Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I had the opportunity to see Quentin Tarrantino's new film "Once Upon A Time In Hollywood" on the first day it played at the American Film Institute Theater. The title of the movie recollects two earlier "once upon a times", particularly "Once upon a Time in the West" and also "Once Upon A Time in America", a lengthy gangster flick. The former film, a spaghetti western has definite echoes in Tarrantino's movie, in which the two main characters travel to Italy for six months to make four spaghetti westerns in an attempt to prolong their careers. The two primary characters are an actor and his friend and stuntman. They have appeared together since the 1950s in a television western and are struggling in the late Hollywood of the 1960s. The actor is a macho, cigarette-smoking bad guy while his stuntman is tough, deceptively quiet, and suspected many years earlier of killing his wife. The film includes a large cast and many subplots. It captures a great deal of Hollywood glitz, glitter, and superficiality. Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski are among the many Hollywood stars with prominent roles in the film. The movie takes a long, slow look at Hollywood in the late 1960s. There is a feeling of nostalgia but also a feeling of shallowness. Given its time setting, the Hollywood scene gets intertwined with the Manson cult. A highly effective scene in the movie takes place at the Spahn Ranch which Manson and his followers called home. It is appropriately eerie and disconcerting. The Manson murders also are made the basis for the fictionalized, violent, troubled climax of the film. The film is well acted with many effective scenes and offers much to think about. It is not Tarrantino's best movie, but it is well worth seeing. Robin Friedman