Tarantino is certainly a student of cinema; that has been placed on display on talk shows. I’m less sure he is trying to manipulate the audience so much as he is trying to entertain. He does so by telling stories that are entertaining to him; I think he has a blast making his movies. And he often works with the same actors because they get what he is doing and enjoy contributing.
To be sure, his work is not for everyone. His films are not even all for me. I have yet to get more than 30 minutes into The Hateful Eight without falling asleep. OTOH, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Inglourious Basterds are great fun. There is no doubt that a substantial focus for him is cinema violence as an art form.
Even so, I still wonder how someone can conclude as Flavious did. If it is a valid criticism I would prefer to skip those films, but I need to know what they are. I suspect it is imagined or there would probably have been an answer.
Cinema is all about audience manipulation. Much of QT’s violence is created with editing. As you never see the knlfe touch Janet Leigh in the shower scene of “Psycho,” much of what is in (good) movies is created in the mind of the audience. Perhaps that is the origin of Flavious Maximus’ s perception, for what he claims is in the movies appears nowhere, visually, or in dialogue.