Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood

Quentin Tarantino’s last movie to date is a rich and lovely immersion in the dying days of the Old Hollywood, LA, 1969. The culture clash is defined by the generation gap, and the innocence of 1967’s Summer of Love is already congealing into hard drug abuse and eruptions of violence reflecting the escalating conflict in Vietnam.

In this time and place Tarantino invites us to hang with TV cowboy Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), an actor uncomfortably aware that his movie career is on the wane and leading roles may be behind him. Rick’s best friend is his stunt double, Cliff (Brad Pitt), who embodies the manly virtues Rick only acts out on screen. It’s Cliff who happens across the group of dropouts who have taken residence at the old Spahn movie ranch. Meanwhile, Rick’s neighbour Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) appears to be on the cusp of stardom herself…

A film of luxuriant and digressive beauty, Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood is in no rush to come to climax, but very subtly, bit by bit, Tarantino injects notes of tension and anxiety into his love letter to a bygone era. The movie’s nostalgia is wrapped up in Rick’s midlife crisis, a fear of obsolescence which the director would appear to share.

A tender, rapturous film, both joyous and melancholy, a reverie for a lost past and a door that opens to myriad imagined possibilities.

Stephanie Zacharek, Time

Distinctly elegiac and unexpectedly emotional.

Kenneth Turan, LA Times