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Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon A Time In Hollywood


mdmost

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Just saw this today in 35mm. First QT film I've seen in the theater since Inglorious Basterds. I figured going in I'd get fine performances by A-list actors, great cinematography, winks & nods galore to cultural touchstones-real & imagined-of the era, a meandering story, and a movie in desperate need of a disciplined editor. Check, check, check. It was entertaining in the standard QT ways. I'm not surprised he went to his same bag of tricks by reimagining the an historic event or his reliance upon over the top violence & gore in the final act. Like Elvis in Vegas, he knows what his fans want to see & he's going deliver them even if he's just singing the same song while squeezed into a different jumpsuit. 

Scorsese has famously stated that the job of the director is to get the audience to care about their (directors') obsessions. QT subscribes to this, and his obsessions are b-movies and exploitation films. For better and worse. In general I'm happy to see this as it will hopefully expose a new audience to some of his source material. It's never a bad thing for long forgotten actors, directors, writers, etc. to get another chance to be recognized.

In the end it's a C+/B- movie with strong enough performances to make the sum greater than its parts. 

 

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really enjoyed it, but it took me a little while to get really in to it.  but from the point brad pitt went to the ranch, i was hooked through the end.  tarantino does ominous tension as well as anyone and i had no idea what to expect during pitt's visit to the ranch.  

other things mentioned that i loved: all the neon lights coming on at the final night, the scenes of leo and olyphant, pitt fighting bruce lee, leo getting the motherfucking flame thrower at the end.

i fucking love tarantino movies.  can't wait to see it again.

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I’ve seen it in both. I’d suspect that most people would either not be able to tell any difference in terms of quality or might actually be annoyed at some of the 35mm signatures in the print (like the Xs in the upper right corner of the screen coinciding with the projectionist changing reels). Those are little film nerd extras for me (especially for a Tarantino film as he’s such a diehard fan of actual film prints vs digital versions). Plus, at the 35mm screening my local Alamo also showed two bonus 35mm trailers beforehand that thematically tied in with what we were seeing so that made for a nice bonus.

 

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On 7/31/2019 at 9:52 PM, futureman said:

has anyone seen it in both digital and 35mm?  and if so, how much of a difference is there?  on the radio some jackoff was saying the difference was “night and day” and you just had to see it in 35mm.  

By night and day does he mean the digital was better quality? Isn't that the case in 2019? 

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2 hours ago, futureman said:

he was saying that the “experience” of 35mm was better. 

Yeah I get it, but that just seems stupid to me. Like mdleast said I doubt anyone can really tell the difference and the digital is what should be in higher quality. Pretty sure digital jumped film some years back now. 

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Saw it this afternoon, out-fucking-standing.  Both Leo and Pitt were great, wished Pitt's character had more screen time.  Leo's insecure actor was very good, even the speech impediment was a nice touch.  First movie, that I know of, seeing the Margot chick...  pure fucking smoke.  Watching Pitt in this was like watching Redford for a bit, was expecting more violence as it's a QT film, but holy shit that finale.  Hopefully we'll get more movies with Leo/Pitt teaming up, they work well off one another.   Agree with the others on the cinematography, great look. 

Aw...  RIP, Luke Perry.  

"We love Pussy" 

"Yes we do."  

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Saw it this afternoon, out-fucking-standing.  Both Leo and Pitt were great, wished Pitt's character had more screen time.  Leo's insecure actor was very good, even the speech impediment was a nice touch.  First movie, that I know of, seeing the Margot chick...  pure fucking smoke.  Watching Pitt in this was like watching Redford for a bit, was expecting more violence as it's a QT film, but holy shit that finale.  Hopefully we'll get more movies with Leo/Pitt teaming up, they work well off one another.   Agree with the others on the cinematography, great look. 
Aw...  RIP, Luke Perry.  
"We love Pussy" 
"Yes we do."  

Yea go see wolf of Wall Street. One scene in particular.
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Just saw it. Great flick. I wanted to know as little as possible about this movie beforehand so I'd have no spoilers or expectations at all, so I didn't know Dakota Fanning was in it. I had no idea that was her playing Squeaky. Unreal. Pitt was amazing. Leo was very good. Oliphant was outstanding as always. Damian Lewis was not at all convincing as McQueen imho. And as always, yes, Margo was smoke.

And since Rick and Cliff seem to basically be composite characters, if I had to pick out one scene to see if it's really true or not, it's this:

 

Was Bruce Lee really that big of an asshole, and was there really a stuntman that kicked his ass on the lot? Probably not, of course, but if so, holy shit. That's just epic.

Edited by wood
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It was long winded. It was a love letter to the Hollywood of old. I though it was okay. Let’s be honest, I could watch Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio just hang out for 2 hours, and to be fair, that’s basically a large part of this movie. I just didn’t think there was much of anything happening really. 

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41 minutes ago, Neonmoon said:

It was long winded. It was a love letter to the Hollywood of old. I though it was okay. Let’s be honest, I could watch Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio just hang out for 2 hours, and to be fair, that’s basically a large part of this movie. I just didn’t think there was much of anything happening really. 

Yup. My take on QT is that in general he shoots several great (and occasionally brilliant) scenes per film. But he's still yet to tie everything together in one tight, concise narrative. Jackie Brown is as close as he's come IMO. 

 

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I will always give QT a pass. Some of his stuff may be problematic, but he's obviously not bowing down to focus groups, and he's making the movies he wants to make. In this world of Marvel movies, we need a lot more of that.

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On 8/2/2019 at 10:15 AM, ajax said:

I can't wait to see this again. It reminded me how much I miss real movies and how much I want to see what's next from the last of real directors (Fincher, Nolan, Coen bros, Scorcese).

Sam Mendes is doing a WWI movie, 1917, that is edited to look like one long take.  I am hopeful that it falls into this category.   

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On 8/2/2019 at 10:35 PM, mdleast said:

Saw this too:

54b192ebe4a49578543d0d341d526204.jpg

If anyone remembers Johnny Carson's bit featuring "cut off your Slauson," this is the small stretch of highway referred to as the Slauson Cutoff. It was supposed to be a much longer expressway, but it ended up getting shelved after just a couple of miles were constructed because of how much shit (in areas populated by white folk - an unfortunately critical distinction in halting an eminent domain proceeding...) would have to have been demolished in order to complete it. 

The relationship between Hal Needham and Burt Reynolds was apparently much of the basis for the relationship between Leo's and Brad's characters. 

https://stuntsunlimited.com/uncategorized/needham-reynolds-tarantino-film/

A fairly thorough and helpful article providing some of the contextual background for the movie:

https://screenrant.com/once-upon-time-hollywood-movie-true-story-tarantino/

Edited by Prepuce of Doom
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18 hours ago, Neonmoon said:

It was long winded. It was a love letter to the Hollywood of old. I though it was okay. Let’s be honest, I could watch Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio just hang out for 2 hours, and to be fair, that’s basically a large part of this movie. I just didn’t think there was much of anything happening really. 

Right there with you.

nothing special with this one.  QT’s done much better, that’s for sure.

I love detail, but OUTIH toils way too long on stuff that just never mattered and had no point.

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On 8/2/2019 at 11:51 PM, wood said:

Bruce Lee’s family calls ‘Once Upon a Time’ ‘a mockery.’ Is it insult or homage? https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2019-07-31/bruce-lee-tarantino-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood

I love Bruce Lee but can Shannon Lee take anything less than the usual absolute adoration that her dad usually gets? I bet Bruce would be laughing his ass off.

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I took the Bruce lee scene as fully imagined by Pitt. Like he thought he wanted to go back to work, then considered how it might go, and fantasized that and said fair enough, I’ll just fix this antenna. That’s why lee was like I can whoop Ali’s ass and then Pitt just destroys him.

Then that made me think maybe the end was just an acid fantasy of his too. I did wonder why Kurt Russell was narrating that part.

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