“Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood”
The power of “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood” is that it feels cumulative, like something Tarantino probably wanted to make early in his career, but couldn’t because a.) he lacked resources and b.) he had to make a slew of good-to-great films to arrive at this point. “Once Upon a Time” is the director’s glorious, messy, cup-runneth-over love letter to the era that made him. I refer to Los Angeles at the tail end of the 1960s: a cornucopia of pool parties, abandoned ranches, and film sets populated by has-been actors and starry-eyed up-and-comers. True to its title, “Once Upon a Time” is a fairy tale about America’s loss of innocence: it’s also the story of insecure leading man Rick Dalton (Leonardo Dicaprio, who has seldom been more vulnerable onscreen) and his best friend and tough-guy stunt double Cliff Booth (a brilliant Brad Pitt, channeling Robert Redford in a more toxic register). A onetime Tinseltown stud who made his fortune on a T.V. serial called “Bounty Law,” Rick’s star has dwindled, and he’s considering starring in a junky Italian Western just to make ends meet. Cliff, more content with his place in life, lives in a trailer next to a nonfunctioning drive-in movie theater, with nothing more than an adorable pitbull for company. Rick lives in a mansion in the hills above Hollywood – on Cielo Drive, in fact, where his neighbors are none other than emerging ingénue Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie, moving through the movie like a ghost) and her husband, Roman Polanski (Rafał Zawierucha). As an act of pure fidelity, “Once Upon a Time” is one of the fondest and most accomplished works Mr. Tarantino has ever produced. His love for the cars, costumes, movie posters, songs, and radio jingles of this era flows off the screen in a way that it hasn’t in years. Ultimately, Tarantino’s revisionist take on the Manson cult turns out to be “Hollywood’s” least convincing element: the film is never more charming than when Cliff and Rick are downing Bloody Marys and waxing rhapsodic about the way things used to be. Overstuffed as it may be, the good stuff in “Once Upon a Time” is as good as Tarantino has ever been. This is a bloody, largely satisfying five-course meal of a movie that’s by turns creepy, indulgent, hilarious, and curiously tender. [B+/A-]
Honorable Mention:
We’re going to include Tarantino’s first film, see below, but not including it in the main list if only out of respect for the fact that it was never actually completed.
“My Best Friend’s Birthday”
Quentin Tarantino wrote and directed “My Best Friend’s Birthday” when he was still working as a video store clerk in Manhattan Beach. The film, while certainly rough around the edges, is a ragged cinematic experiment in the vein of early Brian De Palma or Jean-Luc Godard (the latter of whom is one of Q.T.’s heroes – his production company, A Band Apart, is named after “Bande à part”). It’s populated by actors that would pop up in bit parts in “Reservoir Dogs” and “Pulp Fiction,” and “Pulp” co-writer Roger Avary even helped shoot the film. Similar to Wes Anderson’s original short for “Bottle Rocket,” “My Best Friend’s Birthday” is an early indicator of Tarantino’s stylistic obsessions: his trademark energy burns through the frame, even if the end result is more of an exercise than a fully-realized narrative. Tarantino, exhibiting no shortage of boyish enthusiasm, plays the lead, Clarence. Clarence is a gregarious DJ who spends a day trying to do something nice for his friend’s birthday and consistently comes up short. “My Best Friend’s Birthday” is lighthearted for Tarantino: like vintage Jerry Lewis, with the slapstick dialed down and the snazzy patter dialed up (see: “your ass is grass… and I’m the lawnmower”). It contains a monologue about Elvis Presley that’s undeniably similar to the one given by Christian Slater in the Tarantino-penned Tony Scott actioner “True Romance,” not to mention call girls, poetic conversations in pool halls, kung-fu brawls, surf rock, and references to the Big Bopper (“Hello Baaaaby!”), rockabilly music, and actor Aldo Ray (the nominal inspiration for Aldo Raine in “Inglourious Basterds”). The original cut of “Birthday”, which runs about 70 minutes, was lost in a lab fire, but you can watch the first 36 minutes here on Youtube. [B-]
“Four Rooms (Segment: “The Man From Hollywood”)”
“Four Rooms,” a wonky and mostly unwatchable series of interconnected cinematic vignettes, is the kind of undisciplined anthology work that probably could have only been made in the 1990s. It’s shambling, unfunny, and largely purposeless, despite being populated by in-demand actors of the period like Antonio Banderas, Marisa Tomei, and Salma Hayek. Allison Anders and Robert Rodriguez both directed segments of the film, although their efforts feel largely undermined by a central gimmick that feels too undercooked to possess any staying power. With that in mind, give Tarantino’s installment – titled “The Man From Hollywood” – credit for probably being the best of the bunch. It’s a frustrating but sporadically watchable lark, starring Tarantino himself as an obnoxious, Cristal-swilling film director occupying a swank penthouse with some of his pals, including a beauty named Angela (Jennifer Beals), a smooth talker named Norman (Paul Calderón, returning from his turn playing a bartender in “Pulp Fiction”), a frantic bellboy played by Tim Roth, and a sleepy-seeming Bruce Willis, who recounts an episode of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” starring Steve McQueen and Peter Lorre that does little but draw attention to Mr. Tarantino’s encyclopedic knowledge of 20th-century pop culture. “The Man From Hollywood” contains a few early examples of what would become Tarantino trademarks, including rambling, dialogue-driven interludes and an icky bit where a man’s pinky is severed over a thoughtless bet. It sounds like good fun on paper, and yet the mood of the segment – and of “Four Rooms” as a whole – is strained, zany, prone to trying too hard and coming up short. All things considered, this is a minor, definitively experimental work from a filmmaker who would go on to bigger and better things in the subsequent decades. In other words: for Tarantino apologists and completists only. [C-]
Lost, Abandoned and Unmade Projects
Quentin Tarantino is one of those directors who gets so excited about projects that exist in his imagination that it’s become a task just to keep up with all the movies he hasn’t made yet. Bearing that in mind, here is a brief rundown of some of the movies Tarantino almost directed.
Way back when, in the days of his “Silver Surfer” obsession, Tarantino was rumored to be directing a “Luke Cage” movie – which, let’s face it, would have been a lot more interesting than the slick, workmanlike version we’ve all watched on Netflix. He’s also floated the idea of doing a movie called “The Vega Brothers,” with Michael Madsen and John Travolta reprising their roles as Vic and Vincent Vega, and presumably raising hell somewhere in Amsterdam. Alas, that project did not see the light of day – and, at this point, it seems unlikely that it ever will.
Around the time of “Inglorious Basterds,” Tarantino bandied around the possibility of doing a 1930s gangster picture, which sounds like a full-tilt blast to us. He also entertained the idea of a sort of “Basterds” extended universe with a project called “Killer Crow,” which would have focused on an all-black WWII outfit that has been mistreated by American military and decides to stir up some unholy ruckus on their own. As for potential high-profile projects of days past, Tarantino once found himself tangentially attached to direct the James Bond vehicle “Casino Royale” and also a third “Kill Bill” movie, which would have taken place nearly a decade after the events of ‘Vol. 2.’
These days, Tarantino is supposedly working on a sort of sequel to “Django Unchained” in the form of a “Django/Zorro” comic book crossover, with up-and-comer Jerrod Carmichael on co-writer duties. He’s also got his much-hyped “Star Trek” movie in the works, which is reportedly going to be a hard R (the director has also described it as “Pulp Fiction” in space) and is rumored to be his final film. We have no idea what an R-rated “Star Trek” movie looks like, but to say we’re curious is an understatement. That’s just a taste. Read our Lost, Unmade & Possible Future Films Of Quentin Tarantino to get the hyper-detailed account of pretty much every possible film idea he’s ever mentioned.
“Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood” hits theaters everywhere July 26.
