Entertainment
Quentin Tarantino Enjoys One Of The Biggest Failures Of The Year
By Matthew Swigonski
| Published
From picking out your favorite type of candy to choosing the perfect toppings for family pizza night, personal tastes are highly subjective, and our movie preferences are no different. Just ask Quentin Tarantino, who has come out and said that he actually enjoyed Joker: Folie à Deux, even finding comparisons to the 1994 film Natural Born Killers.
While it’s not exactly a secret that Joker 2 is considered one of the biggest failures of the year, Quentin Tarantino says that he found the flaws in the film to have endearing qualities that clicked with him more than he imagined.
Quentin Tarantino On Joker 2
While appearing on the October 22 episode of The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast, Quentin Tarantino and his Pulp Fiction co-writer Roger Avary were sucked into a conversation regarding the box office flop, Joker 2. Despite the universal consensus that the film was an absolute disaster, the iconic filmmaker couldn’t help but view it from a different angle, admiring it for what it really is, a flawed movie that closely imitated the character it was centered around.
“I really, really liked it, really. A lot. Like, tremendously,” Tarantino told The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast host Bret Easton Ellis and Avary.
Appreciates The Flaws
To explain his reasoning, Quentin Tarantino said that he went into Joker 2 “expecting to be impressed by the filmmaking,” but he ultimately began to see the film as much more approachable than he originally envisioned. The Kill Bill director noted that he expected the movie to be “an arms-length, intellectual exercise that ultimately I wouldn’t think worked like a movie,” he told Ellis and Avary. “And I’m just nihilistic enough to kind of enjoy a movie that doesn’t quite work as a movie.”
Supporting one of the biggest failures of the year isn’t exactly an easy task, but if anyone has enough pull to successfully defend Joker 2, it’s Quentin Tarantino. Granted, he still called the film a “big, giant mess” that was a bit simplistic in its approach, but almost like watching a car crash in slow motion, Quentin Tarantino says that Joker 2 still managed to pull him in, admitting that he “really got caught up into it.”
Enjoyed The Musical Numbers
One of the aspects of Joker 2 that Quentin Tarantino liked the most was probably the one feature of the film that audiences across the globe have panned the most; the musical numbers. He revealed that for whatever reason, the music inside the film caught his attention and never let go, claiming that the more “banal” the song, the more engrossed he felt watching them.
As of October 29, Joker 2 currently holds a dual 32 percent critic and audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, with many reviews pointing to the film’s odd pacing and uneven musical numbers as the biggest negative.
While Quentin Tarantino seems to be alone in his praise for Joker 2, he says that the film resonates with him on a personal level, which could explain his affection for the movie. He explained that while writing Natural Born Killers, he felt inspired by the film Taxi Driver.
While watching Joker 2, Quentin Tarantino says that the film “seems pretty f***ing indebted to Natural Born Killers, almost as if a torch has been passed between misunderstood films.
Source: The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast
Entertainment
In case you forgot, AMC movie tickets are 50% off on Tuesdays and Wednesdays — its a year-round thing
HALF OFF MOVIE TICKETS: AMC Stubs members get 50% off adult evening movie tickets every Tuesday and Wednesday.
All Stubs tiers are eligible for the promo
It’s been over a year since AMC announced that evening movie tickets would be 50% off every Tuesday and Wednesday. That officially bumps the promo into “year-round” territory.
It only feels right to re-remind you of how easy it is to get cheap movie tickets, given the nonstop bangers that summer 2026 is blessing us with. The Odyssey and Evil Dead Burn are the two must-see-in-theaters picks that come to mind as I write this post on July 21, but there’s bound to be a wicked box office lineup regardless of when you’re reading this. Heavy hitters like Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Resident Evil, Other Mommy, Verity, Avengers: Doomsday, Werwulf, and Dune: Part III are all making their theater debut in the last quarter of the year.
As long as you’re an AMC Stubs member, you can catch all of them for around $9 per person (ticket prices may vary slightly depending on your location). All tiers of the AMC Stubs membership have access to the promo, and Stubs members can buy up to 10 tickets at 50% off per showing. The discount applies to the base price of a standard adult evening ticket only — no IMAX.
Mashable Deals
To elevate the in-theater experience even more, Stubs members can also get 50% off small combos on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, like the heavenly pairing of popcorn and that good movie theater Coke. AMC’s snacks are apparently so elite that people are paying to order them at home through Uber Eats — and here you are, getting ’em for cheap.
Entertainment
Light Flip is a minimalistic, cheap flip phone that wont distract you
Remember Light, the New York-based company that builds super-simple, distraction-free, cheap smartphones?
It’s back with a new device; its first-ever flip phone called the Light Flip.
Once again, this is a cheap phone designed to free you from endless scrolling and social media addiction, while still offering the basic tools you need for everyday life. To do this, the company has built an Android-based, minimalistic operating system called LightOS that’s mostly textual and displays everything in just two colors. You do get access to music, messages, alarms, and other basic apps, but you don’t get to scroll the flashy new TIkTok video; that’s what your other phone is for.
The Light Flip is available in six colors: Black, Navy, Red, Pink, Yellow, and Light Gray.
Credit: Light Phone
The Light Flip doesn’t stray far from the formula, but approaches it with the body of a flip phone. In many ways, it’s far more simple than the company’s previous phone, the Light Phone III, which has an OLED touchscreen. The Light Flip is basically your flip phone of old, with a plastic body, a numeric, T9 keypad, some function buttons, and a 2.8-inch, non-touch display.
Mashable Light Speed
Numeric keypad? That’s right, but at least it supports T9 predictive input.
Credit: Light Phone
Inside, it’s powered by a MediaTek MT8873 chip, 6GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, and has a 50-megapixel camera and a (replaceable) 1,800mAh battery. Other amenities include a headphone jack (nice!), a USB-C port, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and 5G connectivity.
The camera on the back has a 50-megapixel sensor but takes 12-megapixel images.
Credit: Light Phone
The numeric keypad might be a tough sell to folks that are used to touchscreens or at least QWERTY keyboards. Fortunately, the Light Flip does support voice-to-text and audio messaging, too.
The phone is available in six colors: Black, Navy, Red, Pink, Yellow, and Light Gray.
The Light Flip retails for $299 or $39 per month with the Light Service plan. It starts shipping in April 2027.
Entertainment
The Ecovacs Goat 01000 RTK robot lawn mower is on sale for under $700 at Amazon
SAVE $301: The Ecovacs Goat 01000 RTK robot lawn mower is on sale for $698.99 at Amazon, down from the standard price of $999.99. That’s a 30% discount.
$698.99
at Amazon
$999.99
Save $301
Not many people consider the chore of mowing the lawn to be enjoyable. It’s a task we often hand off to the neighborhood kids or a professional landscaping crew. But if you’d rather take matters into your own hands, we have a great solution these days. Plus, an affordable model is on sale.
As of July 21, the Ecovacs Goat 01000 RTK robot lawn mower is on sale for $698.99 at Amazon, marked down from the list price of $999.99. That winds up being a savings of $301 from a 30% discount.
By now you’ve probably seen a robot lawn mower rolling around someone’s yard, but it’s still an abnormal sight. Just like the rollout of robot vacuums, we’ll slowly start to see more and more robots take over mowing the lawn. As someone with allergies, I’m totally cool with never touching a lawn mower ever again.
The Ecovacs Goat 01000 is designed to maintain lawns that span up to 0.25 acres in size. You don’t need to worry about a wire perimeter because it maps your yard and stays on course thanks to LiDAR RTK navigation that even works in the shade or under trees. It can even avoid obstacles when mowing in dark conditions.
Mashable Deals
The small mower body that measures 2.3 feet means it can mow in tight areas like between raised vegetable beds or small walkways. Plus, it has an IPX6 waterproof design. You get to decide on your ideal cutting length between 1.2 and 3.2 inches.
Today’s Amazon deal on the Ecovacs Goat 01000 applies to the robot mower with a care kit which includes 36 blades and an RTK AC adapter. Since the mower and the care kit are on sale for under $700, today is a great day to wave goodbye to the heavy and loud push mower and make the upgrade. Spend the rest of summer perfecting homemade slushies instead of doing yardwork.
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