1) ONCE UPON A TIME… IN HOLLYWOOD – Energetically rebounding back into audiences’ good graces after 2015’s polarizing underperformer The Hateful Eight, visionary virtuoso Quentin Tarantino’s passionate love letter to 1969 Hollywood is his most heartfelt and comical work to date. A wild, weird and uncharacteristically sweet cocktail of old time showbiz minutiae, bubbly nostalgia, killer tunes and obscure pop-culture nerdery, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood continues QT’s winning trend of kooky historical revisionism in fresh and occasionally startling ways. Fashioning iconic roles for Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt (the former in primo self-absorbed bumbling mode, the latter cool as Mr. Freeze) as struggling western TV veterans, Tarantino brings the crazy waning days of the 60s alive with a formidable cast and an obsessive attention to detail. Both an adoring deep dive into a bygone era, and a rapturously radical rewriting of Sharon Tate’s dreadful narrative, this fairy tale hang-out delight is a blissful escape of the highest order, and only grows more and more magical with each subsequent revisit.
