BEFORE: Here's the one you probably saw coming, with Brad Pitt carrying over from "Ad Astra". This is the second of the two films this month with enormous cast lists - sure, I could have programmed this one right after "Bombshell" and had Margot Robbie carry over, but then that's six films I would have missed out on! And similarly, I've got one more film with Brad Pitt in it on my list, but instead of watching that one tomorrow, I can fit another six films in between, so that one comes up via different links next week instead.
When I link out of this one, I've got at least a dozen choices, but I'm going to be smart and circle back to an actor I've already used as a link this year, but I picked up two more films with him JUST a bit too late to be included in January's chain. So I kind of have to make up for that before March runs out.
THE PLOT: A faded television actor and his stunt double strive to achieve fame and success in the film industry in 1969 Los Angeles, during the final years of Hollywood's Golden Age.
AFTER: Before I begin, giant-sized SPOILER ALERT regarding what follows, if you haven't seen this film yet, either go and watch it now or proceed no further. I can't possibly talk about this film today without mentioning certain details.
Time for another check-in regarding the 2019 Oscar nominees for Best Picture, I've now seen 5 out of the 9, with another two ("Little Women", "Ford v Ferrari") scheduled for April. That will just leave me with two to see, "Jojo Rabbit" and "Parasite". "Jojo Rabbit" fits in thematically with my April Hitler-based chain, only it doesn't link to any of those films by actor - so I'm waiting to hear news about when "Black Widow" will be released, and I'm saving a slot for it in late September, the plan is to link into (or out of) the horror chain via Taika Waititi. But hey, plans can change, so I'll have to review things in late summer, assuming that we're all still active and alive. "Parasite" is on the back burner because it's exceptionally hard to link to, and I may have to wait for the next available January 1 in order to program it, unless I relax my own rules. C'est la vie. All I can do now is take things one month at a time, that's all that any of us can do.
But let's get to the latest from Tarantino, a film that was a contender for Best Picture less than two months ago, which feels like five years ago now that everyone's life is on some form of pause. Remember when that was our biggest concern, wondering which film is going to bring home the Oscar? Now we've got some bigger perspective, but it's too much. Anyway I had a feeling that "Once Upon a Time..." might win, because I'd seen the other "sure things" like "The Irishman" and "Joker" and found them a bit lacking. I couldn't quite get to the Tarantino film (only I COULD have, I realized the Pacino connection a bit too late) so logically, therefore, with my luck, the big contender I haven't seen is bound to take home the big prize. People were buzzing about it, but not as much as they were buzzing about "Parasite", apparently. Whoever I knew who'd seen "Parasite" was REALLY all in on it, and that should have been an omen. People who'd seen "Once Upon a Time..." were more like, "Yeah, it's good, a bit long, but, you know, it's Tarantino, and he's an auteur, so it's a good film, I guess..." which by comparison, hardly feels like a ringing endorsement.
Now I've finally seen it, after perhaps learning way too much about it from reviews and press coverage, so now I get my chance to say, "Yeah, it's good, a bit long, but, you know, it's Tarantino, and he's an auteur, so it's a good film, I guess..." I'll try to get a bit more specific about all that, too. Let's start with "it's a bit long". Two hours and 41 minutes? Damn it, Quentin, I've got other stuff to do, comic books to read and video-games to play! At least with a heads-up on the length I was able to schedule this for a weekend, but then they went ahead and cancelled the work-days because of the Covid-19 virus, so now it scarcely matters. Hey, if you're under quarantine or just self-isolating at home, you've got nothing but time now, so watch this film to kill nearly three hours, or hell, find a new series to binge-watch or even go back and watch an old mini-series like "The Stand" - you've got nothing but time now, right?
This leads to the naturally logical question - could this film have been, you know, shorter? SHOULD it have been shorter? I say yes, but I'm willing to entertain some debate. Tarantino has a reputation as an auteur, someone who has earned and demands final cut. On that level, if he says it needs to be 161 minutes, then that's what it's going to be. But this is the same guy who split "Kill Bill" into two movies when it was running too long. So that suggests that there should be a limit - how am I going to dub this to DVD if it's too long to fit on an 8-hour VHS tape at SP speed? (Actually, I think I can JUUUSST fit it...). But if I were a director, and my film was clocking in at 161 minutes, I think that would certainly prompt me to take another pass through it, take a really hard look at some scenes to figure out if there's more stuff that could be excised, or perhaps trimmed. I'm willing to bet that if I watched the film again with that in mind, I could find a bunch of stuff - like when Rick Dalton is flubbing his lines on the set of the "Lancer" western, do we really need to see him mess it up THAT badly, and then sit through the entire repetition of the same scene, with him saying the lines properly. That felt a little bit like overkill. Additionally, there are at least a dozen characters and asides introduced that don't feel crucial at all, why is Tim Roth the only actor listed in the credits for having his scenes cut? There are so many characters here, more non-essential characters could have been cut without affecting the overall structure of the film.
I think there was also an opportunity near the start of the film for some heavy trimming. The first 10 minutes is all introduction, and Al Pacino's character is blatantly used in a dinner conversation with Rick Dalton that tells us everything we need to know about his career so far and where it's headed - but after that, there's about minutes of downtime, and therefore nothing essentially "happens" for the first half-hour of the film. But because of his reputation, and because he demands and receives final cut, Tarantino is apparently under no pressure to make tough choices on timing - however, the length of the film could still affect the box office, because it then puts limits on how many times a day each theater can show the film. Assuming a 12-hour theater day, a venue could screen a film under two hours six times, but a film pushing three hours only four times, and that affects the bottom line when it comes to ticket sales. Bear in mind, however, that the first cut of the film clocked in at FOUR HOURS and 20 minutes. So editing work was clearly done at one point, but I think much more could have helped with the film's slow parts.
That being said, with so much screen time to play around with, this is perhaps more linear than most Tarantino films, especially the pretzel-logic plotline that is "Pulp Fiction". I'm reminded also of "The Hateful Eight", when we're halfway through the film when it jumps back in time to show us something that happened the day before, which is suddenly going to be important NOW, and to be fair, if the film had started with that scene first and progressed in accordance with the timeline, that aside wouldn't have made sense because the audience would have had no frame of reference for it. So I'll allow Tarantino to mess around with the time-stream, because generally he seems like he knows what he's doing, and only jumps around in time when doing so creates more clarity, and not confusion, generally speaking. Here there's really only one extended flashback, the sequence with Bruce Lee, but it happens out of sequence to explain why Cliff can't find much work as a stuntman any more, and instead finds himself fixing the TV antenna on Rick's house. Then there's a part closer to the end where the timeline jumps ahead six months, then later has to go back to show us what happened during those six months, but at least there are title cards that explain why we're jumping around in time. Rick's been off in Europe making a couple of "spaghetti westerns", and a few other films, and Cliff went with him, and they had a conversation there where they reflect on whether it might be time to terminate their employer-employee relationship.
Now, the thing about this 6-month jump forward in time, is that to me, it's an odd break in the momentum that the film seemed to be building up - Cliff had been out to the Spahn Ranch and learned that there were a bunch of hippies living on the ranch, possibly taking advantage of the ranch owner in order to get a free place to live. We've also been following the young pregnant actress Sharon Tate as she goes to parties and also to watch herself on-screen in the Dean Martin movie "The Wrecking Crew", and we know that she lives in the house next-door to Rick, along with her husband, director Roman Polanski. Then this bearded long-hair named "Charlie" shows up at her house, looking for his friends that used to live there. If you're at all familiar with the history of 1969, and the murders committed by the Manson family, you might be ahead of the game here in figuring out where this is all leading.
That being said, even if you ARE up on your detailed history of serial killers, things here might not progress the way you would expect. Believe it or not, as soon as this film was over, I tried to catch a little Covid-19 virus update on MSNBC, only they were running an old episode of "Dateline", focusing on the Manson family and their crimes. Coincidence? I've sort of learned that there's no such thing. My movie chain tends to bring me the information I need at critical times, why shouldn't random channel-surfing do the same?
So here's the thing - there's a definite point of deviation between what happened in real-life and what happens in this film. This threw me for a loop at first, I had to pause the film and say, "OK, what exactly is going on here, and why doesn't it line up with what I know to be true and real?" I haven't really gotten in to it yet on Wikipedia or the IMDB trivia section, but what I suspect is that Tarantino has turned the real-life Manson Family events into something of a fairy tale - a point bolstered by the use of "Once Upon a Time..." in the title. What we're witnessing is a story, a fantasy, the way we might have preferred things to happen rather than the way they really did. This is not uncommon in Tarantino's work, think about "Inglourious Basterds", was there ever really a time when someone locked a bunch of Nazis in a screening room and then set them on fire with flamethrowers? No, of course not, but clearly somebody WISHES that could have happened. Was there ever an African-American former slave named Django who got to work as a bounty hunter and then blow up an entire plantation mansion? Again, it's doubtful. But in those cases Tarantino put something on film that was stronger than reality, it's reality augmented by our collective sense of justice trying to improve on the past. My best guess is that's what's up with "Once Upon a Time", the same auteur is looking at incidents in the past and saying, "But what if THIS happened instead, and that would create a stronger story for the film?" Now I'm going to go check to see if I'm right....
Because it's a long movie, and because Tarantino just couldn't resist, there's SUCH a huge cast list - over 200 people listed on the IMDB! I had to draw the line somewhere, because just tracking all of these actors for my year-end breakdown would take me HOURS. I mean, I've got the time right now, but I'm only going to list the crucial roles, and some of the archive footage appearances that the IMDB apparently doesn't count as "appearances". Looking up some of these actors led me down some really weird pathways - for example, I found out for the first time that Nicholas Hammond, who played Spider-Man on TV in the 1970's, also played one of the Von Trapp children in "The Sound of Music" in the 1960's. Now I'm not going to be able to forget that.
There's also a fair amount of tunt casting - like in "Bombshell", part of the fun here is seeing which actors of today play the most notable people from real life. That's Dakota Fanning as "Squeaky" Fromme, who later tried to assassinate Gerald Ford. Other actors make cameos as Bruce Lee, Mama Cass, Connie Stevens - but I think my personal favorite is seeing Damian Lewis playing Steve McQueen, he had McQueen's cadence and vacant stare DOWN, a very believable portrayal.
NITPICK POINT: Why do we have to see so many bare feet, especially women, and usually with dirt on them? This must be Tarantino's particular fetish, I also noticed this a lot in "Death Proof", too. Personally, I don't find feet attractive - I mean, whatever floats your boat, I guess, but even when I see a very beautiful woman with nice legs, it's kind of a bummer to think that there are feet at the end of those legs, and most of them look odd, and most of them probably smell bad. Who gets turned on by this? All feet should stay covered up, that's my feeling, with shoes you can't see through and two pairs of socks for good measure. And if your feet are dirty, maybe wash them? Walking around barefoot or even in flip-flops, or taking your shoes off in public is just plain disgusting. Being a big-time director doesn't give you the right to force your kink on me, Quentin. I mean, you can, but be aware that you're turning off more people than you're turning on.
Also starring Leonardo DiCaprio (last seen in "Body of Lies"), Margot Robbie (last seen in "Bombshell"), Emile Hirsch (last seen in "The Emperor's Club"), Margaret Qualley (last seen in "The Nice Guys"), Timothy Olyphant (last heard in "Missing Link"), Julia Butters (last seen in "13 Hours"), Austin Butler (last seen in "Yoga Hosers"), Dakota Fanning (last seen in "Ocean's Eight"), Bruce Dern (last seen in "Our Souls at Night"), Mike Moh, Luke Perry, Damian Lewis (last seen in "Queen of the Desert"), Al Pacino (last seen in "Stand Up Guys"), Nicholas Hammond, Samantha Robinson, Rafal Zawierucha, Lorenza Izzo, Costa Ronin, Damon Herriman, Lena Dunham, Madisen Beaty, Mikey Madison, James Landry Hebert (last seen in "Seven Psychopaths"), Maya Hawke, Victoria Pedretti, Sydney Sweeney, Harley Quinn Smith (also last seen in "Yoga Hosers"), Dallas Jay Hunter, Kansas Bowling, Parker Love Bowling, Cassidy Vick Hice, Ruby Rose Skotchdopole, Danielle Harris, Josephine Valentina Clark, Scoot McNairy (last seen in "Destroyer"), Clifton Collins Jr. (last seen in "The Mule"), Marco Rodriguez (last seen in "Velvet Buzzsaw"), Ramon Franco, Raul Cardona, Courtney Hoffman, Dreama Walker (last seen in "Compliance"), Rachel Redleaf, Rebecca Rittenhouse (last seen in "Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot"), Rumer Willis (last seen in "Hostage"), Spencer Garrett (also last seen in "Bombshell"), Clu Gulager (last seen in "Tapeheads"), Martin Kove, Rebecca Gayheart, Kurt Russell (last seen in "Swing Shift"), Zoë Bell (last seen in "Billy Elliot"), Perla Haney-Jardine (last seen in "Steve Jobs"), Monica Staggs (last seen in "Hesher"), Omar Doom (last seen in "Death Proof"), Kate Berlant (last seen in "Dean"), Daniella Pick, Tom Hart, David Steen (last seen in "Django Unchained"), Toni Basil (last seen in "David Bowie: The Last Five Years"), Rage Stewart, Maurice Compte (last seen in "A Walk Among the Tombstones"), Ronnie Zappa, with cameos from Michael Madsen (last seen in "The Hateful Eight"), James Remar (last seen in "Drugstore Cowboy"), Brenda Vaccaro (last seen in "The Clapper"), the voices of Quentin Tarantino (last seen in "She's Funny That Way"), Corey Burton (last heard in "Ralph Breaks the Internet"), Burt Ward, and archive footage of James Farentino (last seen in "Ensign Pulver"), Norman Fell (last seen in "Catch-22"), Ann-Margret (last seen in "Going in Style"), Dean Martin (last seen in "Scared Stiff"), Joe Namath.
RATING: 6 out of 10 cans of Wolf's Tooth dog food
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