A closeup of Once Upon a Time...In Hollywood's poster at Cineplex Saint John.
Quentin Tarantino’s ninth feature Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood is a tale as old as time about an actor prince, a stuntman knight, a beautiful movie star princess and a psychopathic ogre.
By the tail end of the Sixties, Hollywood’s Golden Age of studio glamour and iron control was on the out and the auteur director driven New Hollywood of Seventies was ascending.
Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood examines this paradigm shift through fading Western television star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant) and his longtime stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt, Fight Club). Both men are struggling to remain afloat in an increasingly unfamiliar industry; meanwhile, Rick’s next-door neighbor Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie, I, Tonya) is thriving and on the rise as the latest ingenue.
When Booth gives a ride to Pussycat (Margaret Qualley, The Nice Guys), one of Charles Manson’s girls, the specter of the Manson Family begins to loom. All the while the audience is keenly aware the clock is ticking until the Tate murders on August 8, 1969…
Tarantino’s signature sprawling ensemble cast includes Al Pacino (Scarface), Dakota Fanning (The Alienist), Lena Dunham (Girls), Bruce Dern (Coming Home), Timothy Olyphant (Deadwood), Damian Lewis (Homeland), Kurt Russell (Overboard), Emilie Hirsch (Into the Wild), Mike Moh (Empire), Austin Butler (The Dead Don’t Die), the late Luke Perry (Beverly Hills 90210) and Damon Herriman (Justified) as Charles Manson.
The film arrives at a time when Hollywood is undergoing another transition with the arrival of streaming services and VOD and lovingly, recreates the embers of a Golden Hollywood before a country’s innocence was lost.
Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood opens in theatres on July 26.
