I’ve posted a few reviews/recaps of Russian movies around here. Some of them went over pretty well. One of them went viral-ish, and for a brief period of time I had a few thousand Russians who kind of sort of wanted me to stop writing forever. Or do anything forever. You’d be shocked how many people love their Romantic Comedies. If you’ll give me a moment, I’d like to antagonize Americans.

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood sucked, and I don’t care how hot you think that take is.

Did you see the movie? If so, there’s a good chance you think I’m being an edge-lord asshole right now. Please read me out. Let’s see how many times I can get Tarantino to reject my hypothesis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CI9flLyB4LU

Stuff that was good

Okay, when I say sucked, I don’t mean this movie was incompetently made. It’s obviously gorgeous, shot on film, and I’m never going to question Tarantino’s eye for cinematography. Do you like movies that look good? Well check that box off on this bad boy.

The acting is top notch. It’s a perfectly optimized blend of both Hollywood stars and actors. Leo, Brad and Margot are great. Bruce Dern shows up for a few seconds and he’s great. Kurt Russell’s great. Margaret Qualley is delightful. Mike Moh overacts a little in his scene as Bruce Lee, but that’s a choice, and he isn’t so much becoming Bruce Lee as he is becoming the Bruce Lee we like to imagine in our heads. They could have given Luke Perry more to do, but he’ll get ’em next time. I’ve got nothing bad to say about the individual performances.

Stuff that I don’t care about

I don’t care that Margot’s Sharon Tate lives. I realize that some people will take issue with that, but I don’t. It’s fine. Tarantino’s killed Hitler. He can let Tate live. Whatever. I don’t think it’s disrespectful. It’s just an alternate universe. Nobody’s going to watch this movie and think “Hm. Maybe I was wrong about Sharon Tate. Maybe she didn’t die after all.” Trust me, she’s dead, and it was horrific. Tarantino subverts your expectations by letting her live. Or he would have subverted your expectations, had everybody online not figured out that he’s Tarantino and this movie was going to be about her not dying as a twist ending. He tried in vain to get reviewers not spoil the ending, but everybody already figured this out months ago. At this point, if you buy a ticket to this movie, you have already wrestled with the question of whether or not this bothers you, and you really have nobody to blame but yourself.

This concludes the stuff I liked or did not care about. Why was this movie bad?

It’s boring

That’s a terrible critique. I know. It says more about me than it does the movie. Hey man, I’ve watched five more shoddily made Russian movies than the vast majority of you, save for my wife’s friends (Hi guys! ). But let’s be honest, this movie is boring for a lot of it’s 2:40 run time. There are repetitive scenes. Do you love watching Leonardo DiCaprio cry on a Hollywood set out of frustration that his acting career is going down the toilet? Man, do I have a film for you. Like watching Brad Pitt be affable? Again, look no further. Tarantino has made plenty of long movies, but this one is the first where I felt that he was taking our interest for granted. The Hateful Eight was long, and it was a movie that felt long, but there was always something compelling. Maybe it was the ultra-violence. Maybe it was long winded racist conversations. But there was something to go back to. This movie is just long. The dialogue isn’t peppy. Of all the movies where somebody could come out and serve as Tarantino’s stand in about some Pop Culture tic, this is the movie where nobody says a peep about the business as an aside. Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs and Jackie Brown are effectively three vlogs about what is good and bad with Hollywood, and this is the movie where the deepest thought is “Hollywood taught us to kill. Let’s kill Hollywood” (Paraphrasing. I don’t have a copy of the script) Happy now, Jan?

But more specifically, why is this movie boring, aside from it being so long?

There is no story

I’m sorry. There isn’t. There are scenes. There is atmosphere. There is no plot, and I would argue no real story. Here is the too quick play by play.

Rick Dalton’s an actor, Cliff Booth is ostensibly his stunt man, but in reality is his task rabbit/best friend who doesn’t seem to want anything out of life and is content to feed his dog what I guess is Rat flavored dogfood in a trailer behind a drive in movie lot. Rick gets told that he’s making bad choices in cameos and he’s going to destroy his career. Rick goes into a spiral where he kind of sucks at acting. Meanwhile, Sharon Tate is budding actress. Cliff gets a gig as a stunt double, though nobody likes him getting work because he kind of killed his wife on a boat. Then he gets in a fight with Bruce Lee and gets fired (Some speculate that this was a day dream, but the movie isn’t clear on that, and I’m just going to move on as if it is canon). Cliff keeps running into a Manson family girl with hairy armpits, gives her a ride to where they live on an old Hollywood set, gets into a fight and leaves. Rick struggles on a set until he doesn’t, and is told that he gave a great performance. He feels good enough to make bad Spaghetti Westerns and then comes home. Some Manson family members drive in front of Rick’s house as their beater with no muffler, car farts all over his privileged ass. He yells at them and goes back to drinking Margaritas in the pool. They decide to kill him instead of Sharon Tate (I think they were still going to kill Sharon Tate). Cliff gets high on an acid cigarette, and then savagely beats two of them to death, while a third that had her face chewed off by his pit bull falls into Rick’s pool, where Rick torches her ass with a flame thrower. The guys at Sharon Tate’s house see the cop cars and the ambulance, find out what happened, and let Rick hang out with them. Presumably, Rick is going to start making movies with Polanski, though he’s overseas, so who knows if he’ll actually give a shit by the time he gets back from molesting children in Europe. Roll the credits.

Nowhere in that description is a story, because stories have beginnings, middles, and ends. And generally have at least one thread that snakes through the entire movie. This movie has a bunch of stuff, but not a story. Just a lot of random events. But hey, that’s fine. There are plenty of movies without plot. Some of them are great. Maybe it’s a character study.

There are no character arcs

I might have been flippant with that rundown above, but that’s what happened. Leo’s character is insecure. Brad’s character is stoic. Margot’s character is…present? I guess cheerful? Margot’s character doesn’t really do anything, okay? She gets pregnant and then does not die. So she has absolutely no character arc whatsoever. Brad’s character doesn’t appear to actually want anything. I guess he wants to start getting regular work again, but we don’t spend a ton of time with him worrying about that, and he ends right where he began, though having not gone on an adventure. Some people have argued that Leo’s character has a small character arc, but does he? He goes from insecure to being told he’s a good actor, to eventually getting invited to Sharon Tate’s house. Is that growth? Because it seems as though he’s still completely dependent on the approval of other Hollywood types. And he doesn’t actually earn anything. We don’t see him reach some epiphany on the set and become a better actor. There isn’t some moment where he discovers something new or has any meaningful breakthrough. He just acts the hell out of a scene. He never makes the conscious decision to save Sharon Tate or even his own friend and Italian wife. He just cooks a would-be murderer after she’s been most likely fatally mauled by a dog, with a flame thrower. He hasn’t made any conscious effort to change. He’s simply told “You’re good now” and rolls with it. I’m not sure that’s a character arc, but I’m also not a fan of Entourage.

Some will say “Fine, it was long, but the ending was worth it.”

The ending wasn’t worth it

The ending was fun. I enjoyed watching drugged out Brad Pitt smash a hippie’s face into an old landline phone several times. But it wasn’t organic. You might be tricked into thinking that it has some connection to his run in with the Manson family at the ranch, but it doesn’t. In essence he went to the Manson compound and beat the holy hell out of one of the men, and then suffered no consequences for his actions. They never set out to strike back at him, even though his actions beg for some retaliation. He leaves and despite the fact that he saw Pussycat over and over in the scenes before, he never runs into her again. Nobody ever decides that Cliff Booth needs to die. Jesus, what the hell is the point of even having a Manson family if they aren’t going to psychotically seek vengeance on a guy who damn near murders one of their own on their property? In the end, they just happen to run into him again, and he beats their asses all over again, though some lady does get the jump on him and has knife sex with his hip. Why would they ever run into each other again in a region as vast as Los Angeles? Who the fuck knows? Hollywood magic I guess. But there could have been a thread. It would have been so easy to connect these things. All you do is have one of them take down the license plate. Then an enraged Charles Manson (who is basically not in this movie) demands blood. They have some connection with the LAPD run the plates and find out that the car belongs to washed up star Rick Dalton. Manson cooks up the idea of killing them and whoever is in Sharon Tate’s home. That’s it. I’ve given you a compelling reason for the Manson family to attack them in the first place. That’s a hell of a lot better than just calling an audible when a washed up celebrity yells at them, and it gives some closure to what Cliff did at their place. I mean, so long as we’re rewriting history, why not have it based on actual human interaction instead of random happenstance?

Alternatively, they could have just scrapped the Sharon Tate angle altogether, made the Manson family a Manson-like family of generic deranged hippies, and shaved an hour off the run time. At 1:40 this movie is a supernova of images and nostalgia. At 2:40 this movie is a grind that needs to be endured. So of course, they’re going to release a four hour version on Netflix.

“But you don’t get it. This movie is a love letter to Old Hollywood.” 

Fuck Old Hollywood. Jesus Christ, what the hell is it with Old Hollywood wanting to be examined. Have we not explored every single angle of Old Hollywood in 40 other movies by this point.

Get this…sometimes the glamorous actors are saaaad. WoooOOOOOooooooOOOO. Oooh, oooh, and sometimes the guy who plays the hero? Well some of the time that guy is a real prick. OOooOOoohh. Oh also…sexism. Yup. Old Hollywood had some sexism too. Really makes you think. But also, did you ever realize that those old movies have a special place in our hearts? Maybe it really is some kind of magic. Wow. I mean, has anybody ever considered the fact that the old movies were really great? Like really dug into the mystique? I think it’s time we did.  

I’m serious. Fuck off “Old Hollywood.” Nobody has a goddamn interesting thing to say about “Old Hollywood” and they haven’t for years. I’m about as interested in that as I am in your “You know LeBron will never be Michael Jordan, and here’s why” argument. People like to say that it’s refreshing that there is still an auteur out there developing his own ideas and competing with the Comic Book movies that have laid waste to all other movies. But then that auteur goes and makes “Old Hollywood” flicks, and we act as though this navel gazing is more relevant than the last thousand times we’ve explored the same subject. It’s empty calorie nostalgia, you morons. When Buzzfeed and Family Guy toss 90’s references at you, you say “Jesus, come up with an actual point, losers.” But namedrop Steve McQueen and all of a sudden you’d better clear your calendar for awards season. Christ, go watch Hail Caesar. It’s a wacky movie that spoofs Old Hollywood, only it also has a fucking story. I like that kind of Old Hollywood. One that’s in service of something larger than sucking it’s own dick and describing the taste. You’ve had enough love letters.

“But you don’t get it. All of the characters represent something else.”

And? Leaving Easter Eggs to find doesn’t make your material smart. I means you’ve buried treasures around and are smart enough to pick up on the things you already knew in the first place. “Cliff Booth is a nod to the samurai flicks of Tarantino’s youth.” Cool. But he’s also a flat character that doesn’t seem to want anything. I’ve seen people compare him to the Dude from The Big Lebowski, and reject that hypothesis*.  The dude was affable and largely unambitious, but he wanted things. The entire movie was him in pursuit of something, be it his rug, or solving the mystery of Bunny’s disappearance. He was simple, but there was never a time in the movie where I wondered what he wanted. I have literally no idea what Cliff wants, and no idea why I should care. Maybe that doesn’t bother you, but it bugs the shit out of me.

It’s cool that there is a double meaning to everything, and Easter Eggs are fun, but the movie also has to work on the surface level. And for me, it absolutely does not. Maybe you’re somebody who likes to add a little simple syrup to your cocktail. It can add a new dimension to a drink, and give you a deeper appreciation for the chemistry in your glass. That doesn’t mean you want to drink a martini glass full of simple syrup. But for some fanbois all those nods and references make this film bulletproof. Now you can’t come out and criticize it unless you’ve boned up on your Kurosawa and old episodes of FBI. “You just don’t get it.” Probably not, in terms of Easter Eggs. I’m sure a bunch of those got by me. And nobody enjoys being told that they don’t get it. But we aren’t studying for our Bar Mitzvah here. We’re watching a movie. If the bar for criticism is a deep mastery of all mid 20th century pop culture, then we’re never going to have any discussion. And I thought art was supposed to invite a discussion.

*You might not have caught it, but that last bit is a nod to Quentin Tarantino’s reaction to a lady in a press conference. It’s a hidden reference.

Am I the asshole here?

Probably. The movie is getting good reviews. The fans seem to like it. I went into this movie reasonably excited to see it (though I was cooler on the trailer than most, because it looked as if there was no real story there), and I’m not in the business of telling people what media they should consume. And I’ve been on the wrong side of history before. I absolutely hated The Hangover. The first one. Not just the sequels that everybody else hated. That first darling that crushed it at the box office and had everybody fawning over how hilarious it was. I felt as though I’d seen that movie before. I still feel that way, but I’ll concede that the problem is me. If everybody else likes something, only a psychopath believes that it’s the world who is wrong. And right now, the vast majority of the people who have seen this movie think that it is good, so at the moment I am in the minority, and therefore, wrong. Fine. I’ll be wrong. It won’t be the first time. And hell, maybe I’ll grow as a viewer. Maybe this will be the take I regret in 10 years when my viewing tastes have changed. I don’t think it will, because the basic elements of drama are missing in favor of atmosphere, but I’ll admit that it’s entirely possible that I’m being a dick and letting my prejudices cloud my opinion. In the meantime, I need to take a deep breath.

Sometimes people like things that I don’t like, and that’s okay. Sometimes people like things that I don’t like, and that’s okay. Sometimes people like things that I don’t like, and that’s okay. 

Having said all of that, I don’t think anything that I’ve laid out here is all that controversial. Movies should probably include some story and/or character development. Things shouldn’t just randomly happen because the plot demands everything come together. Characters should want things. This is pretty basic stuff, folks. I’M NOT CRAZY. And I can’t get inside your head and tell you your truth, but I think a lot of people really like Quentin Tarantino, and really want this to be great, and don’t want to be accused of not getting it, and those people are not trying to read what I’m writing. I’m sure that’s not you. You really do love this movie, and have your own good reasons. I’m just talking about those other assholes. We’re still cool.

I like most of Quentin Tarantino’s work. If I ever met him at a party, I’m sure I’d act like a little bitch and gush over the work of his that I appreciated. I’d be sure to introduce myself as Ewan McConkle just so he can’t Google me on the spot and discover that I’ve already written 3,200 nasty words about him. He’s great, and he knows far more about cinema than I ever will. But I’ve always felt as though we’ve had a sort of deal where he would never waste my time. He’d pursue art, but never for the sake of pursuing art, and he always, always, always made sure to entertain me. I don’t think any of that is true with this movie. And it’s true, he’s an artist, and as far as style goes, he doesn’t owe me shit. But I don’t owe him shit either.