Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino)

[Grouchy]

This was a wonderful... experience. The film continues recent tendencies of Tarantino to focus on character work and create suspense only to deflate it but, like Gale says, it veers dangerously close to P.T. Anderson territory. I feel like Boogie Nights (and most of Anderson's recent output, which offers large canvases of a certain time period in History) must have been a huge influence on QT for this. One thing that surprised me is that, like Ezee E says, someone who knows nothing about the Tate murders will be completely confused by this. This is a gift from a film nerd to other film nerds. It reminds me of what Alan Moore said about The Killing Joke - if you're not a comic book nerd, you completely miss the relevance of the story being told.

I was also a fan of the driving scenes. And I have no real knowledge of the distances of California but it seems to me the first drive of the movie, made by Cliff from Dalton's home to his trailer house, worked as a storytelling device showing the social and financial divide between the two men. The other extended driving scenes were at least wonderfully poetic. That's also why I have no qualms with Quentin's version of Tate - she wants us to see this young actress having fun on what might be the final days of her life.