I came away with an entirely different opinion. I really enjoyed how the various storylines developed slowly, and gradually intertwined during the film. The ending was fun, and a big shift in gears, but it really just served to underscore all we'd seen before, and gave closure to the eerie undertow that had been tugging at the audience the entire time. There was never a moment where the film dragged, or I even felt at all aware that I was watching a film. It was too captivating, and even for it's languid pace there was a constant sense of movement, of forward motion, leading up to the final confrontation.
You mention Reservoir Dogs, which I think was a great film for what it was-- a low-budget, first effort from a new filmmaker. I had always ranked it 3rd among Tarantino's films, behind Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown, but now it's 4th on my list, supplanted by Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood. This is Tarantino's deepest, most mature, and most understated film to date, and the first since Pulp Fiction that continues to open up and surprise me upon further reflection and discussion.
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Juiceboxcasab (7)
5 years ago
Interesting opinion, I just disagree with the various story lines. I didn’t feel like there was enough content to warrant there being multiple story lines. We get a solid 15+ minutes of Margot Robbie playing Sharron Tate, and even the guy playing Roman Polanski gets legit screen time yet I feel like their characters would have been better suited to be background characters - maybe show them once at the beginning but then don’t show them again until the end, only reference them through other characters.
The fact that we got so much screen time from Robbie felt pointless to me, and didn’t seem to go anywhere.
As for the story lines with Brad and Leo’s characters, I felt like there was a decent idea there that could have been executed far better. 2 hours was not needed to explore the dynamics of each character, when you could have easily done the same in an hour and come out with a much more concise film.
The similarity with Resevoir dogs is that it’s a simple story but it relies on its simplicity to have fun. That was what I came out of Once Upon A Time...wishing I had got, a more coherent and better paced movie. The idea was solid, just poorly executed because Tarentinos ego couldn’t tell that at least 50% of the film is unnecessary and excessive (and not good like in the Wolf of Wall Street.)
It pains me to type this because it’s the only movie I’ve been excited to see since Hereditary and 3 Billboards. I tried to latch onto the positives of the movie which were the costumes, set and acting from Brad and Leo. Those aspects of the film were phenomenal. Unfortunately that’s all I took away from it.
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