Quote from: LennG on May 09, 2024, 08:31:35 PMYou put a lot of effort into this post. Much appreciated. I also liked the movie very much but I wouldn't call it a masterpiece and far from his best work. Pulp Fiction is far and away a better movie and is always listed among the best movies ever made.
I really didn't notice most of the things you mentioned and when I do rewatch it, I will definitely look for them.
It's funny, when I did watch this movie, I thought to myself, WOW a Tarantino movie with any blood. I hadn't gotten to the ending when I was thinking that. Foolish me.
Slow day with nothing to do, so I put it together. That's going to change quickly as I have surgery next week and I have to take my mother to surgery a couple days later - both being done in different cities. It was a fun exercise that didn't take as long as you might think. I'm a huge fan of Tarantino, even though I don't go crazy over his movies. I appreciate his mindset and how he thinks...unique is an understatement. I am also a history buff and the last couple of years, enjoy studying pop culture...so the two crossed paths
In one of Tarantino's interviews, he said what he wanted to accomplish more than anything, was showing the world that Sharon Tate had a real life, and not just a name people remember for having been brutally murdered in one of the most horrendous ways imaginable. He was only a young kid when the murder happened and his father wouldn't tell him what happened even though it was all the news, and happened just a few miles from his home
My biggest criticism of the film is that it stopped short of the Tate murders, leaving everyone hanging. The other criticism of mine, is that they barely showed Manson. I think he was in one scene that lasted a few seconds. Apparently, a lot of the Manson stuff was cut from the film, but to me, it would have been better if it focused more on Manson, the family, and the life of Tate (apart from being a party girl with a sweet temperament). As it was, it was more about life in "'69 Hollywood", played out by DiCaprio and Pitt, about declining actors/stuntmen, with a side story about the Manson family and the life of Sharon Tate. I think a lot of Manson stuff was cut out for the sake of the family, and the whole mess of Manson's life was maybe too emotional for a lot of people. Bizarre, Satanic, ugly, horrendous...whatever adjective you want to give it - it was gruesome and beyond sane thinking by anyone. On the other hand, that's right in Tarantino's wheelhouse
The genre is basically "Historical Fiction", yet in some ways borderlines being a documentary. Even though it wasn't my favorite movie of his, it left more of an impression on me than most of his other stuff. There's a lot in "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" that I'll never forget, and also gives me a different perspective on how I saw the '60's