What Is Quentin Tarantino’s Last Film, 'The Movie Critic,' About?
To the chagrin of those of us still holding on to our Kill Bill lunchboxes and replica “Bad Motherf–ker” wallets, Quentin Tarantino really means to hang it up after 10 movies. Some people thought that meant 2019’s Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood would be his final bow, but they weren’t counting the Kill Bill movies as one entry (which Tarantino does).
Now, plans are finally in motion for a feature he’s calling The Movie Critic. While reports initially suggested the titular character would be based on Pauline Kael—the famously contrarian movie critic who wrote for The New Yorker—Tarantino has said that’s not the case. Instead, the main character will be based on a lesser known writer who wrote for “a porno rag” Tarantino read while he was growing up.
“He wrote about mainstream movies and he was the second-string critic. I think he was a very good critic,” Tarantino told Deadline in May 2023. “He was as cynical as hell. His reviews were a cross between early Howard Stern and what [Taxi Driver’s] Travis Bickle might be if he were a film critic. Think about Travis’ diary entries.”
As for why he’s stopping now at the relatively young age of 60, Tarantino has said he worries about losing touch with relevancy as he gets older. “I want to stop at a certain point. Directors don’t get better as they get older,” he explained to Playboy in 2012. “Usually the worst films in their filmography are those last four at the end. I am all about my filmography, and one bad film fucks up three good ones. I don’t want that bad, out-of-touch comedy in my filmography, the movie that makes people think, ‘Oh man, he still thinks it’s 20 years ago.’ When directors get out-of-date, it’s not pretty.”
Keep reading for everything to know so far about The Movie Critic.
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What is The Movie Critic about?
Tarantino’s inspiration is a real-life, unknown critic who worked for an unnamed porn magazine that will be called The Popstar Pages in the movie. “The porno rag critic was very, very funny. He was very rude, you know,” Tarantino told Deadline. “He cursed. He used racial slurs. But his shit was really funny. He was as rude as hell. He wrote like he was 55 but he was only in his early to mid-30s. He died in his late 30s. It wasn’t clear for a while, but now I’ve done some more research and I think it was complications due to alcoholism.”
The movie will be set in Los Angeles in 1977, which is not coincidentally a major year in the history of cinema. That year marked the debut of George Lucas’ Star Wars, Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Woody Allen’s Annie Hall, David Lynch’s Eraserhead, Dario Argento’s Suspiria and one of Tarantino’s personal faves, John Flynn’s Rolling Thunder, which was cowritten by Paul Schrader.
Who’s in The Movie Critic?
No casting decisions have been announced yet, but Tarantino has a clear picture in his mind of what he’s looking for when it comes to the critic. “I haven’t decided yet, but it’s going to be somebody in the 35 year-old ball park,” he told Deadline. “It’ll definitely be a new leading man for me.” He noted that he had “an idea of somebody” he could “imagine doing it really well,” but he declined to say who that person is.
As for the other characters in the movie, Tarantino has a stable of frequent collaborators he loves to work with over and over again, so any or all of them could pop up for his final bow. These include Leonardo DiCaprio, Samuel L. Jackson, Harvey Keitel, Uma Thurman, Christoph Waltz, Michael Madsen, Tim Roth, Kurt Russell, Zo? Bell and Bruce Dern.
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Where will The Movie Critic be filmed?
In September 2023, California’s film office announced that Tarantino’s latest project—referred to as “#10”—will receive more than $20 million in tax credits to film in the state. “I love shooting in California,” Tarantino said in a statement at the time. “I started directing movies here and it is only fitting that I shoot my final motion picture in the cinema capital of the world. There is nothing like shooting in my hometown; the crews are the best I’ve ever worked with, and the locations are amazing.”
With that kind of incentive, it seems unlikely that Tarantino will shoot much of the movie elsewhere, but you truly never know. After all, this is the man whose most recent film included a scene where the main characters brutally murdered the Manson Family, with help from a friendly pit bull named Brandy.
What is The Movie Critic release date?
Given that Tarantino was still looking for his leading man as of May 2023, the earliest fans can expect The Movie Critic is mid to late 2024. The WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes have further complicated that timeline, though, so it’s now more likely that the film will debut sometime in 2025.