Tarantino’s right to rant: why harsh criticism still matters in a culture of outrage |
Quentin Tarantino has attacked the actor Paul Dano for his role in There Will Be Blood. Folk may not like what he said but he has every right to say it, says Neil Mackay
I find myself in a deliciously, old-fashioned position: defending someone who irritates the hell out of me for something very stupid and mean that they said, but which I nonetheless think they have every right to say.
Indeed, I believe it would benefit many if they listened to this particularly goof-brained individual and their deeply goof-brained opinion.
Enter Quentin Tarantino, once Hollywood’s enfant terrible, now an old man shouting at clouds.
Tarantino recently appeared on a podcast - an act which itself should mark you as a thirsty attention-seeker. Podcasts are where intelligence goes to die.
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This particular podcast was by Bret Easton Ellis. I cannot tell you how much it depresses me that a once great writer like Ellis now choses to swim in this fetid corner of the media fish-tank.
Write, Ellis, don’t squawk like every other desperate wannabe, has-been and never-will.
Tarantino was there to talk about his 20 favourite movies of the 21st century. If it sounds juvenile, it was. And if you expected this cinephile’s cinephile to wax lyrical about undiscovered gems, or bring as yet unknown masterpieces to your attention, then you were to be sorely disappointed.
Once, Tarantino raved about French new wave cinema, and the grimy forbidden delights of grind-house. Now, he’s acutely middle-aged and middle-brow in his choices.
His top 10 was: Black Hawk Down, Tory Story 3, Lost in Translation, Dunkirk, There Will Be Blood, Zodiac, Unstoppable, Mad Max: Fury Road, Shaun of the Dead and Midnight in Paris.
Few of these films are ‘bad’. Most are okay. I rate them all apart from Mad Max: Fury Road which was a perfect example of........