Quentin Tarantino takes no more than the risible title from Enzo G.Castellari's Dirty Dozen knockoff of 1978, and respells, misspells, that. (Did he ponder Basturds as possibly funnier?) Much of the movie, a revisionist revisitation of the French theater of operations in the Second World War, is unapologetically, unsanctimoniously silly. …

At first, and for the better part of its two and a half hours, this is apt to seem an oddly unadventurous undertaking for Quentin Tarantino, a gabby adaptation of a novel by his revered Elmore Leonard (source of notoriously mediocre movies), draggy, only fitfully funny, lifelessly staged, largely static. …

After a sizable step forward in his third film, Jackie Brown, and after a lengthy interval of six years since then, Quentin Tarantino takes several steps backwards in his fourth. An odd blend of pretension and triviality, it posits a comic-book world in which there can exist a Deadly Viper …

The second half offers no convincing evidence that Quentin Tarantino needed two installments to tell his scrambled tale. It convinces us instead that in its entirety the film is even worse than initially believed. For much of the time, it looks more like sweepings from the cutting-room floor than like …

Mexican approximation of a Guy Ritchie caper film, or in other words Quentin Tarantino twice removed: brisk, brutal, callous, convoluted, technologically tricksy. If, under director Hugo Rodriguez, it's a bit more ragged, it's a bit more human into the bargain. That element appears to carry over into a repeated pattern …

The studio rep at the screening asked that both audience and critics not provide any spoilers for this, Quentin Tarantino’s ninth film. But Tarantino himself tells you everything you need to know on the “what happens” front with the title: the fairy-tale formulation that pauses before telling you the setting. …

Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood — The studio rep at the screening asked that both audience and critics not provide any spoilers for this, Quentin Tarantino’s ninth film. But Tarantino himself tells you everything you need to know on the “what happens” front with the title: the fairy-tale formulation that …

A title as self-conscious although not as accurate as Samuel Beckett's Film. Yes, Quentin Tarantino's cast of characters accommodates some staple figures of the form: the small-time heisters, the mob torpedoes, Mr. Big's sex-bomb mate, the boxer bribed to throw a fight. But the writer-director borrows his narrative devices from …

A documentary that focuses on the first 21 years of Quentin Tarantino's career.

The directorial (also auctorial) debut of Quentin Tarantino, a past actor with a small part here. (Initial impression of him: a bit of a showoff.) In its essentials, it's a conventional heist movie, and there is not a lot more to it than essentials: an ad hoc gang of jewel …

Comic-book burlesque of the hard-boiled film noir, tougher than tough, cooler than cool, bloodier than bloody, sillier than silly. Robert Rodriguez adapted it -- or more accurately, copied it -- from Frank Miller's series of graphic novels; and he insisted, to the point of resigning from the Director's Guild, on …

Seeing that the spaghetti Western owes a debt to the samurai film — Fistful of Dollars, anyway, owes a debt to Yojimbo — cult director Takashi Miike takes things an illogical step further: a Japanese takeoff on the Italian horse opera, with the actors speaking barely intelligible English. It’s a …

Tony Scott, alias Blue Boy, alias Mr. Misty, alias I.C. Spots, pursues his calling as a reshaper of traditional screen icons (aviator: Top Gun; racer: Days of Thunder; private eye: The Last Boy Scout) for the MTV generation. Here, working from a script by Quentin Tarantino, alias I.M. Hip, it's …

A product of cinephiliac inbreeding. It has to do with a hitman named Critical Jim who, besides his work, loves movies ("The old movies, you know, where it was all about the story"), and it has even more to do with his assigned target, who delays his execution in the …