First Reviews Of 'Once Upon A Time In Hollywood'

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino's ninth (and penultimate, if you believe what he's said about hitting the beach once he gets to double figures) film, had its premiere at Cannes yesterday and after a standing ovation that lasted somewhere between four and nine minutes depending on which report you read, the first reviews to come in have been similarly giddy.

The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw gave it five stars - "It’s shocking, gripping, dazzlingly shot in the celluloid-primary colours of sky blue and sunset gold" - while over on Little White Lies, Hannah Woodhead declared it "[Tarantino's] most pared back, thoughtful and perhaps personal work" as well as "his most character-driven film to date and, for better or worse, easily his most mature".

There's an underlying anxiety about ageing and striving for relevance that might betray Tarantino's status as an elder statesman of Hollywood these days too, with Woodhead writing: "there’s a fear of getting older, a fear of being replaced by someone younger, someone cooler".

Pitt and DiCaprio give "entertainingly loose performances dripping with self-irony and pleasurable chemistry," according to the Hollywood Reporter's David Rooney, though he does say that the "two ambling hours of detours, recaps and diversions that precede the standard climactic explosion of graphic violence are virtually plotless".

Variety's Owen Gleiberman reckons DiCaprio and Pitt have rarely been better, and that Once Upon A Time... "recreates the Hollywood of 50 years ago with a fantastically detailed and almost swoony time-machine precision". That said, Gleiberman gives it the old Andy Townsend and declares it a film of two halves, the first being the stronger: "By the end, Tarantino has done something that’s quintessentially Tarantino, but that no longer feels even vaguely revolutionary. He has reduced the story he’s telling to pulp."

Bradshaw concedes that the ending is likely to split audiences but says that "certainly any ostensible error of taste is nothing like, say, those in the much-admired Inglourious Basterds. And maybe worrying about taste is to miss the point of this bizarre Jacobean horror fantasy."

So, overall: very, very, very good, especially if you're already a Tarantino buff who's been waiting for a shot of distilled, medical grade Quentin to hook straight to your veins. The other thing that every critic mentioned is that Tarantino's thing about filming women's feet in close-up is very much back. Very, very much.