Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

It's so long. It’s like inhaling the smoke from a filter-less cigarette and enjoying its equally long exhalation. It won't make you cough, and it won't scratch your throat. Which is actually the only problem I have with this "California dream". Connoisseurs of Tarantino's work will soon suspect that history will change again, and this time it is far less subversive fun than Inglorious Bastards. The three-pointed storytelling (actor-stuntman-Sharon Tate) does not have the exact structure of The Hateful Eight, but is rather an episodic collection of stories from filming and enchanted memories of faded neon. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is not the best that Tarantino has to offer, which does not mean that after the end of the I won’t be madly in love with the corked smile of Cliff Booth and dividing the 162 minutes by three, because that’ show fast the film went by. You won't resist the urge to see it again, even if you already know what’s going to happen... (09/08/2019)

It’s Quentin Tarantino’s ninth film and nothing changed in his storytelling. It’s true that he tuned his hubris down a bit so we don’t see any 40-minute scenes with zero content, as was the case with The Hateful Eight.  But it's still exactly the kind of movie you can expect from Tarantino. It‘s three hours long, with nothing happening for the first two hours, and the last 40 minutes are so full of suspense you will watch it with bated breath. Quentin strategically chose a new topic – Hollywood, but it’s actually just Pulp Fiction in a new coat. This movie seems likes Quentin Tarantino’s opus magnum. He portrays a period he obviously likes the most from Hollywood history – the Western era – and makes allusions to everything that comes to his mind. And he doesn’t care a bit if you like that era, have seen those movies or are their fan at all. He just does what he wants, and it fascinates me how much time and effort he had to invest in shooting scenes from various imaginary films, creating their posters and names. If nothing else, this makes Once Upon a Time in Hollywood a remarkable movie. Plus Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt are a pair of cool guys who can’t let Tarantino’s fans down. It still, however, seems just like a film where a group of actors meet to have some fun together, most of all Leo and Brad. You feel like you went to grab a beer with them, took a peek into their lives, and in the last part of the film you got to see some traditional Tarantino action, which is just as wild and brutal as we’re used to. In short, nothing new under the sun. (13/01/2020)

By far this is the best movie by the video store freak since Jackie Brown, not least because it doesn't resemble a classic Tarantino film, and because the great Quentin kind of surpassed all his bloodthirsty movies. Those who expected the typical gory carnage, got mature filmmaking, where Tarantino works sparingly with the pace, doesn't rush anywhere, caresses every scene, every line (the scenes with Sharon Tate in the cinema, or the wise little girl are the best). In the very end, however, Quentin unfortunately breaks free from his chain and in the (literally) explosive finale he shows us all that the good old morbid man is behind the camera after all, just so we don't forget. Pomo here says the finale was wonderful, for me it was the weakest link in an otherwise great film. Finally, a quick note: it would be good to have at least some awareness of who Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate are (were), and their influence on late 60s pop culture. Not like the cow in the cinema next to me who at the end said: “What was that blond girl doing there? She was pointless!” PS: Those beautiful Rick Dalton posters had the exact same graphic feel as the posters for the spaghetti westerns available on Wrong Side of the Art. Yeah, and it's too bad I'm straight, otherwise I'd hang a poster of Brad Pitt from this movie on my bedroom wall :o) (24/08/2019)

Beware of trolls. It’s a nice and fun wait for a wonderful climax that you don’t want to spoil for yourself. It is fun because of the duo of viewers’ favourites who delightfully enjoy every scene and gesture (ultimately, Brad has an even better role than Leo), and it’s nice thanks to the filming environment and nailing the cheerful colours of the carefree sixties in LA. Margot as Sharon Tate is the ultimate blonde angel, a balanced contrast to selected hippie girls from the Manson Family, who conversely are portrayed as the nastiest bunch and treated accordingly (bravo to Quentin for a courageous, fresh breeze of incorrectness in this fucked-up PC-obsessed era). However, in the dialogue and the meaning of individual scenes from the westerns of Rick Dalton (Leo’s character), as well as in the context of the movie as a whole, Tarantino’s creativity appears to be flagging. Like Franco Nero’s cameo in Django, it’s nice to have it there, but in terms of dialogue it was the weakest (or plainly just pointless) scene of the movie. Most of us consider either Basterds or (in my case) Django to be Tarantino’s masterpiece of the past decade. Do not expect Once Upon a Time to be on a par with those. Qualitatively, it is rather The Hateful Eight in an inverse, divinely lightened mood. And with a WONDERFUL climax. [Cannes] (24/05/2019)

Hmm! Watching Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a bit like when the proud parent of a newborn shows you an album full of pictures of their baby, gushing over it and expecting you’d gush too. But even though the photos are really nice, after a couple of pages it stops being fun, and you end up not giving a toss about the brat. Similarly, in his new film Tarantino gushes over the Hollywood of the 1960s, playing entire, often incredibly long scenes of old, mostly fictitious films that have nothing to do with anything that could be called a “plot”. And yeah, it’s nice, cute, atmospheric.. but, for someone who doesn’t care much about old Hollywood, it lasts too long. And this is not what I would love to see from Quentin. This is only masturbating over the atmosphere of the movies from the 60s, a time that is long gone. And on top of that, it’s almost without humour, which was the biggest surprise to me. The occasional efforts also fall pretty flat. For example, the scene with Bruce Lee was so incredibly stupid that I was embarrassed by it. There was a man sitting behind me in the cinema who laughed loudly for about two minutes and I just shook my head because there was really nothing to laugh about! I don’t know, this time Tarantino simply didn’t make a film for me. Only the scene at Spahn’s Ranch and the famous climax show what this film could’ve been if it’d really been “about the Manson Family”, as the reports of the new Tarantino movie said. (22/08/2019)