Page 42 Daily Mail, Friday, August 16, 2019
it’s friday! film
Hooray for
by
Brian
Viner
Once Upon A Time... In Hollywood (18)
Verdict: A real trip ★★★★★Inhisfinestmovie
sincePulpFiction,
Tarantinogivesus
afull-throttletour
ofTinseltownyou
willneverforget
BAZBAMIGBOYEISAWAY
Dora And The Lost City Of Gold (PG)
Verdict: Wacky children’s film ★★★✩✩animated tV series dora the explorer is the
springboard for this quirky children’s adventure
— live action, except for a couple of computer-
generated animals and a sequence in which the
characters fleetingly revert to cartoons.
dora is the only daughter of explorers (eva
Longoria and michael Pena) who live happily
in the idyllic South american rainforest — at
least, until the momentous day when dora is
despatched to live with her aunt, uncle and cousin
in the U.S. and must learn to cope with the chal-
lenges of an american high school, a very differ-
ent kind of jungle.
a sort of Crocodile dundee for kids begins
to unfold, only for dora and her new friends
to return to the rainforest in search of the mystical
city of Parapata — and her parents, who have
gone missing. at this point, the film becomes
more of an indiana Jones for kids, but there’s lotsof daft, knockabout comedy, too, much of it
downright pantomime-like, with dora herself
(the likeable isabela moner) as the panto’s
guileless, relentlessly cheerful principal boy who
occasionally breaks into song.
Older children might consider it beneath them,
but it’s a safe option for the under-tens — and,
actually, i quite enjoyed it myself. the British
director is James Bobin, whose impressive credits
include the muppets, muppets most Wanted and,
before that, da ali G Show.now, Quentin tarantino has
used that infamous event, and
its traumatising effect on the
movie community, as the back-
drop to Once Upon a time... in
Hollywood, which he tells us will
be his penultimate film.
He will have to go some to beat
it next time out. For me, his
masterpiece will always be 1994’s
Pulp Fiction, but this isn’t far
behind, with Leonardo diCaprio
and Brad Pitt both on thunder-
ously fine form.
as is tarantino himself. Fans of
his films will recognise many of
his favourite themes, devices
and quirks — tics, almost — but
rarely have they meshed together
so winningly.
diCaprio plays Rick dalton, a
self-pitying tV actor worried hiscareer is on the slide and aware
that his excessive drinking might
be accelerating his decline, but
unable to stop. Pitt is Cliff Booth,
Rick’s touchingly loyal friend and
stunt double.
the story unfolds episodically,
with a series of absorbing
and sometimes extremely
funny set-pieces that don’t
particularly connect with each
other. there is one pricelessencounter between Cliff and
Bruce Lee (mike moh).
Yet the narrative is driven by
a simple, compelling, ominous
fact: Rick has moved into a
home on Cielo drive. His next-
door neighbours, much to his
delight, are Polanski and tate,
the latter played very sweetly by
margot Robbie.
the film takes us on a journey
towards that terrible night,
but, on the way, tarantino is in
an incorrigibly playful mood.
He has a hoot depicting certain
fixtures of Sixties Hollywood —
indeed, one can almost hear him
chuckling in his editing suite
as he sweeps us off to a party at
Hugh Hefner’s Playboy mansion,
where we find a stoned SteveF
iFtY years ago last week, a
grotesque series of murders
in Los angeles changed the
mood, not just of a city or even
a country, but of an era.
Seven people were indiscriminately slaughtered
by crazed disciples of the cult leader Charles
manson. they included actress Sharon tate, the
young, heavily pregnant wife of film director
Roman Polanski.
For many, those murders by the so-called manson
Family represented the most horribly abrupt end
imaginable to the supposedly carefree Sixties.
manson’s followers were hippies, who were meant
to espouse ‘peace and love’. that fallacy died with
tate and her friends at 10050 Cielo drive, in La’s
swanky Benedict Canyon neighbourhood.Little explorer who’s just a-Dora-ble