Just a couple of days after his 60th birthday, legendary filmmaker Quentin Tarantino has made it official: His next feature film is really called The Movie Critic and that the cameras start rolling this Fall in Los Angeles. However, the director and screenwriter put to rest the rumors that the movie is centered around world-famous and renowned film critic Pauline Kael. The information was given by Tarantino himself during a Q&A event at the Grand Rex Theater in Paris, France.
The Movie Critic will be set in 1977, a period that made a huge difference in the story of cinema. It was the year that gave us Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and it was around that time that some of the best filmmakers rose to prominence in what is now called the American New Wave of cinema, or the Hollywood Renaissance. In that era, emerging directors like Martin Scorsese, Dennis Hopper, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Francis Ford Coppola established themselves as the best in the bunch. They redefined cinema by focusing on stories that featured flawed protagonists, melancholic and realistic world views, and story endings there were often tragic.
Why Were The 70s Important For Quentin Tarantino?
During that time, Tarantino was a teenager who fiercely consumed every New Wave product, and was hugely influenced by those filmmakers. If indeed The Movie Critic turns out to be the director’s last movie, it makes perfect sense that his swan song would be a love letter to the period of cinema that made him. And if that’s the story, we can be 100% hyped up about the casting process that's coming up, because we’ll see a slate of actors who will get to play living legends on the big screen.
The Movie Critic May Feature A Starry-Eyed Protagonist - But Not Pauline Kael
The title of the new Tarantino movie also suggests that the transformation of Hollywood will be seen through the eyes of an outsider who is impacted by what they see on the silver screen. As you probably know, Hollywood has a complicated relationship with film critics, using them as reference when they praise a masterpiece, but disregarding their comments when they write a bad review. In the 70s – way before the internet – the words of a film critic on paper were hugely influential, and Pauline Kael was one name that people hugely trusted to tell them if a new flick was good and why. But there were many others like Kael who also were (and are) film lovers who get starry-eyed before a well-crafted production, which could give the movie a romantic feel along the lines of Tarantino's previous title Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Who knows? The director might even create a film critic based on himself.
For many years, Tarantino has been saying that he’ll wrap up his career with ten movies. After producing several titles that are considered cinema masterpieces like Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, and Inglorious Basterds, he can probably rest knowing he did his very best for the movie industry. However, as Hayao Miyazaki has proven, announcing one’s retirement doesn’t necessarily mean that the work will be over.
Details from The Movie Critic, including cast and expected release date, are yet to be announced. You can watch a trailer for Oscar-winning Once Upon a Time in Hollywood below: