ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD

Stars: Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Margot Robbie, Margaret Qualley, Dakota Fanning, Julia Butters, Damon Herriman, Austin Butler, Emile Hirsch, Scoot McNairy, Luke Perry, Al Pacino, Nicholas Hammond, Spencer Garrett, Mike Moh, Lena Dunham, Damian Lewis, Bruce Dern, Kurt Russell, Timothy Olyphant, Zoë Bell and Michael Madsen.
Writer/Director: Quentin Tarantino

(THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS)

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

When you are a director eight films into a career streak marked by eight cinematic events, your ninth film can be about whatever your heart desires. And Los Angeles in the summer of 1969 - a cool hotbed of hippy counter-culture, groovy tunes, barefooted women, the paradigm-shifting emergence of New Hollywood and a scruffy, psychotic, ticking time bomb of violence called Charles Manson - beats to the obsessive pop-culture pulse of Quentin Tarantino like no film of his ever has.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood hitches a ride through the period with three distinctive characters, each of which speak to key strengths in Tarantino’s writing arsenal. Leonardo DiCaprio plays ageing action tough-guy Rick Dalton, once the heroic lead in a hit NBC series, but whose career has reverted to small-screen baddie bit parts; Dalton’s stunt-double and gofer Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt, at his most charmingly laconic), whose industry standing is also sliding but who takes the downturn in his manly stride; and, a starlet on the rise named Sharon Tate (a luminous Margot Robbie), who has settled into life as Rick’s neighbour in a home on Cielo Drive with hairdresser Jay Sebrig (Emile Hirsch) and her largely-absent boyfriend, Roman Polanski.

Plotting is sparse in Tarantino’s ninth. Rick gets a gig as a moustache-twirling villain in a TV western pilot, and feels the pressure to deliver the performance of his newly-defined career; Tate wanders the backlot before settling into a session of her big-break movie, The Wrecking Crew with Dean Martin, giddy with delight when the audience laughs at her pratfalls; and, Cliff, between running errands for Rick and hanging with his lovable pitbull Brandy, chance encounters a free-spirited teen named Pussycat (Margaret Qualley) who takes him to ‘Charlie’s’ creepy commune compound on an old movie lot called Spahn Ranch.

A fair portion of the movie magic that the auteur brings, and he brings a lot, is in the interaction of his characters and the meaningfulness he imbues in each of them. Not since Jules and Vincent bantered between hits in 1994’s Pulp Fiction has Tarantino so perfectly nailed the fragile ‘macho buddy’ friendship dynamic that he captures in Rick and Cliff. Men like these are the heroes of the director’s formative years (speculation suggests they are based in part upon Burt Reynolds and Hal Needham); actors who have experienced the ebb-and-flow of stardom have often found favour with the director (Travolta, of course, but also Robert Forster, David Carradine and Michael Parks, amongst many).

DiCaprio and Pitt (who deserves Oscar attention for his work here) are like a booze-sodden Butch and Sundance; one, tearing himself apart over his waning influence, the other so inured to pain and suffering (Pitt’s strapping torso a diary of past wounds) he’s numbed to what the future holds for his type of Hollywood hanger-on. In one of Tarantino’s great dialogue scenes, a desperate DiCaprio, in full villainous garb awaiting his first scene, shares a heartbreaking meet-cute with seasoned Tinseltown 8 year-old, Trudi (a perfect Julia Butters); it is one of many great bit parts from actors such as Damian Lewis (a spot-on Steve McQueen), Bruce Dern, Luke Perry, Dakota Fanning and Damon Herriman.     

The inspired casting of Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate represents, above any other character from Tarantino’s oeuvre, the kind of warm, genuine human presence that defines his growth and maturity as a storyteller. He understands that her horrific demise, in confluence with the Viet Nam War and the Watergate revelations, sounded the death knell for America as a nation driven by optimism and hope. Robbie is an extraordinary presence as the ill-fated starlet; Pitt and DiCaprio carry the load, but the film soars on the Australian actress’ impact in only a handful of scenes.

America is not denied its destiny-altering moment of late ‘60s ultra-violence; this is a Tarantino movie, after all, and few filmmakers revel in the visceral power of cinematic bloodshed like QT. But the destiny he envisions is different; more importantly, it’s better. Tarantino’s tendency towards historical revisionism (see, 2009’s Inglorious Basterds) and the hint of a fairy tale outcome right there in the title allows for what is the most emotionally resonant third act in all of his films.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is an experiential odyssey, more interested in the mood and vibe of the summer of love and the characters that populate it than any heavy bummer of a narrative. This is where Tarantino likes to live, clearly as a filmmaker, but also one suspects, within himself – the LA of Matt Helm movies, Playboy Mansion pool parties, the Van Nuys Drive-In, neon-lit fast-food hangouts and whiskey sours before noon. His Hollywood is filled with flawed but real heroes, friendships bonded by hardship, and an innocence that is cherished, not lost. His heart is in this film, for the first time afforded as much input as his fan-boy passion and film culture knowledge.

The result is the year’s best American film.

SWINGING SAFARI

Stars: Radha Mitchell, Guy Pearce, Julian McMahon, Kylie Minogue, Asher Keddie, Jack Thompson, Alice Lanesbury, Georgia Mae, Jacob Elordi and Jeremy Sims.
Writer/Director: Stephan Elliott

Rating: 4/5

People of a certain age (i.e., me) love rose-coloured glassing what a freer, wilder, uninhibited time the 1970s was to grow up an Australian. As Richard Roxburgh’s dulcet tones confess in the opening narration of Stephan Elliott’s raucous ode to that decade’s suburban debauchery, such recollections are probably blown out of realistic proportion. In cinematic terms, that is called ‘artistic licence’, and while it will be the only time ‘artistic’ is used to describe anything about Swinging Safari, that won’t matter a bit to audiences primed for retro fashions, loose morals and capital-B broad comedy.

Playing like a boozy, floozy Antipodean mash-up of TV staple The Wonder Years and Paul Mazursky’s middle class mores romp Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969), Elliott casts the terrific Atticus Robb as his adolescent alter-ego Jeff Marsh, a sensitive teenager whose obsessions know only two forms – movies and girl-next-door Melly (Darcey Wilson), an equally ill-at-ease tweenager barely coping with the madness that unfolds daily in their cul-de-sac existence. Jeff ropes in the neighbourhood kids to make life-threatening Super 8 action films under his ‘Deathcheaters’ banner, while Melly struggles with a Jan Brady-like life of perpetual moodiness and parental indifference.

While Jeff’s ‘backyard Spielberg’ narrative reflects Elliott’s early directorial flare, the bawdy adult exploits in Swinging Safari capture the essence of the filmmaker’s grown-up career output, as a maelstrom of sexual tension sweeps through the neighbourhood in the wake of a failed spouse-swapping incident. That antiquated alpha masculinity that plays as hilariously sexist in today’s climate is captured in Guy Pearce’s bottle-blond, moustachioed man-child Keith, Julian McMahon’s gaudily wealthy leer Rick and Jeremy Sims’ loud-but-decent third wheel Bob; their respective spouses are Kylie Minogue’s neurotic souse Kaye, Radha Mitchell’s sexed-up swinger Jo and Asher Keddie’s tightly-wound, image-conscious Gale.

Every one of the game stars plays to the back row with performances that demand the kind of largeness needed to dominate their director’s frantic pacing (courtesy of ace editor Sue Blainey) and raucous soundscape. Elliott’s work has favoured settings and circumstance rich in generally distasteful, occasionally funny comedy and characterisations as big as the Outback often, not coincidentally, filmed in the Outback (The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert, 1994; Welcome to Woop Woop, 1997; A Few Best Men, 2011).

The red dust of Australia’s centre is replaced by the golden sands of Nobby Beach and shimmering bitumen of Wyong Place in Swinging Safari, but perhaps more than ever the mise-en-scène is the true star of a Stephen Elliott film. Every frame is filled with lovingly detailed recollections of the plastic period that will instantly engender that warm nostalgic glow in those lucky enough to have lived it. The fashions are the most obvious call back, but everything from Kentucky Fried Chicken TVCs, the entire K-Tel catalogue, moon chairs, Valiant chargers and cheese fondue sets are referenced. Colin Gibson’s production design, Jodie Whetter’s art direction and Justine Dunn’s set direction bring Elliott’s memories to vivid life in what must have been a dream gig; Oscar winner Lizzy Gardner’s costuming is, expectedly, a treat.

Even more resonant are the behavioural and social beats that Elliott skewers; parenting techniques and beach etiquette that seemed entirely appropriate in the day yet are now mined for instant hilarity. While some of his other pics have exhibited an occasionally bitter streak, Elliott seems to hold true affection for this time and place; despite its high-pitched shrillness, Swinging Safari is his warmest, funniest and most likable film since …Priscilla.

THE AGE OF ADALINE

Stars: Blake Lively, Michiel Huisman, Harrison Ford, Ellen Burstyn, Kathy Baker, Amanda Crew and Anthony Ingruber.
Writer: J. Miles Goodloe and Salvador Paskowitz.
Director: Lee Toland Krieger.

Rating: 4/5

After his acid-tongued, ultra-contemporary take on burdened romance in 2012’s Celeste and Jesse Forever, director Lee Toland Krieger embraces a far more fantastical and glowingly cinematic incantation of fateful love with his follow-up, The Age of Adaline.

Boldly departing from her small-screen persona in her first film-carrying lead role, Blake Lively plays Adaline Bowman, a well-to-do turn-of-the-century 29 year-old whose life appears cut short when her car plunges into river waters turned freezing by a freak North Californian snowfall. Taking its mystical cue from the likes of Back to the Future and The Natural, a bolt of lightning strikes her over-turned vehicle and affords Adaline the apparent virtue of eternal youth.

A soothing voice-over smartly imbues the premise with credible fantasy and a lovingly cinematic extended montage (recalling the weepy opening from Pixar’s Up) leads to the modern day, where the still 29 year-old Adaline lives a work-focussed life in a very photogenic San Francisco. After eight decades, she no longer indulges in notions of romance; her blessing has become a curse, her life spent alone, bar the companionship of her now aged daughter, Flemming (Ellen Burstyn). But Adaline’s existential defences are worn down by the persistent romancing of rich philanthropist, Ellis Jones (Michiel Huisman, very charming), who whisks his dream girl off to a family get-together on their lush estate.

The second-act kicker brings added emotional depth, when Ellis’ father William lays eyes upon Adaline and both are gripped by overwhelming memories of the soulful romance they shared 50-odd years hence. As William, Harrison Ford emerges as Krieger's trump card; the moment when they reconnect, and William’s intellectualism is confronted by a torrent of emotions, represents some of Ford’s best ever frames of film. It is a raw, vulnerable performance that ensures the film soars and draws fresh reserves out of Lively (the definition of 'Supporting Actor', surely); their scenes together are deeply moving, transcending any ‘fantasy genre’ trappings. (Kudos, too, to the casting department for finding Anthony Ingruder, whose physical and vocal rendering of a twenty-something Ford in flashback is uncanny).

Krieger’s vivid, melancholic melodrama emerges as a major work in the tough-to-pull-off ‘romantic fantasy’ genre subset. The cult fan base that fondly recall Jeannot Szwarc’s Somewhere in Time, the Christopher Reeve/Jane Seymour weepie from 1980 in which self-hypnosis brings together lovers born 100 years apart, will adore the narrative boldness that Krieger employs and the visual richness that DOP David Lanzenberg paints with to sell the premise. Nor will they bat a tear-sodden eyelid at the multi-generational leaps in logic that scriptwriters J. Miles Goodloe and Salvador Paskowitz slyly ask of their audience.

Revelling in the role that will come to define her transition from tabloid starlet to bigscreen A-lister, Lively exhibits maturity beyond her years and recalls the incandescent bigscreen presence of the likes of Jessica Lange, Eva Marie Saint or Françoise Dorléac. The Oscar-worthy work of Australian costumer Angus Strathie (Moulin Rouge, Catwoman) never overwhelms the star, although it has every right to. Fittingly, all below-the-line department heads - Claudia Pare’s production design; Martina Javorova’s art direction; Shannon Gottlieb’s set decoration - on The Age of Adaline bring their A-game.