2 thumbs up. Made me homesick. I spend a lot of nights at The Frolic Room (where DiCapro wrecked his car and lost his license). But admittedly probably not for everybody. And probably not as rewatchable as some of his others.
I thought of another riff on real events in the movie.
In reality, when the killers went to Tate’s home, Tex responded to ‘who are you and what do you want?’ with “I’m the devil and I’m here to do the devil’s business.” Given the depravity with which he then shot and stabbed the victims, it’s a pretty sadistic thing to say.
In the movie, he says the line to Cliff (Brad Pitt’s character) shortly before being mauled by the dog and becoming a blubbering mess right before he’s killed. Cliff repeats the line to the cops, but in sort of a dismissive way, even forgetting the end part. It struck me as Tarantino’s way of saying ‘fuck you’ to the killers.
Also (and this is probably nothing) but the real killers cut the phone lines before slaughtering everyone in the Tate house.
Is it significant then that Cliff uses a phone to bash one of the killers’ faces into a pulp? Probably not.
I read one reviewer describe it as “both a chore and a delight to watch”. I’d probably have to agree with that. Glad I saw it. Enjoyed most of it. But would be hard pressed to have to sit through the whole thing again.
I heard great things about Luke Perry’s performance but found it entirely forgettable. He was supposed to be an actor playing a cowboy from Boston but there really was nothing to it. Neither the cowboy character nor the actor character did much of anything or even had as much as a Boston accent.
Dakota Fanning’s part was good albeit very brief.
The violent fantasy ending was entertaining but at the same time sad since you knew how reality played out. It seemed like it was done out of anger like Tarantino was hoping Krenwinkel and Watson would someday be forced to watch it and were told “this is what everyone wishes had really happened”.
There’s absolutely no doubt that Sharon Tate is portrayed in a deeply compassionate and endearing way. But the fact remains that Sharon Tate the actress does not play even a miniscule role in the story. None. Sharon Tate the corpse is the only version of her this movie cares about.
For Tarantino uses our knowledge (or for some, memory) of her horrific murder as a critical driving force in the narrative. The dates. The timeline. The telegraphing of details are all geared toward building tension about what we know is going to happen. He exploits her tragic fate as a way to push our buttons. I personally found this ghoulish in a way that the Hitler revisionism wasn’t in Basterds.
There is undeniable poignancy in seeing Tate get the Hollywood ending she deserved, that the killers cruelly deprived her of in real life. But you could remove all of Tate’s scenes and they wouldn’t change the tale of Rick and Cliff one single iota. She’s only there as a historical harbinger, as a cheap device to give us a sense of dread before QT’s cute little bait-&-switch.
The film isn’t the worst of his body of work (my vote goes to The Hateful 8 or Death Proof), and DiCaprio and Pitt are really excellent (especially the latter, since his character is mostly an empty shell). But I found the film devoid of anything interesting, other than the remarkable recreation of the period. All hat and no cattle, and an overly-familiar one at that.
I agree with a lot of what you state. To me Sharon Tate had a strong whiff of Mary Sue, the perfect blank slate female.
As I left the theater I found my mind repeating the words “Artifice on artifice on artifice”. I even found the acting by Leo to be overly stylized and artificial. Although his vocal stammer was a nice character touch.
The other thing that came to mind was, “They art directed the shit out of that”. Yes, it was intended to be a fairy tale, hence the title. But Tarantino’s fetish for the time period and a certain San Fernando valley patina to Hollywood is really his alone and I don’t feel he brought me into it sufficiently as a film goer. I say this as someone who worked in the industry and live a block off of Ventura Blvd.
I expect that the film will get a heap of accolades from industry types, but I would be curious about the reaction of non-coastal viewers.
I don’t agree with any of that. Sharon Tate in this movie is the embodiment of 1969 Hollywood. She’s not a corpse or a statistic, she’s used as an avatar for the way Hollywood used to be seen.
And the movie is great. One of the best he’s done.
But that’s exactly what a Tarantino movie is. There’s never any real story. There’s never any actual substance. It’s just amalgamation of his favorite stylistic elements. Given that, this is one of his better ones.
But that’s not true. Reservoir Dogs is an examination of male codes and masculine bonding in all its perverse contradictions. Jackie Brown (by far his most mature work) is a rather touching meditation on aging. Django Unchained, for all its flaws, is an unflinching look at the horrors and cruelty of slavery that Hollywood has never explored often enough.
Good crime dramas and film noirs have always had more to say about society or individual characters’ flaws and failings than they’ve often been given credit for, because they’ve always been wrapped up in genre trappings. Beatrix Kiddo may be little more than a trope in KB1 but becomes a real person, fully fleshed out, by part 2. Hans Landa is a villain for the ages because he embodies the horrible mechanical mind–ruthlessly clever and logical–of a fascist state. These are real characters, not just homages.
To write QT off as mere pastiche is to diminish the artfulness that he’s capable of. That he chooses to go to the nostalgia well once too many times showcases his failings, but doesn’t mean he’s a hack. His pros are significant, but it’s frustrating to see that he’s not really interested in growing as an artist or challenging himself as a storyteller. Once Upon is empty because it feels lazy more than anything. The sequence at Spahn Ranch is scarier than anything in Midsommar but he doesn’t appear to have an ounce of self-awareness.
It’s ironic that he loves the films of Hawks and Fuller and Boetticher, etc., but those directors were never about style. They usually drilled for substance, but were taken for granted because they rarely indulged in “message” movies. QT has made films that are light, playful but highly entertaining. Pulp is probably the best example of this and good writing and good acting (which he’s stellar at delivering) should never be underestimated. But Once didn’t really show him stretching or exploring anything new, imho. YMMV.
I really enjoyed this. The love for Cinema is evident in every frame. After Inglorious Bastards I should have suspected history would zag instead of zig.
I also find it hilarious how the fan theory that QT’s movies actually take place in an alternate universe still holds.
So good. Tarantino‘s mastery of the medium is cracklingly present in every frame. A return to form, as the last film of his that I really loved was 2007’s underrated “Death Proof”.
It’s my favorite film of 2019 so far, although I haven’t seen many of those yet (I see a lot of movies but mostly on Blu-ray or streaming), and my fifth favorite of the 2010s (of which I have seen a great number; see my Top 50 here:
https://twitter.com/slackerinc/status/1158148080220418048?s=21).
And it’s now my second favorite Tarantino joint after “Pulp Fiction”, displacing “Jackie Brown”. In case anyone is curious about my grades/rankings of all ten Tarantino films:
[spoiler]
- Pulp Fiction A
- OUATIH A
- Jackie Brown A
- Kill Bill 1 A
- Kill Bill 2 A
- Death Proof A-
- Reservoir Dogs A-
- Inglourious Basterds C*
- The Hateful Eight C
- Django Unchained D+
*Although the opening scene, and the famous one in the bar, are superb.[/spoiler]
A piece of bravura filmmaking, and very highly recommended.
I liked that Rick was a little bit of a fuckup but that it didn’t go all the way with that the way you would typically expect. He pulled it together.
An unusual move to start having narration halfway through the film, and noticeably being narrated by an actor who had played a small part earlier in the movie . It was needed there though IMO. I wonder if he tried to have a character do the explication, like earlier when Steve McQueen did it at the party–but it just didn’t work. OTOH once he had that narration later in the movie I wonder why he just didn’t do that about Sharon Tate instead of the Steve McQueen thing.
I also thought they might show some cliched scenario where Rick says he’s trying to get Cliff work but then Cliff finds out he’s really not trying. When in fact we saw that he really fought for him.
The fake dog food brand was hilarious.
I like the happy ending a lot even if that might annoy some people.
The dark-haired girl was scary as hell.
A couple things I absolutely loved about the movie that may be a MMV situation:
—The extended scenes from fake TV shows, movies, and even commercials from the period. They were longer than they needed to be for the sake of the story, but I would have been happy had they been three times as long.
—The genuinely close “bromance” between the lead characters. There were times when it zigged when I expected it to zag, and that was really cool.
Did anyone notice Tim Roth was in the credits as having a cut part? I wonder what that was. Charlie Manson maybe?
Wiki says he would’ve been Jay Sebring’s butler.
Ok, I can see why that might not make the cut, lol. I assume he was credited only as a courtesy? I don’t think I have ever seen that before and I know actors’ parts get cut all the time.
I don’t find that true for myself. I’ve seen it 3 times so far, and since I have both A*List and Regal Unlimited, I can see myself going to see it several more times before it leaves the theaters. I love everything about it.
Right now I’d rank it my 3rd favorite Tarantino, after Jackie Brown and Pulp Fiction, unfortunately though, pushing Kill Bill (counting 1&2 as one because it’s my ranking and I say so) out of 3rd place.
Regarding accusations of “violence against women:” that’s just a ridiculous thing to mention here. These people set out intent on murder, and when their original plans went awry, they worked to come up with a new justification to murder. That’s like grand-double-premeditated-first-degree-murder! (Clearly, IANAL) the scene was gratuitously violent, IMHO, but the fact that they were women was irrelevant.
Was I the only person who thought the dark-haired one’s lunatic screaming and arm-waving were just ridiculous and a directorial misstep?
I saw the scene as an indication of their close relationship and the dog’s exceptional discipline, but also as a comment on Cliff’s own level of discipline and bad-assiness. (At least in some areas - clearly he wasn’t too disciplined about housekeeping) It takes a very strong person to train a dog to that level, and the fact that she was such a big and scary-looking pup drove that point home. Of course, it paid off at the end too.
I disagree. She was a well-developed character. She just was’t an especially interesting person. She was very sweet, but also vapid, vain, insecure, and somehwat manipulative. She did come off as a bit too “pure,” but that’s partially because it’s rare to see a Hollywood type portrayed as being a really nice person at heart.
BTW, I hated this movie and thought it was at least an hour too long, but I guess it says something about QT’s mad skillz that I still want to talk about it.
An act of violence against a woman is still an act of violence against a woman, even if you think you’ve come up with a story that justifies the violence.
First of all, you don’t have to show on screen the retribution.
Second, you don’t have to show it in explicit detail, particularly the extended, gory depictions that really relishes the violence.
Third, you don’t have to show justice in the form of physical retribution at all. You might just thwart the plans and have them arrested without any kind of violence.
All three of those things are choices.
The first thing I thought of when I saw that, besides thinking it was a bit over-the-top, was that we had seen it before in Kill Bill 2 when Darryl Hannah’s character got her second eyeball plucked out. Not sure why QT went this way in the current film but I thought he did it in KB2 as a shout out to the way Hannah’s “Pris” character died in Blade Runner.
I actually wanted the violence to be more explicit like in some of his other movies. I had a hard time seeing what happened, because he cut away so quickly. (Inside the house, I mean.)
And anyone who wants a story like this to end with them getting quietly arrested and nothing violent happening should know better than to even buy a ticket to a Quentin Tarantino movie. C’mon.
Now there’s a movie I’d pay to see. Along with Luke Skywalker starting a stormtrooper union to go on strike to cease operation of the death star so he doesn’t have to violently blow it up.
LOL!! Exactly.