Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood Review

Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood

Dir: Quentin Tarantino 

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Kurt Russell, Al Pacino, Dakota Fanning, Emile Hirsch, and Timothy Olyphant

“When people ask me if I went to film school I tell them, ‘no, I went to films.’”

This sentiment from filmmaker Quentin Tarantino is a poignant statement not only for his entire career, but specifically for the ninth feature film from the writer/director “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood”. Often times labeled as a film nerd of the highest degree or a cinephile with encyclopedic knowledge, which are both completely true, Tarantino is also a dedicated film historian who is working within all of his films to keep the essence of long-ago filmmaking genre, structure, and style alive. 

In “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood” the nostalgia for the films and the history that defined the end of the 1960’s and the beginning of the 1970’s for the film industry is present from the first frame and saturated until the final frame. Movie posters loom like skyscrapers over Los Angeles in 1969, Hollywood glows with rich detail and stunning beauty through the lights and architecture of famous landmarks, and real-life movie stars like Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), Bruce Lee (Mike Moh), and Steve McQueen (Damian Lewis) weave into Tarantino’s fictional yarn. 

It’s a combination of everything that the director has honed and crafted in his style and structure over the course of his career, there are even winks to his past found in both subtle and direct sources on the screen. While it’s undoubtedly a Quentin Tarantino film, “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood” is also different from other films in his catalog. This film, in terms of story structure is akin to “Pulp Fiction” while the tone and pace feels most like “Jackie Brown”.

The story here centers on two friends working in the film industry in Los Angeles in the late 1960’s. Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) is the movie star whose leading man status is fading while the changing industry begins to embrace the counterculture movement of the time. Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) is the stunt man looking for work while helping his buddy Rick as both a personal motivator and occasional handyman. After a meeting with a producer (Al Pacino), an offer to work in Italian spaghetti westerns is offered to Rick who immediately realizes that his status in Hollywood is changing. The traditional hero with the chiseled jawline and neat appearance is being replaced with contemporary tough guys with shaggy hair who dress like hippies. Rick is beside himself while Cliff seems okay with change as long as there is work. It doesn’t help Rick’s ego that he lives on Cielo Drive in Beverly Hills, right next door to new rising starlet Sharon Tate and her husband Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha). 

Tarantino does a fantastic job of contrasting the two lives of Rick and Cliff against the life of Sharon Tate. Rick is grasping for the past throughout the film, struggling to understand the changing times and how he fits into a new era of movie making. Rick has a nasty cough that never seems to go away and a stutter that gets worst when he is forced to embrace the inevitable change that is coming. On the opposite side is Sharon Tate, a rising star full of enthusiasm who is just breaking into the Hollywood system. Seeing her bubbly charm as she dances at a big party, with some of Hollywood’s biggest stars at the time watching her own the dance floor, is as much lovely as it is somber. While Tarantino may weave fiction and fact into his own kind of revisionist history, we as the audience know the fate of Sharon Tate and her close friends at the hands of the Manson family. 

The cast in Tarantino’s films are always abundant with familiar faces, the same is true here for the cameos which are incredibly fun. However, the film belongs to Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt who are both fantastic in the roles. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Rick Dalton as an entitled Hollywood actor most concerned about his relevance and the process behind his acting. In one moment, Rick destroys his trailer after messing up his speaking lines on set and the next he’s crying huge tears after a young actor offers words of admiration. DiCaprio is fantastic throughout. Brad Pitt, in one of the best roles of his career, plays Cliff with colossal amounts of coolness but also a hint of danger from a past that may or may not have involved murder. Pitt is phenomenal. Also impressive is Margot Robbie playing Sharon Tate, her performance is charming especially when she sneaks into a cinema to watch “The Wrecking Crew”, the breakout role for Tate. 

This is perhaps Tarantino’s most directly reflective film; the auteur is clearly looking back on his place in cinema history amidst the rapid and immense changes that have come along over the course of the director’s career. Tarantino has always been cutting edge in technique and storytelling but the progression of his films has gone from liberal examinations of present matters through foul-mouthed gangsters and sword-wielding assassins and have turned towards conservative genre structures from the past like war films with vengeance-seeking soldiers and western stories featuring six-gun shooting double-crossers. 

“Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood” has everything that Quentin Tarantino loves about films jam packed into one movie. Yet still, this film feels farthest from the style he is known for. There are still flares of vocabulary, amazing musical cues, and the occasional scene of violence, but the underlying tone in Tarantino’s ninth film is sweeter than anything he has done before. The introspection shown in regards to the aspects of film that Tarantino loves so deeply, that he fights to keep alive, is what gives “Once Upon a Time…” its beating heart. And through the journey of an aging movie star that believes he is becoming a has-been Tarantino deliberates on his own relevance as a filmmaker. It’s a beautiful, somber, and touching film. If this was Quentin Tarantino’s final film, it would be a fitting finale for one of cinema’s greatest filmmakers.

Monte’s Rating

5.00 out of 5.00

The Hateful Eight Review

The Hateful Eight

Director: Quentin Tarantino

Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Walton Googins, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Bruce Dern, and Demian Bichir

Quentin Tarantino can do whatever he wants. Even if that means releasing a three-hour plus 70mm special presentation of his newest film, “The Hateful Eight”. Mr. Tarantino’s career, eight films with the inclusion of this one, is nothing short of impressive. His films have spanned from bank robbing gangsters, to vengeful left-for-dead brides, to World War II men on mission; Mr. Tarantino’s films have influenced popular culture and have made an indelible impact on the trajectory of filmmaking. It’s been a filmgoers dream come true. Mr. Tarantino is an encyclopedia of film history, from the classics to the grindhouse, and his knowledge of film has always served as a method of influence. “The Hateful Eight” is the writer/director as his most scaled down yet still unrestricted; eight people in one room with a mystery that connects them all. Sounds like a simple premise right? In the hands of Quentin Tarantino “The Hateful Eight” proves anything but simple.

On a snowy journey in post-Civil War Wyoming, bounty hunter John Ruth (Kurt Russell) is transporting the wanted outlaw Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) by stagecoach for a meeting with the rope. Along the way Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), also a bounty hunter, waits with three frozen dead outlaws in the middle of the path. Major Warren queries a ride to Minnie’s Haberdashery, a station where he can wait out the oncoming blizzard. Ruth obliges and the group continues the journey. Upon arrival at the station the group meets more people, but something is amiss. Someone is lying about their true intentions.

A bunch of unsavory, unredeemable characters are in a room together under the gleefully self-indulgent manipulation of a writer known for a flourish of discourse and a fascination with bloody and disturbing affairs, how much could go wrong? For the characters everything goes wrong but for the viewer everything, almost, goes right. The composition of the narrative is a whodunit, a mystery akin to an intense poker match where everyone is holding their cards until the last available moment. What the viewer gets is an interrogation, one that moves from freewheeling bar-talk conversation to gun-in-hand threatening, mostly from the character John Ruth, played by an ill-tempered Kurt Russell, who is trying to protect his bounty. Everyone is a suspect in John Ruth’s mind, except Major Warren, played admirable in a leading role by Samuel L. Jackson, who won Ruth’s trust by an association with a famed President. Add in a slew of other wonderfully shady characters, performances by Walton Googins playing a newly appointed Sheriff and Tim Roth playing the executioner/hangman are especially fun, and the plot thickens.

It’s a hard technique to build a mystery, especially at the extensive length fashioned by this script. It would seem that every one of the accomplished actors in the film would get an opportunity to share the spotlight; this isn’t the case even though they all shine during their available time on screen. Mr. Tarantino plants a lot of seeds throughout the film but not all them blossom the way they have in the past. Instead the narrative is filled with other material that overtakes the mystery at the core; political ramblings, racial indifference, feministic inequality, and social confusions are all topics handled straightforward and with the director’s patented violent attributions. While this has potential to weigh the film down unnecessarily, it’s also fascinating to watch Mr. Tarantino operate in this manner.

The legendary Ennio Morricone scores the film brilliantly, providing undeniable tension but also an authenticity that links the film to the past that so clearly influences the motions. The photography is also stunning, both in the vast snowy white of the mountains and within the progressively confining spaces in the haberdashery.  

Mr. Tarantino has said that he only plans on making a couple more films then retiring to explore other avenues for his talent to flourish. Whatever platform the director chooses to tell his stories, he will do it utilizing his unique style and approach. If “The Hateful Eight” is a representation of what the future may look like for the director, cinephiles are in for an interesting journey. Quentin Tarantino can do whatever he wants; here he proves that he can do whatever he wants very well.

Side Note: Do yourself a favor and watch this in the 70mm Roadshow presentation, it provides a unique film experience that isn’t readily available anymore.

Monte’s Rating

4.25 out of 5.00