Tarantino.

My brother kinda sorta went to film school, basically he did a BA in Media Studies from memory. But before that, he got popular for a while performing a scene from Reservoir Dogs as part of his Country Week Speech team performance. I sat with him as he wrote out the lines and paused the VCR to scratch down Tim Roth's spiel which he uses to convince everyone he's not a cop. He got by minus the swearing. I wasn't there but he pulled it off. He was the only one to win a trophy for our school, all the sports teams and the debate team didn't qualify. So he kinda built a legacy from it. (In truth it was his actual speech but this performance part helped).

After I finished high school he came home from uni and showed me Pulp Fiction. It really wasn't like anything else around, despite it being so heavily influenced by many genres. It's a great movie. It deserves its icon status. We all spouted that Ezekiel passage (which is heavily modified from the Bible). Royale with Cheese was a meme before memes. John Travolta was suddenly relevant again. Samuel L Jackson proved he's a motherfucker of an actor.

I've seen most of Tarantino's films, but not Django and Death Proof. I didn't think I'd enjoy Hateful Eight as much as I did, it was great. I've probably watched Kill Bill more than the others, I'd love to see the Whole Bloody Affair, which amounts to the vision he had for both volumes to be one original cut. If I have to complain about any of them I'd say I can't deal with Inglourious Basterds, not that it isn't well made or terrible, I just couldn't handled the protracted tension of most of the scenes and the final moments leading up to the end are fucking unbearable. I probably wouldn't watch Jackie Brown again.

Once Upon a Time was one I did look forward to seeing despite spoiling it for myself in general. I feel like I should read more about the Tate murder from what little I know, I know bits about Polanski, whose name I forgot, so I resorted to googling "rape rape" in reference Whoopie Goldberg's defense of his actions, since their was a lot of contention over Polanski's stat rape charge regarding a 13 year old girl. I won't digress suffice to say we probably need a better definition of rape by now.

But I'm kinda not digging Once Upon a Time. I think it's taking far too long to tell a really short story. It looks fantastic, it deserves the accolades for production design. There's cool stuff going on with it. I don't think Margot Robbie's being objectified, I don't see why having less lines in her case diminishes what she does on screen. She's telegraphing a lot with her performance, we're spending time with her as an audience and getting to know her. There's nothing really narcissistic about her watching herself on screen. DiCaprio's pretty great I thought some of his scenes so far were a little forced he's fun to watch. Planting him in the Great Escape almost worked. I preferred Pitt's character overall. But I haven't been as captivated, the build up to the real story's taken quite a while, when you'd really have a sense of what was going on way before with Tarantino, even if he had spent more time building mood and scene. It's less dialogue heavy, which is pretty good considering it suits the mood. I'm fine with him doing fantasy versions of recent history, I don't think people were half as dumb believing his version to be the truth, not like those idiots who thought Titanic was "just a movie". But I paused Once Upon a Time to do stuff, then forgot I'd been watching it and almost started watching 4 year old Batman Vs Superman script doctor videos. So, clearly my investment was low.

Based on the ratings via Rotten Tomatoes, Tarantino's movies seem to be in a fall of diminishing returns, this last feature a slight uptick. I know he's not as heavily praised or revered as he was 20 years ago, he still gets listed with the modern greats, he reached auteur status and I'll pay that. I've never spat on his shit, I don't care how controversial he is most of the time, I agree with his stance on simulated violence. You have a choice, nobody forces you to watch this, kids haven't gone into diners and stood on tables shouting if anyone moves, they'll execute every motherfucking last one of you. His brand of violence is kind of lampoonish, it's overblown. And yeah, it's fuckin' fun, JAN! I think he writes more interesting female characters than most. I know he screwed over Uma Thurman, I was oddly fascinated with their work on Kill Bill, she was supposed to be more of a collaborator by the vibe I got from old promo interviews. But she kept a brave face while a certain producer ran Hollywood with a perverted fist of bribery and casting couch nightmares.

Polanski is probably an asshole. Weinstein's definitely an asshole. Tarantino claims to have kept him out of reach of Thurman, I'm inclined to believe he did, and I try not to shit on people who didn't speak out to the general public at the time. Everyone was stymied and threatened or felt intimidated if they spoke out. Some may have felt the lack of evidence meant it wasn't right to go forward. Hollywood's got toxicity issues. Having said that, I don't defend Tarantino as much as I would have back then. I used to agree that a character that uses derogatory terms is being a representation of real life so a script with that language should get a pass. Now, I'm probably more squeamish about it I can't defend it as readily. I think his time in the anti-PC patrol's kinda over, whether the recent apologies he made were sincere or forced by his team is up for debate.

And Once Upon a Time is actually really disappointing. Considering it's leading up to a particularly dark ending, the payoff is pretty minimal. It's got such a happily ever after vibe of an ending, which is fine for the title, but I wasn't all that attached to any character to care the outcome. Pitt's character's way more enjoyable, he's basically the hero. Robbie's fine but I'm supposed to fall in love with her character, she's the princess or damsel of the story, and I didn't care that much she survived. I don't know her friends in this well enough to care they live. The hippies, if you have no context, don't seem to be that malevolent, just a bunch of bullies, so without the context of the Manson murders and his cult, you wouldn't know to hate them. And the payoff with the flamethrower gag just feels like complete fucking overkill. The violence meter's been turned down as low as it could go, (at least in terms of how much we're exposed to) as if Tarantino's finally succumb to all the backlash and this was his response to the bad language/anti-violence crowd, like it's not fun to rile them up so we get a watered down but very well presented Tarantino film. It was weird. Maybe I'd watch it again but this was underwhelming for all the hype.