Quentin Tarantino directs Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio and Margot Robbie in this love letter to 1969 Los Angeles where a fading Western star, his stuntman buddy and Sharon Tate go about their lives, all at a moment of career flux.

I went to see this in 35mm at the Filmhouse with Natalie, Gráinne Maguire and Stuart Laws. All excited to be there on opening night. Gráinne was concerned there wouldn’t be a chance to escape for a break over three hours. I knew there would lots of languorous shots of people driving the freeways and boulevards, off ramps for beer runs and wee breaks.

We were being taken back to the sixties, when car cruising longuers were part of cinema grammar. Back to a city that sprawls like no other, where automobiles are essential. Into a world like a shark, like time, in constant forward motion with only the illusion that if you are in the driving seat, you are in control of your direction. Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood is a movie about three individuals being chauffeured towards their new destinies, unaware of the separate destinations but suddenly aware they are moving, things are going fast. Whether by car or by career, these are three movie workers floating along the stream of time. Watching them get soaked in the water, struggle a little against the tide but mainly going with the flow is one of the most ambient experiences ever produced in mainstream cinema. A blockbuster about beautiful people not taking action, not fighting back, just being conscious they are on the ride of their lives. And if you can sit in the backseat, not expect too many heads to explode, not expect automotive serial killers to try and slam your brains against plexiglass, then you too can hitch a ride into this more relaxed Tarantino time stream too. Get in the car. It is a bitchin’ yellow Coupe De Ville. It will be Mr Blonde’s car in 20 years time.

We are in that back seat when the dual credit appears; Leonardo DiCaprio / Brad Pitt. Equal billing, playfully swapped over in alignment to screen position. A partnership we never knew we wanted. Two Hollywood pretty boys heartthrobs entering whisky tanned middle age gracefully. Two of our last proper movie stars. DiCaprio’s name is the only name above a title that still can launch original IP into blockbuster status. Pitt is just cool as fuck. In real life, as in here, better as the gorgeous, laconic wingman than the lone lead. The Brad Pitt of Ocean’s 11 or Snatch is my jam. Not carrying the movie but supporting it with a laid back, self assured charm. Nervy, intense, hard grafting ultimate (ultimate in so many ways) megastar and relaxed Sundance. Tarantino knows why we bought a ticket. This is the Bogart and Bacall… the Meg and Tom… the Laurel & Hardy of 2019. Multiplex power couple casting.

DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton is a meta exercise. One of our very best playing a struggling TV star has-been. An excuse for Tarantino to bung in pastiches of violent Westerns, War movies and what ifs. Pepper the freewheelin’ journey with a bit of trademark destruction. But Dalton is a human character. A dolt you want to hug as he struggles through a day at work. His image changed in a make-up truck conversation he cannot keep up with, an ever intruding stutter and a lack of confidence in foreign names off camera, a drunk. Like Aldo Raines or bounty hunter John Ruth or even Vincent Vega he’s the lead, the hero… but rarely the smartest man in the room. People often bring up Tarantino’s violence towards women or his enthusiastic use of “forbidden” racist epithets as evidence he is just another white guy making movies for white guys. Yet look at his favoured use of the masculine movie star… near constantly a schmo, pointedly only front and centre in the narrative because he is a white, red blooded, American swinging dick – not because of ability or talent… certainly not wit. Written and directed that way too, a choice not to continue the myth. His fate is invariably death or at the very least being taken down a peg or two for his over confidence or lack of wiles compared to the Samuel L. Jacksons or Uma Thurmans in the story.

Although this collaboration with DiCaprio is incredibly sympathetic to the QT lead lunk, for once. There’s something so unguarded and vulnerable about Rick Dalton. Watching a perfectly coiffed man tear up (“Don’t cry in front of the Mexicans”) and self lacerate himself every act of a movie, to go through his crisis of confidence alone… well, it ain’t Easy Breezy. For all his advantages and bluster you want Dalton to keep at being an actor… rehearsing his lines late into the night, smashing scenes with precocious children and playing the heavy in Hollywood or anti-hero in Rome. And he has good qualities too… he knows his limitations, is in touch with his emotions, hates hippies. I’d go for a drink or 8 with Rick Dalton, give him a manly pat every time he is troubled by existential thoughts bigger than his intelligence. Beneath it all there’s a nice boy lost in the sea of almost success.

Then Brad Pitt takes his top off. Stuntman Cliff Booth is the more fascinating, undefined and attractive character. Scarred yet happy, mellow yet hard to break. Someone comfortable with their place on the lower rung, who can be as warm or as aggressive as he feels fit in his interactions. He might have killed his wife, yet he keeps his partner on the rails and feeling loved. And can shift his weight so a punch to the face from him means something. Again Tarantino has tooled around in this character area before too. There’s fellow trailer van dropouts Dennis Hopper and Michael Madsen in True Romance and Kill Bill Vol. 2 respectively. Craggy men living on minimum wage, with spartan lifestyles, philosophical about their violent regrets and wrong turns. Robert Foster in Jackie Brown speaking maturely about his choice to get hairplugs, able to fully interact with hardened criminals without losing his ethics. Sonny Chiba hiding his deadly skillset in a sake house loft, trying to eke out a normal life as a gregarious innkeeper. Then there’s the unavoidable Floyd in True Romance, who mathematically, geographically and thematically could be Cliff Booth’s son. The bong smoking doppelgänger elephant in the Tarantino universe room. I wouldn’t want a DNA test if I was “the old cowboy looking dude” in a Hawaiian shirt bumping into the spaced out couch dweller in 1993.

Dalton and Cliff are a team. They get along, have affection for each other yet one is the employer and the other is the employee. The story that needs to be resolved is if ‘Rick Dalton, Hollywood star’ is no longer a viable business then what will Rick do. But if Rick quits the grind of pilot seasons and spaghetti westerns as he is considering then Cliff won’t have a job as his driver and steady hand either. The partnership could be dissolved, the friendship abandoned. They exist symbiotically. As introduced “If you think you are seeing double – well… you are.” So Cliff and Rick spend a day apart. We see Rick struggle on set alone without his stuntman to help shield him from the hits of interaction, “carry his load”. Ultimately Rick does alright, nailing a big scene. Yet Cliff spends the day silently exploring his future too. He picks up a member of the Manson family, Pussycat (a magnetic Margaret Qualley) but isn’t interested in her sexually. Maybe Cliff wants to poke around in this the hippie lifestyle, he keeps seeing it at the crossroads and he is reaching a crossroads. See what dropping out from mainstream existence actually feels like, now he has time on his hands and Rick’s hatred of hippies is temporarily sequestered away at Columbia Studios. He doesn’t like what he glimpses (in an incredibly tense sequence, the closest Quentin has gotten to pure horror so far) but doesn’t completely reject it either. After all he does buy an acid dipped cigarette for later. It is not a total pass on a life that may come next. Just like Manson’s homeless drop outs, Cliff’s own position in society is precarious. He is unemployable away from Rick and only gets along with the few he chooses to. Mainly Rick and his dog. And what a lovely dog.

Like Inglorious Basterds or Django Unchained this is also one of QT’s exercises in alternative history. Robbie is effervescent as Sharon Tate, movie star on the cusp, a physical performance of glamour and grace. Her day to day involves dancing, partying, dancing, catching herself in a movie, dancing, buying Roman Polanski a copy of Tess of the D’Urbervilles. The eventual movie he adapts from it is one of his very finest.

*** SPOILER COMING UP FOR THE REMAINDER OF BLOG ***

The movie’s conclusion doesn’t tally up with realities version of events. In an incredibly violent penultimate scene, different people live and different people die. Over the past decade Tarantino has killed Hitler and his cronies, cast a slave to free the slaves and saved Sharon Tate. I think he is revelling in the fantastical power of cinema not being reality. I have no issue with him shifting the sand of times to make a lovely sandcastle out of the muck. And if you have any issue with the extreme pain inflicted on the hippies because they are young women… shame on you. They get what they deserve. Dog can, fireplace mantle and flamethrower. I can accept some people don’t click with Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood because very little happens. Don’t agree with that assessment but can accept it. But if you are whining that a Tarantino movie has some thrillingly gory carnage, meted out on real life mass murderers… well, you are a fool. What were you expecting at the juncture of his career? A chairs in a circle meditative intervention?! Fuck off.

You can’t be a tourist in this Hollywood era and not see some stars. Bruce Lee is painted as a braggart. Watch some interviews with him. He was. As was John Lennon or Muhammad Ali. It was a particular strain of fame the Sixties induced in their new talents. A mouthy self belief that was distasteful and slightly forced. Anyway if you want Cliff Booth to be seen as our hero then he needs a star leading man to be his punching bag. As charming Hollywood powerplayer Marvin Schwarzs (a gleefully game Al Pacino) informs us very early on “That’s an old trick.” Tarantino foreshadows it just like the acid dripped fag, the hefty dog food and the flamethrower. These aren’t throwaway jokes, they are putting pieces on the board. Bruce Lee’s fictional ass-whupping establishes Cliff as a man not to be fucked with. That’s good old fashioned storytelling too. More unexpected is the scene where Damian Lewis plays Steve McQueen as a lovelorn loser. He is in the worst wig known to cinema, a not entirely inaccurate wig. You could be a leading man with bad hair right up until the heyday of Bill Murray and James Caan. But like Rick Dalton, he is focusing on what he hasn’t got, rather than all he has achieved. The biggest, coolest star of the 60s and stuttering former Bounty Law lead. Simpatico.

Tarantino doesn’t just rewrite crime history with his redemptively gory ending. He potentially reignites his leading man’s career. We close on Rick Dalton being invited into the New Hollywood compound. A hero and a curio to that creative community that shunned him only an hour before. He has the infamy of besting those hippies. Four Italian genre flicks waiting in the can. Hollywood property. And he is now part of the new network. In QT’s alternative universe are we now going to see Rick Dalton as the Gunny Sergeant in The Last Detail or Sterling Hayden’s Cop in The Godfather or Quint in Jaws? A career boosted by being in with Tate, Polanski et al will no doubt keep Cliff employed too. The loving, supportive partnership they’ve fostered no longer will torn asunder by the fickle fortunes of Hollywood. That could be Cliff Booth being eaten by a rubber shark in longshot come 1975.

It is hard not to see the parallel between this Hollywood and modern Hollywood. Thematically they are going through a period of entropy. Stars have little value. Pitt and DiCaprio narrowly avoid being Rick Daltons through choosing exciting directors and mature projects… they are the final stars to avoid television and contracts playing capes (Cruise, Denzel and maybe Keanu have fallback franchises that keep their career prestigious). All had their initial period of hits well before the millennium. The star is a dying breed. Like pandas or old buildings I feel we need to protect this endangered species.

We have one Tarantino movie left. He refers to … in Hollywood as the climax of his stories. “That last 30-minute set piece is my last set piece. I think it is my most effective. I don’t know what ten will be but I imagine ten might be epilogue-y to the entire career.” Don’t be silly, Quent you are the rare Hollywood filmmaker who attracts freedom, control, budgets and brilliant casts. Don’t give up on us, the loyal audience who want fantastic actors, in adult situations, having fun, being cool, surviving squib heavy chaos and with the best soundtracks ever. All these words…. Did I not mention the soundtrack? Ear candy.

10

John Woo directs John Travolta, Christian Slater and Samantha Mathis in this action blockbuster where a stealth jet pilot goes rogue and crashes his plane into the desert to steal its nuclear arsenal.

“Yeah. Ain’t it cool?”

“Everybody dies, Kelly. I’m as good a reason as any.”

“Would you mind not shooting at the thermonuclear weapons?”

Ah… Broken Arrow came out in a bubble. A bubble where John Travolta had gone from slumming it in talking baby movies to (thanks to Pulp Fiction) becoming the highest paid star of the 90s. He’d gone from a has-been to the coolest star in cinema. Every utterance from his mouth was going to be the most quotable sentence ever. A bubble where we kinda had already figured out Christian Slater wasn’t going to be the next Jack Nicholson, as promised by all those magazine articles, but yet was still leading man material. Where Samantha Mathis was one of the sexiest stars in this particular young lad’s eyes. Where John Woo’s Hong Kong action stylings were the most brain-frazzling visuals ever committed to celluloid. Where Ry Cooder’s twangy guitar score was about to musically define hangdog masculinity heroics right up to the Y2K. I went to the cinema with my Dad to see it. Bought the video. Wore that video out.

The reality is all these elements have dated Broken Arrow horrendously – Travolta threw his comeback away on bland overpaid rubbish, Slater rewired his career and became a character actor, Mathis probably only now means something to particular middle aged men, John Woo’s use of slow mo, birds, close-up or symbolic exchanges now seems cliched old hat and the kids don’t know what Ry Cooder’s twangy guitar is anymore. Apart from lashings of high octane action, the secret strength of Broken Arrow is Graham Yost’s screenplay. The guy who wrote Speed sure knows how to craft a race against the clock, three act, big budget chase. Heroes who throw themselves into danger, improvise MacGuyver style solutions and get the girl. Crew cut, boy scout, vehicular carnage heroics. With a satisfying side of chaste romance. And a pudding of psychotic but chatty villainy.

Broken Arrow is still an atomic rush. Give it another 10 years and that embedded 1995 staleness will suddenly become its charm again. A priceless relic, a time capsule of physical adventure. The 1990s genie in a bottle. Movies don’t have these stunts any more, these Mano-y-Mano scraps to the death. You’ll wanna see Slater leaping from exploding train carriages. Marvel at Mathis scrambling out of the way of a wayward helicopter rota. Guffaw at Travolta talking sass to his old partner, henchmen, financier and the White House boardroom. Holding the fucking world to ransom and cracking wise. I don’t know how you want to spend your Friday nights but it is this or a “live action” remake of The Fox & The Hound. You live in your reality, I’m bunging a flare and a petrol canister at fat Danny Zuko’s humvee!

8

Luis Prieto directs Halle Berry, Chris McGinn and Sage Correa in this thriller where a single mom chases the fleeing car that holds her abducted child.

There’s one or two quite decent set pieces here – Berry desperately cutting across hard shoulders and central reservations to keep up with her unknown nemesis on a tangle of freeway off ramps works well. That’s 10 minutes of film though and the rest of the action is pretty blah. Berry has never been the best actress, so maybe a film that relies on her being the sole, lonely focus on screen for quite so much runtime wasn’t the best choice for all concerned. Including me. I choose to watch it. And it just about did its late night, high concept job. Adequate.

4

Clint Eastwood directs himself, Jessica Walters and Donna Mills in this psychological thriller where a DJ fucks a fan who becomes violently obsessed with him.

A movie that is fascinating for three reasons. 1) The start of Clint’s directing career… a career that gifted us one of the most classical and confident filmmakers in current Hollywood. 2) The earliest pure example I know of the yuppie in peril / stalker thriller, a sub-genre that Natalie & I enjoy thoroughly. 3) Like the later, similar Fatal Attraction, it now proves a somewhat unintentional exploration of toxic masculinity. Clint is supposed to be the victim here, emasculated from what he “deserves” (young pussy and fame) by a one night stand who irrationally wants more than what he used out of her. And yes, Walters is unhinged in her actions and her juggernaut of a performance. She dominates scenes, unsettling Clint and us, leaving us with little air to breathe. It is the kinda great turn that should have made the future Lucille Bluth a household name… á la Kathy Bates and Glenn Close. Yet what is unusual is just how she boxes Eastwood… the man of action, at the height of his leading man box office status… in. He has very few options but to callously get on with his life and hope she gives up – moves on to another poor schlub or kills herself. Misty has dated. Your sympathies aren’t really with anyone as both lives car crash into each other. Emotionless lotharios and murderous harpies both merit worse than they get. But I’m sure Clint doesn’t share that assessmen. His later works show more sophistication but his personal life suggests he does see women as commodities to be humped and dumped. And to judge this attitude based purely on what happens on screen there’s that awful treacly romantic montage of lovemaking in the third act when our hounded DJ finally wins back his true love -young, bland, submissive. It feels like an advert for what men should get, for what Clint feels he is entitled to. It certainly isn’t intended as the cheesy slice of high camp it now plays out to for modern eyes. Modern eyes ruin a film like a Misty. Yet it still has a strange compulsive power.

7

Pedro Almodóvar directs Antonio Banderas, Asier Etxeandia and Penélope Cruz in this semi-autobiographical drama where a reclusive director opens up old friendships, addictions and memories.

I’m not Almodóvar’s biggest fan. The high camp of his most lauded works irritates me and it usually is the films of his that wander away from his unique brand of screeching, lurid melodrama that I prefer. I’m happy knowing that his house style isn’t for me, but respect his four decades strong oeuvre. To make works so idiosyncratic and personal with such regularity and consistency demands respect. This slightly more staid, seemingly directionless drama did more for me. I liked the various soapy strands and felt Banderas gives a career best performance. Pain and Glory moves a lot slower than you standard Almodóvar release, but I accessed the romance and transgressiveness of it easier than some of his more bludgeoning tour de farces.

7

Jacques Tourneur directs Dana Andrews, Peggy Cummins and Niall MacGinnis in this supernatural curse movie where a sorcerer who lives with his Mum puts a murderous hex on all who doubt his powers.

A really unique British genre film in that it has scenes and sequences that feel completely original and unrepeated in cinematic horror. The sceptics at the seance, a children’s party that exposes the villian’s psychological core, and that train track final reveal are all glorious swathes of celluloid grotesque. MacGinnis and Athene Seyler, as the warlock and his sweet old ma respectively, put in great camp performances. The less said about the vanilla protagonists the better though. A monochrome treat.

7

Mel Brooks directs Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder and Madeline Kahn in the spoof western about a black sheriff taking on the railroads.

One of those classics I’m going to get in trouble for feeling a bit “meh” about. The support is spirited, I’ve always got time for Gene Wilder – one of my comedy heroes. Maybe his presence means I crave Richard Pryor in the lead. Cleavon Little seems a little stiff. Sad truth is that most of the skits don’t make me personally laugh… which surely is the only true measuring stick for a comedy.

5

Park Chan-wook directs Im Soo-jung, Rain and Kim Byeong-ok in this surreal romcom where two asylum patients fall in love, one of whom believes herself to be a killer cyborg.

A change of pace for the Oldboy auteur shifting between sweet, colourful and utterly baffling. A bit too random to hold my attention, it does have some wonderfully composed images.

5

Quentin Tarantino directs Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz and Leonardo DiCaprio in this western where a slave is freed and teams up with a bounty hunter to win back his beloved from a plantation.

Probably Tarantino’s funniest film and truest genre experience. Six shooters, horses, hats. Period accurate but in a vaudeville, seventies exploitation perspective of what is true and what has happened and what fantasy we want. There are three brilliant performances here. Waltz is superlative as the white saviour… the polar opposite of his Hans Landa in morals but exactly on point in verbosity and calm under pressure. DiCaprio plays stupendously against type as the villainous Calvin Candie -a dolt who feels justifiably superior in his wanton cruelty. And Samuel L Jackson is damn near magical as The Big House overseer Stephen. His momentary shifts between playacting, conniving, assessing and controlling is a comic performance par excellence. He should have been nominated for Best Supporting Actor, should have won that Oscar. Which brings us to Django’s one flaw… Foxx’s lead is a bit too blank. He feels perceptibly like an absence of cool whenever the focus is on him. Once two of those lower billed, yet stellar, players bite the dust the film still has a reel left in it. The ensuing violence is gloopy fun, but the scenes have none of the verbal vim that the better actors bring to the first two hours. It is a small hurdle that trips Django Unchained up from reaching perfection.

9

David Evans directs Colin Firth, Ruth Gemmell and Mark Strong in this romantic comedy where a career orientated teacher falls for a loutish football fan who can’t commit to her over his Saturday fixtures.

Something of a forgotten gem among the Brit-Rom-Com period of the late 90s, this to me is the best of the cycle. I was never really into football as a kid. My Dad, uncles and cousins brought me along to all the QPR home matches but I very rarely got caught up in the games. I’d spend the 90 minutes distracted by the programme, the occasional Roy of the Rovers comic they gave out or resting my forehead against the icy cold handrail of the concrete terrace. Football was unavoidable as a kid in the UK, you were defined by your ability on the playground, your team and your Panini sticker collection. I only really excelled at the latter two… QPR were going through a rare First Division golden patch -the Guinness sponsorship made the strip look extra cool- and I liked collecting stickers (though preferred the movie and TV based ones – my Thundercats collection rocked).

Based on Nick Hornby’s memoirs, Fever Pitch often gets being a football fanatic in that era bang to rights though. The crush of match days, the squeezing through the turnstiles, the chanting on the harsh grey unseated stands. I guess the tribal sense of belonging, the testosterone laddishness is more seductively captured here on film than the reality. The movie’s rose tinted view of the early nineties on the terraces takes in Hillsborough with sensitivities but avoids the unwavering paranoia I felt as a child that it could all kick off at any moment. The unease felt over constant presence of riot gear and police horses on Loftus Road, the dread over pubs you shouldn’t walk past on match days are primal emotions still embedded in me from those Saturdays in White City. Although it was a world I never fully embraced, it was one I was in a few weekends a month until I grew into the things that defined me… music, films, girls. These are Hornby’s other touchstones, explored more thoroughly in High Fidelity. A favourite of mine in my twenties, book and film. Yet I still have a soft spot for Fever Pitch. Maybe because its underlying message is footie is something you should grow out of if you want to succeed with the fairer sex.

The gender politics of the film aren’t perfect. Hornby avatar Paul is stereotypically immature and insensitive. A man child. He hasn’t grown out of the sense of belonging match days with his absent Dad (Neil Pearson -standing out in a small but well sketched role) gave him. He likes the comforting regularity of the football year. The predictable annual cycle of matches that means he won’t be abandoned by Arsenal. If he wasn’t such a good teacher and played by Mr Darcy himself you’d struggle to see why we as an audience would root for him to grow up and get his act together. Firth brings a natural charm to him, even in Paul’s more petulant moments, and he actually reminds me of a few of my leather jacketed, shaggy haired A-Level teachers. Men who probably always saw working in a college as a means to supporting their hobbies rather than a vocation but connected with the pupils better than the career teachers. Fag break legends.

Ruth Gemmell has a harder schlep. Her Sarah can be a bit of a demanding shrew as written. It is difficult to figure out what she sees in Paul apart from proximity. She wants to change him for the better. But surely there are less demanding renovations? Luckily Gemmell is sexy and believable in her performance. She convinces there is some glimmer of hope in the mismatched pairing. You want them to work for her sake. She’s worked consistently since 1997 but this is probably the role of her that resonated most with the general public. She’s helped by a banging soundtrack of earlier 90s hits that sweep us along the rougher patches in their relationship and gives the street party finale a real sense of celebratory magic. You’ll leave Fever Pitch with a big smile on your face, surprised they’ve pulled such an unlikely, slightly dated will-they-won’t-they dynamic off. Goal!

8