Dare I?

Rating: 9/10 (2 August 2019)

Well. In my opinion QT is back. It's been a long time. More than twenty years since QT made a serious movie -- one with character and style -- that movie would be Jackie Brown, a little seen classic.
But here is an uber ambitious, complex, beautiful character driven feast. Yes there is a violent ending. But that is like 2:20 into the film and is totally telegraphed for the squeamish to miss. Most importantly this film feels close to QT's bone. Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown are, in my opinion two of the very best English language films of the past twenty-eight years. They are both perfect. Visually. Aurally. Character wise. Plot wise. But they are basically simple and rather juvenile stories from the ether, not from the director's heart. Here We get oodles about the craft of acting. Done, perhaps, more intelligently than anyone has ever done it. We get a kaleidoscope pastiche of old Hollywood from a million angles in glorious fifties/sixties colors like the automobiles of the time. It is not note perfect like pulp fiction. QT doesn't get the counterculture nor the music that defined the counterculture the way he has a seemingly perfect ear for the Motown and Soul music that was made during the same era. Some things feel wrong. Sometimes the plot wanders. But we see the craft and intelligence of the director. The wisdom and, yes, maturity. It could have been better, maybe, but hopefully it is a harbinger of things to come from one of the most talented directors of our time.