Remember how last month I was like, "Aw I feel bad because I didn't see any movies in August"?
So. About that.
I absolutely did see a movie in August. Admittedly, only one movie. But still: I went out to see it in a theater, making a whole night of it. It was a thing I watched in its entirety. I didn't fall asleep in the middle of it or get nauseated and have to leave early. There is really no excuse for me just totally omitting this experience from my memory.
Except.
The movie I saw was Quentin Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood" (2019).
And it was just so forgettable.
Some bullet points:
- At a 2 hour, 40 minute running time, it is unforgivably long, especially given that it is
- packed with boring dialogue from a director we know can deliver snappy, memorable dialogue even when characters are just shooting the shit together, so what the hell happened?? And worse still, that bad dialogue is happening in
- yet ANOTHER self-worshipping movie about making movies, so many of which are mind-numbingly, preciously self-revering and therefore boring and therefore don't need to be made. Worse still, it is
- kiiiiiind of deeply misogynistic? Like:
- The film super briefly alludes to the fact that the ostensible hero of the movie murdered his wife as if this is nothing more than a kind of Joan Vollmer-esque piece of trivia/footnote?
- And the inevitable Tarantino gore-fest at the end directs WAY more extensive and vicious violence at two women than at their male counterpart who arguably bears much more responsibility for the heinous acts they planned to commit?
- And actually this male ringleader is dispatched with comparatively little suffering, especially in Tarantino terms?
- And while we're revisiting this premise of revisionist history revenge fantasy that may be becoming a bit of a preoccupation of Tarantino's, instead of going all the way with it and having Sharon Tate be her own damn savior--especially after you showed her training with Bruce Freaking Lee--we have two random dudes (one of whom, again, MURDERED HIS WIFE OMG THIS IS NOT A SMALL MATTER) save the day instead?
- Also speaking of preoccupations--and I don't mean this as kink-shaming because to each their own, but it was just genuinely distracting--what is Tarantino's thing with showing us the dirty soles of women's feet?
So yeah. It was irritatingly problematic, but also, it was dull.
In summation, the good news: I saw a thing last month, and therefore did not go a full month without watching a film for the first time in recent memory.
The bad news: my streak is unbroken because I saw this utterly bleh movie.
I gave this one a 2.
See you next month!
{Heart}
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