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CIA 2 Review and analysis of Once Upon a Time in HollywoodQuentin Tarrentino

By Devika Mahajan TY BMM- 33

REVIEW BY HINDUSTAN TIMES Once Upon a Time in Hollywood movie review: Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt shine; Quentin Tarantino shocks Once Upon a Time in Hollywood review: Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt bring effortless chemistry to the most surprising film of Quentin Tarantino’s career. Rating: 3.5/5. Updated: Aug 15, 2019 12:16:50

By Rohan Naahar

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood movie review: Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio and Margot Robbie in a poster for Quentin Tarantino’s new film.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Director - Quentin Tarantino Cast - Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Al Pacino, Kurt Russell Rating - 3.5/5 Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a solid yet surprising addition to director Quentin Tarantino’s singular filmography - a languid and laid-back mood piece that doubles as a throwback to the filmmaker’s lifelong obsessions, and ends with one of the most controversial sequences of his career. Despite being fully prepared for what was in store, I was taken aback by how many surprises Tarantino had in store. There is none of the breakneck backand-forth dialogue that the filmmaker is known for; the conversations, instead, are paced as sleepily as the summery vibe of the film, which is set during a period of great upheaval in Hollywood, circa 1969. Don’t get me wrong, his characters are still partial to a long chin-wag, but in a less aggressive, and more internalised manner - perhaps a sign that Tarantino, like the fading movie star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), is maturing with age. Dalton is one of the filmmaker’s finest creations, a character upon whom Tarantino has projected some of his own self-seriousness. He’s pathetic without ever seeming weak; selfish without ever coming across as selfcentred, and I was taken aback by how funny he is. Rick was one of the most famous television stars in Hollywood a few years ago, but could never transition to a career in the movies. This is a matter of grave concern for him. The only reason the town still takes him seriously, he tells his companion and longtime stuntman Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), is because he’d listened to some

solid advice when he was starting out, and bought his own house in the Hollywood Hills, instead of renting an apartment. “It means you’re here to stay, and you’re not just moving through,” Rick tells Cliff one evening, and pat comes Cliff’s standard response: a smile and a nod of acknowledgement. Cliff is a man of few words. He is ‘more than a brother’ to Rick, ‘but less than a wife,’ the narrator (voiced by Tarantino regular Kurt Russell) informs us. Their dynamic isn’t unlike a married couple’s. Why he has stuck by Rick is never really explained - he rarely ever performs stunts for him anymore, and is more of a gofer instead - but he has his own skeletons. Word around town is that he was involved in his wife’s death. It really seems like neither Rick nor Cliff has anyone but each other in the world. So when the hottest director in the business, Roman Polanski, moves in next door with his wife, the actor Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), Rick sees it as a sign from above; as if the universe is conspiring to ensure that he have a career. Ironically for a film about the movies, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is far less kind to historical figures than it is to fictional characters such as Rick and Cliff. Having assumed that her murder at the hands of the Manson Family would be a significant part of the film - every moment she appears on screen seems to be building towards it - I was stunned by how little Sharon Tate has to do in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Honestly, barring DiCaprio and Pitt, everyone else in the film’s sprawling cast, is basically playing a cameo. This just goes to show how desperate actors are to work with the legendary filmmaker; it’s the sort of pull that only Martin Scorsese has these days, and what Woody Allen used to enjoy until very recently. But Sharon Tate isn’t the only real-life figure that Tarantino does a disservice to; his portrayal of Bruce Lee is bafflingly mean-spirited. I read recently that had it not been for a very concerned Brad Pitt, it would have been worse. It is almost as if Tarantino had a personal axe to grind against the late screen icon. I wonder what it could be. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is the first Tarantino film since Jackie Brown, I believe, that he hasn’t divided into chapters. But its structure is as episodic

as his other movies. A longish sequence in which a child actor sends Rick spiralling into an existential crisis is hilarious, and will possibly played on loop when DiCaprio is inevitably nominated for an Oscar. Another, in which Cliff pays a visit to the Spahn Ranch, where Charles Manson and his family have set up camp, is directed like a Spaghetti Western. The movie is, however, also a victim of some of Tarantino’s annoying excesses, and self-imposed rules. Tarantino has convinced himself that a film’s length is directly proportional to its quality. As anyone who has seen City Lights (a breeze at 87 minutes) and High Noon (even breezier at 85) would tell you, this is simply not true. Once Upon a Time..., like The Hateful Eight and Django Unchained, could easily have shaved a few minutes off its 161-minute runtime, especially because it has such a meandering structure. There has been talk of Once Upon a Time... being re-edited into a four-hour miniseries for Netflix, when the time comes for it to be released on home video and streaming. I’d imagine it would make for a more enjoyable experience. As amusing as it was to watch a bunch of Jewish mercenaries massacre Hitler and his Nazis in Inglourious Basterds, or to watch a black slave annihilate his white oppressors in Django Unchained, Tarantino’s revisionist streak is sure to divide audiences right down the middle this time around. Personally, I was on board with the burst of his trademark graphic violence towards the end, but once again, his single-minded obsession with putting his female characters through hell can’t help but feel a little tiresome. The times have changed, I wish he’d have as well. If Tarantino is to be believed, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is his secondlast film. To end on a truly subversive note, might I suggest that for his final movie, Tarantino direct a nice little romantic comedy set in a French vineyard or something. If anything, it would give him an excuse to really zoom in on the feet as they stomp on the grapes.

REVIEW BY EXPRESS TRUBUNE

Review: 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood' is Tarantino at his peak By Ali Bhutto Published: August 19, 2019

It all begins on a menacing note, in black and white. We are introduced to the protagonist of Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, the actor Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), through a commercial for a TV western he once starred in. The first few minutes of the film contain two fleeting clips of this fictitious TV series, which dates back to the late ’50s and is titled Bounty Law. They provide the audience with a brief background to Dalton’s career and a glimpse of the Hollywood that preceded 1969, the year in which the film is set. There is, however, something about this footage that is hard to pin down. A deep sense of unease lingers throughout the second clip in particular, which features a cameo appearance by Michael Madsen. Hard-boiled and nihilistic, it conjures a sense of impending doom. Quentin Tarantino uses the atmospherics of film noir and a pastiche of ‘films within the film’, to build suspense and create a sense of irony. The murder of Sharon Tate and friends by the Manson Family constantly lurks at the back of the audience’s imagination and shapes their expectations. The horrors of history have served as a potent backdrop in Tarantino’s films, where the potential for unpredictability exceeds what is considered to be the norm in mainstream cinema. Then there is the collective memory – the backlog – of traumatic scenes in his films: sodomy and sex-slaves who live in dungeons, inPulp Fiction; the shooting of The Bride in the opening scene of Kill Bill Vol. 1; the annihilation of a family of Jews by Nazis in the opening act

of Inglourious Basterds. Tarantino skillfully exploits our awareness of how far things can go in his universe. History and memory play an important role in Once Upon A Time in Hollywood. The emphasis on the western genre – the brutal landscape of Bounty Law in particular – is a nod to the history of Los Angeles, which, as a remote nineteenth century pueblo, had a reputation for lawlessness and debauchery. The director welcomes us to a Wild West that has retained its wildness over the ages, under varying facades. In the film, the latest incarnation of this outlaw ethos is arguably the Manson Family. It is no coincidence, then, that the cult resides on the now dysfunctional Spahn Ranch, where Bounty Law and other westerns were filmed a decade earlier. In one scene, the Manson girls, after having rummaged through a dumpster on a street in LA, walk past a giant mural of a cowboy who has taken his gloves off and is sitting in front of a set that may very well be Spahn Ranch. Are the Manson girls driven by a sense of vigilante justice – their own version of ‘bounty law’ – to embark on a killing spree? The idea that violence in film begets real-life violence has long been a point of contention between Tarantino and his detractors. In the film, he relegates this notion to the twisted mind of one of the more sadistic members of the Manson cult (aptly named Sadie), who attempts to give her murderous intentions a poetic tinge, with the mantra “Let’s kill those who taught us how to kill”. Her warped argument is that since she and her friends are going to kill someone anyway, why not target those who act out violence on TV? The opening credits consist of an elaborate montage that begins with a close-up of a perfect smile – the kind that was characteristic of a more reserved era in visual media. As the camera zooms out, however, we see the wild eyes and the expression takes on an entirely different significance.

This is an illustration of the crazed face of Dalton – a reflection of his current state of mind as a self-proclaimed “has-been”. He has gone from being one generation’s TV hero in the ’50s, to another generation’s TV villain in the ’60s. In Dalton, Tarantino creates a new kind of anti-hero. He is not the gruff loner from the “rogues’ gallery” of spaghetti westerns, or the intellectually inclined “evil Hamlet”. Instead, he is something of an emotional wreck and has the habit of bursting into tears when both sad and happy. He is an alcoholic, has the tendency to forget his lines on set and stammers in real-life conversations that he may have rehearsed in his head. There is an undeniable wretchedness about him and at times we cannot help but feel embarrassed for him. Yet despite all this, he grows on us during the course of the film and by the end, feels like a close friend. There is a sequence in which the newly wed Dalton returns to Los Angeles after shooting spaghetti westerns in Rome, with Italian wife in tow. It plays out as a B-movie alternative to an earlier sequence of Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha) and Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) arriving in the city. In 1969, Dalton may no longer fit the profile of what is desirable in a star. But what is more glaring than this is the fact that he does not fit into today’s popular culture either. There is, however, a flipside to this. We notice that while Dalton views his career on cynical terms, all the other characters in the film – from Tate to the Manson Family – have quite a different impression and see him as something of a household name. Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) is Dalton’s stunt double, best friend and driver, all rolled into one. He literally and metaphorically lives ‘behind the scenes’, in a trailer behind a drive-in theatre, in a state of semi-squalor.

His persona as the film’s underdog is somewhat tainted by the shocking revelation that he may have killed his wife. In a brief flashback to the incident that may or may not have led to the act, the audience is made to sympathise with Booth. Tarantino ensures that we remain undecided about our final judgement of him. When he ogles at Manson Family member Pussycat (Margaret Qualley), Simon and Garfunkel’s Mrs Robinson plays on the radio, hinting at a reversal of roles from The Graduate. Yet when Pussycat comes on to him, he asks to see her ID, for proof of her age and when she fails to provide the same, politely turns her down. The lack of a plot only adds to the film’s eccentricity; the focus is on the characters going about their daily routines. Booth’s long drive home from Dalton’s house, is measured by the progression of songs playing on the radio. In this case, time and distance are used to signify his place in the Hollywood hierarchy. While Dalton and Tate are neighbours in the Hollywood Hills, Booth and the Manson Family live on the fringes. The home of George Spahn (Bruce Dern) – the owner of Spahn Ranch – is perched up on an elevation and is reminiscent of Norman Bate’s home in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. When Booth goes investigating, against the wishes of the Manson girls, we wonder whether he will suffer the same fate as Detective Arbogast in Psycho. The fact that the girls attempt to dissuade him from doing so, only adds to the mystery. Like Bates, they are afraid of what he may discover. This is the closest the film comes to the horror genre. When Polanski and Tate attend a party at the Playboy Mansion, Tarantino’s song of choice for the dance floor sequence is the Buchanan Brothers’ Son of a Lovin’ Man. The soundtrack and visuals help to set the scene up as a sociological study of Hollywood society in 1969 and its inherent frivolities. Against this backdrop, Steve McQueen (Damian Lewis) narrates to a friend the gossip about how Tate broke off her engagement with

celebrity hairstylist Jay Sebring (Emile Hirsch) and married Polanski. We sense a degree of jealousy on the part of McQueen, who, it seems, longs to see Polanski fall from grace. Even the smallest of details serve a functional purpose. In a bird’s-eyeview shot of Dalton rehearsing lines in his pool at night, we see two vehicles approaching in the corner of the frame, making us wonder whether the massacre at Cielo Drive will unfold halfway into the film. Here, again, Tarantino manipulates the audience’s expectations and their memory of his previous works, like Pulp Fiction, in which the main character, Vincent Vega, dies in the middle of the film. Themes of duality and polarisation – new and old, beautiful and ugly, good and evil – can all be traced back to the Bounty Law footage at the start of the film, which takes on a mythical and folkloric quality, with the mention of the fictional “Janice-town”. Janiculum is a hill in Rome, where, according to Pagan beliefs, the Roman god Janus reigned as king. The Romans referred to Janus as a father of his people. In the Bounty Law scene, bounty hunter Jake Cayhill (Rick Dalton) has killed one Jodi Janice and the sheriff of Janice-town (Michael Madsen) hints that the victim’s father, Major Nathan Maxwell Janice, will seek to avenge his son’s death. According to some scholars, Janus was personified as having two heads, or two faces – young and old – and is believed to have kept guard over Rome. In the context of the film, Janus’ two faces can be representative of new and old Hollywood. At the same time, this duality, the two faces/heads can be applied to Dalton and Booth, who, on screen, are essentially one character, part of one whole. And Dalton even travels to Rome to star in spaghetti westerns. Dalton and Booth, the two faces of old Hollywood keep guard over Los Angeles and protect it from the forces of darkness. Rating: 5 stars

REVIEW BY NEW YORK TIMES ‘Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood’ Review: We Lost It at the Movies By A.O. Scott 

July 24, 2019

Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt star as midlevel entertainment industry workers whose relationship forms the core of Quentin Tarantino’s look at the movie past. There is a lot of love in “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood,” and quite a bit to enjoy. The screen is crowded with signs of Quentin Tarantino’s wellestablished ardor — for the movies and television shows of the decades after World War II; for the vernacular architecture, commercial signage and famous restaurants of Los Angeles; for the female foot and the male jawline; for vintage clothes and cars and cigarettes. But the mood in this, his ninth feature, is for the most part affectionate rather than obsessive. Don’t get me wrong. Tarantino is still practicing a cinema of saturation, demanding the audience’s total attention and bombarding us with allusions, visual jokes, flights of profane eloquence, daubs of throwaway beauty and gobs of premeditated gore. And yet “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood,” whose title evokes bedtime stories as well as a pair of Sergio Leone masterpieces, is Tarantino’s most relaxed movie by far, both because of its ambling, shaggy-dog structure and the easygoing rhythm of its scenes. Though trouble percolates on the horizon and mayhem arrives in the final act, this is fundamentally a hangout movie, a bad-guys-come-to-town western more like “Rio Bravo” than “High Noon.”Above all, it’s a buddy picture about two middle-level entertainment industry workers doing their jobs and making the scene over a few hectic, sunny days in 1969. The friendship between Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) functions for Tarantino as both keystone and key. It’s an organizing principle and a source of meaning, and a major reason that “Once Upon a Time” is more than a baby-boomer edition of Trivial Pursuit brought to life. Unlike many of the people they share the screen with — the period-specific A-list characters include Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), Steve McQueen (Damian Lewis) and Bruce Lee (Mike Moh) — Rick and Cliff are made-up.

Rick is an actor on the downward slope of a moderately successful career. A star in a handful of westerns and combat pictures, and of a popular TV western series, he is now mostly cast as a one-episode villain on other people’s shows. He’s considering an offer to make spaghetti westerns in Italy. (Tarantino supplies perfect fake clips to annotate Rick’s filmography.) Not a has-been, exactly, but not quite what he used to be or might have been. Cliff is his longtime stunt double, but as Rick’s roles have shifted, his role has changed too. His duties include driving Rick (whose license has been suspended) to and from auditions and sets, performing minor household repairs and generally being available as a sounding board and drinking partner. You can’t really call Cliff a sidekick — we’re talking about Brad Pitt — and he’s not really a servant, either, even though Rick pays him for his time. An older vocabulary is needed: Cliff is a gentleman’s gentleman, a man Friday, a dogsbody, a squire. “More than a brother but less than a wife” is how the movie puts it. The relationship isn’t defined by money or sex, but by a difference in rank accepted without comment or complaint by both parties. The inequality between the men — Rick lives in a spacious ranch house up in the hills, Cliff in a cluttered trailer down in the valley — is what dignifies their bond, just as the contrast of their temperaments sustain it. Rick, a sloppy drinker and a furious smoker, wears his feelings close to the surface. He weeps aloud over the state of his career, throws an epic tantrum in his trailer when he messes up a scene and is moved to tears by the exquisiteness of his own acting. Cliff is a different kind of cat — lean, taciturn, self-effacing, slow to anger but capable of serious violence. Some say he’s a murderer; he himself occasionally alludes to a criminal past. Better not to ask. Apart from Rick, his main attachment is to his dog, Brandy, whose loyalty is the mirror of his own. (DiCaprio’s baroque, exuberant emotionalism perfectly complements Pitt’s down-to-the-bone minimalism. They’re both terrific.) If the guys aren’t quite Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, their companionship nonetheless takes shape within a fundamentally aristocratic social order. Joan Didion, in an essay first published in 1973, described the Hollywood of that era as “the last extant stable society,” and Tarantino’s tableau confirms this view. Life isn’t perfect, but it is coherent. People know their place. They respect the rules and hierarchies. Rick’s neighbors, Sharon Tate and her husband, Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha), live higher up in the canyon (at the end of a

gated driveway) and also on the status pyramid. They are regarded not with envy or resentment, but with awe. The governing virtue in this world is courtesy. The things produced within it are ridiculous, but also beautiful. Residents take seriously things that are objectively silly, which lends a measure of charm to otherwise pedestrian moments. A series of on-set interactions between Rick and two other actors — a leading man played by Timothy Olyphant and a juvenile played by the phenomenal Julia Butters — demonstrate the workings of this code. What they’re collaborating on might look like disposable commercial trash, but making it involves craft and tradition, folk wisdom and spiritual discipline, trust and integrity. Tarantino’s sense of the movie past is often described as nostalgic. He tends to be seen — by admirers and critics alike — as a film geek, a fanboy, a fanatic cinephile with an encyclopedic command of archaic styles and genres. True enough. But “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” shows that he deserves a loftier, possibly more contentious label. It’s the expression of a sensibility that is profoundly and passionately conservative. John Ford, one of old Hollywood’s greatest conservatives, ended one of his greatest movies with the exhortation to “print the legend.” Tarantino’s answer is to film the fairy tale. Alongside the knight and his squire, there is a princess — Tate — who lives in something like a castle and is married to a man who looks a little like a frog. Tarantino has never been much interested in sex or romance — violence and vengeance are what makes his stories run — but he has a sentimental investment in marriage and a thing about wives. Sharon, who is barefoot, pregnant or both in most of her scenes, is not so much a symbol of innocence or glamour as an emblem of normalcy. The best stretch of the movie follows her, Cliff and Rick through their separate routines on a single day. Rick is at work, fighting off a hangover and his own self-doubt. Cliff picks up a hitchhiker — a girl he’s noticed before, played by Margaret Qualley — and drives her to the Spahn Movie Ranch in Chatsworth, where she lives with a bunch of other young people (and an old guy played by Bruce Dern, one of many memorable cameos). Sharon also gives a stranger a ride, buys her husband a gift and stops in at a theater in Westwood to watch herself in “The Wrecking Crew,” a spoofy action caper starring Dean Martin.

That’s a real movie, as are most of the others whose titles appear on billboards and marquees. In the real world, six months after that magically ordinary imaginary day, Tate was murdered in her home on Cielo Drive, along with four of her friends. The killers lived at the Spahn Ranch, and were disciples of a failed musician named Charles Manson. That’s the opposite of a spoiler, by the way. If you don’t know about the Manson family, or if you’re vague on the details of their crimes, you may not feel the tingle of foreboding that is crucial to Tarantino’s revisionism. Didion, in “The White Album,” wrote that “many people I know in Los Angeles believe that the Sixties ended abruptly on Aug. 9, 1969, ended at exactly the moment when word of the murders on Cielo Drive traveled like brush fire through the community.” But what if the ’60s never ended? Or rather, what if the ’60s, as a half-century of pop-culture habit has taught us to remember them, never really happened. [Seen the movie? Let’s talk about the ending.] The political struggles of the decade are deep in the background, occasionally crackling through car radio static along with traffic and weather reports. The music we hear isn’t a soundtrack of rebellion, but an anthology of pleasure. Tarantino’s anti-ironic celebration of the mainstream popular culture of the time amounts to a sustained argument against the idea of a counterculture. Those who would disrupt, challenge or destroy the last stable society on earth are in the grip of an ideological, aesthetic and moral error. Hippies aren’t cool. Old-time he-men like Rick Dalton and CliffBooth are cool. You don’t have to agree. I don’t think I do. But I also don’t mind. There will be viewers who object to the movie’s literal and metaphorical hippiepunching on political grounds. There will be others who embrace it as a thumb in the eye of current sensitivities, and others who insist the movie has no politics at all. To which I can only say: It’s a western, for Pete’s sake. Politics are wound into its DNA, and Tarantino knows the genome better than anyone else. Which is just to say that like other classics of the genre, “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” is not going anywhere. It will stand as a source of debate — and delight — for as long as we care about movies. And it wants us to care. Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood

Rated R. Not the bloodiest Tarantino, but still Tarantino. Running time: 2 hours 41 minutes.

My reviews on the reviews The Hindustan Times The Hindustan Times review about Quentin Tarrentino’s 9th creation a combination of over- criticism, extremely personalised, facts and breivity. Rohan Naahar, the reviewer of this piece gives an insight on accurate reactions the audience might have gotten in the midst of watching the movie. As long a review as this movie deserves, Rohan Naahar’s criticism/ review is short, concise and written with brevity, while putting and compiling points that are spot on and some that according to me, aren’t. This review goes through a timeline of events, while also missing out on a few but still managing to make it well structured. A few points raised by Naahar were highly relatable and met a consonance with my thoughts while watching it. We can derive the fact that this review was filled with Tarrentino’s criticism through a few statemments made by him like- ’’ Don’t get me wrong, his characters are still partial to a long chin-wag, but in a less aggressive, and more internalised manner - perhaps a sign that Tarantino, like the fading movie star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), is maturing with age.’’ ’’ Personally, I was on board with the burst of his trademark graphic violence towards the end, but once again, his single-minded obsession with putting his female characters through hell can’t help but feel a little tiresome. The times have changed, I wish he’d have as well.’’ With all said and done, Hindustan Time’s review of the film seemed like a decent example of a review filled with dissections and the reviewer’s suggestions (which to me was avoidable). The reviewer should have understood that the director of the movie, Quentin Tarrentino has an eccentric style of directing, a style found across all his films just like this one.

The Express Tribune Ali Bhutto’s review on Quentin Tarrentino’s 9th feature film seems detailed, full of examples from his other creations, deriving analogies from the straight from the history and many cinematic details. The review consists of the reviewer’s interpretations of theme and polarisation. It is highly structure following the right stream of events. At the same time, the review consists of too many quotes and examples from Tarrentino’s previous movies as well as other films, which makes it tough for the general audience to keep up with it. As a person, who hasn’t followed Tarrentino’s work, would find this review inept to relate with, but at the same time, it’s a great piece for Tarrentino’s lovers. The review is very well written and accurate till its closure where the reviewer dissociates from his point and seems to be diverging away.

The New York Times The New York Time’s review for Tarrentino’s latest feature is an ode to his effort, ideas and creativity where A.O Scott, the reviewer points out that the film for the most part affectionate rather than obsessive. The review recognises the fact that Tarrentino’s might be reaching cinematic saturation demanding the audience’s total attention and bombarding us with allusions, visual jokes, flights of profane eloquence, daubs of throwaway beauty and gobs of premeditated gore. The review does not go through a smooth stream of events in the movie, but rather talks about of aspect and skips to another in detail. This review also consists of various examples and analogies from historic essays that make it tough for the general audience to crack and relate. The review talks about the tone and mood of the movie and refers to one of the prime characters as the Princess and his husband as a frog, which to me, seemed inaccurate.

I like how at the same time, his review was very relatable and had some points we could ponder upon after watching the movie. He used the right words for his interpretations and movie’s motives. The review uses a lot of complex language and hence is good for a slightly niche audience. Apart from that, the ending of the review does great justice to the film.

The Economic Times This “review” is less like a review and more like a summary and its extreme conciseness does not do justice to Tarrentino’s 9th long creation. Despite it being a small review, it still managed to talk about the prime aspects of the film, consisting of good interpretations and comparisons. This review mainly focuses on how powerful the climax is, as the headline suggests. The article barely has any sort of criticism against the director and is more like an ode to the director for creating yet another great piece of his own form of art and vision.

Quentin Tarrentino’s 9th creation is here, here to stay and immortalised By Devika Mahajan The title of the ninth film by Quentin Tarantino, “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood,” is a nod to the Western genre influence on Tarantino's latest— both structurally and in the actual plot. Unlike his other movies, this latest creation of his was wholesome in terms of characters, moods, themes, tones and dialogues. The major part of “Once Upon a time in Hollywood” takes place in 1969, introducing us to its two leads, TV actor Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stuntman and his “More than a brother, less than a wife” (as referred during the end of the film) Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). Rick was the star of a hit Western show called “Bounty Law” but is struggling to figure out what’s next, keenly aware that his days of heroism are ending as he ages out of Hollywood—and he’s encouraged by a bigwig played by Al Pacino to go to Italy to reboot his career with spaghetti westerns. Cliff is way more laid-back, the kind of guy who loves his dog almost as much as he loves Rick and says what he means even to someone like Bruce Lee (Mike Moh), whom he actually fights in one of the film’s most crowd-pleasing scenes. I was taken aback with the fact that Bruce Lee’s character was depicted as cocky and frivolous that therefore makes me wonder why the director chose to do that, especially for someone so legendary. Of course, as most people know, the real-life figures living next to Rick Dalton are the most controversial ones- Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha) and Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie). His sketch of these characters shows that Tarrentino used his artistic liberty to fictionalise characters in ways we could never imagine. Any person in the theatres, who know about Sharon Tate’s actual murder back in the times, could be found on the edge of their seats, expecting to see the same. What we can also derive from this creation is that Tarrentino does not see Sharon Tate once a real person but more like an idea. While she is seen dancing at a party at the Playboy mansion or treating herself to watch herself at a public

screening of “The Wrecking Crew,” she’s glowing every time she appears on-screen, a counter to Dalton’s increasing anxiety. The bulk of Tarantino’s film is designed to be a dreamy snapshot of the movie business and life in Hollywood in the late ‘60s. We get dozens of shots of Cliff driving Rick around town, really just to show off the amazing production design, classic cars, and music choices on the radio. What caught my ears more than my eyes was the choice of music by Tarrentino, especially when he comes across a mysterious, slightly manic pixie dream girl of a hippy. We find that Tarantino’s and the master cinematographer Robert Richardson’s approach is in deep consonance and is incredibly finely tuned, and hence the film never loses that dreamlike aesthetic for the sake of realism. In terms of the colour scheme and tone, Tarrentino uses a combination of blues and yellows when the scenes are focused on Cliff, depicting the calm, carefree cowboy of a character that he is, and darker tones while depicting Dalton in his existential crisis and downfall. What really caught my eye in the movie was despite Dalton being shown as no less than a manly, fame driven actor through his physique and emotions, he was quite opposite of an alpha male character that Tarrentino often adds in his movies. Dalton’s vulnerability and his ability to cry every time he’d hit rock bottom, especially in front of an 8 year old child actor or every time he’d be overwhelmed with happiness. DiCaprio proves to be such a perfect choice for Dalton that one can’t really imagine anyone else in the part. He’s always had classic Hollywood charisma, but he imbues Dalton with that poignant mix of longing and fading optimism that often comes with aging. Sure, he loves his life and hanging with his buddy but he’s nervous when he thinks about what’s next, wondering if he hasn’t missed out on something forever. Brad Pitt according to me, has an edge over all the actors in the film for his ability to fit into the desired role was as smooth has honey. What I also took away from this movie is that Tarrentino uses actors more than once in his movies, just like Di Caprio in Jango and Brad Pitt in

Inglorious Bastards and I’m certain that Margot Robbie will feature in his next. A lot of people are going to focus on the end of “Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood.” The minute that we see that the film has jumped forward to August of 1969 and that Sharon Tate is very pregnant, anyone with even a passing knowledge of history knows what’s coming. Or at least they think they do. The climax of this film was extremely unpredictable but not so shocking as it is expected out of Tarrentino and the cinematic freedom applied in all his creations. Tarrentino established himself as a puppet master as the movie approached its closure, and only he was the master of it and what he did to his characters. Not to miss out on Tarrentino’s obsession with showing women’s feet and male jawlines could be seen all across the movie. He never fails to add his signature styles making it highly personalised but all for the public and audience, without any fear. This layered and ambitious creation by Tarrentino is no less than a product of a confident filmmaker working with collaborators completely in consonance with his vision and personalised art. Every piece fits, despite their randomness. The juxtaposed combinations between his music, visuals and dialogues seem to be in harmony. A paradoxical consonance, is what I’d like to call it. Every choice is carefully considered. Whether it all adds up to something is now up for audiences to decide, but this is a film that feels like it’s not going away anytime soon. It’s one of those rare movies that will provoke conversation and debate long enough to cement itself in the public consciousness more than the fleeting multiplex hit of the week. Love it or hate it, people will be talking about it. And that’s something the older Tarantino has in common with the younger one. He hasn’t lost any of his power to fire people up.