Film Review – Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

After the claustrophobic experience of 2015’s “The Hateful Eight,” writer/director Quentin Tarantino returns to the open air with “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” It’s a valentine to a time and a place, taking viewers back to Los Angeles in 1969, where free love was taking shape and the old ways of the studio system were coming to an end, while on Cielo Drive, a young woman named Sharon Tate was about to be murdered by the Manson Family. It’s a cocktail of nostalgia and unrest Tarantino loves sip until his lips bleed, going hog wild with his latest endeavor, which is a picture of extraordinary detail and run time, as the helmer isn’t content to merely recreate 1969, he wants to live there once again. Tarantino’s vision remains as potent as ever in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” but his unwillingness to judiciously edit his footage also returns, creating a feature that’s undeniable fun, but also unnecessarily lengthy, playing up bad habits that’ve been plaguing him since 2012’s “Django Unchained.” Read the rest at Blu-ray.com