Saturday, August 03, 2019

Movie review - "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" (2019) ***1/2 (warning: spoilers)

Random thoughts
- Nicholas Hammond of all people knocks it out of the park
- Bruce Dern was fine but that would have been the perfect last role for Burt Reynolds
- like a lot of film buffs I was sitting there going "I love a lot of this but I get the Fabian and Michael Rennie references, I'm weird, what about normal people?"
- the film was about fetishness - movie posters, TV guide, cigarette packets, logos
- the money is well spent - it's a film about movie stars, production design and Tarantino - without those things it would be a hard slog (for some people it will be)
- I get the ending and I liked it
- the final assault ramming head repeatedly thing... that wasn't cool... wasn't cathartic in the way that say killing Nazis in Inglorious Basterds was or slave owners in Django Unchained was or rapist men in Kill Bill was... the women were killers but marginalised members of society... also we just meet them in the film.
- all the acting is excellent
- I wonder if the 8 year old girl on the set of Lancer is some allusion to James Stacy's pedophilia, not accessed in the film
- there is no female role with shade and dimension - Tate dances and is ethereal, the Charlie girls are sex objects/psychos/"other", Ric's Italian wife jabbers and gesticulates even though she takes part in a crucial scene, Brad Pitt's wife is a nagging bitch... in contrast the male roles are given lots of depth... Brad and Leo of course but also Emile Hirsch's pining Jay Sebring, Bruce Dern's George Spahn
- the visit to the Spahn Ranch was v creepy
- Mike Moh is a great Bruce Lee

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