The 1990s were a boffo decade for newly minted directors: Richard Linklater released Slacker (1990), Quentin Tarantino released Reservoir Dogs (1992), and so on. In Generation Tarantino: The Last Wave of Young Turks in Hollywood, Andrew J. Rausch (The Films of Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro) lays out with undisguised exuberance how "the attitude and swagger that has come to define Gen X" reverberates through this distinguished crop of movies.
Rausch devotes chapters to each of 13 filmmakers (some of whom he interviewed for this project) whose feature debuts, which were released or made in the 1990s, launched long careers; he explores each director's output in the 1990s in terms of financing, casting, visual approach, and more. The characters in these films don't sound like professors, and neither does Rausch. Writing conversationally ("Here's the deal"), he's free with his opinions while also quoting generously from critics with not-always-corroborating views on the work under discussion.
The featured filmmakers largely came of age in the tumultuous 1970s, and many had the gumption to skip film school and go the DIY route with funding--commonalities that Rausch believes help explain the maverick spirit of their work. Equally interesting to him is each artist's distinctiveness. Unlike Robert Rodriguez (1992's El Mariachi), Sofia Coppola, daughter of director Francis Ford, didn't have to participate in a clinical trial to finance her first feature (1999's The Virgin Suicides), but she may be the only director of her (or any) generation who took her cast to play laser tag. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer