Search found 1 match: Quentin Tarantino

*****Spoiler Alert******

The way Quentin Tarantino made and promoted this movie kind of made me think of The Sixth Sense. That is when you watch it for the first time it's enjoyable enough right up until the end because you don't know about the twist. But once you see the end and reflect on the movie as a whole you realize how problematic it is, and how the director basically had to hoodwink you into seeing things one way so that you'll be surprised when things don't turn out the way you expected when it comes time for the finale. This is magnified in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood when the film is at least peripherally dealing with an actual historical event.

There are many scenes in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood whose only purpose is to inform the audience of details pertaining to Sharon Tate, her relationship with Roman Polanski and Jay Sebring, and tangentially Charles Manson. Tate is one of the three main characters, and even though she has very little to say or do in the movie we spend an inordinate amount of time with her. We're invested in her as a character from the first time we see her because she's oblivious to how ugly and brutal her fate is - and how imminent it is - whereas we are. Or at least we believe we are. She has our sympathies, even if she weren't portrayed as some sort of angelic presence rather than a real person. However, watching the movie a second time you realize that most of the scenes she's in are completely superfluous, as the film isn't about her or the real life Manson murders, as it turns out. Why are we spending so much time being around a character that has nothing to do with where the film is ultimately heading? The answer is that we really shouldn't be. She's a symbol of lost innocence. Yes, we get it, but you don't have to interrupt what's going on in the movie every 5 minutes to keep reminding us. It really disrupts the flow of the movie and breaks the immersion in the main characters and what they're doing. When you watch the movie a second time these scenes are a drag to sit through because you know they're ultimately nothing more than a diversionary tactic for Tarantino's big surprise in the third act, which obviously isn't a surprise to anyone who's already seen it. I guess the title gives away his real intent to a certain extent, but the constant switching from the main story to focus on a tertiary character doing nothing leaves a sour taste in the mouth.

This is a movie about a washed up movie star struggling with self confidence and unable to hold the limelight like he used to. It's also about a stuntman who's best days are behind him, and more specifically it's about the relationship between the two in a movie industry that's moving faster than they can keep up with. What it's absolutely not about, as it turns out, is the Tate-LaBianca murders. This is a problem because Tarantino does his best to try to convince the audience that it is, right up until he pulls the rug out from under us a la M. Night Shyamalan, who consistently misled his audience into thinking one thing for the sole purpose of being able to say 'gotcha!' at the end of The Sixth Sense. This is at odds with Tarantino's stated intent of having a filmography that will last through the years and that he can be proud of, because In it's current form Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is a 'once and done' movie. And although the scenes with DiCaprio and Pitt are thoroughly entertaining, as are many other aspects of the movie - the costume design, music, cinematography, production design etc. - sitting through scenes of exposition concerning what turns out to be an irrelevant character is annoying after the first viewing, and makes the film as a whole drag on each subsequent viewing.

I've watched this movie 3 times now, but the second and third times were not the same movie as the first one I watched. I got the blu-ray and ripped it to an mkv file then edited out almost half an hour of footage - the silly Bruce Lee scene and the even sillier Great Escape scene, and trimmed some of the Sharon Tate scenes. Tate's a peripheral character, and as such shouldn't take up the kind of screen time devoted to her in the full version. What we have in the full version is a 2 hour 41 minute movie, with a bunch of irrelevant and distracting scenes crowbarred into a really interesting and funny tale of a pair of amiable characters weaving in and out of a brilliantly realized Hollywood landscape in 1969. The version I've been watching still runs a leisurely 2 hours 15 minutes, but doesn't have any fat on it. It flows much better, is more focused and I find it much more enjoyable. It's the version I'll be watching from now on.

'Full' Version: 5/10
Edited Version: 8/10