Review: Once Upon A Time In Hollywood

Image courtesy of Columbia Pictures.

In one of the more meaningful needle drops in Quentin Tarantino's filmography, Mick Jagger sings "baby, baby, baby you're out of time" during a transitional sequence in "Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood" in which the film's two stars - aging TV cowboy Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his loyal stuntman and pal Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) - return from a trip overseas that allowed Rick to branch out into Italian spaghetti westerns after his Hollywood career began to take a nosedive. Meanwhile, a very pregnant Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) goes about the business of preparing for an evening with some friends.

In the case of the latter character, who was brutally murdered by members of the Manson family on Aug. 8, 1969, the song could be seen as a little on the nose. In regard to the other two characters, the use of The Rolling Stones' song is all part of a thematic melancholy that presides over the film, which is both the most emotionally resonant picture in Tarantino's oeuvre since "Jackie Brown" and the first Tarantino picture since that 1997 classic that could be described as a "hangout movie."

There have been numerous films that have explored how the late 1960s were the years that began to change it all, from the music and movie industries to American culture at large, but Tarantino's movie is one that focuses on the folks who were left behind and, as Jagger would tell it, "out of time."

As the film opens, Rick's former glory years as a TV cowboy on a show known as "Bounty Law" are in the rearview mirror, and he has resorted to playing villains on episodes of other shows, often forgetting his lines and spending the evenings getting drunk. An agent played by Al Pacino warns him that as audiences watch him get beat up on TV every week as a different villain, it'll become harder for him to make a case to the studios that he's still leading man material. Hence, the suggestion - one to which Rick doesn't take kindly - that he should fly to Rome to work on spaghetti westerns.

On the other hand, Cliff - whom we are told falls somewhere in the spectrum between assistant and wife to Rick - appears to just be going with the flow. His career has also stalled, although he still acts as Rick's stunt double. Pitt's performance is deceptively rich - Cliff is rather laconic, so the actor's relatively easygoing portrayal might occasionally be outshined by DiCaprio's more showy - and also excellent - work as the melodramatic Rick. But Pitt's measured work here deserves some recognition.

Much of what we know about the enigmatic Cliff comes from rumors spread by others - he was a war hero, but managed to avoid prison after apparently killing his wife. Although there's a sense of darkness revolving around Pitt's character, there's also a lot of room for humor, especially during a sequence in which he finds himself in a scuffle with a cocky Bruce Lee (Mike Moh).

Cliff is also involved in two of the film's most intense set pieces, both involving the Manson family. Although the film's finale involves some bloody violence, an earlier scene during which Cliff finds himself at the Spahn ranch, where Bruce Dern gives an amusingly cranky turn as George Spahn, is the more unnerving. Cliff has been led to the ranch by a hitchhiking young woman who he often spots on the side of the road, and he appears to be unsettled upon meeting the rest of the family at the ranch. While the film's first half is often buoyantly full of life, the encounters with the Manson family cast a gloomy and eerie pall over the second half.

But the picture's eventual darkness can't quite overshadow the joyfulness of Tarantino's portrayal of 1969 Los Angeles, from the lovingly recreated and heavily detail-oriented scenes in which Cliff zips down Sunset and Hollywood boulevards - the iconic El Coyote and Peaches record store are among the sites brought back to life - to the neon signs advertising hotels, recording studios and movie theaters that light up the night. Much like Jacques Demy's sadly forgotten 1969 film "Model Shop," Tarantino's film gets a lot of mileage - excuse the pun - out of driving sequences around Los Angeles, many of which are from the vantage point of a backseat driver.

And speaking of movie theaters, the scene that is perhaps the film's best involves Tate, played with a glow of pure joy by Robbie, finagling her way into a free movie screening of "The Wrecking Crew," one in the Matt Helm (played by Dean Martin) spy spoof series in which Tate portrayed the klutzy sidekick. There's something moving about seeing the actress view the real-life Tate on screen and feel buoyed when the audience laughs at her onscreen hijinks. The scene involves little dialogue from Robbie, but her work during this sequence is among the picture's acting highlights.

There's been somewhat of a brouhaha about Robbie's minuscule amount of dialogue in the film, but I'd humbly submit that these arguments have sort of missed the point about her portrayal. The film doesn't aim to do a deep dive into Tate, but rather portray her as a symbol - or sacrifice - involved in an incident that some - Joan Didion included - viewed as the moment when the pulse of the late 1960s movement was lost.

The most information we get about Tate from others is when Steve McQueen (Damian Lewis) relays information at a party about her relationship with Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha) and love affair-turned friendship with Hollywood hair stylist Jay Sebring (Emile Hirsch), another Manson family victim, all the while alerting us to the fact that McQueen himself once had a thing for her. His comment that he never stood a chance is, interestingly enough, mirrored by a similar comment by Rick later in the film regarding a role he lost to McQueen.

Those familiar with Tarantino's past decade of work - most notably, "Inglorious Basterds" and "Django Unchained" - will recall the director's penchant for revisionist history with a bent toward justice, and suffice it to say that the events of Aug. 8, 1969 in his film diverge, well, a bit from the historical record. The finale is violently jolting, although it's followed by a moving coda involving a camera angle from up above.

During the one scene in which the audience gets the Manson family's point of view, four characters sit in a car at the bottom of Cielo Drive to discuss their planned night of mayhem. One Manson family member notes that as children they grew up watching violence and murder on TV, so it's fitting that by attacking movie stars and Hollywood figures they are "killing the people who taught us to kill."

This terrifying concept is only the most extreme example of the picture's overall view that the events of that night were the beginning of the end of the Peace and Love Generation, paving the way for the cynical comedown of the 1970s. But the juxtaposition of the Mansons and the film's aging Hollywood stars provides for an emotionally resonant exploration of one generation pushing the other out of the way into an uncertain future. "Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood," a title that only appears onscreen at the film's end for good reason, is a deeply satisfying elegy about the pain and acceptance that comes with realizing that one's time is up.

Review: Wild Rose

Image courtesy of Neon

"May all your heartbreaks be songs, and may all your songs be hits," a woman tells Rose-Lynn Harlan (Jessie Buckley), an ex-con with aspirations to be a country music star in Nashville. Yes, Rose-Lynn's story is the cliched stuff that has made up the dreams of stardom in more films than I can count - in the past year alone. But what makes the film unique is the fact that our heroine is a Scottish lass with a thick brogue, and what makes her story compelling is that she is trying to balance her dreams with taking care of two young children whom she hasn't seen for a year while she was in prison.

It also helps that Buckley has great presence. She convincingly gives a performance that depicts a hot mess of an individual who has never quite grown up, but eventually learns that doing so isn't so bad. Julie Walters is also memorable as Marion, Rose-Lynn's mother, who is watchfully protective of her two grandchildren and willing to give healthy doses of tough love to her often-astray daughter.

As Rose-Lynn departs the prison, where she's spent a year for unwittingly helping to transport a package of heroin, a fellow inmate tells her that she'll be "the next Dolly Parton." Something along those lines is what Rose-Lynn hopes to accomplish.

But upon her arrival back in the free world, she must tend to her young son and quiet daughter, who clearly feel uncomfortable around her, and work as a house cleaner for an almost unbelievably munificent woman named Susannah (Sophie Okonedo), whose sole existence appears to revolve around ensuring that Rose-Lynn succeeds after discovering her terrific voice and passion for country music.

Thankfully, "Wild Rose" isn't slavish to the cliches of this genre - which has seen a number of entries as of late, including the fourth version of "A Star is Born" and "Teen Spirit," both good by the way - and skips the whole rise and fall element that has become customary to music-based dramas. In Rose-Lynn's case, there's a whole lot more falling than rising, although the film's somewhat tidy ending seeks to fix that.

Buckley makes an impressive breakthrough performance. She sings the songs in "Wild Rose," and has a pretty fabulous voice. She also gives a convincing performance as a reckless individual who learns to become a responsible one. It's also somewhat refreshing that her character is one who is occasionally difficult to root for - while we hope she achieves her goal, she's also pretty selfish along the way.  While Rose-Lynn isn't always likable, she is compelling and human.

The film's final section - before that tidy ending back in Glasgow - involves a trip to Nashville, during which Rose-Lynn attempts to determine if life as a country music star is one that she actually wants to pursue. A hotel clerk makes a comment about the length of her stay, and it's true that the Nashville scenes are a little slight, considering the buildup to Rose-Lynn arriving there. That being said, while "Wild Rose" often feels like a variation of a familiar tune, the picture's setting and lead performance give it a unique spin that makes it well worth one's time.

Review: Crawl

Image courtesy of Paramount Pictures.

Alexandre Aja's "Crawl" seeks to answer a time honored question: Why does anyone live in Florida? Like, seriously. This relatively short and often bloody horror movie features a young woman and her father - and anyone unlucky enough to attempt to try to help them - tormented by massive, nasty alligators that have overtaken their house during an enormous storm most likely brought on by global warming.

We get one of those obligatory scene setters in which Haley (Kaya Scodelario), a college swimmer, doesn't give it her all during a swim team practice, and we get a flashback of her father, Dave (Barry Pepper), telling her as a young girl that she's an "apex predator," although I'm not sure that's normally something you'd want to call your daughter, and that she's not a quitter. Naturally, as I'm sure you'll be shocked to learn, this comes into play once they're stuck in a home filled with rising water and hungry gators.

Haley and Dave are seemingly not talking as the film opens for reasons never quite divulged, although it likely has something to do with his split from Haley's mother. Haley's sister calls to ask her to check on her father, who has made the foolish decision to visit the family's old property located on the coast as a major storm system descends on the area, to ensure he's safe. Soon after Haley - and her pup - arrive at the scene, she's being attacked by one of the reptiles in the basement. She finds her injured father and the two spend the rest of the movie attempting to not become gator snacks.

If the plot sounds thin and the characters' decisions often silly to the point of a head shake, it's because they are. However, the impressive set pieces and obvious skill that went into the making of the film, much of which involves people making their way through rooms full of water and clogged with debris, almost make up for how silly the entire endeavor is.

Aja has talent as a director - his breakout film, "High Tension," was deeply unsettling and somewhat provocative, his "Piranha" remake was deliriously gory and "Horns" was, well... it was something - and this is obviously on display here. Do I wish that he'd apply those skills to a horror movie that digs a little deeper, rather than a by-the-numbers genre exercise? Yes, of course. But as far as entries into the animals-gone-wild genre go, you could do much worse than "Crawl."

Review: Echo In The Canyon

Image courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment.

Is "Echo in the Canyon" mostly just a needle-drop documentary that plays iconic tunes as background music to interviews with the legendary musicians responsible for them? Is it safe to say that we don't learn anything new - other than that Stephen Stills and Mickey Dolenz once held a nudist party - about its subject matter? Is the entire film mostly a vehicle for Jakob Dylan, son of Bob and former lead singer for The Wallflowers, who recently recorded an album filled with the songs in the film?

The answer to all of these questions is "yes," and yet the film, directed by Andrew Slater, is still a pleasure. The film follows the mid- to late-1960s scene in Los Angeles's Laurel Canyon, where a ton of great musicians moved and inspired each other to write some of their best music.

At various points, the scene was inhabited by Stills, Graham Nash, the members of the Mamas and the Papas, Jackson Browne, Neil Young, The Byrds, Brian Wilson and other members of the Beach Boys and numerous others. In "Echo in the Canyon," Dylan - acting as tour guide - interviews some of those musicians as well as others inspired by their music - for example, Tom Petty, and some other musicians from Jakob Dylan's era - Beck and Fiona Apple, among others - take part in a concert that is interspersed throughout the picture in which they perform the songs.

A curious - and interesting - inclusion in the film is footage from Jacques Demy's "Model Shop," a mostly forgotten 1969 film that was the French director's only movie in English. The film features some of the best footage of Los Angeles at that time, as its protagonist spends a significant amount of time behind the wheel in the movie making his way through Los Angeles's major throughways and winding hills.  The filmmakers note that Demy's picture was somewhat of an inspiration for this documentary in that it did a good job of capturing a moment in that city's history. It's a film well worth seeking out.

While none of the interviews are particularly enlightening - much of this history has been revealed elsewhere - it's nonetheless enjoyable. Ringo Starr tells a funny story or two, Roger McGuinn makes an attempt at being diplomatic when discussing past band members, David Crosby less so and Michelle Phillips is surprisingly open about her exploits with other band members.

And, of course, there's the music. Dylan and his pals do some decent renditions, but the use of the actual music - especially The Byrds' "Goin' Back" and Buffalo Springfield's gorgeous "Expecting to Fly" - is the film's greatest treat. Many of these songs are extremely cinematic - think "California Dreamin'" or Buffalo Springfield's music - and while most of them have been used to death in previous films, there's still a thrill seeing images set to these tunes.

So, while "Echo in the Canyon" doesn't tell us anything we didn't likely already know, it's still well worth catching up with these great musicians - many of whom are well into old age - and hearing them talk about one of the greatest eras for rock 'n roll music and filmmaking in this nation's history. "Echo in the Canyon" goes back to the well - but this material is so rich that it remains interesting nevertheless.

Review: The Last Black Man In San Francisco

Image courtesy of A24.

To be able to hate a city, you have to love it first. That's the sentiment of the appropriately named Jimmie Fails (played by, appropriately, an actor named Jimmie Fails), one of the two lead characters in Joe Talbot's lovely and melancholic debut, "The Last Black Man in San Francisco."

While I can't agree 100 percent with Jimmie - there have been some cities I haven't liked, and it wasn't because I loved them first - I can understand where he's coming from. If you've lived somewhere for a long time, you may grow to be frustrated with its faults, but often that feeling of resentment stems from a love for a place and one's wanting it to be better.

The film is both a love letter to the titular city and a poignant tale of a friendship. Jimmie's best pal is Montgomery (Jonathan Majors), a sensitive man who writes plays that are seemingly never produced and makes impressive drawings on a note pad. Montgomery lives with his blind grandfather (Danny Glover), and Jimmie - who we learn is somewhat estranged from his scheming father and absent mother and once lived in a group home - crashes on Montgomery's floor.

Much of Jimmie's time and headspace is devoted to sprucing up a gorgeous house in a gentrified section of San Francisco. Amusingly, the house belongs to an older white couple, who appear alarmed every time he comes around to paint the house or make other fixes, considering that he doesn't live there. The wife even throws fruit at him to try to make him go away, but he's undeterred.

According to Jimmie, his grandfather built the house in the 1940s, but his family eventually lost it. After the neighborhood gentrified, the property was worth $4 million, which Jimmie cannot afford. So, he cares for the place, dreaming that he can one day own it himself. One day, he gets a break after the couple living in the house moves out, leaving it vacant. He and Montgomery move in as squatters.

One of the film's finest elements is how it observes the people of San Francisco. The picture's opening shot is a doozy - Jimmie and Montgomery share a skateboard, riding down the city's hilly streets to the house. On their way, they glide through neighborhoods of varying socioeconomic status, all the while a corner preacher whom they often watch while waiting for the bus gives a sermon about the black community's place in a city that is slowly pushing lower class people out.

The entire film has an observant nature. There's an amusing scene in which Jimmie waits for a bus. A completely naked older man sits down at the bus stop and makes conversation. In another film, the scene would be played for maximum laughs, but Jimmie shrugs it off as just another day in San Francisco.

There's also an ongoing fascination with a group of young black men who stand on the corner near Montgomery's grandfather's house and, essentially, talk shit. Their constant chatter - which involves dissing one another, making fun of passersby or just making aimless conversation - is used humorously - however, we later learn that Jimmie was once friends with one of them, and a tragedy late in the film leads to a poignant scene in which Jimmie notes that you can't define any person by just one thing.

This is a film that is light on story, but heavy on mood, place and character - and as such, it works very well. The film's gorgeous photography and use of music helps to heighten the ambience, and the various neighborhoods of San Francisco are almost characters themselves. It also helps that Fails and Majors give strong leading performances. Their friendship strikes a curious balance - Jimmie is headstrong and determined, while Montgomery is quirky and shy - and is the heart of the film.

The movie is basically composed of two love stories - neither of which are romantic. One involves Jimmie's love for his best friend, while the other revolves around Jimmie's love for the house - an object that he can never truly have. As a story about longtime residents of a city being shoved out by gentrification - a phenomenon I've witnessed in numerous cities - "The Last Black Man in San Francisco" acts as a dirge, albeit one that made me laugh frequently. This film was a bit hit at Sundance this year, and it's easy to see why. Talbot's debut film is one to seek out.

Review: Midsommar

Image courtesy of A24.

Ari Aster follows up his acclaimed debut "Hereditary" - a Bergman/Cassavetes-esque tale of a family falling apart disguised as a haunted house movie - with an ambitious, but slightly overlong, sophomore horror tale about a group of clueless Americans who get lured in by a cult, although the movie is clearly more interested in the breakup story at its center.

For starters, "Midsommar" doesn't quite live up Aster's debut - it's often quite good, and while never exactly scary, the fact that its horrors all play out in the glaring daylight makes it deeply unsettling. Plus, it's very well acted, is filled with strong camerawork and features a few memorable set pieces. It also drags slightly in sections, and while specific relationships between the characters are well explored, some of the other characters are underdeveloped.

Much like "Hereditary," Aster's latest story is centered around a horrific tragedy. In the opening moments, Dani (Florence Pugh) has received an email from her bipolar sister that appears to hint at a suicide attempt, but also says that she plans to take their parents along with her. Dani is crushed after the worst thing that could happen does, and she falls to pieces. Her boyfriend, Christian (Jack Reynor), is aloof and as we find out during a conversation with several of his pals, he was on the verge of dumping Dani, but now sticks with her out of guilt due to her family tragedy. This doesn't mean, however, that he's any more emotionally available. Their troubled relationship is the heart of the film.

At a party some months later, Dani is surprised to learn that Christian is planning on taking a trip to Sweden with his friends Josh (William Jackson Harper), party boy Mark (Will Poulter) and a Swede named Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren), who has invited them to attend a ceremony being carried out in his isolated village. Pelle's people are known as the Harga, and every 90 years they take part in a ceremony that Christian and his friends expect to include psychedelic drugs and folkloric rituals, but they're unaware that the festival's events go much further than that.

Aster's film, much like his previous one, is seemingly influenced by European cinema of the 1960s and 1970s - Tarkovsky and Bergman, for example - but it also clearly pays homage to the 1973 horror classic "The Wicker Man." For those familiar with that picture, you'll remember that it doesn't turn out too well for the outsider who finds himself in the middle of a pagan ritual.

At two hours and 20 minutes, "Midsommar" is a slow burn. The first quarter of the picture involves Dani's tragedy and is set amid a snowy backdrop, while the remaining three-quarters of the film are set against the disarmingly bright Swedish backdrop of Pelle's bucolic Swedish village (the film, however, was shot in Hungary). From the start, something about the place seems off. Villagers are playing flutes and other instruments, everyone is friendly to a fault and from the moment they arrive, the Americans are given a mind-altering drug that results in a bad reaction for Dani.

The scene starts to become intense as the visitors make some faux pas that upset the Harga - Mark urinates on an ancestral tree and Josh takes pictures of an ancient text after being warned against doing so - while a pair of Brits who are guests of another young Swede want to leave after several days there and Christian finds himself the object of attention from a young village woman, who leaves pubic hairs in his food and a ritualistic object under his bed.

The picture's first horrific moment - and, frankly, it's the film's most gruesome set piece - occurs about an hour into the movie. Dani, Christian and his friends witness a ceremony that leaves them deeply unnerved and wanting to leave, prompting Pelle to try to soothe them and convince them to stay.

Other reviews have noted that all hell breaks loose in the film's final 20 minutes - which involve Dani taking part in a competition to be the May Queen, a hilariously lurid sex scene involving Christian and a bunch of Harga women and the ceremony's final brutal ritual. For me, the scene an hour into the movie was the most difficult to stomach, although the final ceremony in the film contains a major twist and the film's final shot is one that's going to prompt a fair amount of debate.

While "Midsommar" isn't quite on par with "Hereditary," it's still a solid folkloric horror picture with a solid cast - Pugh especially - and a fair amount of ambition. The movie is most intriguing when it explores how people deal with tragedy by throwing themselves into something new, even if it's reckless, and the picture's other most interesting component is its breakup story. The combination of his first two films makes Aster one of the most unique filmmakers - along with Jordan Peele - among the current crop of horror movie directors. "Midsommar" requires some patience, but it ultimately pays off.