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Quentin Tarantino's ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD (2019)
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50 posts in this topic

Oh...my...god....

 

What a damn near perfect experience. The world he created, it was so complete and intricate. It was maybe one of the best period pieces I’ve ever seen. 

The snap to dialogue was damn near Mamet. I haven’t enjoyed dialogue this much since “heist” back in 2001. 

This played so similar in many ways to inglorious basterds it was insane. 

No one mailed it in, no one sucked at their role. Even Lena Dunham didn’t ruin her scene, a minor miracle.  

This movie felt like a huge cultural response to the safe over produced focus tested we normally see. I can’t recommend this enough.

9/10

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Saw it this weekend.  Both my wife and I loved it. 

I felt like it was refreshing to let the movie breathe and have character w/o break neck pacing of most modern movies.  It was definitely a throwback to the 70's style movie.

Every character and actor was amazing, the little girl from the TV show was the highlight for me, she had such a small part, but was perfect and important to Leo's character.

Very different from his earlier works, but a lot of fun.  4/5 for me.

 

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The good-

The production design is fully immersive. You will feel utterly transported to that time.

If QT's new thing is revisionist history (a la Inglorious B), I'm kind of OK with that. I think it is an interesting shtick and he could do worse than continue this line of stories -- correcting the wrongs of the past through film. Obviously, the Sharon Tate case is front and center here, but I really appreciated the nods to other high profile Hollywood crimes -- the Natalie Wood case (wife on the boat) and the Polanski underage rape case (in the car scene... "Do you have ID?").

The action scene at the end is perfectly brutal.

The Bruce Lee dream sequence was spot on -- the fighting style, the philosophizing, the cocky attitude. Brilliant.

DiCaprio is brilliant. Some of his best work. The insecurity and desperation are palpable.

The bad-

I CANNOT believe this movie was released and funded in 2019. It is UNBELIEVABLY misogynist. Full stop. There is a line between commenting on a character's misogyny and male gaze (early Mad Men, for example) and just exploiting the material (later Mad Men, for example). This movie zooms past the line. Long holds on lady-bottoms. All of the women in the film are props, etc. And then one token shot of a shirtless Brad Pitt to say, "Look, we balanced it out."

I was hoping for some trademark QT dialog (used to wonderful effect in Hateful Eight). There is none. Just long tracks of dead air. This movie needs to lose about 30 minutes.

The precocious young actress trope is fairly played out. But I forgive it, because it led to my favorite moment of the movie. ("That was the best acting I've ever seen." Cries. lol)

And speaking of lack of dialogue, Tate is practically a non-speaking role. Just an historical statue. I'd have liked to hear from her in a scene or two. It would've been a great way to show her character (increasing the tragedy of her real-life death) and also offered a counterpoint with Rick's character.

Overall-

I'm a little stymied. Moments of genius hanging on a really shaky frame. It makes for an interesting discussion piece (as his movies do because he's a very creative, intelligent writer and director), but I wouldn't recommend it. Generally, it's kind of boring.

A critic called this QT's MAGA film. Perhaps. If he intended it as a critique of the misogyny of Hollywood, he missed the mark. And if it wasn't a critique, that just means he's gone completely tone deaf.

(And I'm a little shocked Lena Dunham would agree to be in this. It seems very much at odds with her past work.)

 

P.S. One more thought... If you don't know anything about the Manson murders, this film won't work on any level. The violence at the end will seem even more tacked on than it already does.

Edited by BCarter27
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On 5/21/2019 at 1:14 PM, TupennyConan said:

Typical exploitation film from this chap. It reminds me of 'who killed JFK' cultural cannibalism. 

This is the corrupt core of all that we call commercial fun -- or art.  

this is quite the post. far from normal around these parts. Might you expand on it? No, I haven't seen the movie. No, I'm not going to see the movie. I stopped enjoying movies around the summer of 1997. 

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1 hour ago, NoMan said:

this is quite the post. far from normal around these parts. Might you expand on it? No, I haven't seen the movie. No, I'm not going to see the movie. I stopped enjoying movies around the summer of 1997. 

what happened in the summer of 1997

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1 hour ago, Artboy99 said:

what happened in the summer of 1997

Mission: Impossible

Steven Spielberg (or one of his henchmen) Twister

but if you wanna get into history and the specifics of history the writing was on the wall the Summer of Jaws, so that was what 1975 and it was all over by 1977 with Star Wars. Meaning that studio folk began to think, "Why have a slow build into a 2 million dollar profit and have a quality movie like Taxi Driver in your library when you can have an instantaneous 500 million profit with, as Paul Schrader called it, "Dweeb Cinema."

Edited by NoMan
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16 minutes ago, Oddball said:

I’m good with that. It was fantastic. It edges out The Irishman as my favorite film this year. I have not seen 1917 or Ford VS Ferrari yet but will this week.

They did a decent job of spreading the awards out. Including 1917 landing best director, and Parasite for best international film.

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Quote

The publicity campaigns for Marvel Studios’ Avengers: Endgame, Netflix’s The Irishman, Warner Bros’ Joker, Columbia Pictures’ Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Paramount’s Rocketman and Universal’s Us have been nominated for the Maxwell Weinberg Award for Motion Picture Publicity Campaign for the 57th annual ICG Publicists Awards.

 

The award, which honors guild members for achievements in publicity and promotion during the calendar year, will be bestowed February 7 at the 57th annual luncheon at the Beverly Hilton.

 

“This year’s nominated campaigns are diverse and creative, covering the spectrum from superhero, comedy, drama, horror and musical,” said Tim Menke, ICG Publicists Awards Chair. “Congratulations to the teams of publicists who orchestrated and implemented these exceptional and successful strategic campaigns bringing people into theaters around the world.”

 

Last year, Warner Bros took the movie crown for Crazy Rich Asians.

 

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On 7/29/2019 at 5:04 PM, paperheart said:

huge letdown. long and boring. if QT has made a movie i've liked less, i can't think of it.

I completely agree with you.  Don't get me wrong I LOVE QT's movies and no one wants his movies to be brilliant more than I do.  

Even going back, Hateful 8 seemed to be a collage of a bunch of previous QT movies - "I've seen that scene; I've seen that scene" etc etc.  This one I found to be exactly as you described.  

Normally I want his movies to be even longer than they are because they're so good, but this one I found myself saying on more than one occasion "This scene is dragging - he's carrying it on too long."   On more than one occasion I found myself saying "Is there even a point to this story?"

If his next one is indeed his last, I hope for a return to the level of previous masterpieces.  His last two have been disappointments for me.

Edited by pemart1966
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