Member-only story
The Un-Review
Why I’m not going to go see Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood.
Back in 1994, well before the internet catapulted spoilers at the world, indiscriminately, I heard that the film Pulp Fiction was worth seeing. I took my then-girlfriend (who is now my wife) based on the recommendation of some friends. I had seen Reservoir Dogs some years before and had admired the technical facility and flair of the direction but thought the violence slightly more than gratuitous. Pulp Fiction, I thought, turned out to be even more brutal in a way that left me very very uneasy. We ended up walking out of the film well before the halfway mark. It was just too uncomfortable. Years later I sat through a full view when it was on cable. Seeing the entire film did not change my opinion of it. This is, perhaps, a strange comment on Tarantino’s new film, Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood because I am certain I will not go see it. Oh, I might view it, in years to come when it’s on Netflix or HBO and I don’t have to pay for it. But I’m not going to make an effort to see the film because I think I know what’s going to happen. I know it’s going to make me uneasy in the same way as Pulp Fiction, Inglorious Basterds, Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight all made me uneasy. I don’t much like what I feel are Quentin Tarantino’s efforts to make me complicit in his sulfurous cruelty and his depictions of violence.
