Captures the aura of an era. This is Tarantino's masterpiece

Rating: 9/10 (15 March 2020)

Tarantino's long-in-the-making love letter to the 1960s, one of the decades that really influenced him as a filmmaker, is a masterpiece in directing, cinematography and storytelling, topped off by two mesmerising performances from Leonardo di Caprio and Brad Pitt. Tarantino vividly renders not only what it must have been like in the film industry in Hollywood in the late 1960s, but also the style and aura of that time. Granted, what we are given is Hollywood's memory of the decade, the stars living it up and miserable in the Hills. The Vietnam War was at it's peak in 1968/1969, but in this film it is merely just a obscure broadcast on a car radio; bulletins from battlefields insignificant to our stars as they fight their own battles in the studios and bars of Hollywood.
Rick Dalton (Di Caprio) is a burnt-out actor struggling now at the end of the 1960s. The '50s and indeed this past decade have been good to him, but it now appears that he is yesterday's news. He was Jake Cahill, star of the long-running TV western show "Bounty Law". But now that the era of the Western is in decline, Dalton feels like he has had it. But when Roman Polanksi and his wife Sharon Tate move in next door to him, Rick wonders if he is just a pool-party away from that starring role in a big movie that he needs. His good pal and long-time stunt double is Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), and he is more optimistic than Rick, and we follow the pair as they travel around Hollywood and later, Europe, when Rick decides to give the Spaghetti Western a shot. But in the background, something dark and menacing is lurking up in the Hills, and we are headed for quite a conclusion.
This is a very funny and stylish film. There are many memorable and hilarious moments and lines, such as Booth's taunting of the legendary Bruce Lee in that now infamous scene - "Anybody kills anyone in a fight they go to jail. It's called manslaughter." The last ten minutes or so are completely off-the-wall and unexpected, and remind the viewer that they are watching a Tarantino flick. Brad Pitt and di Caprio are absolutely phenomenal. The scenes showing us the Western being filmed and Rick forgetting his lines are very well done and again, laced with a fine humour - "I just want her to play the fiddle."