Quartile rating: 7/10 · 2 ratings
Los Angeles, 1969. TV star Rick Dalton, a struggling actor specializing in westerns, and stuntman Cliff Booth, his best friend, try to survive in a constantly changing movie industry. Dalton is the neighbor of the young and promising actress and model Sharon Tate, who has just married the prestigious Polish director Roman Polanski…
Tarantino's love letter to late-1960s Hollywood is a marvel of atmosphere and performance — DiCaprio and Pitt deliver career-best work, and the film's sun-drenched, meticulous recreation of LA's golden era is cinematographically stunning. Its novelty is undeniable: the languid, digressive structure and revisionist historical fantasy are distinctly Tarantino's voice at its most personal and indulgent. The plot, however, is deliberately thin — more a mood piece than a story — which will frustrate viewers expecting conventional narrative drive. The ending delivers a cathartic, darkly comic reversal of history that works emotionally but risks feeling abrupt and slightly unearned in its tonal pivot, keeping it from a top score.