Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

Dorathen Better Late Then Never

Curapedi I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Kimball Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Michael_Elliott My Best Friend's Birthday (1987) This amateur film was co-written and directed by Quentin Tarantino and has become somewhat of a cult favorite over the years. Fans of Tarantino are willing to check out anything he has done so this leads them to his first feature, which originally ran 70 minutes but due to a fire there are only fragments that remain. The total running time is just over 35 minutes so half of the movie is lost but there's still enough interesting material to make it worth sitting through. The story is pretty simple as Tarantino plays a DJ whose best friend has just been dumped and the two try to have some fun. This leads to the Tarantino character getting involved with a hooker.With half the film missing it's impossible to fairly judge this movie but I must say that as a Tarantino fan I enjoyed it. On a technical level there's certainly nothing special about the film as the director obviously hadn't gotten that great eye of his. However, the dialogue and how people talk to one another is on full power here and there are some very funny sequences. One such example is when they are discussing great actors in bad movies and also a scene dealing with good music.Tarantino is actually a lot of fun in his part and he certainly knows how to handle his dialogue. What's most interesting here is the subplot dealing with the hooker as a lot of their relationship would be used in TRUE ROMANCE so fans of that film will certainly want to check this out.

Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) "My Best Friend's Birthday" is a film that runs for slightly over an hour and was made almost 30 years ago by filmmaker Quentin Tarantino in his early 20s. According to IMDb, this is his second project. Just like his co-writer Craig Hamann, Tarantino also plays a major character in this film looking pretty punk and with his mannerisms and all he has not changed a bit in the last 30 years. Of course I only watched about half of this film as the other half is apparently lost. What a shame. This is a pretty good work for such a young filmmaker and the talent is visible. The best about it is, as usual with Tarantino, the dialogs: fresh and creative from start to finish with tons of interesting references to music in this very case. We hear about Elvis and Rod Stewart and there is even a Johnny Cash song included in here. Love him. Tarantino must have had great taste in music as another of his early works features Leonard Cohen, another favorite of mine. So yeah what can I say: I recommend this little movie. It only runs for a bit over 30 minutes, so it does not take long to see, basically like a short film. A pretty good watch.

Boba_Fett1138 We will never see this movie in it's full glory. The final reel of this movie was destroyed in a lab fire that broke out during editing and the only surviving parts were edited together to make this 34 minutes short movie. Still you never get the feeling that you're ever really missing any sequences while watching this movie.This is a Tarantino movie alright. It has some absolutely amazing dialog. The story isn't really about much but the dialog makes sure that this movie is an interesting enough one to watch. The line 'Your ass is grass, and I'm the lawnmower.', right before two persons get into a fight, is an absolute classic in my book and now actually one of my favorite movie quotes. The movie is interestingly told and divided in several different parts, in the same style as "Pulp Function". This movie would latter also form the basis for Tarantino's script for "True Romance".Real problem with this movie is that it lacks style. It's a very amateur like looking movie and it uses standard camera-positions and weak editing. Because of this not everything in the movie works very well, such as most of the comical moments and the weird kung-fu fight toward the ending. Tarantino's vision was obviously already present but he didn't had the right tools and persons around him to make the right movie he had in mind with it. Oh well, he eventually ended up alright with that!Probably only truly recommendable to Tarantino fans though.7/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

MisterWhiplash SPOILERS AHEADTo those who wonder how I discovered My Best Friend's Birthday, I found this video on ebay, and it was definitely worth the money despite the deteriorated quality of the copy. This is filmmaker Quentin Tarantino's first independently funded film, and from what was assembled (the film wasn't completed and this can be seen since a couple of plot points are left un-answered at the end of 40 minutes) I can tell that it was one of those well-intentioned (if slight) signs-of-things-to-come. Clarence Pool (Tarantino, with a full-on "Elvis Man" look) is a disc jockey at K-BILLY Radio (Reservoir Dogs' music conductor in a sense), and is planning to give his friend Micky Burnett (co-writer Craig Hamann) a call-girl for his birthday party (a story later re-used for True Romance). This is used as more of a signpost for the film to follow as the characters, in particular Clarence, go off on riffs of Dialog - the "I'd f*** Elvis" speech is in its first revelation - and it's often very funny. Even a kung-fu fight between Mickey and the call girl's pimp (Al Harrell) is executed with the similar sense of dark hilarity that has made Tarantino the pro he is now. Truth be told, the film isn't without its shortcomings for a budget of so little, and a couple of the scenes really don't work at all. Yet for what it's worth it's a small ruby of underground cinema.