Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

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Proboscis
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03 Oct 2019

Saw this a couple of weeks ago.

Seriously, WTF.

Did I miss something here, or was this film completely plotless ?

I cannot understand what the big deal about this movie is. I have heard a few guests on JRE absolutely RAVING about how great it was.

It should be stated that I am a big Tarantino fan, and hold both DiCaprio & Pitt in very high regard. But this film just seemed like a steaming pile of NOTHING GOING ON.

Look I get the ending (I won't mention it), and another of Tarantino's 'alternate takes on history' (as he also did with Inglourious Basterds), but for almost three excruciatingly boring hours, the film didn't really lead towards that apart from the ambiguous parts at the ranch (which I also understood in the context of the real story), nor shed much light on that part of the tale.

And come to think of it, if viewers weren't aware of that occurrence in late '60's history, the rewriting of events would be completely lost on them.

This film gets a 1 star from me.

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MrFigg
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03 Oct 2019

Man. That’s bad news. I’ve been looking forward to this film for ages. Oh well.
Without this turning into a “films to see” thread, check out Midsommar. Beautiful and disturbing. It’s billed as a horror film which I know has put a few people off but it’s far from. Best I’ve seen for a long time.
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Proboscis
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03 Oct 2019

MrFigg wrote:
03 Oct 2019
Man. That’s bad news. I’ve been looking forward to this film for ages. Oh well.
By no means take my post as a deterrent, go see it, maybe I am missing something crucial. As I said, some JRE guests have been over the moon about it. I'm sure Bill Burr creamed his jeans over the film.

Personally I think Tarantino's films reached the pinnacle of awesome very early on, and it's been downhill from there. WTF was Hateful Eight ? Another load of shyte. That said, I have watched the four minute intro a hundred times or more. Very powerful.


MrFigg wrote:
03 Oct 2019
check out Midsommar. Beautiful and disturbing. It’s billed as a horror film which I know has put a few people off but it’s far from. Best I’ve seen for a long time.
You lost me at horror, but won me back at 'disturbing'. I'm a fan of dark films.

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MrFigg
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03 Oct 2019

Proboscis wrote:
03 Oct 2019
MrFigg wrote:
03 Oct 2019
Man. That’s bad news. I’ve been looking forward to this film for ages. Oh well.
By no means take my post as a deterrent, go see it, maybe I am missing something crucial. As I said, some JRE guests have been over the moon about it. I'm sure Bill Burr creamed his jeans over the film.

Personally I think Tarantino's films reached the pinnacle of awesome very early on, and it's been downhill from there. WTF was Hateful Eight ? Another load of shyte. That said, I have watched the four minute intro a hundred times or more. Very powerful.


MrFigg wrote:
03 Oct 2019
check out Midsommar. Beautiful and disturbing. It’s billed as a horror film which I know has put a few people off but it’s far from. Best I’ve seen for a long time.
You lost me at horror, but won me back at 'disturbing'. I'm a fan of dark films.
I’d actually say it fits more into the “extremely uncomfortable” category. :).
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EdGrip
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07 Oct 2019

I don't think it's about "missing something crucial" - if you don't like the film, you don't like the film. I am easily pleased, so I thought it was a beautifully-painted stylised picture of '60s Hollywood. I was happy to drift along in its stylish Tarantino world, taking in the sights and the little character studies - I didn't have anywhere I needed to be or anywhere I'd rather be. I was not familiar with the real story, so the rewriting of history was indeed "lost on me" - but I don't think the rewriting was supposed to be a clever point that I missed out on by not knowing the real version. I don't think that's how it works. The Manson family part is a minor part of the plot, in comparison to Inglorious Bastards. It was probably my favourite of Late Tarantino.. Felt a bit uncomfortable about his pervy gaze, as ever. Go see it, it looks great on the big screen.

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MannequinRaces
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08 Oct 2019

I enjoyed this movie quite a bit. Is it Tarantino’s best work, no. Is it his worst work, no. For me it checked all the Tarantino boxes which are 1) witty dialogue 2) violence 3) killer sound track 4) great acting 5) great film editing / production, etc..

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platzangst
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08 Oct 2019

I read a sort-of review that opined that Tarantino is aging in reverse - I saved the text but it was deleted later - since I'm not sure WHY it was deleted I'll not cite the author, but I will quote what I think are a couple relevant points:


Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is part of what I am tempted to call Tarantino’s Revenge Trilogy, but you can’t really do that because most of his movies are about revenge. What I’m thinking of, specifically, is three films that take as their purpose the settling of historical scores, movies that get revenge for historical crimes – Hollywood, Inglourious Basterds, and Django Unchained. The Tate-La Bianca murders, the crimes of the Nazis, and slavery, each cinematically avenged, great acts of evil undone through frictionless and righteous violence, and all gorgeously shot. The Holocaust, this time with a happy ending.

Watching Hollywood I was reminded of this old piece in Tablet (from before Tablet went insane), which meticulously takes Basterds to task. As the author says, Tarantino’s revenge story violates Jewish moral law while ostensibly scoring one for the Jews; it reduces the greatest crime in human history to fodder for action movie hijinks. In the piece Liel Leibovitz compares Basterds to Melville’s Army of Shadows, a truly brutal comparison for Tarantino’s film. Army of Shadows is a film that knows not only the depths of Nazi crimes but the futility of trying to avenge them; it is a story of moral weight. Basterds could have been written by a 12 year old.

What Tarantino can’t grasp is that even on the limited terms of cinematic vengeance, his movies are limp. The story of the Holocaust is precisely the story of an act for which there can be no revenge, no recompense, no resolution and no understanding. If every single Nazi had immediately burst into flames at the conclusion of the war, this would offer no meaningful comfort; the murder of 11 million people cannot be compensated for. For the Holocaust there is no revenge and there is no atonement. Slavery cannot be dunked on, no matter how cool you make Django seem. And there’s no comfort for the Manson dead. Not even in the movies.

I am not one of those who believes that Tarantino is a racist or a misogynist. I appreciate most of his movies and love Death Proof the most. But the best movie he’s made, in my opinion, is Pulp Fiction, and it’s here that I arrive at my point about him aging in reverse. Most of Tarantino’s movies are well-crafted, engaging, and frequently quite funny. What is missing from his later work and present in his best, earliest work – Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Reservoir Dogs – is moral maturity. The character of Jules undergoes a moral arc in the movie; his brush with death causes him to contemplate the meaning of mortality and compels him to change his life. As he stares down his gun at Pumpkin and Honey Bunny he understands, in a way he didn’t before, what the power of life and death really means. It’s impossible to imagine Rick or Cliff in Hollywood maturing in a similar way, or changing at all, really. They amble along until Tarantino gives them a crack at righteous violence, and of course they pull it off with aplomb. Anthony Lane once wrote that the movies today know everything about violence and nothing about suffering, and I can’t imagine a better description of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. It’s a shame that the years since Pulp Fiction have left Tarantino 25 years older but somehow less grown up.

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fullforce
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09 Oct 2019

Proboscis wrote:
03 Oct 2019
Saw this a couple of weeks ago.

Seriously, WTF.

Did I miss something here, or was this film completely plotless ?
Yeah, you missed something. Many things, rather.
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MrFigg
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26 Jan 2020

Finally saw it. Totally magic hahaha. Loved it :).
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orthodox
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26 Jan 2020

I still wonder what Tarantino meant to say with this movie. All that 'revenge' thing looks like an outright bizarre parody. Who it is directed to? The current state of mind in Hollywood? The infantile audience?
I hate to miss the point. Seriously, Mulholland Drive seemed to be more comprehensible.

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MrFigg
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26 Jan 2020

orthodox wrote:
26 Jan 2020
I still wonder what Tarantino meant to say with this movie. All that 'revenge' thing looks like an outright bizarre parody. Who it is directed to? The current state of mind in Hollywood? The infantile audience?
I hate to miss the point. Seriously, Mulholland Drive seemed to be more comprehensible.
What revenge thing? You maybe missed the point but I appear to have missed the revenge thing.
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orthodox
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26 Jan 2020

MrFigg wrote:
26 Jan 2020
What revenge thing? You maybe missed the point but I appear to have missed the revenge thing.
I mean that tl;dr review quote there above about 'Revenge Trilogy':
viewtopic.php?p=470372#p470372

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EnochLight
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26 Jan 2020

Eh... I loved the hell out of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I've never watched a Tarantino movie that I didn't like, although I have enjoyed some more than others. Hollywood checked all the right boxes as far as classic Tarantino stuff, IMHO. But hey - it's not for everyone, for sure. RT indicates critics loved it at 85%, but audience scores are more harsh at 70%.

Contrast that with Rise of Skywalker where critics gave it a grisly 52%, but the audience gave it 86%.
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pushedbutton
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26 Jan 2020

You wanna see a plotless and pretty much pointless film by tarantino try 'Death Proof'.
It's 2 hours long and the first hour is like watching grass grow, but I guess at least it ends with..erm... something happening.
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MannequinRaces
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26 Jan 2020

pushedbutton wrote:
26 Jan 2020
You wanna see a plotless and pretty much pointless film by tarantino try 'Death Proof'.
It's 2 hours long and the first hour is like watching grass grow, but I guess at least it ends with..erm... something happening.
Agree with this! I watched it once and that was enough for me.

VariableX
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26 Jan 2020

I really liked Once Upon a Time in Hollywood!
In these days of instant gratification, I can see why it might not go down well with some people, but the acting, film craft and story were top notch!

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MannequinRaces
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26 Jan 2020

fretshot7 wrote:
26 Jan 2020
I really liked Once Upon a Time in Hollywood!
In these days of instant gratification, I can see why it might not go down well with some people, but the acting, film craft and story were top notch!
They really were. Not that awards matter but I'm curious to see how this does at the Oscars. It has 10 nominations including best picture and director.

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EnochLight
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27 Jan 2020

pushedbutton wrote:
26 Jan 2020
You wanna see a plotless and pretty much pointless film by tarantino try 'Death Proof'.
It's 2 hours long and the first hour is like watching grass grow, but I guess at least it ends with..erm... something happening.
LOL! Yeah, as far as full-out revenge flicks go, it took a really, really, reaaaaaaally long time for anything to happen. That said, I saw this in the theater as a double-feature backed with Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror (which was marketed as "Grindhouse"), and between that and Death Proof and the absolutely hilarious fake trailers that were placed in between the two ("Don't", "Thanksgiving", "Werewolf Women of the SS", and "Machete" - the latter of which resulted in 2 real movies being made after the fact) , it was a fantastic evening at the cinema.

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loopeydoug
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27 Jan 2020

I saw it as a playful loveletter to his youth; growing up around hollywood and being infatuated with movies.

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orthodox
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27 Jan 2020

I've always dreamed about sending a $100m video message to myself back 50 years.

"Cheers from the future! We haven't been to Mars yet, but we can change our past now. Rest in peace, now everything is as it should have been."

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