House and Home
       OVER TO YOU QUENTIN
By Mike Kemble
It’s hard to imagine Quentin Tarantino’s new fifilm, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is only his ninth in his whole career. It’s been 27 years since his very fifirst as Director of Reservoir Dogs (1992).A bombastic low-fifi gangster flflick that introduced a refreshing and confifident auteur onto the scene, with its sweet popcorn rat-a-tat whip of cooler-than-cool dialogue interspersed with a killer soundtrack than brought a new-found appreciation amongst viewers on the delights of ‘Little Green Bag’,‘Hooked On A Feeling’ and ‘Stuck In The Middle With You’.
Like all true artistic greats, it was his second feature that delivered his true masterpiece, in the shape of Pulp Fiction (1994).This year being its 25thanniversary, it’s scary how little it has aged, and you’d be hard-pressed to fifind any fifilm since, and possibly before that can lay claim to being it’s equal amongst the genre-bending black- comedic criminal underworld of Los Angeles life.
His next fifilm, Jackie Brown (1997), played things out a little slower from the immediate bounce of his previous two fifilms, but in Pam Grier, he cast another faded star back to the fold in a fifilm that helped share his love of the
blaxploitation movies he grew up on in his youth.
His other cinematic obsessions relate to Kung-Fu classics and American Westerns, and both genres inflfluenced where he went next, with Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003) and Kill Bill:Volume 2 (2004); and Django Unchained (2012) and The Hateful Eight (2015). Each one entertaining in their own way, but never reaching anywhere near the highs of his previous three fifilms, and in this regard the same could be true of everything he has directed since. However, in between his Kill Bills and Westerns came an at times delightful World War II revisionist drama in Inglourious Basterds (2009), that whilst falling apart at the end brought some wonderous scenes along the
way that are amongst the best in cinematic history.Which takes us to the present day and ‘Once Upon Time..........’.A fabulous fusion of a fifilm within a fifilm, mixing Western yarn-sensibilities through a tinted orange glow of late ’69 LA Americana. There’s a monotonous ebb and flflow from the beginning, taking you on a journey that doesn’t appear to be going anywhere slowly, yet unlike Inglourious Basterds, the ending is a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am of a punch that somehow brings what went before to a delightful climatic conclusion that ultimately leaves you wanting more.Tarantino has come out on several occasions saying this will be his last as Director, forever. But surely, somewhere, there’s another complete end-to-end masterpiece within him that matches or at least comes close to his opening sets. So come on Quentin, don’t let us down now, lets make it 10 out of 10.
It - Chapter Two (6th Sept):The killer clown, Pennywise is back on the scene, almost three decades after the original fifilm was set, with James McAvoy and Jessica Chastain bringing some Hollywood clout to the table in another epic battle between good and
of wild teenage guerrilla bandits somewhere in the heart of South America in this dystopian thriller directed by the excellent Alejandro Landes.
Loro (20th Sept): Paolo Sorrentino directs the always brilliantToni Servillo, who plays Silvio Berlusconi in all his seductive and corruptive best looking at the life and times of the media tycoon and once Prime Minister of Italy, and the excess folly of those that seek absolute power.
Pain and Glory (4th Oct): Pedro Almodovar directs this very personal account of a fifilm director in his physical decline, reminiscing on time gone by; love lost and the void of life without cinema.
The Lighthouse (18th Oct): Robert Eggers builds on his outstanding fifirst feature,The Witch (2015) in this gripping and brilliant horror in the shape of two powerhouse performances from Robert Pattinson and William Defoe, who are the lighthouse keepers on a remote island in 1890s New England.
See you next time for some festive magic!
Mike
    evil.
Monos (13th Sept):Think Lord of the Flies mashed with Apocalypse Now as chaos entails between a group
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