{"id":7656,"date":"2019-07-26T04:50:32","date_gmt":"2019-07-26T08:50:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/?p=7656"},"modified":"2019-07-26T04:51:53","modified_gmt":"2019-07-26T08:51:53","slug":"review-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/?p=7656","title":{"rendered":"Review: ONCE UPON A TIME … IN HOLLYWOOD"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It\u2019s only a movie \u2013 and a good one<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOnce upon a time\u201d is how a classic fairy tale starts.
\u201cThey lived happily ever after \u201d is how it ends. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So when Writer\/Director Quentin Tarantino calls his movie \u201cOnce Upon a Time \u2026 in Hollywood,\u201d you know he will give you an out-and-out fantasy.  The man is a history buff, but also a revisionist who likes the idea of righting wrongs – ten years ago, he killed Hitler in \u201cInglorious Basterds.\u201d  Unlike fellow-filmmaker Oliver Stone, who tweaks his movies to fit an alternate truth, Tarantino uses history as a concept for a good story.

And what a story he has come up with for \u201cOnce Upon a Time\u2026 in Hollywood.\u201d This time, Tarantino\u2019s mind is on Sharon Tate, the pregnant young actress, married to Roman Polanski, who fifty years ago was gruesomely murdered by three of Charles Manson\u2019s disciples.  

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Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Saddled with this knowledge,  watching \u201cOnce Upon a Time\u2026 in Hollywood\u201d could mean hours of tense foreboding. Just how gruesome will those killings be? This is a Tarantino movie after all.  But yes, this is a Tarantino movie after all\u2026 and the director is master of deception who can fool us whichever way he wants! 

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A bromance – Pitt and Dicaprio.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So you relax in the company of two best Hollywood buds, cowboy\/action star Rick Dalton (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stunt double, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt).  Their relationship is symbiotic: Rick is an Actor, with a home in the Hills, on Cielo Drive, and he pays his pal Cliff for various services.  Like driving \u2013 Rick has racked up too many DUIs – and fixing home chores.  And listening to Rick\u2019s incessant worries about his career\u2019s downward trajectory. In the last ten years, he moans, he\u2019s gone from movie star, to TV-star with his own show, to guest-appearances on other people\u2019s TV-shows.  He is this close to the ultimate indignity, spaghetti westerns made in Italy. 

Rick despairs.  Maybe he somehow could meet his new next-door neighbors, the Polanskis… they are on top of the Hollywood hierarchy. Roman\u2019s \u201cRosemary\u2019s Baby\u201d is a huge hit; Sharon, whom Polanski met on the set of \u201cThe Fearless Vampire Killers\u201d and married, has been noticed in other supporting parts and has a great chance at real stardom.

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Brad Pitt plays a stuntman with a mysterious past.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As a stuntman with a questionable past (he may have murdered his wife and gotten away with it), Cliff knows his place and doesn\u2019t ask for much.  He lives in a messy trailer behind a drive-in theatre and  is grateful for the occasional  gig  that Rick manages to get him. 

The first half of \u201cOnce Upon a Time\u2026 in Hollywood\u201d leisurely introduces Rick,  Cliff, and Sharon as they go about their chores on a February day in 1969. Rick is messing up a scene, Cliff beats up Bruce Lee and fixes Rick\u2019s TV antenna.  Sharon sneaks into a movie theatre and watches herself in \u201cThe Wrecking Crew,\u201d a Matt Helm movie starring Dean Martin.

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Driving around Hollywood.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a lot of driving around in cars, and on one of his runs, Cliff picks up a \u201chippie\u201d girl  (Margaret Qualley, Andie MacDowell\u2019s daughter) and takes her home to \u2026 the Spahn Movie Ranch!

This was the hangout of the Charles Manson \u201cfamily\u201d.   The tension of the movie is jacked up tenfold when Cliff gets out of the car and asks to see his old buddy George, owner of the ranch. The request is denied by a pack of dirty, disheveled, very angry young women. 

As this element of danger is introduced, \u201cOnce Upon a Time\u2026in Hollywood\u201d careens through one  improbable situation after another, with, yes, the expected murder and mayhem of August 8, 1969. The Quentin Tarantino version.    

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Tarantino creates a classic Hollywood pairing.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The pairing of Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio is spectacular.\u00a0 It reaches Newman-Redford of \u201cButch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” status. Once teen heart throbs, now \u201cmen in full,\u201d Pitt and DiCaprio don\u2019t have to worry about finding the mature, challenging parts that escaped poor Rick Dalton.

Tarantino has surrounded his stars \u00a0with an exceptional cast, some very young (Julia Butters, 12, has two scenes with DiCaprio), some of respectable age for actors \u2013 Bruce Dern, 83, Al Pacino and Brenda Vaccaro, both 79.\u00a0 Among the not at all old: Kurt Russell, Michael Madsen, Damian Lewis, Lena Dunham, Emile Hirsch.\u00a0 A slew of the up-and-coming: Rumer Willis (Bruce and Demi\u2019s daughter), Maya Hawke (Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke\u2019s daughter; the ice-cream girl \u00a0in \u201cStranger Things\u201d), Austin Butler (Elvis in Baz Luhrmann\u2019s biopic), Sydney Sweeney.

Dakota Fanning is a scary Squeaky Fromme, Margot Robbie an ethereal Sharon Tate.

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mercy takes in Tarantino’s Hollywood fairy tale.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","no-thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7656"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7665,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7656\/revisions\/7665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}