The Three Musketeers? The reviled 3-D adaptation of The Three Musketeers with Orlando Bloom and Milla Jovovich, from the director of the Resident Evil movies? That one? That was one of your favorite movies, QT? Ranking above all of these movies?:
Others he liked (no particular order) 50/50 Beginners Hugo The Iron Lady Carnage Green Hornet Green Lantern Captain America The Descendants My Week With Marilyn Fast Five Tree Of Life The Hangover Part II Mission Impossible 4 The Beaver Contagion The Sitter War Horse
So, to Mr. Tarantino’s eyes, The Three Musketeers was a better film than Beginners, Hugo, Carnage, The Descendants, Tree of Life, and Contagion. Really?
No, not really. The telltale sign is the fact that it’s #11 (after tying two movies for #10); he put it in his “best movies of 2011” list, if you’ll pardon the indelicate phrasing, to fuck with us. Ha ha, he presumably thought. This’ll make me look subversive and nonconformist! I’m edgy! I like stuff no one else likes! (This is the Internet commenter in him.)
I’d like to think that’s the same reason that Green Lantern, Fast Five, and The Hangover Part II are on the “others he liked” list, but who knows, maybe he genuinely enjoyed that swill; he’s always championed popcorn flicks, and as we decided last week (and keep reminding ourselves), there is no such thing as a universal taste. If the director of films as unique and unpredictable as Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs genuinely enjoyed the scene-for-scene remake that was the Hangover sequel, who are we to second guess him?
What’s problematic is the smugly-titled “Nice Try Award” category. To wit:
Nice Try Award Drive Hanna Drive Angry Real Steel
Yeah, Drive. NICE TRY. Nice try at making a cooled-out, homage-heavy, violent yet intellectual crime picture. You just go sit over there with the 3D Nicolas Cage mess and the Hugh Jackman boxing robots movie. Wait, what?
(Could it be — and we’re just spitballing here — that Tarantino realizes that not only is Drive stepping into his territory, but he’s maybe a wee bit peeved that Drive is better than any film he’s made since Jackie Brown? Or, from a tough-girls-kicking-ass perspective, that Hanna does in two hours what Kill Bill barely managed to do in four? Just a theory…)
Tarantino also made comparatively predictable choices for director and screenplay; those are available on the Tarantino Archive. What’s not on there is his “Worst Films” list, which was pulled after the post’s original appearance, though the fine folks at the Playlist grabbed it while it was up:
Worst Films Sucker Punch Potiche (Trophy Wife) Miral Insidious Rampart Straw Dogs Paranormal Activity 3 Meek’s Cutoff
That’s right, Meek’s Cutoff. I’ll tell you what that movie needed: A big 3-D zeppelin pirate ship sequence.