Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (5/5 Stars)

Whenever some crazy person does some horrible thing in the world, deranged manifestos from the extremes of society are festooned upon us by a media exploiting our collective morbid curiosity. The dead are victimized twice. First they are robbed of their live, then their lives are forever connected and largely overshadowed by the attention spent on the perpetrators. Sharon Tate is a perfect example. This utterly blameless young woman was horrifically murdered by the Manson cult. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood uses this real event from 1969 Hollywood as its reason for being. However, upon exiting the theater, you may notice that during the course of the movie, you have learned far more about Sharon Tate then Charles Manson. Writer/Director Quentin Tarantino to his great credit has flipped the murders on their head. He showers attention on the victims and treats the perpetrator dismissively. This is too my great relief. I was very worried coming into this movie about what Tarantino would do with the material given that Roman Polanski was still alive. Coming out of the movie theater, I can marvel at the deft way Tarantino handled it all.

Reappearing in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood from Inglorious Basterds and Django Unchained are Leonardo Dicaprio and Brad Pitt respectively. Tarantino writes them some tailor-made roles. Leonardo Dicarprio plays Rick Dalton, former star of Bounty Law, on the downward trajectory of his show business career (in an early scene, he gets presented the ‘opportunity’ to move to Italy and star in westerns over there). Brad Pitt plays Rick Dalton’s former stunt double, Cliff Booth. Cliff may or may not have been involved in the tragic death of his wife in the style of Natalie Wood’s mysterious fate. Nobody can prove whether or not Cliff did what and Tarantino makes it purposefully ambiguous. Enough people think Cliff might have to the point where he no longer is a working man (he also got into a fist fight with Bruce Lee). He spends his days doing odd jobs for Rick and feeding his bulldog.

Rick Dalton and Cliff Booth are completely fictional. It is a testament to the movie that we become highly invested in them while waiting for the real occurrences to occur in the last half hour of an almost three hour movie. It must be noted that Brad Pitt at 55 years old still has a six-pack of abs. It’s absurd. While Leo plays worn and tragic, a type of role he has become very good at.

As a very present character is Hollywood itself. The 1969 production value, the neon details, the cars, the Playboy mansion, the year round sun. Most of all, that feel of innocence before those dirty hippies ruined the party and gave the sixties their hangover.

I very much don’t want to ruin this movie for you. If you don’t know anything about it, I think you should do some historical homework and then listen to nothing else. You should know something about the Manson murdes. Read the Wikipedia article. Then watch this movie. You will not be disappointed.

Would you believe me if I told you that this is Tarantino least vulgar and arguably least violent movie. It is on the same violence level of pre-Kill Bill. As far as cursing is concerning, not that much at all really. It’s kind of refreshing. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is top-tier Tarantino. Put it up there with Pulp Fiction and Django Unchained. Highly recommended.

Night Moves (3/5 Stars)

I would have a hard time explaining why I go to Kelly Reichartdt movies. There is a reason you can only see them in New York City (a few select others) and then maybe only in one theater. They are tiny movies. The pace is slow. The plot bare-boned. The direction is simplistic. This may remind you of other low budget auteurs. Perhaps the dudes in the French Wave, or Ingrid Bergman, or an early David Lynch film. But I hate those other guys. Why did I pay a ticket to see Kelly Reichardt?

I think it might be because Kelly Reichardt lacks pretension. There is very little that is abstract about her movies. Her movies are small not because they are metaphors about larger things. They are small because the subjects are small and Kelly is interested in small things and that’s it. Her best movie, Wendy and Lucy, is about a woman and a dog that takes place over a couple of days as her car breaks down and she tries to get it fixed. The remarkable thing about it is the combination of how specific it is about its subject combined with how little it seems the movie wants you to feel a specific emotion toward the subject. Kelly Reichardt seems to be a competent enough director to make bigger movies that have more to say but her scope stays restrained and her purpose ambiguous to the point where her art achieves a sort of rarefied quality to it. These are serious dramas, sometimes about life and death issues, but they are handled in the complete opposite of a heavy-handed manner.  I always feel especially comfortable watching a Kelly Reichardt film.

“Night Moves,” concerns the simple plans of three environmental terrorists in Oregon, played by Jesse Eisenberg, Dakota Fanning, and Peter Sarsgaard. Jesse and Dakota live on separate organic farms. Peter is a contact Jesse has that used to be a marine and lives in the woods. He can make a bomb that will blow up a little dam. It won’t really matter because there are 10 other dams on the river but it seems to them that something must be done and blowing up this little dam may just get people talking about I don’t know taking down the others. The movie concerns itself the most with Jesse Eisenberg who probably at the beginning thinks he is in charge of this operation. But little by little his idea of being in charge becomes more and more marginalized to the point he seems to be acting randomly by the end. And maybe the point is that this would be world changer was just acting randomly the entire time, lashing out more in chaotic frustration as opposed to purposeful planning. I don’t know. Kelly refuses to lecture me. I won’t give away what exactly happens other than to say that true to form Kelly has the bomb explode offscreen midway through and throws a rather unexpected wrench into the ending.

Jesse Eisenberg’s performance is at once granularly specific and mostly opaque. It’s not that he doesn’t have feelings and thoughts. He just has nobody to speak about them with. More ambiguous is the characters of Dakota Fanning and Peter Sarsgaard. Their most dramatic moments are kept offscreen for the benefit of profoundly confusing Jesse’s idea of what was his life’s narrative. At one point he stands in the woods staring at his trembling hands. Boy, wouldn’t you like to know what he is thinking.

What was it all about? Is this really how these terrible things happen?