BEFORE: We got caught in the snow driving back from Long Island yesterday, and after another round of shoveling (of course, my parents visited last week, so I'd put the snow shovels away), we expressed our sincere hopes that better weather is in our future this week.
Marisa Tomei carries over from "Someone Like You...", even though she seems to just have a bit part in this one. I recorded this film to go on a DVD with the much more recent film about a hotel, but there wasn't room for it in the January schedule.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Grand Budapest Hotel" (Movie #1,920)
AFTER: My first question, since Quentin Tarantino directed one of the four segments of this film, is: was this made before or after "Pulp Fiction"? Ah, one year later, that explains a lot - because it seems like someone was trying to capitalize on the success of that film, not just by hiring Tarantino, but also by creating a set of interlocking stories that shared characters.
The problem here is, "Pulp Fiction" adds up to a greater whole when you put all of its segments together (even if it may take you a few viewings to do so) and this one just doesn't. Each story seems more pointless than the last, and as for those little bits where they intersect, so what? The stories were already connected by the bellboy character, so there was no need to connect them further by showing us who was on the other end of that mysterious phone call.
I admit as a younger man I sped through this one just to see topless ladies in the segment with the coven of witches, so as penance now I had to watch the whole film. Now it's just boring to me, it's not like any A-level or even B-level actresses got naked, proving that the lower you are on the food chain, the more skin you've got to show. Hey, I don't make the rules.
But the witches storyline just doesn't GO anywhere. Rather, it's just about to, then stops abruptly. Did the project run out of film? Come to think of it, most of the segments seem to end just when they're getting good. I wonder if that was a stylistic choice, a time issue or just bad storytelling. Clearly they organized the segments from worst to best, so if you're a Tarantino completist, you should definitely watch the last half of this film, but you're free to skip the first half - I know I wish I did.
Also starring Tim Roth (last seen in "Everyone Says I Love You"), Antonio Banderas (last seen in "Miami Rhapsody"), Jennifer Beals (last seen in "The Book of Eli"), David Proval, Madonna (last seen in "Shadows and Fog"), Valeria Golino (last seen in "Escape from L.A."), Ione Skye (last seen in "Zodiac"), Lili Taylor (last seen in "The Notorious Bettie Page"), Sammi Davis, Alicia Witt (last seen in "Two Weeks Notice"), Amanda de Cadenet, Tamlyn Tomita, Quentin Tarantino, Bruce Willis (last seen in "The Story of Us"), Paul Calderon, with cameos from Salma Hayek, Kathy Griffin,
RATING: 4 out of 10 penis nicknames
No comments:
Post a Comment