Superb: another great piece of movie-making from Quentin Tarantino

Rating: 9/10 (17 August 2019)

1969. Rick Dalton was once the star of a highly popular TV series but a few bad choices have set his career back, leaving him wondering if he should quit showbiz altogether. His best friend is Cliff Booth, an aging stuntman who was Dalton's stunt-double in movies and TV. His career is largely over. While Booth ekes out an existence, Dalton still lives a life of relative luxury in Hollywood, rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous. In fact, his neighbours are Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate...
Superb movie, written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. Not like other Tarantino movies though: his trademarks - frequent, graphic violence and stylised dialogue - are toned down. Instead we have a wonderful character study as we follow the lives of Dalton and Booth, and, to a lesser extent, Sharon Tate.
Many Tarantino traits do remain though. The plot is as immersive as ever: the 161 minutes just fly by. The sub-plots are brilliant, especially the movie-within-a-movie segments (would love it if those Rick Dalton movies and TV shows were real...). The movie segments highlight Tarantino's reverence for and extensive knowledge of cinema and its history.
The soundtrack is amazing, as you would also expect from Tarantino. Fits perfectly into the movie and helps the momentum of the movie too.
Great performances from Leonardo Di Caprio and Brad Pitt in the lead roles. Margot Robbie, as Sharon Tate, doesn't have much dialogue but absolutely lights up the screen. Her innocence and exuberance define the era and set up a wonderful counterpoint to the evil lurking in the shadows.
Only reason I didn't give this a 10/10 is that it felt incomplete. I kept thinking that something more was due to happen, but then it didn't. Turned out this was due to my lack of precise knowledge of the events surrounding Sharon Tate. Once I realised what Tarantino had done, I then felt this should be a 10/10. I decided to go with how I felt coming out of the cinema, rather than how I felt after reading a few other reviews and Wikipedia.
Therein lies the movie's only problem. The viewer's opinion of this movie is possibly dependant on how much they know about the events surrounding Sharon Tate. I know the historic characters involved, so enjoyed the Hollywood references and in-jokes. I also know how things turned out, so kept expecting the movie to link up with that. My lack of knowledge of the precise details meant I missed Tarantino's clever twist.
Someone who has no knowledge of Sharon Tate will not have this weight of expectation and could just watch this as a (totally fictional) drama. Even then it's a great movie, but far less layered for that viewer.