Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

The ever-increasing navel-gazing seemed to me to be a recipe for disaster. After the admirable Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino started flagging with Django Unchained, only to slightly overdo it with The Hateful Eight, saved only by the actors and a decent amount of tension. The prospect of another film lapping at the three-hour mark, this time around in tribute to golden era and voluntarily apologizing in advance for its disregard of the audience, therefore tempted me very cautiously. However, the biggest surprise lies in just how wrong I was. Instead of traditionally engaging in endless conversations, the author fragilely confesses his love in a hundred and one ways. Unlike many of his previous works, he does not brag about his own talent; he genuinely and solely pays tribute to the talent of others and wants nothing more than to return to the sixties, immerse himself in them, and simply experience that boundless enchantment with film and television that only early youth can bring. So even though the drawn-out running time seems like showing off in principle, partly because it only slightly and superficially expands on the genre (just try retelling the Sharon Tate storyline yourself), a smile came to my lips incredibly often. The almost playful idea of digging your claws into a beloved world or period, where you tell the story "your own way", could theoretically become a goal for countless other directors, but something tells me that many of them would blindly break their own teeth on it. (2019-08-22)

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... (2019-08-09)

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] (2019-05-24)

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. (2020-01-13)

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. (2019-08-12)