The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
Once Upon a [Thread]... in Hollywood
GreasyKidsStuff
MOMMM!ROAST BEEF WANTS TO KISS GIRLS ON THE TITTIES!Registered User regular
MOMMM!ROAST BEEF WANTS TO KISS GIRLS ON THE TITTIES!Registered User regular
Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood is Quentin Tarantino's tenth (ninth if you count Kill Bill's two volumes as one movie, which QT seems to so I dunno) feature film. It came out last week. It's also very good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELeMaP8EPAA
This thread is for discussing the film. Here's my thoughts after seeing it yesterday:
The film is not without its issues, and I'm still going back and forth on how I feel about the ending, which the Hollywood Reporter published a good piece summarizing:
However, it's still getting plenty of strong buzz. I liked this very personal review by Walter Chaw, who also praised the film's portrayal of Bruce Lee:
So, what'd you think? Is Tarantino out of steam? Did this film reinvigorate your enthusiasm for his work like it did for me? Let's smoke an acid-soaked cigarette and talk about it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELeMaP8EPAAQuentin Tarantino’s ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD visits 1969 Los Angeles, where everything is changing, as TV star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his longtime stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) make their way around an industry they hardly recognize anymore. The ninth film from the writer-director features a large ensemble cast and multiple storylines in a tribute to the final moments of Hollywood’s golden age.
This thread is for discussing the film. Here's my thoughts after seeing it yesterday:
GreasyKidsStuff wrote: »Caught Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood this afternoon. No spoilers, and while I do recognize the reasons why several people would take issue with it and choose not to see it themselves, and the discourse around it is sure to be exhausting... I think it's my film of the year so far. The thing so many people are saying about it being his most humane film rings true in a lot of aspects (but not all, which would require some discussion of the ending). I also just really enjoyed briefly experiencing this nostalgic vision of an era that Tarantino clearly haves a considerable love and respect for. It's a film that I'm going to happily sit with and digest for a while because I think there's a lot to digest. Easily one of his best.
The film is not without its issues, and I'm still going back and forth on how I feel about the ending, which the Hollywood Reporter published a good piece summarizing:
However, it's still getting plenty of strong buzz. I liked this very personal review by Walter Chaw, who also praised the film's portrayal of Bruce Lee:
So, what'd you think? Is Tarantino out of steam? Did this film reinvigorate your enthusiasm for his work like it did for me? Let's smoke an acid-soaked cigarette and talk about it!
GreasyKidsStuff on
+2
Posts
there was the occasional squicky moment but honestly overall I think this movie has a tremendous heart and optimism, which was so refreshing after Hateful Eight's nihilistic slog
The plot meandered for a while but I didn’t really mind since I tend not to demand that every movie be a precisely machined narrative delivery device. The ending threw me both for the violence and the ahistoricism, which I felt made more immediate sense in Basterds and seems here to be something he’s doing just because he can.
Edit: also: list of the 56 theatres in the US showing the movie on 35mm film (and, in a few cases, on 70mm, although I'm pretty sure it wasn't shot on 70mm? so I'm not sure what the point of that is): https://www.indiewire.com/2019/07/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-35-mm-70-mm-movie-theater-locations-quentin-tarantino-1202160721/
I came here to post about Shannon Lee's comments about the film's portrayal of Bruce Lee, actually. In short, she wasn't thrilled even though she acknowledged the performance itself is very true to the real man:
I don't think Lee's response is unfair or invalid (she's his daughter for crying out loud), but I also don't want to say that she has the last word on Lee's role in the film. More in spoilers.
And also, it's a flashback from Cliff's perspective. So we're already looking at an unreliable narrator.
It’s so ridiculously overlong, stylistically inconsistent, self-indulgent, and incoherent
Cut it down to an hour 45 and maybe it’s something
Whatever message Tarantino may have been trying to relay doesn't really matter much when his daughter said "hey this portrayal of my dad was well performed but his role in the movie and how he was written made me super uncomfortable and were not accurate at all"
Bruce Lee wasn't a fictional character, he was a real person and Tarantino trying to trade in some sort of American Mythology shit doesnt mean he gets a pass for an extremely short sighted and offensive portrayal of the man
Here’s some assorted thoughts I’ve read that show the complexity of it:
Those random Twitter folks may hold those views but I lend way more weight to Bruce Lee's own daughter, and now wife who has joined in with her own displeasure over the film, than MovieTwitter folks
At some point the fact that his literal relatives are going "no this is very offensive and wrong" has to matter more than random folks or critics because he was a real person they knew better than anyone and that supercedes whatever Tarantino may have been trying to say with Lee's mythology or how the American public views him because he is an old white man who only knows Lee from his movies and maybe, like, interviews?
Why not
Because that’s not how viewing, discussing, and interpreting film works
When it's "is this portrayal fair and honest to a real person" it's pretty close, though. Whether Lee is thematically appropriate or whether his use in the film works with its overall look at the mythology of golden age Hollywood can't be decided by his family, but that's a different question that can't paper over the honesty or lack of honesty of the portrayal.
The idea that there was no way to handle it that wouldn't have had some backlash isn't something I necessarily agree with, but there bare minimum that should have been achieved is the depiction of Bruce Lee not actively disgusting and upsetting his surviving family members. Its basically the worst possible reaction and when people close to the real man are outraged by it that is more important than it playing an interesting role in the film or not being quite as bad as some people are describing it.
It is comparable to saying Green Book's depiction of Don Shirley is good because Ali does a good performance and it won Best Picture even though Don Shirley's family actively fought against the film being made and have publicly declared their disgust with the movie and how it misrepresents his legacy.
If you think that Bruce Lee in the movie is interesting enough to outweigh his family's complaints then more power to you but that is not something I can agree with at all.
It’s not a biopic
Just because a film does not set out to be a precise account of a real person's life does not make it immune from criticism for inaccuracy
If Tarantino wanted to tell this story he could have easily made a Bruce Lee analogue, not a stretch given the two leads are fictional characters, and while it still would have been problematic it wouldn't have brought in the baggage and expectations that come with using the real man.
If a filmmaker decides to put a real person in a movie, then they are taking responsibility for depicting that person how they choose. In some cases making a wildly inaccurate version is very effective, like satirizing a horrible person of power, but if what the filmmaker is trying to say with their depiction A) doesn't come across clearly and
That doesn't matter.
If the portrayal is offensive to those close to that person you don't get to just say "well yes but see I'm using that person as a metaphor to say x", you still made an offensive portrayal of a real person to the people who knew him
The "point" doesn't matter
We’re at an impasse then.
At the same time it deserves/earns the vast majority of it's criticism. It is indulgent film industry wank from someone who romanticizes it all in one of those, the good old days style approach. It's just really well made wank, and I can enjoy that.
Movies using notable celebrities and pop culture figures for their own purposes accurate or not is pretty common place and people probably don't generally care as much what their families thought about it. A lot of movies could probably get away with an unflattering depiction of Bruce Lee. I think it's got a lot to do with who's making this, and where they're coming from that is going to put a lot more people on edge.
My own issues with the movie comes from the, well misogynist material. Like I was gonna go with sexist but I think it's well past that. Women are either tempting sex traps, harping shrews, or iconic madonnas of innocence (Mothers in fact).
And the more I think about it the worse it looks.
If Dick Cheney's kids weighed in on his various portrayals how much truck would you give them?
And as the hero of the film, he killed the shrew and got away with it, he resisted the temptations of the harlot, and murdered the angry women who came to ruin this world.
"My dad, the war criminal, is portrayed as a mean guy in this movie" isn't the same as "This portrayal of my father seems to exist for white people to laugh at and that sucks"
I appreciate that you didn't go with the first draft where you typed "Hitler" instead of "Dick Cheny" though
Thank you for recognizing my discretion.
Same with the ending. I think the violence is incredibly gratuitous and hard to watch at times, but it was simultaneously really funny at other times? Like, I lost it when Rick came out with the flamethrower. But again, that immediately turned into "holy fuck" when he torched the girl in the pool. It's a tricky one. I don't blame anyone for looking at it as a whole and saying 'fuck that'.
I don't think that means we can't be critical of a movie where Bruce is the only non-white character and is used solely as a comedy moron who gets whooped by the lead. Like it or not, Bruce Lee is a symbol of Asian excellence (specifically physical excellence) and I don't think it's a reach at all to call this portrayal (from what I've read about it) pretty disrespectful and in bad taste.
I mean this with all due respect, but did you see the film? He does not "get whooped." He is goaded into an attack that Cliff takes advantage of to beat him once in a best of three (which, from what I understand, is fitting with Lee's arrogance which you point out he was guilty of). Cliff gets knocked on his ass in the first round. There is no third round.
And if we accept, as others have pointed out, that the film's representation of Lee is accurate to his character and mannerisms, is it still the film's (or Tarantino's) fault that some audiences are laughing at him? Or is it something that, like Walter Chaw points out, is more representative of Western audiences' perception of Asian people?
It's weird to me that his daughter says it's an inaccurate portrayal and we're like ok yeah she was 4 and it was almost 30b years ago, she probably knows best.
However! I think there's plenty of meat on the bones of the portrayal being iffy! Even if I disagree with the quick take of "white dude beats Bruce Lee". It still felt a bit squicky
Edit - further -
I think "nobody shall beat him in media ever" is dumb and bad. However, his use in this movie being the only Asian there and it being a scene that establishes Pitt, it feels off. Feels undeserved? I dunno. It's complicated and I'm bad at movies
Like I wouldn't say the Lee stuff is nothing, but that its problematic elements seem a bit more incidental and thoughtless. It's like the exploitative through line of I guess much/most of his stuff. But now it's a real person instead of a film trope.
I think its just the current discussion
There are a couple really good articles already going around about how gross the film and its creator is towards women
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/once-a-time-hollywood-quentin-tarantinos-violence-women-problem-1227406
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a28538449/quentin-tarantino-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-fails-sharon-tate-female-characters/
fair enough.
It was a fairly heroic non-invocation of Hitler well done
https://www.paypal.me/hobnailtaylor
Great use of music. I was impressed by the integration of the music, the commentary on the radio, all the show references, the landscape and storefronts and scenery all making for a really great sense of time and place.
Pitt and DiCaprio were really good. The entire sequence of Dalton on the Lancer set was great. It's funny, it's very funny. The sequence where Tate watches her movie and delights in the audience reactions was great.
All the clips of Dalton in different TV shows and movies mimicing the exact feel of an old fifties or sixties production. Including the scene where they watch his FBI guest spot and commentate across it. The flame thrower is a good callback,
Basically all the tv show and movie making stuff, and the general soaking in sixties Hollywood atmosphere.
When the harpoon flashback scene happened and they started talking about Cliff's past I was thinking they were maybe going to take a dark turn with him later. It's a comical scene with a dark meaning. But to the movie it's just comical I guess. Like the more they showed of Cliff's life I thought it was gonna go somewhere very different with it. Most of my issues percolate up from the ending on. And the violent comedy is gross, but funny. But with everything else it stops being funny for me and ends up just gross. Then the more I think about it later on, the worse it gets.
I still think the bit with Lee where he talks about how his hands are lethal weapons and if he gets in a fight and kills someone he'd go to jail and Cliff's retort is "Anyone who gets in a fight and kills someone goes to jail, its called manslaughter." is a good bit.
There's a lot I liked. And I can often deal with entertainment that's problematic because there's stuff there that I like regardless. This one either just goes too far or I've just changed to a point where my thresholds are lower now. Probably a bit of both.