Rambling self-indulgence from a juvenile director

Rating: 3/10 (27 December 2019)

Here we go again, Tarantino rewriting history because, well, he got away with it in his silly reimagining of WWII in Goriest Barsterds, so why not do it again with this pointless retelling of the Manson murders. Mercifully, fewer people get slaughtered this time, but it's the same revenge theme glorifying violence - pick the most evil people you can find like Nazis, slavers, or in this case hippy cult killers so audiences will cheer their murders.
This time the bad guys are mainly girls, the evil Manson women, with Charles Manson making only a brief appearance. I've read that this is a dig at the MeToo movement, in which case Tarantino should keep his misogynist musings to himself, and you'll understand why when you see the ludicrous, sick ending. Tarantino has always had difficulty portraying women, who are mostly evil or dumb in this movie, but then this is a macho buddy pic, highlighting 1960s cliches and Hollywood buddy love between Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, who is so macho he gets to beat up Bruce Lee, for what reason other than dragging down the memory of a screen icon, I don't know.
Apart from the ludicrous ending (the scene with the flamethrower was so juvenile as to be unintentionally hilarious) we are treated to plenty of drawnout scenes that go nowhere. Like the filming of a TV western, as long as an actual TV episode, or the Spahn Ranch scene that takes forever to build tension only to fizzle out to nothing. It seems to have been included only to give Bruce Dern a cameo, like the Steve McQueen (Damien Lewis) cameo, which is poorly backlit to aid the illusion and serves no other purpose than to deliver a clumsy plot explanation. Then there's long scenes of Pitt driving around LA to music just so more songs could be included on the lackluster 1960s soundtrack (seriously, couldn't they afford better songs?) or to drive past 60s movie posters on every street corner.
Is all this labored film-nerdom referencing the 1960s and Tarantino's own movies supposed to be clever? There's no doubt Tarantino can direct and create scenes from other movies/ genres, and spin them into appealing floss, but it's sugary empty macho floss that will rot your brain with gratuitous violence. I can see how this movie appeals to old film critics who get the film references and remember the 1960s, but this movie needed severe editing and a coherent script.