Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

A New Tarantino Hangout Classic! - 9/10

by Popcult Productions

“Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood” (2019)
A faded television actor and his stunt double strive to achieve fame and success in the film industry during the final years of Hollywood's Golden Age in 1969 Los Angeles.
Tarantino’s 9th undertaking is here, and we’re hoping it won’t be the one before the last! Before we begin breaking down this film, we’d like to point out that the passion a filmmaker like Tarantino has for cinema is more than just inspirational for us, he’s a director who’s already proven to leave a huge print on pop culture with projects that not one of them is deemed to be unworthy of the words “original” and “creative”. What we’re going to talk about is merely an opinion and not a so called “review” of his latest drama flick, Quentin Tarantino’s work is what we consider pure class and a director who’s worst movie is appraised to be good, is personally in our opinions no way near to be criticized or evaluated.
Now to be honest, coming out of “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”, we can finally say that this film deserves so much praise for the risky elements it imparts. Quentin is a director with a notable style that specifically flourishes in films like “Pulp Fiction” and “Inglorious Basterds”, he’s known for his blending of genres and unrestricted storytelling, in addition to him being the only filmmaker who’s permitted to feed you a bunch of entertaining scenes that forge together a larger story puzzle of his own, and yet he gets away with it. The plot of this movie is not a one that consists of coherent character arcs and doesn’t even bother to piece itself together towards a complete perfect story, it’s rather considered to be a unique take on Hollywood’s bizarre reality, where it’s told to be funny, epic, and entertaining.
The reason Tarantino gets away with this particular flavor of storytelling is because not for one moment his scenes are sought to be “boring” or “meaningless”, his perfection of music, dialogue, cinematography, set/costume design, and action is part of how his movies create distinctive worlds of cinema that lures audience into theaters. That’s why “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” is a film not for everyone but for people who are fans of Quentin’s specific style of storytelling. Additionally, the second act of Tarantino’s near 3-hour movie did drag a bit, there’s a scene where voice over was inserted and characters were shown in a certain time sequence and at this point we were eagerly on the look out fot where this might lead up to, and as soon as this act was over the third one was some of Tarantino’s finest, the amount of craziness the last 30 minutes included, were crafted perfectly. And thanks to the iconic performances Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt managed to provide, this movie also came off as an epically fun ride. It’s actually the Tarantino film that relies on comedy the most, there are a lot of scenes where you find yourself laughing out so hard and that wouldn’t have worked without the likes of Leo and Brad. Those actors are tremendously talented to a point where a lot of scenes demanded their coordination and they didn’t underperform for one second, especially Leonardo. His so much serious performance of this broken guy who’s finding out that cinema is forgetting about him and he really doesn’t know what to do, and the reason that his lines come off as the most comedic in this film is because he plays this character to that extent of seriousness. As for Margot Robbie’s character, she really had a little to do in the first-second acts, and we can’t help but feel that her character didn’t really add a lot to the film other than what she got to do towards the end of it, which really payed off, to be honest. For all Tarantino fans out there we assure you that “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” won’t disappoint and that ending was probably one of our favorite sequences among his films, so you better check it out as soon as you get the chance!

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