Once Upon A Time In Hollywood

[Something Spanish]

oh yeah, also having trouble with this...(again, going into the forbidden to reveal stuff)

Spoiler: ShowHide

that kurt russell VO on the night of really is perplexing, going through what the Tate household was doing that night on a near hourly basis, a la the post intermission QT VO in Hateful Eight narrating what the characters had been doing since the pre intermission shooting, but here it goes on an on priming us for what we expect to go down, and then the events take that strange turn and exclude the Tate household completely, it's kind of a dirty trick, like in Funny Games when the guy rewinds on his buddy getting shot and changes the fate of it all

[Something Spanish]

One last thing for now: everything before the Night Of is so, so very good. Damn near perfect. A love letter to movies, the craft, the period, the city, the people, all that. And the characters of Rick and Cliff are so fully realized after spending a single day with them you gotta tip your hat to QT with kudos for such perfect characterizations.

[Alethia]

Ahhhhh I want to read the forbidden stuff but I can't!!! 

[Drenk]

I did.  Well, the second one. Anyway, the best case scenario: I love most of the movie and the ending doesn't ruin it for me. All the signs point to Tate as a symbol of purity, which seems infantile to me...And there's no way to bring back some sense of reality to it, or to even acknowledge what happened in life, so it would need to be really, really well done to make me accept the "magic of cinema", but since this particular movie—unlike Basterds—is set in Hollywood, well, who knows...

I had a dream where it worked.

I love male partnership in stories, so that's why I'm mostly excited for this one: the invisible duo.

[putneyswipe]

I will say Drenk that the metatextual layer of this being a story about moviemaking and Hollywood made the ending feel like the only appropriate one in this context. I found the last shot in particular to be weirdly moving, definitely his most emotional ending since Jackie Brown. Again, if you're looking for a documentary about 1969 you'll be disappointed, but I don't think anybody was expecting that.

I'll be going to dip in again soon. We haven't had something like this in theaters for a very long time.

[csage97]

My review: wilber is crazy.



Just kidding! Just messing around with you, wilber. Here are my actual thoughts:

Spoiler: ShowHide

I personally loved it. Well, most of it. It felt somewhat loose and meandering in a way, but then again, not really. Indeed, so much of it was a love letter to filmmaking, and also a love letter to Tarantino's memory of that time (the radio music, the neon signs). But it's certainly not a documentary about that time, either, as others have said.

I can see how some people would be lukewarm on it, I suppose. Some of the humour came on a bit strong, though the audience really enjoyed it. But most of the humour was great. One of my favourite bits was Cliff giving his thoughts on the Rick movie while watching it on the TV set at Rick's place ("Shot 'm right in the face!" just like Marvin). In a lot of ways, it was just a hangout movie about friendship, filmmaking, and the end of eras (both with actor archetypes and certain kinds of movies, ones like this one).

The end ... well, it was almost exactly what I expected. We knew it was coming, and I'm still trying to decide how I feel about it. The violence had the theatre gasping and laughing out loud, and everyone erupted in applause when the credits rolled. I'll probably get my thoughts about it together soon, but I know that I for sure greatly enjoyed the first parts of the movie leading up to the ending finale.

Maybe my only gripe was that Cliff is sort of a super-human character with his toughness in a campy way. The movie makes clear near the beginning that he he probably killed his wife, and I think it said he's a veteran (?), so he must be a tough guy. But something about his character seems a bit off in the sense that he's such a smooth-talking, ass-kicking hunk of a man who somehow hasn't made it and lives in a disgusting trailer eating shitty Mac and Cheese and drinking beer, yet shows no sign of fear ever and will give Bruce Lee an ass-whooping at the snap of his fingers. It's not too wild, but pretty campy in that sense. Still, I love watching Brad Pitt on the screen.

Oh yeah, and DiCaprio was just great in this movie.

[jviness02]

I'm about to watch it for a second time to gather my thoughts, but my initial reaction is:

Performances are absolutely fantastic.
Cinematography and production are fantastic.
The opening is pretty entertaining.
The middle to right before the ending is some of Tarantino's best work.
The ending is entertaining as hell, but weird.

Second viewing will make it more clear to me, but I love a lot about it.

[csage97]

Oh yeah, one more thought:

Spoiler: ShowHide

DAMN there were a lot of feet in this movie. Tarantino really went wild this time. A little less would've been more subtle and made the "foot fixation" less noticeable and that would be fine. At one point, my friends and I were laughing at how much the feet were so there; I think it was around the time Margaret Qualey's feet were right in the face of the camera on Cliff's windshield, right after showing Margot Robbie's dirty feet in the cinema.

And so many shots that start out on people's feet and then move up to show their body or face. Bare feet, feet in shoes and boots. Dirty feet. Feet feet feet. I mean, it's definitely not a deal breaker, but Quentin really wore the feet on his sleeve in this one.

[Alethia]

This is the best movie of the year.

....until the ending.

I have to sit with it a bit, and will clarify my thoughts after seeing it again Saturday, but I absolutely loved it, until I didn't. And really trying my best to be objective, but his narrative choices in the last fifteen minutes don't make a lick of sense to me.

Still... This ranks high. As said before, everything leading up to the Night Of is fantastic.

85% Masterpiece. 15% hugely missed opportunities


Edit: I WAS WRONG. The ending is perfect. Best movie of the year.

[WorldForgot]

Spoiler: ShowHide

Sharon at the Box Office and Cliff with Squeaky are shot alike, off kilter in close up. Being screened to asses their past.

This is a time capsule to the era and ideologies that birthed his fixationz, those genrez and personalitiez, not a film ensconced within genre and personality. A singular perspective on why we play pretend . Just a glimpse toward Cielo.

[Robyn]

Oh, the diverse reactions to the ending is exciting!

I'll try to stay away from this thread now until I watch it myself. Just wanted a sneak peek.

[wilberfan]

'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood' DP Robert Richardson Featured in 'Behind the Screen' Podcast

Link

[WorldForgot]

One of my favorite bits of its vibe:

Spoiler: ShowHide

https://twitter.com/Nickrob/status/1154665390644973568

Two people I know are seeing this as their first QT and I really wonder how this will play for that crowd that isn't invested in auteurs or cinema. Like Pulp Fiction, I get the sense it might be better for those in the total dark.

[Alethia]

Yes, that joy is palpable throughout!

Reservations be damned, I still really loved this movie. Can't wait to see it again.

[Robyn]

enjoyed this:

There's a hard cut to black between two scenes in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in ... Hollywood, and for a brief moment the theater got very quiet. Suddenly, the room was filled with something I hadn't experienced in a very long time: The sound of a film projector. Once so ubiquitous and so comforting, that steady rattle of celluloid shuttling through metal was so foreign in that moment it took me a couple of seconds to recognize it. It made me happy to hear that sound again — and it also made me sad to realize that this beautiful thing that was once a huge part of my life is now basically extinct.

That feeling of joy blended with melancholy for a bygone era never left me through the rest of Once Upon a Time in ... Hollywood, although it was occasionally joined by other emotions including fear, shock, and giddy excitement. Tarantino once told an interviewer that all his movies are "achingly personal ... I may be talking about a bomb in a theater, but that's not what I'm really talking about." In this case, while Once Upon a Time is nominally about a couple of grizzled showbiz vets teetering on the edge of career obsolescence, Tarantino is really talking about film's obsolescence, particularly in the literal sense of the word — like the kind fluttering through the projector at my press screening. But rather than mourn what's been lost, Tarantino throws a rowdy, bawdy party celebrating everything this medium can achieve. If film is dead, then Once Upon a Time in ... Hollywood is its Irish wake.

https://screencrush.com/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-review/