Many movie reviewers feel the need to tell you their personal history and their relationship with the filmmaker in question, so just a fair warning: you’ll have to read some of my personal bullshit in order to get to the meat of the review. Sorry about that.
Also, yes: there are probably spoilers. We’re all adults here. This review is for someone that has already seen the movie, I guess.
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To start: I’m a huge Tarantino fan. Lots of people say that, but it’s true. As an “I want to make movies and live on a movie set forever” type of guy: Tarantino has always been one of my favourite filmmakers. From the time I was a kid and I somehow convinced my father to take out the script for Reservoir Dogs from the library, I just knew innately: this Tarantino guy is going to be part of your life in a major way that is bigger than anything your child brain can fathom right now. I wasn’t even allowed to see his movies for awhile growing up, I would just read all of them and fell in love that way first.
Tarantino has lived a very storied life that represents that nerdy filmmaker dream so many of us have, and even with all his faults (and there are many), we love his work and value his opinion tremendously. I spent my early 20s watching like 4-5 movies a day in order to educate myself. Even if they were shit movies, I’d watch em because “Tarantino mentioned it.” I write screenplays using black and red flair pens in notebooks by hand because I read HE DOES that, and I’m an idiot. I even worked at a call centre for a couple years like Tarantino did to wholly experience the full extent of minimum wage misery he did as a young man…sadly, video stores were no longer around by the time I wanted to work there.
Why am I mentioning all that? To give you the full picture of who is reviewing this movie: someone who is capable of being very biased, yet also super critical of one of his favourite filmmakers. I think I do a decent job balancing the bias and criticism.
Here goes…..
I saw the film twice in one week. Once (…upon a time in Hollywood, ha ha) on Thursday night in AVX. And once on Saturday night in 70mm!
Take 1:
-AVX quality/the experience in the theatre itself: fucking amazing. I don’t think a Tarantino film has looked this gorgeous in awhile. It’s a shame he wants to stop making movies now and is so against digital; he could be one of the few filmmakers to make it worth leaving home for. Zero moronic smartphone interruptions, but one jackass had a smartwatch that kept flashing light everytime he moved his stupid arm. Lots of young people whispering to each other: you know who that is right? You know about the Manson murders right? That’s Bruce Lee. Have you ever seen Enter the Dragon?
-Bruce Lee scene: I didn’t like it. Rubbed me the wrong way and it felt totally disrespectful to the man’s legacy to be fucked with like that. First of all: I don’t think Tarantino should feel so comfortable using Lee like that. But of course, it’s Tarantino: why would he censor himself ever? The man who literally gave himself a line in which he says the N-word in front of Sam Jackson once. Of course he would take Bruce Lee and give him a scene where he comes off the way he does…
Secondly: I don’t believe Pitt’s stuntman character would be able to take Bruce Lee in a fight. I just don’t. Cliff Booth drinks and smokes, is older, and is in generally shittier condition than Bruce Lee overall. The only thing Bruce Lee ever smoked was weed. There’s no fucking way he’d be able to fight Bruce Lee, and to suggest anything other than that is straight up nonsense. The movie is about aging and how times change, yet Tarantino still had to write a scene in which this stunt double of “Old” Hollywood got to sort of “win” in a fight against this striking figure of “New” Hollywood. Kind of made no sense to me.
-The use of “Cassius Clay” instead of Muhammad Ali in 1969: Ali changed his name in 1964. To have characters say his former name is disrespectful and an awful choice on Tarantino’s part. You could argue, “People would have taken a bit of time to catch up, and this speaks to the intolerance of Pitt’s character, etc.” Except this isn’t like Prince or fucking Puff Daddy changing their names, this is bigger than that. Ali changed his name for a goddamn reason, and to have Bruce Lee of all people (and Pitt’s character) call him that was not cool. It just came off shitty to me. People have commented on the fact that this is Tarantino’s first time making a film without the use of his favourite racial slur….IMO, we shouldn’t take our dicks out and start blowing each other so soon yet. Using “Cassius Clay” is Tarantino getting away with shit yet again, and I don’t mean to be a liberal annoying person here, I just think it was off. If you don’t see it, that’s absolutely fine. We can still be friends. I’m not suggesting Tarantino is a racist and I have no clue what was going on in his mind there, and I’m not gonna jump down your throat and call you a fascist pig or something like the Manson girl did to the police car innocently driving past her, I just thought it was….off. That’s all.
-I don’t like the revision of history in movies. (I don’t think it works and I didn’t think Basterds was one of his better movies). I’m not saying “DON’T DO IT! YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED!” I’m just saying, I think it’s dumb. That being said: it worked pretty well here. Tarantino found a good, tasteful way of making the climax of the film seem very fairy tale-like. We obviously know none of that shit actually happened, but the way Tarantino presents it as a possible Brad Pitt/Cliff Booth hallucination is pretty clever. Even as a staunch anti-revisionist history film guy, I must admit it was handled well.
-That being said: I didn’t really like how Tarantino made it seem like, “Old Hollywood was better! If only men like this were still the norm the Manson murders would not have happened!” It’s like Tarantino is still struggling to grasp with the fact that the world around him has fucking changed. It’s problematic, and a much better film reviewer than myself has written about it perfectly here.
-McQueen actor didn’t look like him and it took me out of the film. This was such a distraction for me it didn’t feel like a scene out of a Tarantino movie, it felt like the work of a lesser filmmaker. It felt like Tarantino desperately just wanted to tie in stuff he read about and he didn’t care if it didn’t fit the film or not. As a filmmaker you’re a tastemaker, and it’s your job to make sure your choices make sense. To me, I felt like Tarantino got a little too carried away in some places (and yes, before you ask: I am well aware of who I’m talking about here. Getting carried away is kind of his thing). For example, Margot Robbie references Jim Morrison at one point. For no other reason than to elbow the audience member: Did you guys hear that? Do you all get it!? Did you hear what she just said!? It didn’t fit the film at all, but Tarantino probably read some biography about how Jay Sebring was Morrison’s hairstylist and thought, “I gotta put that in the script!”
-Using real clips from real movies instead of recreating them in one moment (Margot Robbie watching the actual Sharon Tate) and then recreating scenes in other moments (Leo in Great Escape) was weird and inconsistent, also taking me out of the movie a little bit. Pick a fucking choice and stick with it, because it comes off very silly.
-I thought the dialogue was a little disappointing. ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD has been compared to JACKIE BROWN for being measured and a bit quieter than his others in terms of how the characters communicate. But IMO, even JACKIE BROWN had crackling dialogue. In this movie the dialogue wasn’t his best. There are some moments I really loved, but overall the dialogue was not wall-to-wall top tier Tarantino. Sorry. (I love his work so much it pains me to write anything critical about it, so don’t get mad at me, I already feel awful).
-What was Tarantino getting at with the “Cliff Booth may or may not have murdered his wife” stuff? Was that a veiled reference to Polanski’s past/other weirdo Hollywood types? I’m not arguing anything here, I’m just brainstorming. It kind of reminded me of the scene in Louis CK’s aborted I LOVE YOU, DADDY in which they discuss whether or not John Malkovich’s character’s rumoured history is true or not (which is a reference to Woody Allen, obviously). What is Tarantino trying to say with this scene? Someone smarter than me can figure it out.
Take 2:
On a second viewing, I enjoyed it a lot more. I pretty much liked everything else about the movie I didn’t bitch about above.
-70mm quality/the experience in the theatre itself: The 70mm looked great, and it was especially worth it during the BOUNTY LAW scenes. When Tarantino plays around with the aspect ratio, etc, the 70mm really shines. Surprisingly, the audience at the 70mm was FAR WORSE than the digital one: I counted about 8 different phones dropping at various points throughout the movie, someone's phone rang twice, and more smartwatches were flashing light throughout the movie. Also, for about the first 15 minutes several morons arriving late fucked it up for everyone and had to use the flashlights on their phones to locate their seats. Even when they sat down, a couple of them dropped their shit and had to continue using the phone flashlight to locate their shit on the floor, fucking up the experience for everyone even more. Fucking insufferable assholes….maybe Tarantino is on to something when he says he’s gonna stop making movies. Audiences have become horrendous pieces of shit that do not value the experience of seeing a movie at all, and the worst part about it is they actually think their behaviour is somehow acceptable because most of them are young people who are unaware what life was like before owning a smartphone. People that know me well know that I could easily rant about this all day. The reason why we go to see movies is because life outside the movie theatre is awful. We want to escape that for 2.5 hours. So why would you want to keep any trace of the outside world (your phone) around for the experience? Do you not understand that a fucking rectangle emitting light is distracting us from the larger rectangle in the room emitting light we paid to be there for? Are you fucking stupid? I feel like Rick Dalton complaining about this…..….it’s official, old buddy….I’m a has-been….
-Male friendships. It’s a complicated thing to explore, and Tarantino nails it. Leo and Brad Pitt have a sort of Batman & Robin relationship (or Batman and Alfred), and it’s endearing to see how well they play off each other.
-The theme of aging is handled brilliantly. It’s like Tarantino wanted to take the themes of JACKIE BROWN and explore them a bit more via Rick Dalton’s acting career. Leo’s performance in the scene where he breaks down crying in front of the little girl is some of his finest acting. And when he breaks down in his trailer and has to give himself that dark pep talk: amazing.
-The way an acting career was illustrated was fantastic overall. I say that as an actor. (I have received anonymous hate mail telling me I’m conceited and shitty for calling myself that, and I don’t think highly of myself at all, but it’s technically true - I’ve had the tremendous fortune of starring in a couple commercials over the years). The scene where Timothy Olyphant’s character and Leo talk shop and politics about acting and getting roles is 100% accurate.
To tell you a little more about this: I work when I can. I am not hot shit at all. I survive off the crumbs of various productions, basically only working whenever I can land a decent role. I love being on a set even when I’m not working; something about the whole place is goddamn magical. I mean, a group of people coming together to create a movie? Sign me up, man. I fucking love movie sets. The coffee, the stressed out catering people smoking cigarettes, the people in costume as something hilarious and uncomfortable who are stuck like that all day, the friendly guys that look like Wayne Campbell carrying heavy shit, the cute girls all over the place….I fucking love all of that shit. I’d work as an actor for free (and I have).
Anyway, as a background actor type dude, on the sets of these things you start seeing a lot of the same people over and over. You hear a lot of, “Yeah, I was up for that. Went in last week…didn’t go so hot….” or “Yeah I worked with that guy once, he was cool” or the old classic: “He’s an asshole, but he’s SO GOOD AT HIS JOB. Fuck it, this is an amazing opportunity for us! We just have to get through this.”
Sometimes people are super friendly and very cool. However, with other people you can literally feel the resentment, and they will literally come up to you and ask, “How did YOU get this part?” Or others will let you know you almost didn’t get a certain job because THEY almost did, or some other shitty negative thing they probably don’t realize comes off as sounding jealous and shitty. Some people will straight up ask, “How much money are you making? What are you getting paid for this?” as if that’s an appropriate, totally normal question to ask. Before getting jobs as an actor I had no idea how nosy and shitty some people can be.
When Leo and Timothy Olyphant are discussing how a certain role ended up, etc, I thought that completely NAILED how those discussions go. And Leo’s reaction was perfect: all you can really do in those situations is just sort of humbly admit it wasn’t meant to be, while imagining yourself in that role as a main star.
The other thing I thought Tarantino did a great job of was illustrating just how far Rick Dalton’s star power has fallen. In a scene near the end, Cliff and Rick are watching themselves on TV, trying to spot the moments their parts are up next. That’s totally accurate, and 100% something I’ve done. To see a dude like Leo’s Rick Dalton sitting in front of the TV, waiting to see when his part will be aired speaks volumes: this guy is no longer the hot shit he once was. He’s like me, and every other background actor struggling to get by: he’s surviving off the crumbs when he can find them. The cool thing about the character Rick Dalton is we sort of get to see him transition from being at the top of his game at the beginning of the film, and then witness him gradually come to terms with not being number one anymore. That’s where the film truly shines IMO: if you took out all the Manson stuff, the movie would be perfect for the exploration of Dalton’s career alone.
Overall: I REALLY liked this movie, but it did not dethrone any of his previous titles on my list.
