Jesus Christ, Fuck This Movie
There’s this really terrible trope in professional wrestling that I call the Stephanie Special. How it works is simple enough: the Good Guy’s in the ring, and he’s out there talking to the Bad Girl. As they go back and forth, the Bad Girl quickly slaps the Good Guy right across the face. Without fail, the crowd always loses their shit to this. Not only is this due to the fact that a slap in wrestling is considered to be disrespect of the highest order, but, by the crowd’s logic, it also gives the Good Guy a free pass at hitting a woman. Stephanie McMahon, the inspiration behind my made-up term, executes this better than anyone. So much so that when she does get hit, it leads to the biggest crowd reaction of the night.
Though one would think a trope so barbaric by nature could only be found in the cultural dregs of professional wrestling, some of the most highly-respected filmmakers of our time are getting use out of it right now. Awesome, right? One example of the Stephanie Special I always think about is when Ryan Gosling choked Sylvia Hoeks to death while also holding her underwater in Blade Runner 2049. It was during to their big fight, though! She was one of Gosling’s main adversaries throughout the entire film! It had to be done! Look, I get it. I’m sure everyone who saw the movie that featured 50-foot holograms of naked women and sex with an intimacy robot, understood the complexities of what was happening there.
Two years later, and wow, what do you know; the Stephanie Special’s back in town. This time, in the form of America’s Sweetheart Brad Pitt straight-up bashing Maya Hawke face in for a solid minute in Quentin Tarantino’s latest, Once Upon a Time In Hollywood. But again: Hawke, playing a Manson Family member, attacked Pitt first. What else was he to do?
Ideally, this wouldn’t have to be said, but maybe filmmakers shouldn’t have scenes that positively portray a man violently putting his hands on a woman? Regardless of whatever fabricated context these guys come up with to legitimize it, I’d just really prefer not to see a man heroically strangling a woman on screen anymore. Big ask, I know, but I have faith in the Writers Guild of America to to figure out a way around this massive creative roadblock.
What’s unfortunate about this moment, aside from the obvious, is that it happened to occur during the movie’s most worthwhile stretch of action. Hollywood’s final fifteen minutes were actually pretty great other than that. During that run, Tarantino’s wry alternative history side fully comes out in full force, things get bloody, things get fiery, and we all get a happy ending.
Once Hollywood was over, though, I just felt like it was a little too obvious that Tarantino had those final fifteen minutes completely figured out and he didn’t give a shit how he got there. Because you can’t just make short film when you’re Quentin Tarantino. You’d be leaving so much money on the table. And how would you even release it? Just have it go straight to Netflix, or another streaming service as, like, an anthology series with other prestige directors? Nah, you can’t do that, you’re one of those annoying auteur pricks who always talks about how awesome projectors are or some shit.
That’s why, despite the fact that there’s less than a half-hour of quality story, Tarantino went and added 135-or-so minutes of filler. All he had to do was make sure all his characters were where they needed to be for that grand finale. He did not seem to care in the slightest about how they got there. And boy, does that lead some of the to the clunkiest fucking storytelling you’ll ever see. Seriously, Hollywood is just a wasteland of quarter-assed narration, a fifth-assed Sharon Tate storyline that’s inevitably nothing more than a long-play red herring, and hey, did you know that in the 1960s, the times they were a’changin’ and there was a whole lot of swingin’ new tunes to prove it? Well, if you didn’t, Quentin Tarantino has you covered.
I genuinely can’t even fathom the audacity it takes for a filmmaker to go into a producer’s office in 2019 and tell them, “hey yeah, I’ve got a great idea for a movie. It’s gonna be about the topsy-turvy world of showbiz, and also how crazy the Sixties were. Two things that have never been talked about on the big-screen before. Sounds great, right? Now, if I can just get that check for ninety-six million dollars, I’ll be on my way!” This movie should embarrass Tarantino to no end. He’s one of the few artists who can explore any idea he wants and get it made pretty easily. Instead, he chooses to walk down the most well-trodden path imaginable and act as though he was the first to do it. I guess that shouldn’t be surprsing, but still.
I don’t even know what else to say about this movie. Should I talk about the acting? It was fine. Given that 80% of what Margot Robbie had to do on-screen was smile while driving around in a fancy car, I’d say she’ll be more than prepared for her upcoming role in the new Barbie movie. Andie Macdowell’s daughter was probably the woman with the most lines in the whole movie, and she played a sex-crazed hippie girl who’s probably underage, so that was super cool. And aside from bashing a woman’s head in and murdering his wife, Pitt brought an affable effortlessness to his character that the movie sorely needed.
Leo, on the other hand, had the more actory role. Because of course he fucking did. Leo’s performances are always good, it just seems like he’s working off a Serious Actor’s Checklist in all of them. Like, first you’ve gotta put on an accent. Okay, close enough, check. Now, develop some idiosynchratic tics, you know, like a stutter, even though you’re playing an actor and it will go unmentioned how it completely vanishes when your character’s performing his lines. Like, it’s not even gonna be used as conflict within the given circumstances, you’re just putting on the stutter to show everyone you can do it for Craft Points. Perfect, now all that’s left is for you to get super red-faced in a few scenes. Show them that you’re really passionate about something, you can do it. This is important, Leo, make sure that face bright fucking red. Redder! Redder! I said red, god damn it, REDDER! Aaaaaand check, beautiful, beautiful.
So yeah, the acting was fine, no complaints. Good set design, too. Whenever anyone does a period piece, people always go gaga over how true to the era the set pieces were, so if you’re one of those types, don’t worry, they were able to recreate the historically accurate look of the 1969 Wheaties box. There were also some cleverly used Dutch angles that made me think something bad was about to happen, but then it didn’t! It was great! What a rollercoaster!
Other than that, there’s probably not much else to say about this movie that wasn’t already said or thought about back when people were reviewing Hail, Caesar!, or Inherent Vice, or La La Land, or even Bad Times at the El Royale. Not a good movie, folks. Wouldn’t recommend. Just read some fucking Joan Didion instead.