Year of Release: 2019
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Al Pacino, Emile Hirsch, Margaret Qualley, Timothy Olyphant, Julia Butters, Austin Butler, Dakota Fanning, Bruce Dern, Kurt Russell, Damian Lewis, Nicholas Hammond, Luke Perry, Maya Hawke, Lena Dunham, Scott McNairy, Rumer Willis, Rebecca Gayheart, Zoe Bell, James Remar, Michael Madsen, Perla Haney-Jardine
Genre: Drama
Score out of ten (whole numbers only): 6
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Synopsis and Review:
Quentin Tarantino is back, 4 years after the release of "The Hateful Eight". Where his previous film was a lengthy chamber piece with a series of despicable characters, "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" is a view/homage of life in Hollywood at the end of the 60s, distilled through the director's sensibility. The film focuses on Rick Dalton, a character modeled after Clint Eastwood's career. We find him in 1969, following a successful run on TV, playing a cowboy/lead on a TV show which has given him plenty of exposure and fame. Rick meets with a successful producer who wants to cast him in a series of Italian features, where once again he can be the lead star, starting with some spaghetti westerns. Rick overdrinks, oversmokes, and his sole friend is his constant and loyal stuntman, Cliff Booth, a handsome, charming man, who has a somewhat colorful past. Cliff has remained best friends with Rick through trials and tribulations, and has a very low profile, easy going vibe, which draws him to a group of hippies (under the mentorship of Charles Manson) living in what used to be a set for cowboy films. Rick lives on the Hollywood Hills, surrounded by well known neighbors, such as Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate who is just now starting her path to fame. As Rick, Cliff and Rick's new wife return from their Italian experience, they're all in for more than they expected.
"Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" is, unlike Tarantino's previous films, looser and scope and narrative. Though the film focuses on the story of Rick Dalton, and his relationship with his best friend Cliff, there's not much advanced in terms of who Rick, or for that matter Cliff, really are. The film cuts a slice of what life in Hollywood was in 1969, and provides insight into the life of an actor trying to find his bearings, someone who feels precociously aged and out of sync with the life/career he aimed to live and have. The film also has a series of supporting characters who show up, all aiming to create a more diverse universe, one where hippies, cults and their followers co-exist without much friction. What is the most fantastic thing about the film, its fluid style and seemingly ease by which the story gets told, is also its downfall: there really isn't that much to tell. As much as Rick's fascinating character and life may be, and Leonardo DiCaprio brings him to life impeccably, as a mixture of loneliness, fear, excitement, insecurities, alcoholism, all bottled to amazing dysfunction, the film veers off into other plot lines, such as Cliff's encounter with the cult (which basically goes nowhere) or even Sharon Tate's, both of which are inconsequential, lack insight or generally feel underdeveloped or superficially looked at. The film is indeed a postcard to a bygone era, but much like postcards, it's up to the viewer to make the story or imagine what has happened in that postcard. Robert Richardson's cinematography is phenomenal, and Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, make this film worth watching, but this lacks the punch or visceral response that Tarantino's previous films caused.
"Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" is, unlike Tarantino's previous films, looser and scope and narrative. Though the film focuses on the story of Rick Dalton, and his relationship with his best friend Cliff, there's not much advanced in terms of who Rick, or for that matter Cliff, really are. The film cuts a slice of what life in Hollywood was in 1969, and provides insight into the life of an actor trying to find his bearings, someone who feels precociously aged and out of sync with the life/career he aimed to live and have. The film also has a series of supporting characters who show up, all aiming to create a more diverse universe, one where hippies, cults and their followers co-exist without much friction. What is the most fantastic thing about the film, its fluid style and seemingly ease by which the story gets told, is also its downfall: there really isn't that much to tell. As much as Rick's fascinating character and life may be, and Leonardo DiCaprio brings him to life impeccably, as a mixture of loneliness, fear, excitement, insecurities, alcoholism, all bottled to amazing dysfunction, the film veers off into other plot lines, such as Cliff's encounter with the cult (which basically goes nowhere) or even Sharon Tate's, both of which are inconsequential, lack insight or generally feel underdeveloped or superficially looked at. The film is indeed a postcard to a bygone era, but much like postcards, it's up to the viewer to make the story or imagine what has happened in that postcard. Robert Richardson's cinematography is phenomenal, and Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, make this film worth watching, but this lacks the punch or visceral response that Tarantino's previous films caused.
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