Quentin Tarantino’s exploitation black-comedy thriller Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood finds a pulp-fictionally redemptive take on the Manson nightmare in late-60s California: a B-movie loser’s state of grace. The Los Angeles of 1969 is recovered with all Tarantino’s habitual intensity and delirious, hysterical connoisseurship of pop culture detail. Things head south for Rick and Cliff’s careers when Rick’s western TV show Bounty Law is cancelled. Cliff makes an impassive appearance at this creepy compound and Tarantino audaciously makes this a kind of western-thriller episode, as Cliff makes a social call on the owner, George Spahn (Bruce Dern). Rick and Cliff are basically nonentities, the only difference being that easy-going Cliff has no ego to bruise, no ambition to nurse.

Source: The Guardian May 21, 2019 19:07 UTC