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 Once Upon a Time in Hollywood 

Rate this film:
A 50%  50%  [ 5 ]
B 40%  40%  [ 4 ]
C 10%  10%  [ 1 ]
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Total votes : 10

 Once Upon a Time in Hollywood 
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Post Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
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Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (stylized Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood) is a 2019 comedy-drama film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. Produced by Columbia Pictures, Bona Film Group, Heyday Films, Visiona Romantica and distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing, it is an international co-production between the United States and the United Kingdom. The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie, alongside Emile Hirsch, Margaret Qualley, Timothy Olyphant, Austin Butler, Dakota Fanning, Bruce Dern, and Al Pacino.


Thu Jul 18, 2019 8:42 am
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Post Re: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Lots to digest from this one. Too early to tell where it ranks. It might be Tarantino's least cohesive film overall, but there is no denying the great performances, cinematography and truly energetic second half that builds to a rousing finale. Maybe it's because none of the main characters are killers (A first for the director, merely just sprinkled in the background, so it can be slower to some use to middle scenes of great action) But it's a true lovefest of old Hollywood that many films try and simply fail at capturing. Lots of Easter Eggs and hidden jokes hidden throughout that any cinema fan should enjoy on repeat viewings. Brad Pitt and the little girl opposite DiCaprio are probably my two favorite characters. Margot Robbie turned out to be more of a letdown, but she no doubt oozes the sexiness and charisma with what she is given. DiCaprio is really good as usual and the rest of the cast really are nothing more than one scene dominant, but they are effectively used. Russell and Luke Perry surprisingly fair best, Pacino kind of gleefully hits his Dick Tracy self parody at times, and Bruce Dern is unsurprisingly yet effectively an old son of a bitch.

It is long, but it was well worth the wait and looking forward to analyzing it more as time goes on.

Right now, solid A

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Thu Jul 25, 2019 8:03 pm
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Post Re: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
C

Boring and aimless for 9/10 of the movie. I read somewhere that this meandering was in part a consequence of not having Harvey Weinstein reining him in. Probably so. Definitely needed an editorial eye. Reminds me of The Counselor. Another failed, meaningless movie by a top notch director. Quite disappointed and surprised by what is Tarantino’s first failure (not counting Death Proof

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Thu Jul 25, 2019 11:58 pm
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Post Re: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
feels like this was heavily edited.

aimlesss is a good term and the finale is terrible. Pitt and Leo are awesome though

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Fri Jul 26, 2019 12:27 am
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Post Re: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Loved Brad and Leo in this.

May be one of Tarantino's weaker films on first watch but I still liked it a bit.


Fri Jul 26, 2019 1:30 am
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Post Re: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
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not counting Death Proof


Death Proof is a lot of fun. :P I don't think I'll enjoy this as much as I did that but hope I'm wrong.


Fri Jul 26, 2019 1:47 am
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Post Re: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Loved it. One thing I wish, for the sake of narrative cohesion, is that he would have dropped the six month gap at the end. Having everything take place in one day, showing what lead all the main characters to the murder night. Then, much like in Basterds and Django, our anti-heroes give these real life villains the justice history never could. As is , Sharon’s entirely plot line comes across as only thematic, but it still works. I loved the day in the life stuff, the characters finding their self-worth again and the absurdist alternate-reality Hollywood.


Fri Jul 26, 2019 2:10 am
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Post Re: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Pitts scene at the ranch might be one of the best things Tarantino ever directed, I was waiting for someone to come at him the entire time, and when it happened it was hilarious. The ending too, and the Bruce Lee scene, to the Natalie Wood murder parody Cliff might easily be his best character ever.

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Fri Jul 26, 2019 10:22 am
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Post Re: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
The scene with Cliff and his wife was hilarious

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Fri Jul 26, 2019 11:36 am
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Post Re: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
I fucking loved it if only for the batshit insane finale that is one of the wildest movie moments I've seen in a while. The rest of the film is impeccably done and entertaining and all the actors are great.

The whole sequence at the ranch is also epic.

Margot's not in it a lot but her performance is lovely and magnetic and she really does serve as the overarching character of the film, IMO.


Sat Jul 27, 2019 5:55 pm
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Post Re: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Yep I fucking loved this as well. Dicaprio and Pitt are just are on fire here the whole time, and honestly for it to be two and a half hours I honestly didn't feel the length at all. I guess I can understand why some might find it slow and a bit tedious, but man I was hooked from beginning to the end. I loved the energetic momentum it had throughout and Tarantino is really on his A game here in terms of directing and the cinematography. There are some really incredible scenes in this whether it be any of the scenes with Dicaprio and the little girl, DiCaprio with Timothy Olyphant and Luke Perry, Brad Pitt at the ranch or just that completely batshit, but awesome finale that I definitely didn't see coming, but was so damn satisfying. I just wish more was done with Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate, but she was still great whenever she was onscreen.

A+


Sat Jul 27, 2019 10:34 pm
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Post Re: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Saw this again tonight. This movie is fucking brilliant. May be my favorite Tarantino film.


Sun Jul 28, 2019 11:27 pm
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Post Re: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
I dug it. Very likable characters, even if one of them killed his wife. Just a fun movie.

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Wed Jul 31, 2019 6:29 am
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Post Re: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Saw it the other day and loved it. Very chill movie. Fun and funny. Pitt and DiCaprio were both great and should be nominated but especially Pitt. Didn't expect to love him so much in this. Margot Robbie doesn't have a lot to do and yet she's so captivating when she's on screen. The finale is hilarious and awesome.


Thu Aug 01, 2019 4:44 pm
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Post Re: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Yeah, I think this is a movie I've come to appreciate with more time. It's not my favorite Tarantino and not quite as immaculate as some of his other work but it's got a lot of great moments, scenes and performances.


Sat Aug 03, 2019 1:17 am
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Post Re: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
I'd be a little shocked if Pitt doesn't win the oscar for this. He good.


Sun Aug 04, 2019 12:42 am
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Post Re: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
I don't get the praise. I kept waiting for all the pieces to congeal into something coherent or meaningful and they never do. The movie meanders all over the place, with not a lot to say. What's the point of this movie? Sure the acting and production are top notch, but.... without a unifying story or theme or message... why should I care? Shockingly for a Tarantino film, I was somewhat bored, listless.

It's quite easily my least favorite Tarantino film. I didn't realize until now how thoroughly he's gone downhill (for me). Jackie Brown, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, and Death Proof.... I loved all of those. Then Inglorious Basterds, Django Unchained were okay but I haven't bothered to rewatch either one. Hateful Eight I can't even sit down to watch. And then this pointless exercise in cinematic masturbation. yawn.

Still.... it's not bad. And many parts were enjoyable. I'm just disappointed with the whole.

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Mon Aug 05, 2019 2:09 pm
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Post Re: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
I would compare this to The Big Lebowski. It is Tarantino’s comedy about the fall of old Hollywood given a fairytale ending. The more I sit on this movie, the better it gets.

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Tue Aug 06, 2019 8:56 am
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Post Re: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Anyone else think the hippie girl Brad Pitt was flirting with should've been included in the final showdown?

If you're already gonna fuck with history why not do it in a way that makes it a difficult choice for Brad Pitt to react that brutally. Seems like that would be better drama than having all the intruders be devoid of any sympathetic characteristics... And might make all those scenes of him flirting with her/the subplot of him being a wife killer carry more thematic weight.

The film repeatedly equates this cult with the entire counter culture/hippie movement in general. Making it harder for Brad Pitt to want to end that crew would have made it weirder and imho more interesting when they then just get totally overkilled. It even would've made sense with his character walking the dog when Leo confronts them. Take away the context of how the murder of Sharon Tate represented the fall of the 60s and we’re left with the ultimate “get the hell off my lawn” scene in a way that seems to celebrate the washed up actor and his stuntman destroying the children of the hippie revolution. Which is interesting but so counter revolutionary that it makes Once Upon a Time in Hollywood feel like Tarantino’s most conservative film to date.


Thu Aug 08, 2019 3:45 pm
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Post Re: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
You're right, the finale being so disconnected from the rest is the biggest mistake of the film, but I think he chose not to include her for that very reason. He wants us to cheer along as Pitt and Leo brutalize the Manson family, and bringing the one member that we have sympathy for would kinda ruin that.


Fri Aug 09, 2019 1:23 pm
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Post Re: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
I get that Tarantino wants the finale to be a fist pumper but I can't help but think of how much less complex Inglorious Bastards would have been without Hans Landa. Tarantino has already delivered crowdpleasing revisionist history that managed to find more nuance in Nazis and plantation owners. It's frustrating because he's already created the hitch hiker character that could function as this conduit, and established a contrast of Sharon Tate helping another hitch hiker that same day. Replace the red head with her and you could make more jokes about Brad Pitt's character thinking he's tripping; create more tension around a "will he or won't he?" after we see him sic his dog on the first intruder; and could have complicated the resolution. Having the Jewish American soldiers kill Hitler by turning themselves into suicide bombers creates a difficult and crucial paradoxic for Jewish viewers who may enjoy the cinematic wish fulfillment but are aware of how suicide bombers accelerated the state of Israel's march towards apartheid (major impetus for construction of the wall). Here Tarantino lines up "save the 60s by having wife killing stunt man of a cowboy actor slaughter the film's only depiction of flower children" and perhaps my own lack of historical context of the after math is why this didn't feel like much more than a retread of similar historical revisionism he's done in past films.

Perhaps if his depiction of Sharon Tate had any internal universe that wasn't presented in a completely passive "she watches herself and listens to the audience's reaction to her" dropping the only other female character from the slow burn climax could've landed. A more generous writer could have given her a monologue that effectively contrasts her from the other women in the film who are either part of the cult or nagging wives. Instead it feels less like an intentional artistic choice and more like a blind spot.


Fri Aug 09, 2019 6:03 pm
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Post Re: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Tarantino's gotten slacker the past two releases of his. Seems to have peeked with Inglourious Basterds, which was still fairly gratuitous, but the general world building and mock fun-vibe was heaps better. Once Upon A Time does Scorsese's Hugo thing of telling a nostalgia tale simultaneous to the main plotline―of a Western-style 70s era Hollywood through the lens of a B-lister, with a re-imagining of the Sharon Tate murders―only for all the cool camera angles that he uses, there isn't much here to remind us of Tarantino's virtuosity. The tight, complex editing of Pulp Fiction and the high tension of the Dreyfus family massacre in IB, is pretty much absent.

He's having fun, at this point, making the films he wants to see as an audience member: the Manic Film Nerd from the video rental store has a blank cheque to make whatever he wants, basically; and with Once Upon a Time, for all the nostalgia of setting, it's really only about one thing: how completely and totally fucked in the head it was that an angelic and affable and pregnant Sharon Tate and all her friends were slaughtered—added to which, a bit of commentary on Polanski's legal plight gets interwoven (the phrase "12 years old", aka the age of the girl in Polanski's sexual misconduct case, is specified twice: in ref to Sharon Tate's preference for hanging around guys that look like 12 year old boys, and in ref to the precocious child-actress who's actually 8; and the age-of-consent theme is brought up more overtly between Pitt's character and the hippy girl―making this energy more persuasively nuanced is the portrayal of Polanksi as being kind of an imbecile―pretty obviously, Tarantino empathises with Polanski's plight more than a little; but, most of all, he really, really, really fucking hates what those hippies did to Polanski's wife.)

At the precise moment the would-be killers show up in their rusty misfiring station wagon, a TV announcer shouts, "This is the moment you've been waiting for!"

Whether we're built like Ned Flanders or Nelson Muntz, the appeal to violence will be there all the same; it just needs a different rationalisation in each of us. The lynch-mobs of the second world would happen everywhere, from Finland to Tokyo to New Hampshire, without the advent of a governing legal system being in place. You might oppose the death penalty, for instance; but were a villain to rape and murder a beloved sibling, chances are that you would a derive a sense of satisfaction from beating the living shit out of them—and maybe even killing them. Think about it: if violence weren't innate, why would it comprise so much of our entertainment content compared to sex? It mightn't rise from the subconscious very often, but pretty much everyone has a miniature sadist in them—just depends on environmental factors whether it ever comes out or not.

Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, is Tarantino at his most blatantly sadistic; which, thankfully, also means his funniest. The over-the-topness of the payback this film delivers, might never be matched for its bizarre entertainment value. First, he killed slave owners, then Nazis, now it's the Manson family—all hilariously brutal, but this last one is his most emphatic. Not satisfied with the skull cracking blood splatter, or the Ramsey-from-GOT-level-dog maiming, he finishes them off with a motherfucking flame thrower.

You have to wonder whether the tragedy of Tate's death might've been lost to history because of what Polanski ended up doing. You hardly see it mentioned nowadays; almost like the public can't reconcile a reason to empathise with Polanski as a victim himself. But it was fucking crazy, what happened in that house. The fantasy of this film highlights that fact by contrast: when in the final scene the camera pans out and shows Rick Dalton meeting a moon-bellied Tate in her driveway, her real fate becomes emphasised. And so you replay the previous 15 minutes of the film in your head, and grin like a maniac—like you're Tarantino himself.

Apart from all that, there isn't much going for it. Could've been way more experimental and stylish for the setting it was going for. Better than Hateful 8, but below Django.

B-


Fri Aug 16, 2019 9:42 pm
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Post Re: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
This was unique. For a lot of the film it felt more like a collection of scenes than anything and was bold allowing itself to meander, but they were such good scenes with great performances that it worked. I'm not sure I quite understand why Dalton filming the movie where he's moustached with the little girl connects to the rest of the movie. It showed he was a great actor, but he got his break from the FBI show. It was the amazing scene though, the long take? Great touch by Tarantino. But everything with the Manson cult from the ranch to the climax is probably the highlight.

This is maybe Dicaprio's finest performance. I thought he showed Dalton's insecurities in a really layered way. The use of Robbie was perfect, I have no idea what Oscar clip they could possibly use for her, but the movie does not need to about Tate any more than it was and the scenes with her and the movie theatre were wonderful. I went in expecting Pitt to steal the movie so he didn't blow me away as much as I thought, but he did a great job in some subtle ways such as physicial acting

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Tue Aug 20, 2019 10:57 pm
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Post Re: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Glad to hear you liked it so much Shack

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Sat Aug 24, 2019 10:23 am
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Post Re: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
It's a good film, but I was underwhelmed by it. Pitt and DiCaprio certainly deliver, but the story drags and the ending though fun and frenetic does not make it for the rest of it. I've never been much a Tarantino fan, appreciate his films but usually not wowed by it and it's pretty much no difference here. I like some bits and Pitt's supporting acting win is nice for him, but it's a bit of an overrated film.

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Mon Apr 27, 2020 3:39 am
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