An ode to the Golden Age of Tinseltown, this 1969-set odyssey tackles a bunch of topics: celebrity culture and its excesses, the rockiness of acting as a career, the importance of true friendships, and the fragility of peace during the Vietnam War era. Of course, being a Quentin Tarantino picture, this story is told with an abundance of panache; his encyclopaedic knowledge of the cinematic world lending itself to a thoughtful, reference-riddled peek behind the curtains. The 'on-set' sequences are fascinating in their own right. QT has long since been his own genre thanks to his singular filmmaking voice, but his latest could arguably be his most straight-forward movie yet. For all its side-tracking subplots and final act swerve, it is, first and foremost, a bromantic drama. As over-the-hill star Rick Dalton and his loyal stunt double Cliff Booth, Leo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt fuel the show on sheer charisma; Leo's larger-than-life personality wonderfully offset by Pitt's calm and collected demeanour. It's actually a surprisingly sweet tale, Tarantino's trademark vicious spirit, profanity-laden dialogue and hyper-violence largely (but not completely) dialled back in favour of more traditional narrative beats and rose-tinted historical revisions. Maintaining such a ridiculously high standard across his body of work, this is clearly lesser QT though, sitting in the lower echelon of his CV. There's a slightness to this outing not normally present in his films, his decisions here seemingly safer and less interesting than normal. Lacking in truly memorable moments, Once Upon a Time coasts by on the charm of its cast (including an appealing Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate) and Tarantino's impressively high base-level flair.
