Opening day at The Ritz, 4.30pm, Cinema 1, downstairs 6 rows from front, 10 AUD. Supposedly a 35mm print but I can't say I noticed. Perhaps a third full. Upstairs was open too.
Tarantino's latest is nostalgia for America's glory days of the late 1960s, a sort of whitewashed greatest hits for MAGA types to aim for. Men were men, cars were Cadillacs with fins that got three miles to the gallon, women were dreamy, and you could light up anywhere. (The cigarette ad over the credits was deeply weird.) Murder was still random but violence was generally more personal than today's mass shootings. Di Caprio and Pitt buddy it up. Westerns, Spaghetti and American, are showered with various cackhanded honours. Robbie eventually gets upholstered and doesn't move like a pregnant lady. The Chekhovian devices are legion (a dog, tins of dog food, Robbie, ...) but none fail more dismally than an acid-laced cigarette, except perhaps for Pacino as a movie executive. It's amiable, ingratiating, introspective, self-absorbed, and has you wondering if Tarantino can go the (lengthy) distance without graphic violence; he almost makes it. At times the vibe is Altman: Short Cuts or perhaps Nashville, but without the masterful long takes.
I was bored throughout.
A. O. Scott. Dana Stevens. J. Hoberman. Widely reviewed elsewhere.