Though known for stylized
violence, “Quentin Tarantino is
at his best when he’s motivated
by affection,” said Stephanie
Zacharek in Time.com. That’s
why the Pulp Fiction director’s
new film, a “tender, rapturous”
ode to a vanished Hollywood
and to an actress lost too
young, “ranks among his fin-
est.” The movie is set in 1969,
in a Los Angeles changing even faster than the rest
of America. A new generation and a new breed of
drugs are invading the neon-lit dreamworld, and the
old guard watches warily. Leonardo DiCaprio and
Brad Pitt are “marvelous together” as Rick Dalton,
a fictional has-been 1950s TV star, and Cliff Booth,
Rick’s longtime stunt double and only friend. Still,
this movie “really belongs to one person”: Margot
Robbie, who plays Sharon Tate, the 26-year-old
real-life rising star who was murdered in 1969 by
Charles Manson’s followers. Whenever Robbie is on
screen, she “fills the movie with light.”“If Tarantino makes any missteps, they come at the
end,” said Bilge Ebiri in NYMag.com. Until then,
Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood is a “sprawling,
dreamy” re-creation of a moment in time when all
of his obsessions had currency, including B-movie
Westerns, cop dramas, 1960s psychedelia, and“fast-talking showbiz backroom
blather.” For two hours, it’s the
most fun Tarantino has had in
years. Even so, “there’s a lilting
sadness at the film’s heart.” At
one point, DiCaprio had me
in tears over a scene in which
Rick confronts his growing
irrelevancy. And in perhaps the
movie’s most potent passage,
Robbie’s Tate, who is new to
stardom, sits alone in a theater watching herself on
screen in a comedy. Her eyes dance whenever some-
one in the audience laughs at one of her bits.For a long time, the mix of fiction and real-life
tragedy feels promising, said Owen Gleiberman in
Variety. We know the Manson murders are com-
ing, and the presence of Manson cult members at
the periphery of the story “suggests something in
the Hollywood cosmos that’s diabolical in its bad
vibes.” But in the end Tarantino plays with the real-
ity of the killings in a way that trivializes the tragedy.
By the time the closing credits roll, “he has reduced
the story he’s telling to pulp.” True, the “bizarre”
denouement “might well have you replaying the
entire film in your head,” said Peter Bradshaw in
TheGuardian.com. Far from being a punt, though,
the final twist is “entirely outrageous, disorienting,
irresponsible, and also brilliant.”“It may be a while before
another documentary on
Macedonian beekeeping comes
along, so we should make
the most of Honeyland,” said
Anthony Lane in The New
Yorker. It opens with a ritual
that could be from another cen-
tury: A headscarf-clad woman
walks a high, narrow cliff edge,
removes a stone, and barehand-
edly harvests half of the honey from a wild beehive,
leaving the rest for the bees. Our heroine, Hatidze
Muratova, and her half-blind mother turn out to
be the last residents of a tiny village, and “there’s
a bit of a gentle, Old World spin on Grey Gardensabout them,” said Sheri Linden
in The Hollywood Reporter.
Then conflict arises with the
arrival of a boisterous itinerant
family. Hatidze “initially regards
them with warm curiosity,” even
teaching the children how to
harvest honey sustainably. But
the father resists the long view,
and his clumsy foray into bee-
keeping spells potential disaster
for Hatidze. Watching this tragedy of the commons
play out is “like looking at the greatest problems of
our time through a pinhole,” said David Ehrlich in
IndieWire.com. Still, Honeyland “sees the situation
with a clarity that gets under your skin.”The fact that David Crosby’s
still alive is “almost as remark-
able as the fact that his voice
remains pure and soaring,”
said Glenn Whipp in the Los
Angeles Times. In this elegiac
documentary, the 77-year-old
folk-rock legend comes across
as candid about his faults and
remarkably committed to mak-
ing more music as he faces the
likelihood that his ailing heart won’t beat much
longer. Interviewed here by filmmaker Cameron
Crowe, Crosby never does fully explain why none
of the other members of the Byrds or Crosby, Stills,
Nash & Young even speak with him. Otherwise,
he proves “a frank and gifted storyteller unafraidto delve into the most sordid
moments of his life.” Crosby
obviously has a grumpy side,
and even by the standards of
1960s pop stars, his drug use
was prodigious, said A.O. Scott
in The New York Times. But
“the movie keeps you at a dis-
tance,” even when Crosby is
expressing remorse for hurting
certain women he’s known. At
least Remember My Name never strays from “what
remains closest to Crosby’s heart”—the music, said
Joe Morgenstern in The Wall Street Journal. He
says he doesn’t know how he’s survived this long,
but he surely does. “The beauty of the film is that
by the end of it we know, too.”Once Upon
a Time...in
Hollywood
Tragedy writes an abrupt
end to a golden movie era.++++
Directed by
Quentin Tarantino
(R)Review of reviews: Film ARTS^25
Honeyland
New neighbors threaten a
beekeeper’s way of life.++++
Directed by
Ljubomir Stefanov and
Tamara Kotevska
(Not rated)David Crosby:
RememberMy Name
A rock legend moves
beyond regret.++++
Directed by A.J. Eaton
(Not rated)Pitt and DiCaprio: A twilight pairingHatidze releases a colony of bees.Crosby: Surviving on his musicAP
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