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Friday, January 24, 2020

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)

What to say about a Quentin Tarantino movie?  Unfortunately there is this underlying edge to it that just feels like he neither likes nor gets women.  Once you take that as a given and move on, the movie flows.
For a change, this is not a stylized replica of an existing genre, but rather a broader commentary track about the movie industry, looking back to what is essentially it's middle years. 
It is  ambitious and at the same time entirely ordinary. For in setting his story on three very specific days in 1969, the writer-director also brushes up against the specter of the Charles Manson murders, the impact this threat had on that community, and the seismic shift happening in the Southern California culture during that era. Working class stiffs like blue-collar stunt man Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) or fading character actor Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) counter-balance the rise of the counter culture, leaving those on the downhill side of their careers to fight to hold on to what they had.  And then there is the revisionist history, just so you don't forget that it is a Tarantino  movie.  Not my choice in any category it is nominated in.

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