The Film Thread: Page 427 - The Arsenal discussion forum and community: One More in the Tolly

The Film Thread

Burnwinter

Really didn't like ONCE UPON A TIME … IN HOLLYWOOD much overall, although I did laugh a lot during it, because it was full of likeable gags.

[spoiler]Thing is, it was a reactionary work altogether. It featured more than a few sly digs at the left and at "cancel culture"—the antifa looking Manson cultists and their hollow ideological dialogue in the car, the question mark over whether Pitt's character had murdered his wife—and at the end it celebrates the diffuse, casual vengeance of a couple of sympathetic but ultimately very unpleasant guys, whose literal conflagration realises and endorses the hypothetically cleansing violence of tradition, burning the interlopers out of DiCaprio's character's house and implying their analogues should be burnt out of today's culture by unrepentant Hollywood masculinity. Complete with a storyline that goes back in history to protect the damsel in distress etc etc.[/spoiler]

Could have been quite a different film if it had had a different, more thoughtful ending.

KingslandBarge

Really like the contrast of both your reflections.

Klaus wrote:
[spoiler]I'm not sure what else to say or think really, but I liked it. It's like a bunch of stories or viginettes that feel loosely connected, almost. I found both Leo and Brad to be pretty hilarious in it too. Especially Leo. There's something pathetic about his character that makes you feel sympathetic towards him. I laughed out loud at the scene where he, while wearing that ridiculous villain moustache, starts slapping himself in his trailer after messing up his lines and swears that he's never gonna have a drink again. And then he immediately sits down on the couch and takes a swig from his flask, and then looks at his hand in surprise and yells: "What the hell?? NO!"[/spoiler]

I think this is what I like most about the film...
[spoiler] The loosely connected structure which did feel like a series of vignettes and offered a 80s child like me to momentarily soak in the naivety and simpleness of 'adolescent' Hollywood at leisurely pace. I also liked the quite up close and personal immersion with the two lead characters who were both unpleasant to me in their own way. Whether it was the scene you highlighted where Rick was on set breaking at the seams or when he was in front of a child or whether it was Cliff prepping dinner for himself and the dog, I enjoyed the time Tarantino took to establish the pathetic context of their lives, their emotional cores, and their redemptions.
[/spoiler]

Burnwinter wrote:
Really didn't like ONCE UPON A TIME … IN HOLLYWOOD much overall, although I did laugh a lot during it, because it was full of likeable gags.
[spoiler]Thing is, it was a reactionary work altogether. It featured more than a few sly digs at the left and at "cancel culture"—the antifa looking Manson cultists and their hollow ideological dialogue in the car, the question mark over whether Pitt's character had murdered his wife—and at the end it celebrates the diffuse, casual vengeance of a couple of sympathetic but ultimately very unpleasant guys, whose literal conflagration realises and endorses the hypothetically cleansing violence of tradition, burning the interlopers out of DiCaprio's character's house and implying their analogues should be burnt out of today's culture by unrepentant Hollywood masculinity. Complete with a storyline that goes back in history to protect the damsel in distress etc etc.[/spoiler]
Could have been quite a different film if it had had a different, more thoughtful ending.

This reflection also resonates for me.
[spoiler]
I think cultists were given a hollow ideological dialogue, maybe because there wasn't actually more to them? I don't know (just going off press and testimony archives of the assialants). I just wonder if the scatters of banal dialogue across the film were just direct reflections of that cohort society at the time and would it have been insincere to exaggerate it any other way. I also wonder if the intention behind making so many of these characters dislikable and with skeletons in their closet was because they actually were imperfect and douchy. For instance, I wish they went in on Polanski and that skanky underbelly in Hollywood. I also felt very uncomfortable with the 'orientalization' of Bruce Lee, but I can understand if that was the exact point. There was no political correctness, there was no cancel culture. For one reason or another, I think I'd watch this film maybe one more time and see where I am at but I thought it was OK overall.
[/spoiler]

Qwiss

Burnwinter wrote:
Really didn't like ONCE UPON A TIME … IN HOLLYWOOD much overall, although I did laugh a lot during it, because it was full of likeable gags.

[spoiler]Thing is, it was a reactionary work altogether. It featured more than a few sly digs at the left and at "cancel culture"—the antifa looking Manson cultists and their hollow ideological dialogue in the car, the question mark over whether Pitt's character had murdered his wife—and at the end it celebrates the diffuse, casual vengeance of a couple of sympathetic but ultimately very unpleasant guys, whose literal conflagration realises and endorses the hypothetically cleansing violence of tradition, burning the interlopers out of DiCaprio's character's house and implying their analogues should be burnt out of today's culture by unrepentant Hollywood masculinity. Complete with a storyline that goes back in history to protect the damsel in distress etc etc.[/spoiler]

Could have been quite a different film if it had had a different, more thoughtful ending.

[spoiler]Surely the hollow ideology of the Manson cultists is an attack on that generation of hippies rather than antifa?

I thought the fact there was no violence from the Manson family all film, even though he built tension to the a point where you thought there would be was more about the critiques of his use of violence in film than anything else. The fact these 2 "heroes" were the ones releasing the over the top violence against real life villains being a depiction of how violence is accepted in certain circumstances by critics and not others. Right down to the use of a movie prop to murder an at that point injured and defenceless girl.
[/spoiler]

MistaT

I thought it was really bad too, only made it through 45 mins before bailing on it

mags

All these critiques, is film critic a part time métier for all of you? Well done....

[spoiler] Enjoyed reading all the comments probably more than I enjoyed the film. How does the violence with the flame thrower, the beating to a pulp of the tire slasher, tell us anything except that both guys are really hardened nut cases in a real world where unreality is the payday...No penalties for assault, for killing. An indictment of the industry, of the country maybe, yet an obsession with the road the director took to get there. The dialogue in the car as the Manson people drive to Cielo Drive may ring hollow, but for me it was QT the teenager’s voice growing up fascinated by all things Hollywood. Or is it an indictment of the left? Or both?

What stood out is an appreciation for the pacing of the film; the look of the film resonates; loved all the performances; Robbie nailed Tate, poignant, vulnerable, unknowingly walking through the dark side of LA; Leo showing his chops, Brad, underneath the placid exterior, a seething maniac.

Felt the very last scene between Booth and Sebring was weird. Any significance? Q answers that in interview in other post.
What do I know.....
There must be serious interviews with QT out there. Interested in how he sees it. [/spoiler]

mags

Rather see the flame thrower used on Bill Barr and company.
That’s a metaphor.

QuincyAbeyie

MistaT wrote:
I thought it was really bad too, only made it through 45 mins before bailing on it

I don't think I've never quit a movie for being too bad unless it was some straight to DVD shit that happened to air on TV. This is definitely one of the movies where I found myself thinking while watching that it wasn't really interesting, but has grown on me more and more later on.

mags

Getting to know Q.

https://deadline.com/2019/12/quentin-tarantino-interview-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-indie-filmmaking-1202809425/#comments

QuincyAbeyie

Klaus wrote:
Claudius wrote:
Saving Private Ryan is one. But before that we had

Apocalypse Now

The Deer Hunter

Platoon

Full Metal Jacket

My issue with lists like these is that there are always way too many films about Vietnam, and they're always from an American point of view which is troubling, even when they are self-critical like Apocalypse Now (which I do think is both an important film and a work of art). The Vietnamese experience of getting colonised and genocided by the West is always taking a backseat.

I read a thread on Reddit about this recently, and films from a Vietnamese point of view seem very hard to come by. A Vietnamese guy said that most of the ones that exist are propaganda. The anti-war documentary Hearts and Minds (https://letterboxd.com/film/hearts-and-minds) was recommended in the thread, although that too is American-made.

Burnwinter

CYCLO is worth a look, though a little dated. Vietnamese neorealism from 1995.

Burnwinter

(And not directly about the war.)

Burnwinter

mags wrote:
All these critiques, is film critic a part time métier for all of you? Well done....

I've been enjoying the takes too.

[spoiler]I guess I just can't get past the idea that the film is fundamentally both nostalgic and reactionary. It makes sense, Tarantino is the mediocre wedding DJ of auteurs, spinning other directors' and genres' greatest hits back to back. He's a content nerd whose heart remains in the 60s and 70s with old school stars like Booth and Dalton, and he's also suffered his own share of vitriolic criticism and had to take a hit for having apparently condoned his patron Weinstein carrying on the way he did.

So he thinks "What kind of alternate history would I make about Hollywood? What if we took time back to before Hollywood "losing its innocence" … when would that be? The Sharon Tate murder! Yeah, that works. And I'll get a couple of beat-up old Hollywood industry types, dudes I can relate to, dudes whose careers I'd be trying to revive if they were around today, and I'll make them my protagonists. And they're going to stop all this shit from happening."

And that's the film he made. And it's fun in a lot of ways because he loves the material, he fetishises it, and he gets you to like Booth and Dalton without taking the edge off things completely. But at the end, he takes the Manson cultists and turns them into mouthpieces for the type of online anonymous people who've been throwing shit at him, and he flamethrowers them and gives the washed-up dudes a moment of real heroism framed with his habitual ultraviolence.

I feel like I get it. I just didn't really want to indulge it. I felt similar about THE HATEFUL EIGHT, which was also riddled with nasty ideology and downright unpleasant.[/spoiler]

QuincyAbeyie

I don't look for that much meaning behind things when watching Tarantino movies, nor could I find much if I tried without reading others' takes on them. I think he writes very entertaining dialogues, is very good at directing action scenes and always brings out good performances from the actors he works with. His work may be derivative, but today his style is unique enough that it doesn't matter to me even if most of his works have a sense of sameness about them. Also, just this last month both Joon-ho and Gerwig have said that they've been inspired by him, so clearly he has something else to contribute with than being a mediocre wedding DJ, because that's someone who doesn't inspire anyone or anything.

The last couple of day I've watched quite a few movies. Ford v Ferrari, Groundhog Day and Frozen 2 were all good/fine, while The Guilty and Uncut Gems were great.

Burnwinter

If I took my taste from Bong Joon-Ho and Greta Gerwig I guess I'd agree with you. Instead I just respond to things directly. PARASITE is good but overrated, by the way.

The idea that there's no meaning worth exploring in Tarantino's work is pretty shaky, given three of his last four films have built themselves explicitly on political themes (fascism, slavery, ideology) …

"Mediocre wedding DJ" is deliberately harsh but it's true you can get a lot from watching Tarantino's research material instead of his actual films. You can watch CITY ON FIRE instead of RESERVOIR DOGS, and so on.

He's got a gift and I've enjoyed many of his films. INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS is probably my fave along with RESERVOIR DOGS. ONCE UPON A TIME … just didn't do it for me. I found it bitter and unsavoury.

Jens

I can't think of many movies I've felt wasted my time more than The Hateful Eight, easily his worst for me. I've yet to see Once Upon A Time but I can't imagine it's as bad as that mess.

QuincyAbeyie

I didn't mean to say that there isn't any meaning worth exploring in his work, but rather that most of them could stand on their own even without it and come out on top when compared to other popcorn flicks.

goon

Quincy Abeyie wrote:
I don't look for that much meaning behind things when watching Tarantino movies, nor could I find much if I tried without reading others' takes on them. I think he writes very entertaining dialogues, is very good at directing action scenes and always brings out good performances from the actors he works with. His work may be derivative, but today his style is unique enough that it doesn't matter to me even if most of his works have a sense of sameness about them. Also, just this last month both Joon-ho and Gerwig have said that they've been inspired by him, so clearly he has something else to contribute with than being a mediocre wedding DJ, because that's someone who doesn't inspire anyone or anything.

Agree with this 100%. This isn't a judgement on those who do, I sometimes feel like I'm missing out by just taking movies at face value. On the other hand there's definitely been films I've enjoyed that others have disliked or hated because of the more superficial way I absorb them.

Coombs

In film school I felt self-conscious about despising Tarantino and his movies, so I would just tell people that I liked Jackie Brown, because most of the kids hadn't seen it.

Neither had I.

Burnwinter

Jens wrote:
I can't think of many movies I've felt wasted my time more than The Hateful Eight, easily his worst for me. I've yet to see Once Upon A Time but I can't imagine it's as bad as that mess.

It's nowhere near as bad, much lighter with lots of charming or hilarious moments.

KingslandBarge

Coombs wrote:
In film school I felt self-conscious about despising Tarantino and his movies, so I would just tell people that I liked Jackie Brown, because most of the kids hadn't seen it.

Neither had I.

😆

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