Once Upon A Time ... In Hollywood: Film Review

Synopsis

In Hollywood 1969, fading actor Rick Dalton (DiCaprio) and his stunt double Cliff Booth (Pitt) navigate their aging careers and relationships on three nights: Feb. 7, Feb. 8, and Aug. 8. Next door to Rick lives the new couple of Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate (Robbie), and on August 8, 1969 (technically August 9th), everything will change?

Review

To start, the performances in the film were fantastic, particularly from the two leads (their chemistry is great). However, I found Brad Pitt's performance to be the one that I enjoyed more. It's nice to see DiCaprio back on screen, but there was something about Pitt's character that was more human. This film is very funny. It is one of the funnier, if not funniest (it's close with Jackie Brown), Tarantino films. Mostly everything in this film was spot-on. The production design, cinematography, writing, etc. all was great. As an aside, it's an admittedly risky script to pull off and I applaud Tarantino for doing it with such aplomb. Now, the editing was touch sloppy for me. There were a few jarring cuts (especially in a scene with Luke Perry and DiCaprio) that distracted from the story a little for me. It also drags a little in the middle section, but that's it. This film is VERY Tarantino, meaning that it is unmistakably a film of his. All of the tropes that he uses and his trademarks are on display (long takes, bare feet, Red Apple cigarettes, etc.). I very much enjoyed this film. It ranks in my top 5 for Tarantino films (#4 actually, behind Reservoir Dogs (1992), Pulp Fiction (1994), Django Unchained (2012), and ahead of Jackie Brown (1997)). Also, I will say that this film gets better as it goes along. It's all good, but the finale (Oh My God, the finale) is the toppest of notches.