‘Once Upon A Time In Hollywood’ Tarantino's Next

What format did you catch (i.e. digital, 35mm, 70mm)?

 

Just saw it. Wow!

 

“Wow” like in how self indulgent it is?!?

 

Spoiler: Violence

Yeah. That’s how I see it. LSD-crazed Mason family gets the trip turned on them. That’s why it’s so brilliant. I think the point is Pitt is out of his head and doesn’t realize the extent of his brutality with blood all over the walls - it’s all surreal to him. Lol. He kinda looks at what he’s done and goes. “Uuhhh”.

 

My wife & I saw it Saturday. We liked it quite a bit, but at the same time were slightly disappointed. It felt too laid back for much of it, meandered quite a bit & was somewhat disjointed & episodic, as well as feeling unfocused story wise. Pulp Fiction & Reservoir Dogs both were disjointed, but due to the non linear way they unfolded, that worked well. This was filmed in a linear fashion, so it's episodic & disjointed approach tended to show the cracks in the story more than it should have. The way the story evolved, far too much time was spent on the fading career of Dicaprio's character, & as well done as the Lancer scenes were, they added nothing to the film itself.

Other than the ending, the only really somewhat suspenseful scene to me was at the Spahn Ranch, but even the alternative universe style ending was telegraphed a mile away, even if the precise mechanics of it weren't, & after Inglorious Basterds, I didn't expect an ending so obviously similar. The good points were the excellent acting by the entire cast, Quentin's superb eye for details & getting things period correct & the incredible cinematography & the perfectly captured look of a late 60s film, as in the look of the "film stock".

But, Quentin's typical style, penchant for wonderfully sweeping cinematic gestures & ear for deliciously quotable dialogue were very muted. So much so that it didn't always have that Tarantino feel, like even he was unsure of what he was after with it. His fetishism for late 60's Hollywood was on full display here, it's just too bad he failed to do more with it.

I consider this "lesser Tarantino" & for the first time ever I left the theater after one of his films wanting more than I got. Even Death Proof, where he was "slumming" in the grindhouse/drive in approach was more satisfying. This is along the lines of Kill Bill for me, & those two are my least favorite films of his. It was good, very good at times, but not great, like Jackie Brown, Pulp Fiction, The Hateful Eight, Reservoir Dogs & the first 45 minutes of Inglorious Basterds were great.

We did enjoy it & we'll add it to the Tarantino collection once it's out on DVD/Blu, but for a better Tarantino style look, (though not directed by him), on the whole Manson deal, albeit fictional, I'd go with Bad Times At The El Royale over this.

 

No. Wow as in it really was great, but some jacka$$ with a picture of the Beatles doctored so their heads are bald (wild!) will not be impressed by it and will HAVE to so declare.
Please bite me.

 

Killing me abit reading everyone saying how good it is everyday, stupid UK still a fortnight away !

Wish the Stones was on the soundtrack but least they are in one of his movies, regarding the soundtrack, this is close to pulp fiction levels, been listening to nothing else since Saturday.

Caught a site today in the UK that are selling the standard LP and Tequila Sunrise Orange Deluxe LP to pre order, think I’m just gonna go with the CD and Standard LP.

 

Why do you think it was self indulgent?

How was it telegraphed? I had no idea what was coming, down to the last second.

 

I am in love with Sarah Margaret Qualley

 

From the first interaction Pitt's character had with one of the Manson family, to Charlie scoping out things to the visit to the Spahn Ranch, it was very obvious what Quentin was going to do here, it was just a matter of seeing how he was going to do it. And it was so much a lower key version of the end of Inglorious Basterds lacking the over the top insanity that made that ending so much fun.

 

I tend to agree with this: the Manson girl’s speech in the car, roughly, “in our trip sessions with Charlie, I said we’re the generation that grew up constantly watching killing on TV, we’re going to kill the pigs who taught us to kill” seems to be Tarantino speaking through her as a mouthpiece. The hippies are living a parody of frontier life - they’re out in the country riding horses, but spend all day watching TV - on a “ranch” that was a movie set for the sort of violent Western fantasies that Rick Dalton starred in. Despite Rick’s contempt for the hippies, his Lancer character’s long speech to Mr. “Boston” (the Luke Perry character?) echoes the Manson family’s rants against “pigs” - basically, “you’re a rich city slicker parasite and I’m entitled to your money, and I’ll hurt this little girl if you don’t give me what I want.” Also, the scene where Rick and Cliff watch Rick’s performance as the villain on FBI and get off and cheer every time Rick does something violent or kills someone seems to echo the Manson girl’s argument that Hollywood fantasy violence encourages or provokes real violence. Obviously, the Manson murders were horrific real world violence, not a Hollywood fantasy, but I’m not sure what to make of the climax, where

Spoiler

Cliff and Rick brutally kill the Manson family members just as horrifically as the Manson family in real life killed Sharon Tate. For all of Tarantino’s reputation as an outsider or bad boy director, the ending is like a Spiro Agnew fantasy of how to deal with the hippie problem. The conclusion where Rick uses the flamethrower to incinerate a hippie girl can’t help but evoke Vietnam and napalm and all the horrors of that moment, kind of a “we had to destroy the village (or destroy Rick’s Cielo Drive home) in order to save it” fantasy.

It’s hard to say whether the film is ultimately anti-violence and believes the hippie girl’s argument that televised or filmed violence causes real-world violence, or more of a right-wing fantasy of the “good guys” using frontier violence, not on the movie screen, but in real life, to clean up a real world problem.

At the screening I saw,

Spoiler

several people in the audience laughed and cheered as Pitt and DiCaprio brutally killed the hippies. Obviously the real-life Manson murders were horrific crimes. but I’m not sure what Rick and Cliff do to the hippies, even arguably in self-defense, is any better. Brutal killing is wrong regardless of who’s on the receiving end of it. And, while I think grown-ups should be able to watch whatever they want, and I did enjoy this movie a lot, I can’t help but question why I enjoyed watching the brutal violence in this movie just like Rick and Cliff enjoyed watching Rick be the violent bad guy on FBI.

 

I do not think those things made it obvious at all.

Spoiler

Charlie scoped out the Tate/Polanski residence. How would that make it obvious the attack would occur next door?

I thought the interaction between Cliff and the Manson family would mean something in the ending of the film, but not what ended up happening.

You don’t have to answer. But I just didn’t see it coming. Thankfully!

 

Even her armpits?

 

I thought that the movie was going to end with

Spoiler

the Manson family walking past Rick’s house and entering the Tate/Polanski property. I was assuming, or hoping, that we would be spared a scene of the actual murders. But I was assuming that it would end with us, the audience, knowing that the real world murders were about to happen.

 

Damn. People are really going deep on what the ending means and what that says about society. I was entertained as hell by the ending.

 

I didn't notice.
Her face, eyes, voice and vibe blew me away. I remember a girl like her or at least the nice girl hitchhiking.

 

I saw that, very good!

 

It wasn't obvious where the attack would take place or how the whole thing would play out, but it was obvious that Quentin was playing with reality & was setting up Pitt & Dicaprio's characters as the heros in the end, & thus how things would wind up being altered, & that's where it was obvious, again even if the precise mechanics of it weren't.

 

It's an entertainment, folks. You are either entertained or not. Yeah, he took a dark subject as the fulcrum, but the movie is all about the atmosphere, the vibe, the cars, the culture, some the coolness of "late Hollywood" as the old system was dying and the new breed was coming into vogue.
I guess you could go all film critic on it, but I've certainly wasted more hours on films I enjoyed less. I also think it's hard to determine out of the gate how this one will play, long-term. It isn't as crisp or innovative as Pulp Fiction, but it has a coolness that captures a take on life at the top of the heap in Hollywood during a time of incredible change-- both within the country at large and within that microcosm of the community of celebrities that lived there at the time. For me, it was like an interesting time capsule--

PS: If you haven't read it, Ed Sanders book, The Family, gives you a slightly different perspective on the Manson gang.

 

When one of the characters who took part in one of the most notorious crimes of the decade prefaces the ending sequence with a speech blaming society for the crime she’s about to commit, it’s hard not to think about whether she’s right or wrong about that.

It’s possible to watch the end simply as a killer action sequence, but I think Tarantino also meant it to be a little deeper than that.

 

You can watch it as a cool retro entertainment or go all film critic on it, or both. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.

If all somebody gets out of it is “cool, I remember how much I liked Deep Purple and Paul Revere and the Raiders and Bruce Lee and cool muscle cars and metal ice cube trays,” that’s valid, but to me there was a lot more to it than that surface nostalgia trip. Bits such as the little girl’s monologue about acting or the scene where Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate watches herself acting suggest that there’s a little bit more going on.

 

Considering there was originally erroneous passages wrongly linking the Process Church of the Final Judgement to the Manson cult, & the Process Church sued Sanders's U.S. publisher for defamation over a chapter linking them with Manson's activities, I'd take the overall book with a grain of salt as to accuracy. The case was settled by the publisher, who removed the disputed chapter from future editions. The Process Church was a Scientology offshoot, & had no connection with the Manson family.

That didn't stop hack "investigative" journalist Maury Terry from spreading the same incorrect BS with an imaginary link between the two in his terrible conspiracy theory book The Ultimate Evil, where all these groups, (Manson, the Process Church, Satanists/Anton LaVey, the Son of Sam, yadda, yadda, yadda), were somehow all linked together & conspiring to bring about the downfall of the world. If Sanders hadn't put forward that incorrect info, perhaps Terry would have never wasted so many trees publishing his illogical & loony screed.

In The Ultimate Evil, author Maury Terry contends that the Son of Sam killer, David Berkowitz, was a member of “The Children,” a satanic cult based in Venice, California, with links to the military and intelligence establishments. According to Terry, The Children is a splinter group of The Process Church of the Final Judgment, which—although officially disbanded some thirty years ago—continues to operate secretly in six major U.S. cities. Terry claims that The Process Church has changed its name many times, along the way accumulating millions of dollars in real estate holdings, and operates from a “remote enclave” in New York, as well as having ties to Manson & his ilk.

 

I assume you know that she’s Andie MacDowell’s daughter, right? If you liked her in this, check out the HBO series The Leftovers.

 

That's why I thought it was cool that Jay Sebring was so ecstatic about playing Paul Revere records in the house.

 

Fair enough. I actually have/had a first edition. I do remember that controversy for reasons that probably aren't worth explaining here. It did offer a different perspective than the prosecutor's book, but perhaps it's just trash. Dunno. I read quite a bit over the years about it-- a fairly long time ago.