“And that’s when my dentist told me to floss daily.” Image via The Dissolve

When watching a feature directorial debut, look not just at how good the movie is, but how much promise it shows. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, the feature directorial debut of Ana Lily Amirpour, is not perfect, but the amount of promise it shows is hard to describe.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night wears its genre influences on its sleeves. If you can catch even half the references, then you will walk out with just a few more cool points added to your credibility. This is genre mashup that is sometimes incoherent, yet always riveting to watch.

Set in an Iranian ghost town called Bad City during an unspecified point in time, Girl chronicles a vague dystopia in which the borders are lined with ditches filled with dead bodies, the sun never seems to shine, and heroin is just the way people connect with one another. So basically, it is like a really horrifying Bruce Springsteen song come to life. There is no better way to explore human connection than through a vampire. Girl has been marketed as an “Iranian Vampire Western,” which is a perfect way to find a niche audience. Like any good western, the lead is never given a name. She is a vampire who wanders the empty streets at night, feasting on whatever lonely men happen to cross her path. But then, she finds love, or at least feelings in general, in Arash (Arash Marandi) who is sometimes as cool as James Dean and other times as awkward as Ben Braddock.

Yes, this is a film about a teenage vampire who finds love. However, this is not the indie version of Twilight. Amirpour has definitely watched enough vampire films to identify tropes and then subvert them. A Girl Walks Home finds the humanity in a vampire by showing that there actually isn’t that much of a difference between man and vampire. Sure, The Girl has agency and shows no fear, yet she is cripplingly lonely when finally confronted with love. It probably helps that Sheila Vand saw more than a just vampire in her character. With very few words, she creates a character who is both lovely and terrifying. Enjoy hearing her say “are you a bad boy?” in Farsi.

You will probably walk away from this film with very little understanding of what happened. What is certain, however, is that Ana Lily Amirpour was born to be a filmmaker. She barely needs a story; all she needs is some good lighting and even better music to convey emotions. Bad City doesn’t really exist, but it feels like a place that was invented both by experience and nightmares. The best kind of vision is one in which it feels like a director is inviting you into their weird little world. There is no better example of this than the scene where The Girl puts on White Lies’ “Death” (which I thought was a Cure song at first, because I’m not good at being cool) on her record player while her and Arash get the feels. I just want to hug scenes like this and live in them forever. Amirpour understands how to appeal to both the film snob and the sad teenager inside all of us.

Girl Walks Home is all over the place, sometimes for better, and sometimes for worse. Sometimes, it feels like a French New Wave Spaghetti Western, and other times it feels like Near Dark by way of David Lynch. It is a scrappy debut, but one that deserves your attention. In the same way that Reservoir Dogs showed that Tarantino was a budding master at writing dialogue and Who’s That Knocking at My Door showed that Scorsese was a budding master at turning violence into art, Girl Walks Home shows Amirpour as a budding master of mashing up genres while capturing loneliness through sight and sound.

So to answer the question that you are probably asking, this film is not necessarily accessible to the casual filmgoer. But if you take the risk and go see A GIrl Walks Home Alone at Night, you might walk away from the black and white facade and immediately into the nearest video store you can find (a few of these still exist) with a pile of movies you had never heard of before.

On Tuesday night, Deadline reported that Quentin Tarantino would shelve his highly anticipated new script “The Hateful Eight” after word that an industry insider had supposedly leaked his script. The source of the leak is still unknown, though Tarantino firmly believes that it wasn’t Tim Roth’s doing. For once, Mr. Orange isn’t the rat.

According to the article, Tarantino held a secret meeting with actors Bruce Dern, Tim Roth, and Michael Madsen. He gave each of them a copy of the script and then one of them went and brought it to their agents. Then, somebody in said agency leaked the script. Infuriated, Tarantino said that he would shelve “The Hateful Eight.” Instead of turning it into a film, he threatened to have the script published instead. If it was only the script itself that we ever got to see, that wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. Tarantino’s scripts are a wonder to read, filled with amazing descriptions and misspellings. But would you rather see the Mona Lisa, or read a rough description of it?

The sense of betrayal that Tarantino feels makes absolute sense, but his reaction feels a little black and white. Quentin is an old fashioned dude who almost feels like he wasn’t made for these times. The man refuses to shoot on digital, and has basically no internet presence whatsoever. We live in a time where everything is seen and scrutinized, so having the very first draft of a script he just completed already come into attention might have been too much for him to handle. Strangely enough, this isn’t the first time that Tarantino has had one of his scripts get leaked: the same thing happened to both “Inglourious Basterds” and “Django Unchained.” Then again, those were both later drafts and when they were both leaked, the respective films were already finished or in the process of being finished. People with patience wouldn’t have read the leaked copy of “The Hateful Eight.” Its mere presence seems like good press, actually. People are talking about a film that hasn’t even been made yet.

Shelving his latest script just seems like an unfair punishment. There has to be a better way to punish some Hollywood insiders than by holding all of his fans hostage. While I will try to take Quentin’s word that he might return to “The Hateful Eight,” this is the same guy who has also said that he will make “Kill Bill 3″ for the past decade. If the “Kill Bill 3″ possibility has taught me anything, it’s that Tarantino has no shortage of ideas, but he really doesn’t care when the viewer wants to see something that he has written.

But I really do care, and I hope that this whole debacle can be settled and sorted out soon. “The Hateful Eight” should be the next film that Quentin Tarantino directs. It is not just because of the possible actors, as casts can change frequently (at least three actors had to drop out of “Django Unchained” because of other obligations). One can argue that Quentin has been making westerns in one form or another for his entire career. However, it is about time that he finally made a “pure” western. If he made “The Hateful Eight” next, it would serve as the final chapter of a sort of loose trilogy with “Inglourious Basterds” and “Django Unchained” in which each film moved closer and closer to being a western. “Basterds” is a war flick with western influences, and “Django” basically is a western that just happens to be set a little further east*. It is as if these two films were building up to Tarantino finally writing and directing his first traditional western.

If Tarantino does decide to direct “The Hateful Eight” next, he will actually be doing a huge service to the genre that he loves so much. For years and years, people have speculated that the western of the days of John Ford and Howard Hawks is dead. Despite the huge box office success of “True Grit” just four years ago, the myth that the western is dead still stands. Quentin is known for reviving the careers of struggling actors and bringing forgotten music back into the lexicon. Quentin could definitely remind everyone that there is still profitability and legitimacy left in the western genre.

Quentin is one of few filmmakers left who truly deserves to be called a genius. This is not just because of the ideas he comes up with, but also how he can make things that normally wouldn’t work actually work in the most masterful of ways. Getting screwed over by the industry that you love so much must be difficult. However, that rabid fan base that can quote “Pulp Fiction” by heart and probably owns all of the collector’s edition copies of “Reservoir Dogs”** is still there. As a fan, I will see anything with Tarantino’s name on it. Preferably though, I would like to see the product that promises a Mexican standoff between Bruce Dern, Michael Madsen, and Tim Roth.

I highly reccomend that you read the full Deadline article.

*Although there are parts of “Django Unchained” that take place in Texas and some other parts of the western United States. Whether it is truly a western is up to interpretation.

**For the record, I own the copy with the Mr. Blonde cover.