ONCE UPON A TIME...IN HOLLYWOOD

Quentin Tarantino's ONCE UPON A TIME...IN HOLLYWOOD is a triumph.  Indeed it may be my favourite of his films since the superlative JACKIE BROWN.  It's a love letter to old Hollywood, and drips with compassion for fading stars, and indulges in nostalgia for the days when radio stations were the soundtrack of our lives.  The movie stars Leonardo Di Caprio as Rick Dalton  - a fictional TV star of the 50s and 60s whose career is in the doldrums because of his age and alcoholism.  As a portrait of the fickle callousness of the star system, it's a moving film. There isn't much that's honourable or likeable in Rick, but he's our idiot, and to see him bested in his art and conversation by a child star (Trudi - a scene-stealing Julia Butters) is to weep for him. To see him lured by the quick cash of Spaghetti Westerns and saddled with a young wife is to laugh at our own frailty. He's an idiot, but we care that he's okay.  And we care largely because of the most humanising thing about him - his long and loyal friendship to his stuntman/driver/buddy Cliff Booth. In a career-best performance from Brad Pitt, Cliff is just a decent no bullshit kind of a guy. He's tough.  We see him beat up Bruce Lee in one of the most hilarious scenes in the film, and we hear rumours about a potentially murderous past, so the final showdown is well within the realms of his capabilities, despite his being high as a kite. There's something so tragic about his life in a mobile van, heating up tinned food, and something so likeable about his seeming indifference to it.  He's just a good guy. We see this too in his care for Bruce Dern's Spahn - exploited owner of the ranch in which the Manson Family are living. Which of course brings us to the other story in this film...

I think a lot of us came to this film thinking it was going to be a film about the Manson Murders and it's kind of discombobulating realising that it isn't really. We only meet Manson in one scene, and barely see Polanski from a distance at a party.  Polanski and Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) live next door to Rick, but their lives are largely separate.   And what of Tate?  She's barely given the same screen time or depth of character as the two male leads. She's just a sunny happy dancing blonde, exciting to see herself on screen, in a scene that will give anyone who knows about Tarantino's foot fetish the creeps.  I felt sad for Robbie, who has nothing to do in this film, but really sad for Sharon Tate, who apparently isn't worthy of an inner life.  We do see the events of that fateful night play out. The way in plays out won't surprise people who've seen Tarantino's recent films.  It's really fucking entertaining.  But...

ONCE UPON A TIME...IN HOLLYWOOD is rated R and has a running time of 119 minutes.  The film played Cannes 2019 and went on global release last summer. It is now available to stream, rent and own.

THE CHRISTMAS CHRONICLES - Crimbo Binge-watch #10

Netflix' children's Christmas release is a rare reminder of just how charming Kurt Russell is.  This overlong rather mechanical film is only saved by his presence.  It takes a very dull 25 minutes for him to appear on screen as Santa, after which the movie ignites - although it could still have lost 15 mins from both pre and post Santa segments.  The director Clay Kaytis (THE ANGRY BIRDS MOVIE) should take note.  The premise has two kids who lost their fireman father and fight with each other staying up to video tape Santa coming down the chimney. They actually do catch him but also damage his sleigh. So become some "high-jinx" as they have to help him find transportation and his sack of presents to make all the christmas deliveries and save the spirit of Christmas. All that - including animated elves - is so much blah - but I very much enjoyed the idea of Santa telling grown ups what they really wanted for Christmas as kids, Kurt Russell doing a jailhouse rock number, and a fun cameo from Goldie Hawn. We need more of this couple on screen.

THE CHRISTMAS CHRONICLES has a running time of 104 minutes and was released this Christmas on Netflix. 

GRINDHOUSE - exploitation-tastic-ish

GRINDHOUSE is the new movie double-bill from directors Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino. I'm not going to pretend I had a clue what GRINDHOUSE was till I read the production notes. But grindhouse refers to the shabby adult cinemas that were found across America in the 70s until home video put them out of business. It also refers to the lo-fi exploitation flicks that were played back-to-back in these cinemas until the prints were scuffed and scratched and whole reels were missing. To the extent that Rodriguez and Tarantino have always riffed on schlock cinema - from exploitation flicks, to camp horror classics, to spaghetti westerns, to cheesy martial arts epics, GRINDHOUSE is a logical step. Because instead of just subsuming pop cultural references into a slick modern movie, GRINDHOUSE actually looks and feels like crappy worn-out 70s B-movies complete with scratches on the celluloid, missing reels and hysterically funny mock movie trailers. In fact, the trailers have pedigrees to match the main feature, being shot by Eli Roth of HOSTEL fame and the guys behind SHAUN OF THE DEAD and HOT FUZZ. In particular, I liked seeing Danny Trejo as "Machete" - the vengeful hit man with a gun-wielding, Catholic-priest (Benicio Del Toro). (This may actually become Rodriguez' next feature - neat!) The trailer with the killer Nazi were-wolf women and Nic Cage as Fu Manchu also looked awesome.

First up in the double-bill is the Rodriquez zombie-flick, called PLANET TERROR. Rose McGowan is a go-go dancer called Cherry Darling, on the run from rampaging zombies in her ex-boyfriend (Freddy Rodriguez') car. Infected hicks turn up at Doc Block's hospital as Block (Josh Brolin) feuds with his wife, who's about to hook up with her lesbian ex(!) Meanwhile, sinister government agents, in the form of Bruce Willis and Naveen Andrews, are blowing shit up. I was mildly disappointed by PLANET TERROR. The sheer fun of watching a genre pastiche faded with repetition and the story was actually rather boring. It wasn't helped by the fact that Rose McGowan plays her role in very self-conscious camp style - winking at the audience as she goes. For the Grindhouse project to work, all the actors have to act like they are playing these roles for real - to keep the trick alive for the audience. Plus there's the highly subjective issue that I have never really liked zombie pics as a genre, so even a crazy pastiche isn't going to hold my attention for long. To that end, I'd love to know what real fans of these flicks make of PLANET TERROR.

Second up is the Tarantino stalker-slasher-action pic, DEATH PROOF. This stars Kurt Russell as a bad-ass retired movie stunt-man called, da-da-daa!, Stunt-Man Mike. He kills attractive young women by offering them rides home in his "death-proof" car. Sadly, the "death-proofed"-ness only applies to the guy sitting in the drivers seat. Let's be clear, people, this is BY FAR a superior film.* It's superior insofar as its not just a straight pastiche but a genuine reinvention with memorable characters, brilliant dialogue and just enough camp violence to be funny but not boring. The flicks falls into two halves. In the first half we see Stunt-Man Mike stalk and eventually dispatch a bunch of girls (Vanessa Ferlito, Jordan Ladd, Sydney Tamiia Poitier and Rose McGowan again) that are drinking in a bar. As in all Tarantino, the real joy is seeing these normal people talk normal shit but with that added twist that outlandish stuff is round the corner. In the second half of the flick we move to a different set of chicks (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Tracie Thoms, Rosario Dawson and Zoë Bell) driving round in cars. Cue more cute dialogue, crazy car-stunts and a bit of the old comedy violence.

The revelation is that while we all grew up on camp classics and lo-fi B flicks, not even Rodriguez can match Tarantino's genius in spewing out movies that can hold their heads up as genuinely entertaining outside of the pop-culture references that sustain them. Some of the fun of DEATH PROOF is picking up all the references to other QT flicks but, crucially, that's just an added bonus, not the whole deal. While Rodriguez' movie is an interesting exercise, DEATH-PROOF is a movie to watch and re-watch on its own terms.

*And I know Europeans are complaining the the double-feature is being split - so they'll have to pay double than Americans to see both films - but frankly, given what I now know, the wise move would've been to buy a ticket for the double feature and slip in at the 90 minute mark anyways.

GRINDHOUSE was released as a double-feature in the US in April 2007 and will be released as a double-feature in New Zealand on May 31st and in the UK on June 1st.

DEATH PROOF will be released in Estonia, Finland, Italy, Norway and Sweden on June 1st; in Belgium, France, Switzerland, Netherlands, on June 6th/7th; in Germany on June 14th and in Iceland on August 1st. PLANET TERROR will be released in Iceland on June 8th, Estonia on July 6th, the Netherlands on July 19th, Finland on July 20th, Germany on July 26th, Belgium on August 1st, in Norway on September 14th and in Sweden on September 28th.