QT8. (PG)
Directed by Tara Wood.
Featuring Stacey Sher, Scott Spiegel, Zoe Ball, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen and Samuel L. Jackson. 97 mins.
A documentary about Quentin Tarantino's first eight films, (The Kill Bills count as one) after the release of his ninth one may seem like strange timing, but these first eight are the ones he made with Bob and Harvey Weinstein. A major theme of Wood's film is that, without making a big deal of it, his films have done a lot for advancing black and female representation on the screen, and have given them really meaty roles to play. The irony is that in doing so he was enabling Hollywood's biggest (known) bully and sex criminal: the enormous global success of Pulp Fiction turned the Weinstein's Miramax company into a major player.
The film is adulatory but doesn't entirely absolve its subject: there is footage of the car crash Uma Thurman suffered on the set of Kill Bill and an admission that he knew about Weinstein for years before it came out. Diane Kruger tells a sinister story about how it was his hands, not Christoph Waltz, strangling her in her Inglorious Basterds death scene. Madsen has a story about Harvey's bullying that casts QT as a smirking accessory.
Overall this is a straightforward celebration, with most of his collaborators (but not QT himself) turning up to praise him and offer insights - some familiar, some not - about how he works. It's a gushfest, but one that actually tells you a few things worth knowing about its subject.
Directed by Tara Wood.
Featuring Stacey Sher, Scott Spiegel, Zoe Ball, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen and Samuel L. Jackson. 97 mins.
A documentary about Quentin Tarantino's first eight films, (The Kill Bills count as one) after the release of his ninth one may seem like strange timing, but these first eight are the ones he made with Bob and Harvey Weinstein. A major theme of Wood's film is that, without making a big deal of it, his films have done a lot for advancing black and female representation on the screen, and have given them really meaty roles to play. The irony is that in doing so he was enabling Hollywood's biggest (known) bully and sex criminal: the enormous global success of Pulp Fiction turned the Weinstein's Miramax company into a major player.
The film is adulatory but doesn't entirely absolve its subject: there is footage of the car crash Uma Thurman suffered on the set of Kill Bill and an admission that he knew about Weinstein for years before it came out. Diane Kruger tells a sinister story about how it was his hands, not Christoph Waltz, strangling her in her Inglorious Basterds death scene. Madsen has a story about Harvey's bullying that casts QT as a smirking accessory.
Overall this is a straightforward celebration, with most of his collaborators (but not QT himself) turning up to praise him and offer insights - some familiar, some not - about how he works. It's a gushfest, but one that actually tells you a few things worth knowing about its subject.
