Another conflated, self-absorbed Tanantino Film

Rating: 4/10 (11 December 2019)

I'm starting to believe we have convinced ourselves Quentin Tarantino is a bit better than he is. Reservoir Dog's was great and Pulp Fiction a masterpiece. But we now know Tarantino ripped off Roger Avery and took much of the credit for Pulp Fiction. Jackie Brown was good but not excellent, and Kill Bill, From Dusk 'til Dawn and Grindhouse were priceless. True Romance was another he ripped off from Roger Avery. But after all this, after he started solo projects; these films broke down to grandiose, self-absorbed entitlement. Inglorious Bastards and the Fateful Eight are prime examples of a narcissist without license, oversight or direction. They are boring, insipid, bloated and fatal, masked as marvels but sitting in our intuitive gut as failures. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is the third installment of boring, far too long movies with excellent acting, cinematography and production that money can buy. But if you hated Inglorious and Hateful as much as I did, as the ultimate examples of movies as gaslighting, you will also hate Hollywood. I barely could stand it, writing this review as the gelatinous sand dune of a film progressed. We get the impression Quentin has his hand upon the beating heart of the culture and time period, and yet if we look closer, we see he perceives nothing at best, and a Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver he is not-in fact, nearly the opposite of. I guess I wish Quentin would have just stayed with what he knows, epitomized in Kill Bill, instead of making these massive bore-fests. However, the worst insult of all is making Hollywood absent of the effect of Manson, relegating him and the murders to a mere suggested subplot. I'm boycotting all future Tarantino releases for this reason only.