The Pop Girls Are Reclaiming Classic “Film Bro” Movies

Film school graduates survivors all have at least one horror story about a classmate (see: a man) who could spend three hours talking at you about the Coen brothers without ever letting you get a word in. His Letterboxd top four was ever-evolving, his art house theater subscription was paid on a yearly basis, and he definitely had a Pulp Fiction poster displayed proudly on the wall of his unkempt dorm room. For too long, the “film bro” archetype has been terrorizing liberal arts campuses across the globe, but thankfully, the pop girls are here to save us from their reign of tyranny once and for all.

On Oct. 23, global pop sensation Lisa dropped her latest EP, Press Play. Along with the project came her latest single “Tarantino,” a spaghetti Western-inspired track that sees Lisa taking on a rather unapologetically dominant role. Just as the name implies, the song is laced with nods to the famed director and his films: “I got Kill Bill demeanor, mustard all on my sneakers,” she sings in the first verse, wasting no time to pay homage to the Uma Thurman-fronted two-part film series — a film-bro favorite. She follows that up with the line “Death Proof baby, I do all my own stunts” in the pre-chorus, alluding to the 2007 slasher film of the same name. The music video is also ripe with subtle references, from the action-packed kitchen sequence à la Kill Bill to the mysterious, unopened letter Lisa touts around like it’s the golden suitcase from Pulp Fiction.

Though Tarantino’s films are packed with recognizable iconography, you really have to be familiar with the films in order to identify the visual references. Rather than sporting Thurman’s yellow tracksuit, a piece of film history that has already been replicated countless times in pop culture, Lisa opts for multiple all-black outfits that feel more in line with her pop persona. This reads as an intentional choice from the artist to inject her own iconography into the video instead of relying on Tarantino’s work to bolster her own. Same goes for the blonde bob hairstyle she sports for most of the video, which feels just reminiscent enough to remind you of Uma Thurman, but not similar enough to come across as a paltry recreation. The end result is a music video that actually functions less as an homage to the director, and more as a reclamation of the movies that, for years, have been unfairly written off as “film bro” films.

The song comes just two months after rising superstar Adéla dropped her now-top 10 Billboard hit “Nicole Kidman,” in which Adéla uses the phrase “I feel like Nicole” as a metaphor for feeling like a baddie. On the whole, Nicole Kidman is much more “for the girls” than Quentin Tarantino, though Adéla does make reference to one of Kidman’s most film bro-y projects to date: the 1999 Stanley Kubrick film Eyes Wide Shut. In the source material, Kidman removes her black slip dress with her back to the audience, revealing nothing underneath. In her version, Adéla strips her dress to reveal a rhinestoned pastel lingerie set and matching garter belt that feels much more in line with the costuming of a pop princess. The video also pokes fun at Kidman’s famous AMC Theaters commercial, the script for which all film bros seem to have memorized by heart.

Of course, we can’t talk about film’s influence on pop music without talking about Charli xcx, who literally released an album called Music, Fashion, Film earlier this year. After scoring beloved director Martin Scorsese for the album’s cover, Charli leaned into the film-bro archetype even further by featuring French actor Vincent Cassel in the “Camera” music video. The visual acts as a direct homage to the Mathieu Kassovitz classic La Haine, a black-and-white social thriller from 1995 starring Cassel himself, and if there’s one thing a film bro loves, it’s French cinema. But in Charli’s reimagining, the video serves as an ode to her newfound love of acting, and confronts her mounting desire to trade her pop stardom for a spot on the silver screen.

Even Ariana Grande is using her visuals to flex her film-nerd knowledge. In 2025, she dropped Brighter Days Ahead, a short film based on the 2004 film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind — yet another film bro Letterboxd top four — that served as the inspiration for her seventh studio album, Eternal Sunshine. More recently, she recreated the 1986 horror-thriller The Hitcher via the “Hate That I Made You Love Me” music video. Admittedly, the film is much less film-bro-y than Eternal Sunshine, though if he’s familiar with the cult classic, it’s fair to assume he was dominating that Auteur Theory discussion board back in the day.