Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)

chaos said:

Just an excuse to make Margot Robbie dress up like the first girl he ever jerked it to and zoom in on her dirty feet?

Click to expand...

Well this is now permanently cemented in my head for all time so thanks for that.

chaos said:

I don't really get what Tarantino's deal is with the alternate history thing. Just an excuse to make Margot Robbie dress up like the first girl he ever jerked it to and zoom in on her dirty feet? Who knows.

Click to expand...

It's because it's a "Once Upon A Time" movie, it's not a historical drama, it's Tarantino's take on the period / events. To me it's really a story about both Pitt / DeCaprio characters, embedded in an era where everything was changing. There's obvious nostalgia but I think there's also a focus on "Hollywood", its "residents" and the cultural changes it endured.

There's that scene where DiCaprio characters complains about the flamethrower, "that's too hot, can do you something about that?", some guy answers "it's a flamethrower" and DiCaprio is like "yeah". Change is on its way, there's nothing you can do to stop it.

Bondurant said:

It's because it's a "Once Upon A Time" movie, it's not a historical drama, it's Tarantino's take on the period / events. To me it's really a story about both Pitt / DeCaprio characters, embedded in an era where everything was changing. There's obvious nostalgia but I think there's also a focus on "Hollywood", its "residents" and the cultural changes it endured.

There's that scene where DiCaprio characters complains about the flamethrower, "that's too hot, can do you something about that?", some guy answers "it's a flamethrower" and DiCaprio is like "yeah". Change is on its way, there's nothing you can do to stop it.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I get that it was a focus on the characters as standins for reflections on changing Hollywood culture. But the specific stories. Like, in this the Manson family is thwarted in their attack on Sharon Tate and hilariously murdered, in Inglorious Basterds Hitler is thwarted and hilariously murdered, why is rewriting history in that particular way a theme he has returned to? Even Django was kind of the same way, just not specific to a person.

chaos said:

Yeah, I get that it was a focus on the characters as standins for reflections on changing Hollywood culture. But the specific stories. Like, in this the Manson family is thwarted in their attack on Sharon Tate and hilariously murdered, in Inglorious Basterds Hitler is thwarted and hilariously murdered, why is rewriting history in that particular way a theme he has returned to? Even Django was kind of the same way, just not specific to a person.

Click to expand...

Well I may be wrong but I don't think Tarantino was much in a "rewriting history" process rather than doing its own. It sounds kind of pretentious but I think it reflects on its earlier work with Reservoir / Pulp / Jackie, 80-90 crime stories that might have happened, or not. He obviously likes to get into a genre / subgenre and appropriate it, like he did with Kill Bill (or Django / Hateful). For Once Upon A TIme I think he didn't give a damn getting all forensic about the whole affair, rather than telling a story that could happen with the same setting.

Loved it.

Basterds, Django, Hateful 8, then this … is a damn good decade quality movies.

Finally saw this.

It was definitely Quinton's most boring movie. But, he is such a master that I can see that was by design. Everything about this movie was masterfully done, for what it was.

Not my favorite work of his, but I totally respect it.

There are two main problems with this movie. The first is that the "performer becoming increasingly irrelevant" line is not very original and has been done way better before (The Wrestler, Crazy Heart, etc). The second is that he builds this tension with the Manson Family through the movie and it gives a sense of impending doom that works decently, but the payoff is pretty damn lame. The analogy I used somewhere else is that he replaced the Titanic's iceberg by a joke ice cube with a fake fly in it...

The ending was the best part of that movie.

Szlia said:

There are two main problems with this movie. The first is that the "performer becoming increasingly irrelevant" line is not very original and has been done way better before (The Wrestler, Crazy Heart, etc). The second is that he builds this tension with the Manson Family through the movie and it gives a sense of impending doom that works decently, but the payoff is pretty damn lame. The analogy I used somewhere else is that he replaced the Titanic's iceberg by a joke ice cube with a fake fly in it...

Spoiler

I have nothing against the rewriting of history. In fact, I find it pretty cool to use fiction to exorcise past events, but wouldn't it be better to have an actual well made action scene in the end instead of a ridiculous gory joke ? Wouldn't it be better to involve Sharon Tate in that ending ? Wouldn't it be nice to have used previous scenes in the movie to establish the topography of the two neighboring houses (the miserable failure to do that when the stuntman is repairing the antenna is mind boggling) and then use that in the finale to have an actual climax ? Nope, Beavis and Butt-Head are at the helm apparently so we only get blood huh huh dog bites dick huh huh.

Click to expand...

Because its so much Fun, Szlia.

Lithose The problem is not the gory over the top violence of the conclusion, which is expected - anticipated even - during the movie. The problem is that the build up, some of the foreshadowing, the place where you know the action will take place and Tarantino's brand of cinephilia conjures some classic movie climaxes such as the ending of John Woo's A Better Tomorrow 2 (1987 - time flies...), but what we get (a short, dumb, poorly directed sequence) hits really really far from that mark.

Szlia said:

Lithose The problem is not the gory over the top violence of the conclusion, which is expected - anticipated even - during the movie. The problem is that the build up, some of the foreshadowing, the place where you know the action will take place and Tarantino's brand of cinephilia conjures some classic movie climaxes such as the ending of John Woo's A Better Tomorrow 2 (1987 - time flies...), but what we get (a short, dumb, poorly directed sequence) hits really really far from that mark.

Click to expand...

I didn't think you were against the gore, I linked that for him talking about fun (Should have time stamped it to start there). I was saying that I think the point of the scene was precisely what you didn't like about it. It was supposed to be just fun wish fulfillment, that minimized the real history and the Manson family itself. Your analogy of replacing the iceberg with an ice cube with a fly in it is perfect, I think that was his entire goal. To show them as the jokes they were--the fact that they terrorized an entire generation only happened because they preyed on the most innocent, unassuming people possible. What we were supposed to see was what would have happened if only these worthless hippy dipshits ran into someone who could handle himself. Far from terrorizing people, they wouldn't even have been spoken about beyond some gossip at Hollywood dinner parties where they would have been labelled "the god damn hippies on a bad trip".

Giving them an actual fight scene where it was anything but a silly slaughter, would have changed that. It would have made the Mansons look like more than jokes and I think that's the opposite of what he wanted. What you saw a dumb and poorly directed, I saw as Tarantino just taking a big old shit on both the idea of the Mansons and that they were worth any kind of effort to kill. They were there to be laughed at. The build up and foreshadowing was only there to build up the difference between our historical views of them and the view Tarantino wanted in the movie. Because we all expected some show down with this menacing, evil family (Because we were all filling in the blanks with the popular view of these psychos )and then Tarantino is like "actually...these guys are jokes, and they should never have been our devils. Fuck them, dog bites their nuts off--end.".

I think that's the same reason he didn't have Tate involved. The whole movie was about her remaining innocent, every shot with her in it was just kind of whimsical nostalgia, more meant to establish the thing this new history was protecting. I don't think he wanted her involved at all in any scene with any of the Mansons for that reason (Even when they came to the door, she remained off screen). He didn't even want her to have her night negatively affected, the only thing that would happen to her is she'd get an interesting story to hear. Like throughout the whole movie, she was kind of shielded off in that Golden Era Hollywood world.

Lithose The way you read the ending makes sense. If you take it as an exorcism through ridicule, it's rational, out of respect, to not have the actual victim involved. Also, if you read it as something clever, I can see how that can be satisfying as a spectator. I must say it's difficult for me to go with this interpretation though. Occam's Razor : "dumb and underwhelming" wins over "dumb and underwhelming on purpose", especially when Tarantino is involved. I probably read and heard a little too many interviews of him explaining the inane reasons why he loves some of the movies I love to give him the benefit of the doubt !

Brando said:

Forgot to post here but while I get why Pitt won his Oscar I think 3-5 years from now it will be known more for Leo's performance than anything else. Also think the people that were bitching about Bruce Lee's character in this didn't understand that Pitt's character is an unreliable PoV character. His fight with Lee never happened more than likely.

Click to expand...

It's just that Bruce Lee is a real guy that died on set with a son that would also one day die on set being used as a means of demonstrating another way that Brad Pitt's character was the coolest motherfucker on the planet (which he was). It's not like Quentin went and talked to the family about it either. For being the big film nerd that Quentin is supposed to be it was just a bit in poor taste. Lee is also put forth as kind of a prick?

The obvious foot fetish shit took me out of the movie way more though.

edit - Bruce didn't actually die on set, that's just a wrongfact that's stuck in my head

Brando said:

Maybe I'm being dense but I don't think you get it. The fight was Cliff day dreaming about something that never happened while he was being Rick's bitch and fixing his antenna. It was not meant to be a factual representation of Bruce Lee and it sucks his family and fans didn't get it. Cliff (Pitt) is a wife murdering stunt man whose PoV shouldn't be trusted is what Tarantino was trying to get across. He probably did get a BJ from that girl in the car and he most certainly did not beat up or fight Bruce Lee.

Both Cliff and Rick were pieces of shit regardless of the actors playing them.

Click to expand...

There's what you meant to do, what people thought you did and what you actually did. The family had a problem with it and so did the People's Republic of China. I thought it was in poor taste given the death of Bruce Lee and his son and not at all helped given it was in a movie about an actress, her unborn child and her friends that were all murdered. Fine, I didn't get what Quentin was trying to convey but the imagery is still tone deaf.