen receipt for twelve thousand dollars peace. It was
a pleasure doing business with y'all. Now, gentlemen, if you
(23:41):
care to join me in the Paula, we will be
serving white cake like I wanted that Bikahuna burger, like
I wanted a drink of that beer. I wanted a
piece of that white cake. Gentlemen, you have my curiosity,
but now you have my attention. So at number two,
I am going with Django unchained from twenty twelve. Before
we get to number one, there are some honorable mentions.
(24:04):
Even though he only has nine movies he considers to
be his full length feature films, he does have another
couple of movies that he has directed, death Proof, which
came out in two thousand and seven, which was a
double feature, a Grindhouse production with his director Buddy Robert Rodriguez.
So the second part of this was his movie Planet Terror.
I don't know why he doesn't consider this to be
(24:25):
one of his movies. I guess because it was that
joint project. But death Proof is pretty solid my favorite
of those two movies. What happened to be Planet Terror though,
so maybe that's why he doesn't count it. But the
movie did make fifty million dollars at the box office.
The other honorable mention would be from Dusk Till Dawn,
which he didn't direct, but he starred in it and
he wrote it. But that movie was directed again by
(24:46):
his director, Buddy Robert Rodriguez. A great movie if you
haven't seen that one and you want to see his
acting abilities, which he's not the best actor. He is
a good actor, but I really like him as one
of the leads in that movie alongside George Gloody. And
he also co wrote and directed a movie called My
Best Friend's Birthday, which came out in nineteen eighty seven,
(25:07):
which most of the film reels were almost completely destroyed
in a fire, so good luck finding that one, But
at number one, the best Quentin Tarantino movie of all
time if you haven't guested by now from two thousand
and nine, it is Inglorious Bastards, with the runtime of
two hours and thirty three minutes. The movie is again
(25:28):
Quentin Tarantino rewriting history. It takes place in Nazi occupied
France during World War Two. You have a group of
Jewish US soldiers on a mission to assassinate Nazi leaders,
including Hitler, and that just so happens to coincide with
a theater owner's vengeful plan to do the exact same thing. Again.
(25:49):
The theme here is revenge, and this movie gave me
the most gratifying feeling of revenge I've ever felt in
a movie, and it made me fall in love with
the idea of a movie and rewriting history. And what
a subject to pick World War Two, where you have
the most hateful figure in all of history, Hitler, and
being able to make a movie where he completely gets obliterated,
(26:13):
and all the Nazi ideology is just viewed and portrayed
in a way that it is this ugly, disgusting force,
and all the people they have done wrong, all of
the people that they have killed, are able to rise
up and fight back and unleash that same vengeful power
against them that is so powerful. You have an incredible
(26:35):
cast in this movie from Brad Pitt again in my
favorite role that he has ever done, playing although the Apache,
I just love the way he just talks in this movie. Now,
I don't think so more like chewed out. I've been
chewed out before. And Quentin Tarantino made Christoph Waltz a
star with this movie, playing one of the most hated
(26:56):
villains in all of cinema. That's a dingo? Is that
the way you say that's a bingo? You just say
bengo bingo? Fun. Sorry, I get so excited about that scene.
And then I love all the side characters, the supporting
cast from Eli Roth as the Bear, jew bj Novak
(27:19):
as the little Man. You have Hugo sticklets, all of
these just cool names that combined with the look and
feel of this movie having a red color palette. If
I could get a color palette tattooed on my back.
It would be the Inglorious Bastards color palette because it
just looks so so beautiful. And this movie has my
favorite moments of tension that we've been talking about on
(27:42):
this episode. The scene at the bar wherever all the
US soldiers are there but posing as Nazi soldiers, and
how you can create this incredible standoff that all just
begins from these characters having a conversation. And now every
single word on that page of script is so important
to building that tension, and just the small little inflections
(28:03):
that they do that add so much weight to the scene.
And then it's all the bullets flying of course that
makes it visually stimulating, and the very grotesque, very brutal
violence that ensues after that is you know, Quentin Tarantino's edge,
But it all comes back to that dialogue and that's
what makes them so powerful. Again, just the camera, just actors,
(28:24):
just the words on the page are able to do this,
and that is the best example of it in this movie.
And then it has the best use of food in
any of his movies when Hans is interrogating Shoshana, and
then you have the strudal with the krem Hall. I
would take that brutal interrogation just to have a bite
of that strudal. You also have one of the most
(28:45):
satisfying third acts when you make it to that theater
in Paris and her plan succeeds where she is able
to lock all of these Nazis in this room, including Hitler,
and burn the place to the ground. So you have
one of the best movies of all time, one of
the best villains, the best dialogue, the best cinematography. It
is a perfect movie. It is his only other second masterpiece,
(29:09):
and on top of that, it was my best movie
theater experience of the two thousands. Came at a time
where I really needed a movie like this. I had
just graduated high school in two thousand and nine. Came
out in the summer. I was in that weird transition
where you go from high school to college. In this
movie is the best thing that happened to me that year,
And a movie that has a runtime of two hours
and thirty three minutes does not feel like that whatsoever.
(29:33):
I watched this movie recently. I started it on a plane,
which tends to be a thing I've been doing lately.
I didn't finish it on the plane, but I came
home and made sure I finished watching this movie because
it is that good still after all these years. So
at number one from two thousand and nine, the best
Quentin Tarantino movie of all time is in Glorious Bastards.
(29:53):
If you think I ranked one of these movies wrong,
let me know what your ranking would be. Send me
an email movie Mike d at email dot com, or
hit me up on socials at my gidictro on everything.
We'll come back and talk about sixty five. Let's get
into our movie review now. I want to talk about
sixty five with Adam Driver. We now have our first
(30:16):
bomb of the year. Whenever a movie comes out and
it just starts getting ripped to shreds by critics, it
has a low run and Tomato score. I try not
to pay too much attention to that because as a
movie fan, as a moviegoer, as a movie reviewer, I
like to be the judge myself because I don't always
buy into all that. And for you who listened to
(30:36):
this podcast, I want to let you know from my perspective,
I saw the reviews, I saw the score, but I
was giving this movie the benefit of the doubt because
of the premise. It's about an astronaut who crashed lands
on a mysterious planet, only to discover he is not
alone and it's actually the Earth sixty five million years ago.
That is what this movie is about. Adam Driver plays
(30:58):
the main character, the astronaut, the pilot of this ship,
and then he with the only other survivor of the
crash is this younger girl, and they try to find
their way back home. So that is the premise of
the movie. We'll get into what I think about it,
and if you want to hear a review or I
just go and rip a movie to shreds, be prepared
(31:19):
because that is what we're going to do here. But
here is just a little bit of the sixty five trailer.
I don't know where we are. I've located Bard, survivors, Charles,
the atmosphere or is breathable. There's something gaily on up there.
(31:41):
Even that trailer is boring. So a couple of things
that I look for when deciding whether a movie is
going to be good or not, I find them in
the trailer. First thing up in this trailer is the
title of the movie sixty five. That is a boring title.
That is not a sexy title. It's also kind of
a confusing title and a hard movie to search for.
(32:02):
Even looking up things about this movie, I would type
sixty five and I would just get like math problems,
so bad title. And then you look into how they
are selling the movie. They're really cashing in on that tagline,
that quick little premise. A nastronaut crash lands on a
mysterious planet, only to discover he's not alone and it's
(32:22):
Earth sixty five million years ago. You think, how could
a movie be bad with such a great premise. If
you are able to sell a movie in one line,
it is probably gonna suck because it just appeals to
the studio. It appeals to the way you promote a movie.
If you can sell a movie in one line, I
don't want to watch it. It's not going to be
(32:43):
very good because you're only selling me the sizzle. I
know that there's going to be no substance whatsoever in
that movie. Very few have proved me wrong. Very few
it proved me wrong. But if you are banking on
a tagline, that movie is going to suck. So when
it comes to six I didn't like the title. The
storyline in the beginning, it's a little confusing and it
(33:06):
just kind of jumps very quickly. So it's about Adam
Driver's character. He is living on this planet with his family.
His daughter is having to undergo this treatment. Treatment is
very expensive, so in order to pay for it, he
takes on this mission. But it's going to take him
away for two years, but he's going to make three
(33:27):
times his salary, so even though he can't be there
for his daughter, he is able to go on this
mission and pay for it. He comes back two years later,
so it's him having to make that hard decision. But
you don't really get too emotionally invest in the beginning
because that happens conversation with his daughter, and then he's gone.
You're like, oh, I guess he's going now. And then
(33:49):
he is flying through space, he gets hit by this asteroid,
hits his ship, he goes down, lands on this planet,
and then that's where our story kicks off. This movie
just had no imagination whatsoever, and there are a lot
of good elements here. You have dinosaurs, you have sci fi,
you have a ship, you have Adam Driver, who is
(34:09):
a great actor. He played a good villain in Star
Wars as Kylo Wren, so he can do that. I
don't question his abilities as an actor. But there was
nothing here to chew on, and you think, how can
you make a movie about dinosaurs? Boring? But what this
movie kind of was in the beginning, it's kind of
a toy story rip off. Even what you heard there
(34:30):
in the trailer is him crash landing on this planet
scoping it out. He's like, oh, it's breathable. That's exactly
what happens to Buzz Lightyear when he first lands in
Andy's room. That exact same scene sixty five ripped it
off this movie. It was also kind of a slow burn,
and you can't really slow burn a sci fi movie,
(34:51):
not with a movie like this get into the action
and where it really fumbled the ball here is it
didn't really own any of the genre it was living in.
Is it a sci fi movie? Is it a dinosaur movie?
Or is it just this crazy space movie? It wasn't
really anything. And not only that, it was plagued by
a lot of lazy things, lazy writing, cheap special effects.
(35:16):
There were things going off like smoke. It looked like
I was on a ride at Disney and they're like,
all right, fire the smoke, And that's exactly what happened
in the movie. Was this movie made in two thousand
and six. What was going on here? Even down to
the music in this movie, it was almost like they
just went to moviemusic dot Com, grabbed some tracks, slapped
(35:38):
on some MP three's on this movie, and there it is.
It really made me realize how much effort goes into
making a good dinosaur movie like Jurassic Park. You think
all you have to do is throw some dinosaurs on
the screen and it's entertaining. That's kind of what I
thought was the formula in the latest Jurassic Park reboot trilogy.
(36:00):
But when you see this, you'll realize it's not just
that you got to create something else. Because there are
t rex Is in this movie. There are lots of
other dinosaurs in this movie, and you just don't really
care when they are on the screen. It made Jurassic
World Dominion look Oscar worthy. The best part about this
movie was his gun. It kind of reminded me of
that Turock video game if you ever played that. On
(36:21):
n sixty four, he was a dinosaur Hunter. If there
was one thing I could take away from this movie,
it was like, Okay, that's actually kind of a cool gun.
But it didn't really make me buy into the fact
that Adam Driver's character was good at his job. Why
did they pay this guy three times a salary? Everything
in this movie was him failing. He didn't do anything heroic,
(36:41):
he didn't do anything good. He is not good at
his job. Were they just trying to get rid of him, like,
hey man, sending him out on a space mission. He'll
be gone two years, he won't make it back. It
was almost like they set him up in this movie
because he wasn't good at his job. He wasn't really
that great of a lead. It wasn't really that great
of a character. I cared nothing about his relationship with
the other survivor, the young girl in this movie, not
(37:04):
dogging on her whatsoever. She did what she could with
that script. But with a movie like this, you can't
be mediocre. And I tend to like movies that have
a very limited cast. Movies that are in space tend
to have that because they are so expensive to make.
It's paying for the ships, all the special effects, everything
(37:26):
else going on. They usually have a very limited cast. Also,
space is just very isolating. That's how those movies kind
of work. But in this case, it didn't do it
for me. Especially when you have a TV show out
right now, like The Last of Us where it's all
about older guy, younger character him trying to protect her.
You have that show doing it so well, so to
(37:49):
do a movie similar like this and it be so
bad and so uninspiring, you can't do that. There were
a lot of moments that I was just like, what
am I watching? Very much? Some lol moments that were
not supposed to be LOL moments. I won't ruin anything
in case for some reason you decide you want to
go watch this movie. But there is a part whereas
(38:10):
character falls into quicksand quicksand in a movie in twenty
twenty three, I just wasn't buying into this. With this
subject matter, you deserve to be submerged into that world.
This movie felt like I was just watching an actor
on a movie set. I was so aware of everything happening.
So it was like Adam Driver's character in Girls became
(38:33):
a movie star and this is the movie he went
on to do. So it was almost like, really, with
any TV show when somebody becomes an actor and like,
I'm going to be in a movie, and they play
the trailer and it's very like cheesy and elaborate, very
like what you make out a big Hollywood movie to be.
That is what this was like. It was like a
parody movie that went into something else. It was that bad.
(38:54):
So this movie should have really owned a genre. I
think space It could have been really cool in if
they just made a straight up horror movie with dinosaurs,
that is something that hasn't been done. Nobody has the
budget for that. I don't know what Sony was doing.
They're taking a big hit on this one. Movie has
(39:15):
not done well at the box office. Has only made
twenty two point four million dollars today in the United States,
about another nine million dollars internationally. But it has but
it had a budget of forty five million dollars, so
I don't really see it making that backup. Maybe when
they start playing it on airplanes or cable it'll make
a little bit back. But man, a movie I wanted
(39:38):
to like. When I first saw the trailer, I was like, Oh,
that looks interesting. I like dinosaurs. I like Adam Driver.
I don't like any of the things together. So four
sixty five. I give it one out of five dinosaur prints.
It's our first bomb of the year. It's time to
(39:59):
head down to movie. You're like, I just went on
this rant a couple of episodes ago with Peter Pan.
But we are back because we have our first real
look at The Little Mermaid. They put out the poster,
they put out a teaser, but we really didn't get
a look at what all the animals are going to
look like under the sea, and now we have it,
(40:19):
and now what I was expecting at all. I want
to get into what I fully think about The Little
Mermaid and what Disney is doing with all of their
live action remakes of all their most famous movies. But
before we get into that, here is just a little
bit of the new The Little Mermaid trailer. You broke
at the Rooms. He went to the abuff world. A
man was drowning. I had to save him. This obsession
(40:41):
with humans has to stop. I just want to know
more about them. God child, I can help you. You
can't live in that world unless you've become a human yourself. Impossible.
(41:02):
That's what a lit fun So this movie entirely doesn't
look what I was expecting. I wondered how they were
going to make all the undersea creatures look because we've
seen live action reimaginations of Disney movies like The Lion King,
(41:22):
and the reason that one felt a little bit off
to me is because it took away the charm that
was the animated version of The Lion King. It took
the exact same story and created these quote unquote live
action animals which were really just computer animated, realistic looking animals.
And I thought they would maybe do something different with
The Little Mermaid, because it's one thing to animate a lion,
(41:47):
to animate a wart hog and give them a different voice,
that makes a little bit more sense to me. That
looks a little bit more appealing to me. But when
it comes to watching fish under the Sea, not as appealing.
It's not as cute. There's something cute about Sebastian as
a cartoon, Flounder as a cartoon, but when it comes
(42:08):
to them in a live action form, honestly looks a
little bit creepy. Our kids even going to be into
the idea of this movie. Now, you do have a
great lead here. You have Haley Bailey, which I wonder
how many times people get her name wrong and call
her halle Berry just because it looks similar to it.
But it is Haley Bailey as Ariel. She looks like
(42:29):
a great Ariel. There's nothing that strikes me weird about
the human element to this movie. Javier Bardam as King Triton,
Melissa McCarthy as Ursula looks perfect. I think it's just
I was expecting this world to look a little bit different,
to look a little bit more fun and imaginative and
not so right on the nose. They debuted this trailer
(42:51):
at the Oscars, which I like that. I feel like
we get so many debuts of trailers in the Super Bowl,
why not in the Super Bowl of movies. Interesting thing
about this, though, is they showed the trailer during the Oscars,
and it actually cost them ten million dollars to do that.
Disney paid ten million dollars to show this two and
a half minute trailer during the Oscars. But Disney also
(43:15):
owns ABC, which is where the Oscars were broadcast on,
so it's almost like they paid themselves ten million dollars
to showcase their own movie. This movie appears to follow
the exact same story as the original animated movie, which
came out in nineteen eighty nine. You have Ariel being
fascinated with the world above the sea. You have Prince Eric,
(43:36):
but she is a mermaid and forbidden to interact with humans.
But in order to follow her heart, she makes a
deal with the evil sea witch Ursula, who gives her
the chance to experience life above the sea. And from
what I've seen in this trailer, I think this is
going to be the first real big bomb of Disney's
live action remakes. And that's because I don't think this
(43:58):
story translates. I almost think they're going to have the
same success that they had with other stories like this,
like Beauty and the Beasts, Dumbo, Aladdin and the Lion King.
I think Disney is almost in a space of they
are too big to fail when it comes to their
historic movies. But as we saw with Pinocchio, which didn't
come out in theaters, it was a Disney plus exclusive.
(44:20):
They can do wrong, and a lot of the times
they make up for it with a lot of marketing,
as we saw with what they did at the Oscars
showing the trailer there. Not only do they have the
money to promote the movie, but they also have the
legacy of Disney. Ah, we made a new Little Mermaid movie.
We are Disney here it is. I just think that
when it comes to this one, it's going to catch
(44:42):
them off guard when it doesn't do that well opening weekend.
We're seeing now for the first time that Disney movies
in theaters aren't a hit. And maybe it's because they're
a victim of their own plan here. With Disney Plus,
you have given people the ability to watch your movies
at home, and they're already paying for that there, and
it is largely beneficial to families to save money. You
(45:06):
don't have to go to the theater to watch a
kids movie and take all your kids. You can just
put it on at home. We saw that with Strange
World that did not do well at the box office,
even though it is a pretty good movie. I can
only imagine if they had actually put Pinocchio out in
theaters how much money they would have lost on that movie.
And maybe they're kind of playing their cards with the
movies they choose to put out in theaters and the
(45:28):
ones they choose to put out on Disney Plus. Maybe
they're not taking that risk. With Peter Pan and Wendy,
and they believe a little bit more in The Little Mermaids.
So I think it's unfortunate that this movie won't do
so well, mainly because the people involved. I like all
the actors. I love the lead Hallie Bailey, I love
Javier Bardem, Melissa McCarthy, de Vie Diggs as Sebastian, has
(45:50):
a great cast. I just think it has no artistic vision,
and that is what Disney in the past has done best.
Brought stories to life, things that are magical, not just
cash decisions to bring back movies from back in the day.
If I was a kid watching a movie like this
for the first time, I don't feel like I would
be experiencing that same magic. Disney has always been on
(46:12):
the cutting edge of technology and animation, and they're not
doing anything inventive here. Nothing that I see in this
trailer looks like it's pushing any kind of boundary that
Disney has been known for. They're kind of given up
on that a little bit. So it's not only that
they are making a remake of one of their most
famous movies, if that they're not even putting that much
(46:33):
effort into it. I want to see the same level
on the Little Mermaid that I see in Avatar throws
some motion capturing technology on your actors, make the cute
cuddly fish a little bit more cute and cuddly. That
is what they are known for. That is what they
are famous for. And I think the only way this
movie will make up for that is with the performances
and with the songs, which you can't deny the power
(46:55):
of a Disney song. So I'm not always drawn to
the music little aspect of Disney movies as a kid.
Sometimes I lays skip over the songs, I'll be honest,
Except for The Lion King, I can do without some
Disney songs. So, as I've said before, I will go
see this movie, but I will not be happy about it.
And I want to see how this changes, how this
(47:17):
alters their plans for all the movies they have coming out,
because more live action is on the way. We have
Peter Pannon Wendy coming to Disney Plus, and then we
have Mufassa The Lion King coming out in twenty twenty four,
and also in twenty twenty four we have Snow White,
so they aren't slowing down on their live action remakes.
I just want them to put the magic back in
their movies. Make a Disney movie more exciting again, because
(47:40):
I think my future kids deserve better. This week's edition
of Movie Bar I don't know why Disney live action
movies get me so fired up, but that is my
rant for this week. Thank you for listening. Before I go,
I gotta give my listeners shout out of the week.
Do it every single week to somebody who sends me
email movie Mike dat Gmail dot com, hits me up
(48:03):
on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, or Facebook. And this week I'm
going over to my Facebook page, which is Facebook dot
com slash Mike d stro. And this week's listener of
the week is Caroline Manerik, who commented on my Scream
six review and said, you are so entertaining. Love to
listen to your critiques. Keep up the good work, Mike.
You are appreciated. Thank you, Caroline. You are this week's
(48:26):
Movie Crew listener of the Week. And I don't share
comments like this to boost my own ego, like, oh,
look how cool everybody thinks like him, Look how much
everybody loves the podcast. But the reason I share these
comments is honestly, I'm surprised. I love doing this podcast.
I love everybody who listens. I love you right now,
straight up, just I love you because this is my
(48:46):
favorite thing to do, and I just am surprised when
other people care. I feel like when it comes to
anything creative, you put things out and it feels like
it goes to nobody. And I've been going through this
period of my life right now that I've to enter this.
I don't really care what people think about me. Mentality
not meaning that I don't care and I'm gonna put
out crap, but meaning that I want to be my
(49:08):
truest self and I want to portray how I really am,
the most authentic version of myself, without worrying about the
critique of others. And sometimes I think, like I talk
about movies too much, people are going to find me annoying.
I do this podcast and I post these clips, and
it feels like I am ruining everybody's feed, everybody's timeline.
(49:28):
So whenever I see somebody like Caroline share a comment
like that, it makes me not want to quit. It
makes me feel like I'm actually doing something that even
if it's just Caroline, even if it's just you listening
right now. That gives a crap. That's enough for me.
This is all I've ever wanted to do. If I
had a perfect situation, a perfect way I could earn
money in life, it would be just to watch movies
(49:50):
and talk about them and express my thoughts and share
them with you and do this podcast. So the fact
that you take any amount of your week and spend
it here on this pod cast or go over on
my social media and comments and messages, I love you
for that. I love going back and forth into my dms,
and I just love that element out of anything when
(50:11):
it comes to doing this podcast. So thank you, Caroline,
thank you for listening. Hope you come back next week.
We'll be talking about the new Shazam movie. We also
have John Wick coming up after that. It's a great
time to be a movie fan, so I'm glad you're here.
Until then, go out and watch good movies and I
will talk to you later.
Hello, and welcome back to movie Mike's movie podcast. I
am your host Movie Mike. Today I will be ranking
all nine films from Quentin Tarantino. Whether you love him,
whether you hate him, or whether you're not even that
familiar with this work. I hope you joined me on
this journey through cinema. This is all because his tenth
and final film is being released and I might have
(00:20):
a chance of being in this movie, and I'll tell
you why. In the review, we'll talk about the sci
fi film sixty five, and in the trailer park we
now have our first look at all the characters in
the new Little Mermaid movie coming out in theaters later
this year. So if you love it when I ran
about Disney, stick around for that. Thank you for being subscribed,
Shout out to the Monday Morning Movie crew. And now
(00:41):
let's talk movies. In a world where everyone and their
mother has a podcast, one man stands to infiltrate the
ears of listeners like never before in a movie podcast,
A man with so much movie knowledge, he's basically like
a walking AUMTV with Clive from the Nastril podcast net
(01:03):
movie podinast Quentin Tarantino is reportedly working on his final movie.
It is called The Movie Critic. If there was ever
a movie I was going to be a part of,
this would be it. So Quentin Tarantino, I am available.
I will clear out my entire schedule to be a
part of this movie. In all seriousness, though, if there
(01:24):
is one director that I would like to sit down
with and talk to about movies, it would be Quentin Tarantino.
And as we are going to get into in this
entire list, I will tell you about all the things
that I love about as films, I would have to
say he is my favorite director. As basic as that
may sound, as much of a film burrow that it
may make me out to be, he is just somebody
(01:47):
whose work I look at and think that is exactly
what I want to see when I go to the movies.
I love how much of a nerd he is. This
guy loves talking about film, but not even just film
in regards to movies, literal film, the seventy millimeter film
used to make a movie. He could go on and
on about it. That's why I love listening to interviews
(02:08):
with him. So I am a little sad that he
is going to hang it up as a director after
ten movies. This is something he's been saying for a
very long time. Now he's doing ten movies and done,
but the project doesn't have a studio yet, although Sony
is rumored to be a potential candidate for this movie.
There aren't a whole lot of details out about this
movie yet, but it's set to be set in the
(02:28):
late seventies in Los Angeles, not a lot of big
surprises there. It has a female lead. Some sources have
been speculating that the movie may focus on a very
influential movie critic named Pauline Koe and I actually heard
him recently in an interview talking about her because he
was out promoting his book and he had asked her
why she had never written a book, and she said,
(02:48):
why would I write a book. I've already told my
story in every single movie review that I've done, and
that really set in with me, and I think that
is something I've tried to carry over onto this podcast
and something to you, because yes, I do this podcast
because I love movies. I like talking about why I
enjoy or dislike movies, but I also set out to
share a little slice of myself, and each of those
(03:10):
movie reviews so that quote has really stayed embedded in
my head ever since I heard him talking about her.
So if it is based on her, that would be amazing.
So before we get into this list, let's learn a
little bit about our director, Quentin Tarantino. First of all,
what exactly is a director? The term gets thrown around
so many times. Maybe at this point you're afraid to ask,
(03:30):
So that's okay, you don't have to worry about that
on this podcast. A director is the creative lead in
a film. They are the ones responsible for holding the
creative vision throughout the whole process, from the pre production
to the final edit. It all falls on their shoulders.
A movie has an executive producer or a producer, and
they are the ones who hire their director, and that
(03:53):
director ultimately becomes in charge of the entire production, so
they are the ones behind it all. They work with
the cinematographer to get the look of the movie. They're
involved in the editing sum directors will edit a movie themselves.
A director like Quentin Tarantino is very involved most of
the time, not only directing but also writing his movies.
It all goes back to him as a teenager. He
(04:14):
started writing movies at the age of fourteen, and then
he dropped out of school in sixteen to train to
be an actor. He dropped out after two years and
started working at a video rental store called Video Archives,
and that is where his true love of movies really
began to flourish because he was around him every single day.
He said, this is what influenced his directorial choices. He
(04:35):
loves seeing people come in pick out a movie and
asking them why they wanted to see this movie. Quentin
Tarantino is a two time Oscar winner, both for Original Screenplay.
He won in ninety five with Pulp Fiction and twenty
thirteen with Djengo Unchained, but he has never won an
Oscar for Best Director. So maybe for his tenth film. Maybe,
as we saw at this last Oscars, it was a
(04:57):
lot of people who have been snubbed throughout the year
finally getting their flowers. So how perfect a bookend it
would be if Quentin Tarantino put out this tenth and
final film about a movie critic, truly playing in to
the movie critics who are part of the academy that
will make this decision for him to win that at
the end of his career, allegedly that would make everything
(05:18):
come full circle. And finally, before we get into the list,
what makes a Quentin Tarantino movie a Tarantino movie. You'll
find a lot of themes when breaking down his movies
that we're going to get into. A lot of pop culture,
a lot of dark humor, a lot of nonlinear storylines,
lots of fun cameos, but most importantly, heavy use of profanity.
(05:39):
I love that every movie has a look and a
feel to it, and in my head, all of Quentin
Tarantino's movies exist in this same universe. But I'm pretty
sure he would hate that idea and never set out
to create an entire Quentin Tarantino universe. So that is
a little bit about our director. Now let's get into
the list. At number nine from twenty fifteen, I have
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The Hateful Eight. It has the longest runtime out of
any Quentin Tarantino movie at two hours and fifty five minutes,
almost three hours long, and it is the one movie
he has that I feel does not warrant that long
of a run time. If you haven't seen it, this
movie is a Western set in the dead. It's about
a bounty hunter and his prisoner, who finds shelter in
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a cabin and then discover all these crazy people living
there as well. The movie made one hundred and fifty
two million dollars at the box office. I feel like
this movie is about fifty five minutes too long, and
if there was one movie to be stricken from his
career that I would not miss, this would be the
only one. I don't believe he's ever made a bad movie,
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but this is one I saw once and never had
to revisit again. He loves westerns. Every interview I see
him do, he loves talking about spaghetti westerns. It's a
very classic Hollywood concept which he is just always drawn to.
And I feel like, out of all of his movies,
even more so than Once upon a Time in Hollywood,
this was the most self indulgent of just all the
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things he likes, and that is what nerds do. I
can respect that you are super into something you want
to make a movie completely about that subject. That's fine,
But this one just doesn't really hit for me. There
are so many plot points in this movie where I
felt like it just dragged along, and I think that's
because I just don't like westerns. It has some decent performances,
some good scenes. It's not a poorly written movie, but overall,
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when it comes to the story in this movie, it's
the weakest of anything he's ever written. So at number
nine we are going with the Hateful Late from twenty fifteen.
At number eight from two thousand and four, I have
Kill Bill Volume two. This movie made one hundred and
fifty four million dollars at the box office. It is
the continuation the sequel of Kill Bill Volume one, where
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the bride played by Uma Thurman continues request of vengeance
against her former boss and lover Bill, the reclusive bouncer Bud,
and the treacherous one Idol. This was a big hit
for Quentin Tarantino. It actually made more than Kill Bill
Volume one. And the thing about him, he doesn't make sequels.
And the only reason there are two parts to this
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movie is because it was originally intended to be one big,
long movie, but he thought a three plus four hour
movie would not screen so well people wouldn't want to
be invested in that, so he decided to split it
into volume one and volume two, so if you watch
them all together, it does feel like one big movie.
But what a genius decision to split it up make
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a lot more money off of this when essentially all
you had to do was film one big, long movie.
So I think that's why I like Volume one better.
This one has a little bit more of a slow burn.
There's some good dialogue, some solid action, but doesn't quite
compare two part one. So maybe it's a good thing
that he doesn't make sequels. He puts everything all into
one part of a movie and then that's it. So
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that's why I put this one at number eight. At
number seven from nineteen ninety two, I'm putting Reservoir Dogs.
It has the shortest run time out of any Quentin
Tarantino movie, at only an hour and thirty nine minutes.
It is also the lowest grossing movie out of any
of his films, making only two point ninety nine million
dollars at the box office. But why is that. It's
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because it was his directorial debut and was only shown
on a very limited amount of screens. But that didn't matter.
This movie made him what seemed like a overnight success,
so despite that small number at the box office, this
is what rose him to directorial fame. After this movie
premiered at the Cane Film Festival. He couldn't go walk
out on the street with how people recognizing him. And
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this movie was so ahead of its time that everybody
just started doing copycat versions of Reservoir Dogs. If you
look at movies in the nineties, everybody wanted to have
a story like this. The list goes on and on
with Reservoir Dog copycats, the most famous one for me
being The Boondock Saints. That's exactly the this movie. If
you haven't seen Reservoir Dogs. The movie is about a
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simple jewelry heighst going horribly wrong, and the surviving criminals
begin to suspect that one of them is a police informant.
And I rarely say this, especially about his movies, but
this is one I wish was longer. I remember the
first time I watched this, I was thinking, that's it,
like I want to see more. Great movie. Put them
on the map. Reservoir Dogs is in at number seven.
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At number six from twenty nineteen, I'm going with Once
Upon a Time in Hollywood, where the runtime of two
hours and forty minutes. It is his third longest movie.
It's about a faded television actor played by Leonardo DiCaprio
and his stunt double played by Brad Pitt, trying to
make a comeback and achieve that fame and success that
he achieved in the final years of Hollywood's Golden Age
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in nineteen sixty nine Los Angeles. The movie made three
hundred and seventy seven million dollars worldwide. And this is
part of Quentin Tarantino's revisionist tales which he is famous for.
This one follows the Manson murders and it's probably his
most sophisticated movie. And I think that's why people love
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or hate this movie. I feel like critics love this movie,
but the average movie goer did not care for this
movie whatsoever. And I think why that is is because
this movie has a very laid back plot. It's a
lot of hanging out, it's a lot of slow action
without a big narrative over the entire thing. So it
feels unlike any other Quentin Tarantino movie. It's really his
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love later to Hollywood again. He is fascinated with old
school Hollywood Los Angeles in the sixties seventies. That is
his jam, that is his jelly. So he set out
to make a movie have that look have that feel
if his career existed in the sixties and seventies, this
is the type of movie he would have been making
around that time. So I think the theme we see
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here is he is self indulgent, but unlike in Hateful Eight,
where he just made a right up Western, I felt
like it lent itself to a much more fun movie
going experience, and I enjoyed watching this movie in theaters.
I will say this movie felt a little bit long
the first run through at two hours and forty minutes,
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but for some reason, I just liked the aesthetic of it.
I like the feeling, the coloring of this movie, so
I really enjoyed this movie. I will say I completely
love it enough to put it in my top three.
The reason that is it doesn't have as much of
a rewatchability as some of his other movies. But you
can't deny having Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio together, two
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of the biggest movie stars ever appearing like this is
what I live for. But I get why of all
the people I've told about this movie, most of them
hate it. Not me. I love Brad Pitt's performance as
this aging stuntman. I love the rewriting history Margot Robbie,
and of course it produced one of my favorite memes
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ever of Leonardo DiCaprio pointing at the TV. So at
number six is Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. At
number five, I'm going with the movie from nineteen ninety seven,
Jackie Brown, with a runtime of two hours and thirty
four minutes. This is one of his most underrated movies
of all time. The movie is about a flight attendant
with a criminal past who gets caught by the ATF
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for smuggling and then they enforce her to become an
informant against the drug dealer that she works for, so
she has to find a way to get out of
this entire situation without being killed. Pam Grier is amazing
in this movie, but unfortunately, this is the movie that
people are probably the most unfamiliar with from Quentin Tarantino.
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Some people would even say it's his most forgettable movie.
And to those people, I say, what is wrong with you?
I love the movies of Quentin Tarantinos that focus on
a strong female lead, badass women, and that is exactly
what Pam Grier does playing Jackie Brown. So maybe out
of any one of his movies. It's the most straight ahead.
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And yes, you could argue if he stayed in this style,
we would not be talking about him today. He would
just become another director that had a hit in the
nineties and then did a bunch of average movies. But
to me, out of any of his movies, this has
the best work when it comes to the writing, the
fleshing out of all these characters, from Pam Greer to
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Samuel L. Jackson, who plays one of his most unhinged
characters out of any Quentin Tarantino movie that he's been in.
So if you have not seen Jackie Brown, or maybe
you haven't watched it since the nineties, go do it
today because this movie is great and it lands at
number five on my list at number four. Speaking of
awesome female leads, I am going with Kill Bill from
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two thousand and three, with the runtime at one hour
and fifty one minutes. Uma Thurman plays the bride for
the very first time in this movie. She's just awoken
from a four year coma after being betrayed by a
former assassin, and she goes wreaking havoc and seeking revenge.
And Kill Bill was his first movie since Jackie Brown,
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So there was a big gap between nineteen ninety seven
and two thousand and three, so I felt like that
was a contributing factor to They're being build up. They're
being hype around this movie, Quentin Tarantino being back with
another strong female lead, but this one took it up
on an entirely different level because he created one of
the best action movies of the two thousands. The movie
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made one hundred and eighty million dollars worldwide on a
thirty million dollar budget, which is bizarre to me that
this movie was made with thirty million dollars, with all
of the action sequences, the amazing wardrobe in this movie,
landing a big star like Uma Thurman to play the lead,
and the entire thing playing out like a twisted, dark
bedtime story that you would tell your kids. I love
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the narration in this movie, but I think what sets
this movie apart from every other movie that I've talked
about so far is the final scene. One of the
best third acts in any action movie. The first time
I saw that, it blew my mind. Uma Thurman in
that yellow outfit resembling Bruce Lee slicing people up left
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and right, the bride became one of the most recognizable
female protagonists of all time. In the two thousand you
cannot escape a teenage boys bedroom without seeing a kill
Bill poster planted up on the wall. So at number four,
because of all those things, I have Kill Bill from
two thousand and three getting into the top three. Now
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at number three, I'm going with Pulp Fiction from nineteen
ninety four, with a runtime of two hours and thirty
four minutes. The movie follows the lives of two mob hitman,
a boxer, a gangster and his wife, and a pair
of diner bandits and how all their four lives are intertwined.
The movie made two hundred and thirteen million dollars worldwide.
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It has what I would say is the best soundtrack
out of any Quentin Tarantino movie, and it has the
most non linear narrative out of any of his movies.
And that is the best thing about Pulp Fiction. The
way I was introduced to this movie, the movie came
out in ninety four before I saw because I was
three years old. In ninety four, I saw a Simpsons
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episode called twenty two Short Films about Springfield, which came
out in nineteen ninety six. Season seven, episode twenty one.
I have those memorized. The only TV show that I
can tell you exactly the episode title, what season, and
what episode number, because I had all the box sets
of DVDs. Anyway, in that episode, they do a parody
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of pulp fiction, and that is how I was exposed
to it. They play out the entire thing exactly how
it's done in the movie is how it's done in
the episode. It intertwines all the wives of the people
in Springfield and they break it down. Scene for seeing,
you have snake running over Chie Wigham when he encounters
them in the street, they start fighting. They get thrown
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into the guy's basement. So I remember watching that as
a kid and thinking, Ah, the Simpsons, they're so creative,
and then realizing, Oh, that's actually a movie. Simpsons do
that a lot. I'm exposed to a lot of their
parodies before I even realize they're an actual movie. I
should probably do an episode on that. I think what
this movie really established for him is how incredible he
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is at creating dialogue. This movie has some of the
best dialogue out of any movie from the nineties. I
credit a lot of that to Samuel L. Jackson's character
who drops so many f words but has so many
memorable lines say what a day, I care il gare you,
I'm gonna say one more times, or even just the
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one liners. This is a tasty burger. But most importantly,
this movie showcased how great of a storyteller he is.
It also gave us one of the best dance scenes,
and just has a really amazing cast from Quentin Tarantino
himself has a role in this. John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson,
Uma Thurman, Bruce Willis, Tim Roth, Christopher Walking, being Rames.
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This list goes on and on and on and on
and on. Steve Bushemi and it was also one of
the first times I was introduced to how much he
pays attention to the little things in a movie. My
favorite movies of his have scenes with food that make
me want to eat whatever that character is eating, And
for this movie, it would be the big Khuna burger
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that Samuel L. Jackson takes a big old bite out of.
This gives a tasty burger. It's a tasty burger. It's
a tasty movie. At number three is pulp fiction from
nineteen ninety four. At number two from twenty twelve, I'm
Going with Django Unchained. With a runtime of two hours
and forty five minutes, it is his second longest film
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and the theme of this movie is revenge. With the
help of a German bounty hunter, a freed slave played
by Jamie Fox sets out to rescue his wife from
a brutal plantation owner in Mississippi. The movie made four
hundred and fifty million dollars at the box office. So
much money, I said, million weird. Four hundred and fifty
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million dollars. It is his highest grossing film of all time.
In his movie that probably pushed the envelope the most
when it comes to the subject matter when it comes
to the dialogue, when it comes to all of the
curse words, when it comes to the use of other words.
It is probably the one that people criticize the most.
That people just had something to say about this movie.
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It is at times hard to watch, but man, there
are so many great performances in this movie from Carrie Washington,
Christoph Waltz, Jamie Fox, who you see a side of
him come out that you've never really seen before. And
a lot of that is due to the performance that
Quentin Tarantino was able to get out of him, and
how much he worked with him on really fine tuning
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who Django is and really getting him into the headspace
of what his character would be experiencing at this time,
so you don't really see the cool, calm collective Jamie Fox.
He was able to take that all away and take
on the role of Django. This is a movie that
opened on Christmas Day, which is I believe at the
time was the third movie Quentin Tarantino had come out
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on Christmas Day. It was Django, Unchained, Jackie Brown, and
Hateful Late all came out on Christmas Day. I don't
necessarily think of Quentin Tarantino when it comes to Christmas,
but hey, I'll take Blood and Guts over any other
Christmas movie. The costumes in this movie are a plus.
The food imagery is also a top notch. I love
the white cake. I love the scene when Django and
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Doctor King Schultz meet for the first time. They poured
themselves a beer. It looks all foamy. He slabs off
that foam with that little metal spoon looking thing, and
I don't drink beer anymore, but man, I would take
one of those beers right now. This movie is what
I would consider his second masterpiece. I believe what I
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put at number two and number one are two masterpieces
that I would change nothing about these films. I think
what he created in this movie was a villain that
you just hate, you completely utterly hate. Sometimes you can
find a little shred of good in a villain, you
see some kind of humility, but there is nothing good
about Leonardo DiCaprio's character in this movie. And what I
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loved about Django Unchained is how they were able to
create such tension, and that is something that maybe Quentin
Tarantino doesn't get enough credit for the ability to create
tension with a camera, with dialogue, with amazing actors. That's
all you need, no special effects, no really tricks to editing.
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That's it. That is the power of dialogue. That is
the power of good writing. And I love when Quentin
tarantino movies have this moment where everything just goes down
as hits the wall and all the cards get thrown
on the table, and that's what happens in the dinner
scene where Leonardo DiCaprio's character, the villain in the movie,
completely loses it and tensions are at all time high.
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Hi sat on that tabletop. If you lift those palms
off that tunnel shell tabletops both fails. That sought off.
That is such a powerful scene. Leonardo DiCaprio proves that
he is the best actor. He actually cut his hand
with glass while hitting the Table's continued to stay in
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character and play out the scene with real blood. I
think the blood they actually used to smear on Kerry
Washington's face ended up being fake blood after you got
checked out, but still an amazing moment. I hated Leonardo
DiCaprio's character, but I loved the way he talked. Make
these gentlemen receipt for twelve thousand dollars peace. It was
a pleasure doing business with y'all. Now, gentlemen, if you
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care to join me in the Paula, we will be
serving white cake like I wanted that Bikahuna burger, like
I wanted a drink of that beer. I wanted a
piece of that white cake. Gentlemen, you have my curiosity,
but now you have my attention. So at number two,
I am going with Django unchained from twenty twelve. Before
we get to number one, there are some honorable mentions.
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Even though he only has nine movies he considers to
be his full length feature films, he does have another
couple of movies that he has directed, death Proof, which
came out in two thousand and seven, which was a
double feature, a Grindhouse production with his director Buddy Robert Rodriguez.
So the second part of this was his movie Planet Terror.
I don't know why he doesn't consider this to be
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one of his movies. I guess because it was that
joint project. But death Proof is pretty solid my favorite
of those two movies. What happened to be Planet Terror though,
so maybe that's why he doesn't count it. But the
movie did make fifty million dollars at the box office.
The other honorable mention would be from Dusk Till Dawn,
which he didn't direct, but he starred in it and
he wrote it. But that movie was directed again by
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his director, Buddy Robert Rodriguez. A great movie if you
haven't seen that one and you want to see his
acting abilities, which he's not the best actor. He is
a good actor, but I really like him as one
of the leads in that movie alongside George Gloody. And
he also co wrote and directed a movie called My
Best Friend's Birthday, which came out in nineteen eighty seven,
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which most of the film reels were almost completely destroyed
in a fire, so good luck finding that one, But
at number one, the best Quentin Tarantino movie of all
time if you haven't guested by now from two thousand
and nine, it is Inglorious Bastards, with the runtime of
two hours and thirty three minutes. The movie is again
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Quentin Tarantino rewriting history. It takes place in Nazi occupied
France during World War Two. You have a group of
Jewish US soldiers on a mission to assassinate Nazi leaders,
including Hitler, and that just so happens to coincide with
a theater owner's vengeful plan to do the exact same thing. Again.
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The theme here is revenge, and this movie gave me
the most gratifying feeling of revenge I've ever felt in
a movie, and it made me fall in love with
the idea of a movie and rewriting history. And what
a subject to pick World War Two, where you have
the most hateful figure in all of history, Hitler, and
being able to make a movie where he completely gets obliterated,
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and all the Nazi ideology is just viewed and portrayed
in a way that it is this ugly, disgusting force,
and all the people they have done wrong, all of
the people that they have killed, are able to rise
up and fight back and unleash that same vengeful power
against them that is so powerful. You have an incredible
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cast in this movie from Brad Pitt again in my
favorite role that he has ever done, playing although the Apache,
I just love the way he just talks in this movie. Now,
I don't think so more like chewed out. I've been
chewed out before. And Quentin Tarantino made Christoph Waltz a
star with this movie, playing one of the most hated
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villains in all of cinema. That's a dingo? Is that
the way you say that's a bingo? You just say
bengo bingo? Fun. Sorry, I get so excited about that scene.
And then I love all the side characters, the supporting
cast from Eli Roth as the Bear, jew bj Novak
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as the little Man. You have Hugo sticklets, all of
these just cool names that combined with the look and
feel of this movie having a red color palette. If
I could get a color palette tattooed on my back.
It would be the Inglorious Bastards color palette because it
just looks so so beautiful. And this movie has my
favorite moments of tension that we've been talking about on
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this episode. The scene at the bar wherever all the
US soldiers are there but posing as Nazi soldiers, and
how you can create this incredible standoff that all just
begins from these characters having a conversation. And now every
single word on that page of script is so important
to building that tension, and just the small little inflections
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that they do that add so much weight to the scene.
And then it's all the bullets flying of course that
makes it visually stimulating, and the very grotesque, very brutal
violence that ensues after that is you know, Quentin Tarantino's edge,
But it all comes back to that dialogue and that's
what makes them so powerful. Again, just the camera, just actors,
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just the words on the page are able to do this,
and that is the best example of it in this movie.
And then it has the best use of food in
any of his movies when Hans is interrogating Shoshana, and
then you have the strudal with the krem Hall. I
would take that brutal interrogation just to have a bite
of that strudal. You also have one of the most
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satisfying third acts when you make it to that theater
in Paris and her plan succeeds where she is able
to lock all of these Nazis in this room, including Hitler,
and burn the place to the ground. So you have
one of the best movies of all time, one of
the best villains, the best dialogue, the best cinematography. It
is a perfect movie. It is his only other second masterpiece,
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and on top of that, it was my best movie
theater experience of the two thousands. Came at a time
where I really needed a movie like this. I had
just graduated high school in two thousand and nine. Came
out in the summer. I was in that weird transition
where you go from high school to college. In this
movie is the best thing that happened to me that year,
And a movie that has a runtime of two hours
and thirty three minutes does not feel like that whatsoever.
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I watched this movie recently. I started it on a plane,
which tends to be a thing I've been doing lately.
I didn't finish it on the plane, but I came
home and made sure I finished watching this movie because
it is that good still after all these years. So
at number one from two thousand and nine, the best
Quentin Tarantino movie of all time is in Glorious Bastards.
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If you think I ranked one of these movies wrong,
let me know what your ranking would be. Send me
an email movie Mike d at email dot com, or
hit me up on socials at my gidictro on everything.
We'll come back and talk about sixty five. Let's get
into our movie review now. I want to talk about
sixty five with Adam Driver. We now have our first
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bomb of the year. Whenever a movie comes out and
it just starts getting ripped to shreds by critics, it
has a low run and Tomato score. I try not
to pay too much attention to that because as a
movie fan, as a moviegoer, as a movie reviewer, I
like to be the judge myself because I don't always
buy into all that. And for you who listened to
(30:36):
this podcast, I want to let you know from my perspective,
I saw the reviews, I saw the score, but I
was giving this movie the benefit of the doubt because
of the premise. It's about an astronaut who crashed lands
on a mysterious planet, only to discover he is not
alone and it's actually the Earth sixty five million years ago.
That is what this movie is about. Adam Driver plays
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the main character, the astronaut, the pilot of this ship,
and then he with the only other survivor of the
crash is this younger girl, and they try to find
their way back home. So that is the premise of
the movie. We'll get into what I think about it,
and if you want to hear a review or I
just go and rip a movie to shreds, be prepared
(31:19):
because that is what we're going to do here. But
here is just a little bit of the sixty five trailer.
I don't know where we are. I've located Bard, survivors, Charles,
the atmosphere or is breathable. There's something gaily on up there.
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Even that trailer is boring. So a couple of things
that I look for when deciding whether a movie is
going to be good or not, I find them in
the trailer. First thing up in this trailer is the
title of the movie sixty five. That is a boring title.
That is not a sexy title. It's also kind of
a confusing title and a hard movie to search for.
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Even looking up things about this movie, I would type
sixty five and I would just get like math problems,
so bad title. And then you look into how they
are selling the movie. They're really cashing in on that tagline,
that quick little premise. A nastronaut crash lands on a
mysterious planet, only to discover he's not alone and it's
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Earth sixty five million years ago. You think, how could
a movie be bad with such a great premise. If
you are able to sell a movie in one line,
it is probably gonna suck because it just appeals to
the studio. It appeals to the way you promote a movie.
If you can sell a movie in one line, I
don't want to watch it. It's not going to be
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very good because you're only selling me the sizzle. I
know that there's going to be no substance whatsoever in
that movie. Very few have proved me wrong. Very few
it proved me wrong. But if you are banking on
a tagline, that movie is going to suck. So when
it comes to six I didn't like the title. The
storyline in the beginning, it's a little confusing and it
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just kind of jumps very quickly. So it's about Adam
Driver's character. He is living on this planet with his family.
His daughter is having to undergo this treatment. Treatment is
very expensive, so in order to pay for it, he
takes on this mission. But it's going to take him
away for two years, but he's going to make three
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times his salary, so even though he can't be there
for his daughter, he is able to go on this
mission and pay for it. He comes back two years later,
so it's him having to make that hard decision. But
you don't really get too emotionally invest in the beginning
because that happens conversation with his daughter, and then he's gone.
You're like, oh, I guess he's going now. And then
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he is flying through space, he gets hit by this asteroid,
hits his ship, he goes down, lands on this planet,
and then that's where our story kicks off. This movie
just had no imagination whatsoever, and there are a lot
of good elements here. You have dinosaurs, you have sci fi,
you have a ship, you have Adam Driver, who is
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a great actor. He played a good villain in Star
Wars as Kylo Wren, so he can do that. I
don't question his abilities as an actor. But there was
nothing here to chew on, and you think, how can
you make a movie about dinosaurs? Boring? But what this
movie kind of was in the beginning, it's kind of
a toy story rip off. Even what you heard there
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in the trailer is him crash landing on this planet
scoping it out. He's like, oh, it's breathable. That's exactly
what happens to Buzz Lightyear when he first lands in
Andy's room. That exact same scene sixty five ripped it
off this movie. It was also kind of a slow burn,
and you can't really slow burn a sci fi movie,
(34:51):
not with a movie like this get into the action
and where it really fumbled the ball here is it
didn't really own any of the genre it was living in.
Is it a sci fi movie? Is it a dinosaur movie?
Or is it just this crazy space movie? It wasn't
really anything. And not only that, it was plagued by
a lot of lazy things, lazy writing, cheap special effects.
(35:16):
There were things going off like smoke. It looked like
I was on a ride at Disney and they're like,
all right, fire the smoke, And that's exactly what happened
in the movie. Was this movie made in two thousand
and six. What was going on here? Even down to
the music in this movie, it was almost like they
just went to moviemusic dot Com, grabbed some tracks, slapped
(35:38):
on some MP three's on this movie, and there it is.
It really made me realize how much effort goes into
making a good dinosaur movie like Jurassic Park. You think
all you have to do is throw some dinosaurs on
the screen and it's entertaining. That's kind of what I
thought was the formula in the latest Jurassic Park reboot trilogy.
(36:00):
But when you see this, you'll realize it's not just
that you got to create something else. Because there are
t rex Is in this movie. There are lots of
other dinosaurs in this movie, and you just don't really
care when they are on the screen. It made Jurassic
World Dominion look Oscar worthy. The best part about this
movie was his gun. It kind of reminded me of
that Turock video game if you ever played that. On
(36:21):
n sixty four, he was a dinosaur Hunter. If there
was one thing I could take away from this movie,
it was like, Okay, that's actually kind of a cool gun.
But it didn't really make me buy into the fact
that Adam Driver's character was good at his job. Why
did they pay this guy three times a salary? Everything
in this movie was him failing. He didn't do anything heroic,
(36:41):
he didn't do anything good. He is not good at
his job. Were they just trying to get rid of him, like,
hey man, sending him out on a space mission. He'll
be gone two years, he won't make it back. It
was almost like they set him up in this movie
because he wasn't good at his job. He wasn't really
that great of a lead. It wasn't really that great
of a character. I cared nothing about his relationship with
the other survivor, the young girl in this movie, not
(37:04):
dogging on her whatsoever. She did what she could with
that script. But with a movie like this, you can't
be mediocre. And I tend to like movies that have
a very limited cast. Movies that are in space tend
to have that because they are so expensive to make.
It's paying for the ships, all the special effects, everything
(37:26):
else going on. They usually have a very limited cast. Also,
space is just very isolating. That's how those movies kind
of work. But in this case, it didn't do it
for me. Especially when you have a TV show out
right now, like The Last of Us where it's all
about older guy, younger character him trying to protect her.
You have that show doing it so well, so to
(37:49):
do a movie similar like this and it be so
bad and so uninspiring, you can't do that. There were
a lot of moments that I was just like, what
am I watching? Very much? Some lol moments that were
not supposed to be LOL moments. I won't ruin anything
in case for some reason you decide you want to
go watch this movie. But there is a part whereas
(38:10):
character falls into quicksand quicksand in a movie in twenty
twenty three, I just wasn't buying into this. With this
subject matter, you deserve to be submerged into that world.
This movie felt like I was just watching an actor
on a movie set. I was so aware of everything happening.
So it was like Adam Driver's character in Girls became
(38:33):
a movie star and this is the movie he went
on to do. So it was almost like, really, with
any TV show when somebody becomes an actor and like,
I'm going to be in a movie, and they play
the trailer and it's very like cheesy and elaborate, very
like what you make out a big Hollywood movie to be.
That is what this was like. It was like a
parody movie that went into something else. It was that bad.
(38:54):
So this movie should have really owned a genre. I
think space It could have been really cool in if
they just made a straight up horror movie with dinosaurs,
that is something that hasn't been done. Nobody has the
budget for that. I don't know what Sony was doing.
They're taking a big hit on this one. Movie has
(39:15):
not done well at the box office. Has only made
twenty two point four million dollars today in the United States,
about another nine million dollars internationally. But it has but
it had a budget of forty five million dollars, so
I don't really see it making that backup. Maybe when
they start playing it on airplanes or cable it'll make
a little bit back. But man, a movie I wanted
(39:38):
to like. When I first saw the trailer, I was like, Oh,
that looks interesting. I like dinosaurs. I like Adam Driver.
I don't like any of the things together. So four
sixty five. I give it one out of five dinosaur prints.
It's our first bomb of the year. It's time to
(39:59):
head down to movie. You're like, I just went on
this rant a couple of episodes ago with Peter Pan.
But we are back because we have our first real
look at The Little Mermaid. They put out the poster,
they put out a teaser, but we really didn't get
a look at what all the animals are going to
look like under the sea, and now we have it,
(40:19):
and now what I was expecting at all. I want
to get into what I fully think about The Little
Mermaid and what Disney is doing with all of their
live action remakes of all their most famous movies. But
before we get into that, here is just a little
bit of the new The Little Mermaid trailer. You broke
at the Rooms. He went to the abuff world. A
man was drowning. I had to save him. This obsession
(40:41):
with humans has to stop. I just want to know
more about them. God child, I can help you. You
can't live in that world unless you've become a human yourself. Impossible.
(41:02):
That's what a lit fun So this movie entirely doesn't
look what I was expecting. I wondered how they were
going to make all the undersea creatures look because we've
seen live action reimaginations of Disney movies like The Lion King,
(41:22):
and the reason that one felt a little bit off
to me is because it took away the charm that
was the animated version of The Lion King. It took
the exact same story and created these quote unquote live
action animals which were really just computer animated, realistic looking animals.
And I thought they would maybe do something different with
The Little Mermaid, because it's one thing to animate a lion,
(41:47):
to animate a wart hog and give them a different voice,
that makes a little bit more sense to me. That
looks a little bit more appealing to me. But when
it comes to watching fish under the Sea, not as appealing.
It's not as cute. There's something cute about Sebastian as
a cartoon, Flounder as a cartoon, but when it comes
(42:08):
to them in a live action form, honestly looks a
little bit creepy. Our kids even going to be into
the idea of this movie. Now, you do have a
great lead here. You have Haley Bailey, which I wonder
how many times people get her name wrong and call
her halle Berry just because it looks similar to it.
But it is Haley Bailey as Ariel. She looks like
(42:29):
a great Ariel. There's nothing that strikes me weird about
the human element to this movie. Javier Bardam as King Triton,
Melissa McCarthy as Ursula looks perfect. I think it's just
I was expecting this world to look a little bit different,
to look a little bit more fun and imaginative and
not so right on the nose. They debuted this trailer
(42:51):
at the Oscars, which I like that. I feel like
we get so many debuts of trailers in the Super Bowl,
why not in the Super Bowl of movies. Interesting thing
about this, though, is they showed the trailer during the Oscars,
and it actually cost them ten million dollars to do that.
Disney paid ten million dollars to show this two and
a half minute trailer during the Oscars. But Disney also
(43:15):
owns ABC, which is where the Oscars were broadcast on,
so it's almost like they paid themselves ten million dollars
to showcase their own movie. This movie appears to follow
the exact same story as the original animated movie, which
came out in nineteen eighty nine. You have Ariel being
fascinated with the world above the sea. You have Prince Eric,
(43:36):
but she is a mermaid and forbidden to interact with humans.
But in order to follow her heart, she makes a
deal with the evil sea witch Ursula, who gives her
the chance to experience life above the sea. And from
what I've seen in this trailer, I think this is
going to be the first real big bomb of Disney's
live action remakes. And that's because I don't think this
(43:58):
story translates. I almost think they're going to have the
same success that they had with other stories like this,
like Beauty and the Beasts, Dumbo, Aladdin and the Lion King.
I think Disney is almost in a space of they
are too big to fail when it comes to their
historic movies. But as we saw with Pinocchio, which didn't
come out in theaters, it was a Disney plus exclusive.
(44:20):
They can do wrong, and a lot of the times
they make up for it with a lot of marketing,
as we saw with what they did at the Oscars
showing the trailer there. Not only do they have the
money to promote the movie, but they also have the
legacy of Disney. Ah, we made a new Little Mermaid movie.
We are Disney here it is. I just think that
when it comes to this one, it's going to catch
(44:42):
them off guard when it doesn't do that well opening weekend.
We're seeing now for the first time that Disney movies
in theaters aren't a hit. And maybe it's because they're
a victim of their own plan here. With Disney Plus,
you have given people the ability to watch your movies
at home, and they're already paying for that there, and
it is largely beneficial to families to save money. You
(45:06):
don't have to go to the theater to watch a
kids movie and take all your kids. You can just
put it on at home. We saw that with Strange
World that did not do well at the box office,
even though it is a pretty good movie. I can
only imagine if they had actually put Pinocchio out in
theaters how much money they would have lost on that movie.
And maybe they're kind of playing their cards with the
movies they choose to put out in theaters and the
(45:28):
ones they choose to put out on Disney Plus. Maybe
they're not taking that risk. With Peter Pan and Wendy,
and they believe a little bit more in The Little Mermaids.
So I think it's unfortunate that this movie won't do
so well, mainly because the people involved. I like all
the actors. I love the lead Hallie Bailey, I love
Javier Bardem, Melissa McCarthy, de Vie Diggs as Sebastian, has
(45:50):
a great cast. I just think it has no artistic vision,
and that is what Disney in the past has done best.
Brought stories to life, things that are magical, not just
cash decisions to bring back movies from back in the day.
If I was a kid watching a movie like this
for the first time, I don't feel like I would
be experiencing that same magic. Disney has always been on
(46:12):
the cutting edge of technology and animation, and they're not
doing anything inventive here. Nothing that I see in this
trailer looks like it's pushing any kind of boundary that
Disney has been known for. They're kind of given up
on that a little bit. So it's not only that
they are making a remake of one of their most
famous movies, if that they're not even putting that much
(46:33):
effort into it. I want to see the same level
on the Little Mermaid that I see in Avatar throws
some motion capturing technology on your actors, make the cute
cuddly fish a little bit more cute and cuddly. That
is what they are known for. That is what they
are famous for. And I think the only way this
movie will make up for that is with the performances
and with the songs, which you can't deny the power
(46:55):
of a Disney song. So I'm not always drawn to
the music little aspect of Disney movies as a kid.
Sometimes I lays skip over the songs, I'll be honest,
Except for The Lion King, I can do without some
Disney songs. So, as I've said before, I will go
see this movie, but I will not be happy about it.
And I want to see how this changes, how this
(47:17):
alters their plans for all the movies they have coming out,
because more live action is on the way. We have
Peter Pannon Wendy coming to Disney Plus, and then we
have Mufassa The Lion King coming out in twenty twenty four,
and also in twenty twenty four we have Snow White,
so they aren't slowing down on their live action remakes.
I just want them to put the magic back in
their movies. Make a Disney movie more exciting again, because
(47:40):
I think my future kids deserve better. This week's edition
of Movie Bar I don't know why Disney live action
movies get me so fired up, but that is my
rant for this week. Thank you for listening. Before I go,
I gotta give my listeners shout out of the week.
Do it every single week to somebody who sends me
email movie Mike dat Gmail dot com, hits me up
(48:03):
on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, or Facebook. And this week I'm
going over to my Facebook page, which is Facebook dot
com slash Mike d stro. And this week's listener of
the week is Caroline Manerik, who commented on my Scream
six review and said, you are so entertaining. Love to
listen to your critiques. Keep up the good work, Mike.
You are appreciated. Thank you, Caroline. You are this week's
(48:26):
Movie Crew listener of the Week. And I don't share
comments like this to boost my own ego, like, oh,
look how cool everybody thinks like him, Look how much
everybody loves the podcast. But the reason I share these
comments is honestly, I'm surprised. I love doing this podcast.
I love everybody who listens. I love you right now,
straight up, just I love you because this is my
(48:46):
favorite thing to do, and I just am surprised when
other people care. I feel like when it comes to
anything creative, you put things out and it feels like
it goes to nobody. And I've been going through this
period of my life right now that I've to enter this.
I don't really care what people think about me. Mentality
not meaning that I don't care and I'm gonna put
out crap, but meaning that I want to be my
(49:08):
truest self and I want to portray how I really am,
the most authentic version of myself, without worrying about the
critique of others. And sometimes I think, like I talk
about movies too much, people are going to find me annoying.
I do this podcast and I post these clips, and
it feels like I am ruining everybody's feed, everybody's timeline.
(49:28):
So whenever I see somebody like Caroline share a comment
like that, it makes me not want to quit. It
makes me feel like I'm actually doing something that even
if it's just Caroline, even if it's just you listening
right now. That gives a crap. That's enough for me.
This is all I've ever wanted to do. If I
had a perfect situation, a perfect way I could earn
money in life, it would be just to watch movies
(49:50):
and talk about them and express my thoughts and share
them with you and do this podcast. So the fact
that you take any amount of your week and spend
it here on this pod cast or go over on
my social media and comments and messages, I love you
for that. I love going back and forth into my dms,
and I just love that element out of anything when
(50:11):
it comes to doing this podcast. So thank you, Caroline,
thank you for listening. Hope you come back next week.
We'll be talking about the new Shazam movie. We also
have John Wick coming up after that. It's a great
time to be a movie fan, so I'm glad you're here.
Until then, go out and watch good movies and I
will talk to you later.
Host
Mike D
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