ONCE UPON A TIME ... IN HOLLYWOOD

CONTAINS ... SOME MAJOR SPOILERS

Yes ... that is the title and that is how Quentin Tarantino has punctuated it, with an extraneous ellipsis. Why? Because he's Quentin Tarantino and he can do what he wants, that's why. Usually that's fine, though it leads to a lot of self-indulgence that some people get annoyed with, but personally it's not bothered me that much and I'd sooner watch QT's indulgences than a lot of other peoples', because I like to think I can at least pick up on some of it and I do know of at least some of the movies, posters and TV shows. Maybe I never saw them on first-run theatrical releases (and nor did Quentin, most likely, because he was six at the time) but I do know of the Matt Helm movies, Three In The Attic, CC And Company, Tora! Tora! Tora!, McKenna's Gold, Pendulum, The Illustrated Man and dozens of other old, mostly forgotten movies.

But ... the constant nostalgia callbacks and endless selections from his late 60s vinyl collection actually reached a point where even I was tiring of the nods to period culture, and QT's indulgences only stopped getting in the way of the movie because, really, they ARE the movie. Which is a pity since there's a much more interesting (and much shorter) movie in there that can't get out because of the tapestry of permanent radio chatter and cinema marquees. In fact there are at least two more interesting and shorter movies in there. First off there's the Leonardo DiCaprio thread: Rick Dalton is a one-time TV cowboy star whose hit show ended, reducing him to guest bad guy roles on other peoples' shows: there's a terrific story to be told of a big star struggling to accept that his best years are behind him and having to adapt to the idea of going to Italy to make spaghetti Westerns. Fine. But we don't need to see impeccably staged scenes from these movies and shows at quite such length. There's also an interesting, more comedic character study of Rick's laid-back stunt double and best friend Cliff (Brad Pitt), tooling around 1969 Los Angeles being The Coolest Man In Town (and this is a town with Steve McQueen in it), getting into fights with Bruce Lee and picking up hitchhiking jailbait hippie chicks, and to be honest I could have cheerfully done with a lot more of that movie. Tarantino is a world-builder in the way that Ridley Scott is, and his 1969 LA is as detailed and real as Blade Runner's 2019 LA.

However ... there's a third, much darker and much more problematic story going on, involving actual real historical people rather than figments of Quentin Tarantino's imagination. The fictional Rick Dalton's house just happens to be next door to the real Sharon Tate's, we're in 1969, and that jailbait hippie chick lives at the old Spahn Movie Ranch on a commune run by the sadly non-fictional Charles Manson. Most of Once Upon A Time ... In Hollywood takes place over two days in February 1969 in which Dalton wrestles with his acting career, Tate (Margot Robbie) goes to Hollywood parties with Roman Polanski and blags her way into matinee screenings of her own films, and Cliff tools around being cool and has an uncomfortable encounter with the Mansonites - and it's followed by that night in August when the aforementioned Mansonites turn up looking for "piggies" to kill...

And ... this is where the film suddenly looks like it's going down the same route as Wolves At The Door, in which the actual Manson murders of Sharon Tate and her friends were presented as a slick, glossy piece of popcorn entertainment. Kurt Russell's voiceover is clearly leading the film, minute by minute, to that incident - but then it veers away from established reality: this is Tarantino's own personal alternate universe and, as with Inglourious Basterds, our dimension's known history does not necessarily apply. Once Upon A Time ... does suggest a fairytale, a love story, not a historical document. This last act is also the one with a frankly disturbing level of physical, head-smashing violence: I speak as one who can quite happily marathon the Saw movies over a weekend but even I felt that QT was enjoying it to a worrying degree: it felt sadistic and frankly excessive. Personally I'd have been happier to lose the whole Tate/Manson thread entirely, and concentrate entirely on Leo and Brad: it gets the reality/fantasy divide out of the way and it wouldn't touch on the genuine brutal murders of actual people.

It's ... sprawling, it's narratively messy, it's way too long (like Death Proof, half an hour plus of Tarantino indulging his movie, TV and music passions at Nerd Factor Ten could have been lopped out, tightening up the narrative drastically), it has one scene of genuinely over-the-top physical violence. Yet ... yet ... the period detail is impeccable at least as far as I can tell - if it's isn't genuinely 100% accurate it's close enough, and the clothes and cars and hairstyles and interior design look great. It's also another demonstration that given a proper DP and celluloid, proper cinematography will always be a thousand times better than cold, dead digital. But all that is just surface, while the unexpected cameos and surprise star appearances are just decoration. The incidental pleasures (and there are many) don't entirely make up for the rest of the movie being so all over the place: they go some way, but not enough.

So ... it's a very large and very mixed bag with a lot of stuff in it, some good, a lot not so good, and some of the diamonds you really have to dig for. More discipline and restraint and less geeking out would have helped, but on balance it's one of his less satisfying films. It's not a bad film by any means: there's plenty to enjoy, but he really needs someone standing over him with a baseball bat telling him No every so often. Stay through the end credits for an irrelevant bonus.

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