Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is arguably my favorite Quentin Tarantino’s (Inglorious Bastards, Django Unchained) movie. However, that isn’t saying a lot since he is not one of my favorite directors out there. I admit that there is an audience for his movies. I’m just not a part of that audience. For me, his films are too often over the top, are loaded with extreme and unneeded violence, and contain the foulest language you’ll hear from a big-budget movie any year that one of his movies was released. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was FAR different than his previous eight films. The story was not over the top. The cursing, while present, was used to accent a verbal exchange rather than serve as the root of it. And outside of a 10-15 minute sequence, there wasn’t any over-the-top violence. This movie was long and a bit boring, but it wasn’t bad. It also had excellent acting performances.
Category Archives: Brad Pitt
Babel (2006)
More than a decade before earning back-to-back Best Director Oscars (Birdman, The Revenant), Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu directed a series of unrelated hyperlink films. The idea behind hyperlink movies is that you have a movie that tells completely different stories in entirely different settings but is connected or influenced in ways unknown to the characters (and, for periods, the audience). These films started gaining popularity with the success of Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic in the year 2000. When done correctly, hyperlink films can be incredibly memorable. Traffic won four Academy Awards and was a favorite for Best Picture in 2000.
Allied (2016)
While a 65% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes suggests a movie should be checked out, sometimes you wonder why the score isn’t higher. Allied, the Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future, The Walk) World War II love story set in both Casablanca and London about two intelligence officers from opposite sides of the world says a lot. The movie, set in both Casablanca and London, has been loosely referred to as Mr. and Mrs. Smith (because of Brad Pitt) meets Casablanca. While I understand the reference, this is far from the truth. I was not too fond of either of these other movies. Casablanca is one of the greatest movies of all time (yawn), but I really enjoyed Allied.
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The Big Short (2015)
Completely flying under the radar in an otherwise crowded December release schedule (Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, Concussion, Joy, The Hateful Eight, The Revenant) is Adam McKay’s (Step Brothers, The Other Guys) The Big Short, a movie that is neither short on star power or storytelling. While most will find this movie riveting, it will, unfortunately, hit a little too close to home for many viewers. This movie, while at times challenging to understand, will leave you dumbfounded that what happened actually happened not in some far-off land in a time long ago, but right here in our own backyard just a few years ago. I promise not to explain this movie and then talk about some of the pros and cons. I will do my absolute best not to provide spoilers in this review.
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The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)
Sure David Fincher’s (Fight Club, Se7en) The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is Forrest Gump meets Legends of the Fall. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a great movie. I saw this movie opening weekend six years ago and remember being intrigued by the premise but not exactly sure how I’d react to it. The trailer was superb, and Brad Pitt is excellent in almost everything he does. This movie was screaming Academy Award Nomination for him, and this would prove to be his first Best Actor nod. I’m also very high on Fincher and Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine, Elizabeth: The Golden Age). At nearly three hours, this movie is way much too long, but, at the same time, I’m not exactly sure what I would cut it out. To me, each scene is integral to the story. And while Forrest Gump achieved more critical acclaim (6 Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Actor and six other nominations), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button fared very well (3 wins and ten more nominations). Are the stories similar? They are. And while Brad Pitt’s character in this movie isn’t quite the same as his character in Legends of the Fall, his Benjamin Button character does follow many of the same fight versus flight battles that Tristan faced. If I had to rank these three movies, I think I would still go Forrest Gump first, Legends of the Fall second, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, but that is one heck of a list. All three of these movies currently rank in my All-Time top 125, and I think each of these movies will continue to stand the test of time, meaning I don’t see these movies sliding down as I revise my list yearly.
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