'ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD'..........WHERE DOES QT GO FROM HERE?

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (2019)   Quentin Tarantino lives with a terrifying spectre..........

          .......the spectre of himself as an aging director, still cranking out movies that are hopelessly out-of-date, antiquated in technique and borderline unwatchable........

                 As an example, he said he didn't want to end up pushing 70, directing a film like Hitchcock's woeful, arthritic  "Topaz"......

                  So QT has threatened early retirement, considering one last film before bowing out......

                  Could that happen?  Entirely possible. We can't picture a lengthier career for a director who's primary source of inspiration comes from all the pulp 'n junk movies he devoured while clerking in a video store.........

                    But what a career he's had so far.........applying his brilliant talents for screenwriting, character creation, dialogue, storytelling mastery and pure cinema visuals.......to create gloriously exaggerated versions of  every genre he's ever loved......

                    He's our premier fantasist, untouched by real life or real experience........he might as well have prefaced all his films with ..."Once Upon A Time in.....", since he traffics in fairy tales for adults.........(and as he did in "Inglorious Basterds", he's more than willing to bend  history to his will in order to insure a more satisfying  slam-bang ending.

                    And you can't help wondering where goes he after "Once Upon A Time In Hollywood"......This is the movie where  he directly draws from his original wellspring of inspiration.........the films he already lovingly paid homage to in all his previous movies......

                   They're all in here, swirling around in a meticulous re-creation of late 1960's Hollywood........black-and-white Network westerns, the brutal Darwinian lives of insecure actors and their their hanger-on compadres........and the rise of European junk cinema (spaghetti westerns, Bond knock-offs)that offered a second chance for American pretty-boy, chiseled-chin actors........(who knew their days were numbered with the ascendancy of gifted, down-to-earth performers like Dustin Hoffman and Gene Hackman)

                     And lurking everywhere on the sun-drenched Los Angeles streets, like vultures waiting to strike......Charlie Manson's army of leggy young girls.........(perfectly embodied by Dakota Fanning's brief but memorable turn as Squeaky Fromme.........in Tarantino's long gallery of repulsive villains, Fanning earns her place as one of the scariest.....)

                     The film becomes Tarantino's ultimate vaudeville show, headlined by its two stars, Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt..........and an endless list of actors who show up to to duplicate the celebs of 1969, most prominently Margot Robbie as the doomed starlet Sharon Tate......

                     Ooops, did we way doomed?   In a Tarantino film? Uh.......maybe. Maybe not.

                     If Tarantino does make yet another film that plunders the long lost genres he so adores, we're guessing it won't go well for him with critics and crowds who worship him........his well-worn bag of cinematic tricks may end up appearing as empty, boring and hollow as.....as "Topaz".

                     But don't let that idea stop you from diving head first into this film..... ."Once Upon A Time In Hollywood" delivers one of the most funny, most nostalgic, most creepy.......and of course the most outrageously violent cinematic feasts of this or any other year. 4 stars  (****)