Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

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. (01/13/2020)

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... (08/09/2019)

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] (05/24/2019)

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood may not be quite the movie for me. On the one hand, I appreciate that Quentin Tarantino can make a film that looks good, has great music, is nice to watch, and everyone who appears in front of the camera pushes themselves to the limit. In this case, however, we may not have completely met at the story. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood follows a bit in the footsteps of Inglorious Basterds, unfortunately, however, this time Tarantino is not making a variation or homage to a specific genre, but rather to a time and industry. And truthfully, I know more or less nothing about the television industry in 1960s America, and of the shows discussed here, I've heard of about one in three. Of course, I don't want to say that this is Tarantino's fault – he said himself that this film was going to be very personal to him and it shows. But in short, he's dealing with things I'm not familiar with, and frankly don't even care much about. I felt similarly "off" with his Jackie Brown years ago, because the blaxploitation subgenre didn't do anything for me either. As a result, with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, I often sat in front of the screen and thought that what was going on was probably cool, it was based on something and referencing something, but since I don't know what it's referencing at all, I can't quite get into it. That's more my fault than the film itself, but the fact remains that I'll probably never watch it a second time. (08/12/2019)

The final scene is not based on previous events; it would work in the same way as a separate half-hour “what if" short story. For over two hours, it is hogwash without any direction and a patchwork of unnecessary scenes full of padding, which... are so finely tuned, well acted, funny and set in the time, while making a point and paying tribute that it's no wonder that one wishes to have more of them. Of course, however, there should have been a lot less of them. And if it had not been “from Hollywood lover Tarantino to Hollywood lover Tarantino" and had it mainly been more cohesive, then I would have left the cinema fully satisfied. (08/14/2019)