Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood

Set in 1969, Quentin Tarantino's new film is two stories ran in parallel. The first is total fiction and concerns Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), a TV cowboy in the long running series ‘Bounty Law’.

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Rick is now a fading star as Hollywood moves on to newer and younger things. So Rick is attempting to reinvent himself but is only being offered bit parts as a bad guy. On the downward curve alongside him is his stunt man Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). They are drinking buddies but while Rick lives in luxury in the Hollywood hills, Cliff lives in a trailer with his dog, Brandy. 

Meanwhile, living next door to Rick on Cielo Drive is Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha) with his wife Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie). Cue the second story, a factual one that is about to get the Tarantino treatment.

The film is set in the months leading up the real life murder of the pregnant Tate and all the other occupants of the house on Cielo Drive at that time. Tarantino slow burns through that period filling in Rick and Cliff’s story and dropping in casual encounters with Charles Manson (Damon Herriman) and some of his ‘Family’ members. Cliff even visits Spahn Ranch to see an old acquaintance George Spahn (Bruce Dern) where the Family are now holed up.

Where is the film going? Of course with Tarantino you can never be sure until you get there. He could have recreated the murders. He certainly wouldn't have baulked at that. In fact you find yourself waiting for tragedy to strike knowing that with Tarantino they would have been in equal parts brilliant and unwatchable but he didn't. Thankfully he didn't. The title of the film implies this is a fairy tale, where endings can be anything you want them to be, so all bets are off.

Overall it’s a long, but mesmerizing, film with all the usual immaculate detail along with an incredible soundtrack (naturally), great cinematography, great acting especially DiCaprio and Pitt among plenty of famous names both as actors and as characters played by other actors. Typically there’s plenty of drugs and violence, and a stirring of controversy in casting Cliff as a wife killer among other things in the film to get people wound up but most of all Tarantino does what he does best. He tells a great story.

Some Quentin Tarantino movies of late have disappointed, this one doesn’t. This is right up there with his best. He might as well retire now.

The Revenant

The definition of a 'Revenant' is a person who returns. So now I’ve spoilt the plot for you.

'The Revenant' is a western style ‘epic’ inspired by the exploits of frontiersman Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) engaged in fur-trapping in the wilderness of the northern Louisiana Purchase in 1823. It is directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu brought us 'Birdman', enough said.

Glass's party are repeatedly attacked by the local natives who decimate their numbers. Having to abandon their boat, they end up journeying back to their camp at Fort Kiowa on foot.

While out scouting, Glass is attacked by a grizzly bear after disturbing her cubs or perhaps she thought he was after her fur. The attack is brutal and leaves him seemingly mortally wounded. Taking into account his injuries and the fact that this is the middle of winter and the temperature is well into the negatives, his crew assume he’ll be dead within hours. However Glass is so highly respected that his boss Captain Henry (Domhnall Gleeson) pays for the mumbling mercenary John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) to stay with him until he dies to give him a proper burial. Along with him are Glass’s half-Pawnee son Hawk(Forrest Goodluck) and his friend Bridger (Will Poulter).

Fitzgerald is not happy when Glass does not die quickly and tries to hasten the process but Hawk catches him. In the ensuing fight he kills Hawk as Glass watches on. In the end Fitzgerald abandons Glass in a shallow grave, still alive and now determined to avenge the death of his son. At which point Glass crawls out of his grave and heads for home...

In real life Glass really did survive being mauled by the bear but I think his story has perhaps been passed down and repeatedly re-embroidered over far too many glasses of wine over the years. From here on in his journey to exact revenge becomes more absurd with each scene. 

Glass takes a trip down the river and is swept over the rapids. This would have drowned most man, let alone someone who has just been savaged by a bear. Not Glass though, as for the hypothermia that would surely have followed this dunking. Nope, not Glass.

He is then attacked by another bunch of natives and gets shot before he and his horse plunge over a cliff to what is surely certain death this time? Nope. Well the horse didn’t survive it, which is fortunate for Glass who has the strength to gut the dead animal and sleep inside it. Ewwww.

Eventually our Revenant hero returns to camp and Fitzgerald, who has already made it back, legs it with the contents of the camp safe. Incomprehensively just two guys go after him but this ably sets up the revenge finale.

I suppose the Revenant is not supposed to be a film in the normal sense, it is an ‘experience’ and an impressively bleak one at that. It is also an extreme case of style over substance. It has a great cast, stunning locations, amazing cinematography and the ‘how the hell did they film that’ factor but also practically zero character development together with a ridiculous plot.

In theory all of the good points above should have been able to deliver a great film which could all have been done and dusted in a lot less than two and a half hours but I think this is minimum running time for an Oscar nominee.

If DiCaprio gets an award for his two and a half hours of crawling and grimacing then it will probably be because they feel they owe him one. We already know he’s excellent at crawling and grimacing from The Wolf of Wall Street. Also if he wants the gong that much to put himself through all this, then for God's sake just give the man his Oscar and let's all move on. I’m assuming he didn’t use a stunt double because if he did he’d hardly have ever been on set and that man should get the award instead.

Recommended, if you like that sort of thing.

The Wolf of Wall Street

The Wolf of Wall Street is the biographical story of Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), a stock broker on Wall Street and is directed by Martin Scorsese.

Belfort is keen to make money, lots of it, but sees his initial job at L.F. Rothschild taken away from him when the firm collapses following the 1987 stock market crash. After hitting rock bottom, he bounces back working for a firm selling penny stocks. 

He quickly discovers that he can make good commission on these trades and quickly forms his own company Stratton Oakmont Inc. He recruits an unlikely bunch of guys to work for him including Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill), who quickly becomes his right hand man.

Belfort’s extraordinary business mind ensures that Stratton Oakmont went from strength to strength, making the huge piles of money that he dreamt about. Forbes Magazine writes an article on the firm calling him ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ and the name stuck. Forbes also points out that his methods were rather dubious and that he was misleading investors whilst Stratton Oakmont’s staff lived a life on debauchery on the profits.

The film depicts life at Stratton Oakmont as one long outrageous party where the only thing as important as the money is the orgy of sex and drugs that it can buy. Here too Belfort is the ring leader, wallowing in a raucous excess of cocaine, prescription pills, non-prescription pills, alcohol and women.

Yet when he meets Naomi (Margot Robbie) he is smitten and has to have her. Despite her boyfriend and his wife, they are naked in bed the next day. In the end they marry, settle down and have a child... well she does. Belfort continues as before.

 

It is satire and is probably a reflection on today's society and on Wall Street itself. Whether it is wildly exaggerated satire is open to debate.  

Eventually the FBI start investigating and Agent Patrick Denham (Kyle Chandler) is on their case causing Belfort to attempt to smuggle all his cash out to Switzerland. Here is assisted by a corrupt banker Jean-Jacques Saurel (Jean Dujardin) and opens the account in the name of Naomi's aunt Emma (Joanna Lumley).

As the FBI close in, he is offered a deal to avoid jail but Belfort decides he doesn't want to be saved, turns it down and eventually the whole company is taken down.

When you read up on Jordan Belfort it becomes apparent that Martin Scorsese kept to the story as much as possible, which is a bit of a rarity for Hollywood. What he gives us is a film that is swift, energetic and enormously entertaining. It did not feel like a three hour production because there is not a quiet moment in it.

It's also one of the funniest things I've seen for a long time but that depends on your sense of humour. It is also likely to offend some people but only if you object to explicit language, explicit sex, explicit nudity, explicit drug etc etc.

It is one hell of a good film and Leonardo DiCaprio is, I have to say, simply terrific. If he doesn't win the Oscar for this, he probably never will. 

Django Unchained

Set in the pre-Civil War Deep South, Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Django Unchained’ is a Western and the story of a slave named Django (Jamie Foxx) who becomes, well, unchained. He is set free by a German dentist turned bounty hunter Dr. King Shultz (Christoph Waltz). He needs Django’s help to identify the three guys who are his next bounty and were Django’s previous owners. 

Schultz quickly discovers that Django has all the right attributes for the bounty hunting game, basically he’s good at killing people. So they team up and Shultz takes him under his wing. Shultz though makes Django a promise, that once the winter is over, together they will rescue Django’s wife from slavery too.

Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), Django's missus, is owned by Calvin J. Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio) and works on his plantation home of Candieland. Which he is assisted in the running of by his head slave Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson), who’s somewhat of a turncoat for the anti slavery cause.

Tarantino films of course, divide opinion. If you like Tarantino, you’ll like scenes like the one with the KKK arguing for a good ten minutes about not being able to see out of the holes in their pillow case masks before one member rides off in a huff because his wife made them all and feels it’s unappreciated. Or you won’t.

You’ll like the gratuitous, over the top bloodshed. Or you won’t. 

You’ll like the prodigious use of the word nigger, which I assume he gets away with because it’s relevant to the time period but then again he’s got previous with this, having used the word in most of his films, just less often. Or you won’t.

Obviously it’s also got his other trademarks. Such as a great musical score, great acting, a character driven plot and someone losing their testicles. So you’ll like all that as well. Or you won’t.

You might even like Dicaprio, who it has to be said plays probably his best role ever and he talks Tarantino-speak like he’s done it his entire career. Or you won’t. 

It’s still good to see him shot though. You’ll like that.

So yes it’s a good film but I would say it’s not one of his cleverest and it’s a little too long. Certainly for our neighbours who had to make an awful lot of bathroom visits. The last half an hour seemed an unnecessary way of resolving things that could and should have already been resolved but perhaps Tarantino had forgotten to write himself into the script, so had to quickly fit his cameo in, as well as a bit more violence.

 

One final thought. Django is your typical deadeye movie gunman. He’s always first to the trigger and never gets shot no matter how many bullets are fired at him. He goes off on multiple killing sprees in the name of revenge, even if his victim’s association to him is tenuous. You would have thought that all this would have been on very dodgy ground considering several incidents worldwide in recent times including the most recent in Connecticut but no, apparently not. Just saying. You’ll like that. Or you won’t.