OK BOOMER

Rating: 9/10 (31 December 2019)

Fudging history, a Hollywood staple, seems out of fashion these days. Enter Quentin Tarantino to expertly and rather romantically rewind to a time few remember, but those who do, will well right up. "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" is exactly that: a cinemascopic love letter to summer of '69 L.A. in glorious technicolour.
Leonardo DiCaprio (Rick Dalton) and Brad Pitt (Cliff Booth) have never been better as long time lead actor and trusty stunt double, looking at a precarious employment sunset. Rick's smoking strut armour of extravagance, thinked with mid-career panic evident with a slight stutter slip, is a thing of disastrous, fragile beauty, whilst Cliff's down to earth servant with heart of gold and matching fists character, is classic stereotyping. Together they are Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but on the backlots of silly television westerns.
Tarantino let's his actors play, while streaming a steady pastiche of golden age Hollywood as the backdrop. The marquees. The cars. The clothes. What a trip!
Having the ominous threat of the Manson Family murders looming throughout, "Hollywood" carries a cruel tension, creating an unsettling dread from knowledge of history. And though Tarantino brings it, as he always does, in an explosive finale, his tackling of Hollywood history in a truly Hollywood manner is absolutely exquisite.
Perfect.

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