Highbrow’s Enemy

An enormously promising title, Quentin Tarantino’s Cinema Speculation arrives suggesting a tantalizing combination of coming-of-age movie memoir and deep dive into the spectacular films of the 1970s – Hollywood’s last golden age – via a celebrated and accomplished filmmaker with an infectious enthusiasm for the movies and a breathtaking facility with an impossible number of features, renowned and obscure. Tarantino has an encyclopedic knowledge of postwar American film history, often well-deployed in the book, and a keen eye for assessing source material.