Right this very minute, a lucky select few film critics at the Cannes Film Festival are watching Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, the ninth film by Quentin Tarantino. For now, the rest of us will have to make do with watching the brand new trailer – a none-more-QT look at the auteur’s long-awaited follow-up to 2015’s The Hateful Eight. As well as all the usual Tarantino-isms – a retro soundtrack, a devotion to classic cinema, and some fruity language – this second trailer shows more of the film’s incredible sprawling cast and evocation of Hollywood in 1969.
It’s hard to get over the jaw-dropping cast involved here – the trailer opens with a scene that gets Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, and Al Pacino in the same frame. Plus, Kurt Russell is here (is it mere coincidence that his still-unnamed character turns up in the trailer shortly after the mention of ‘stuntmen’?), Lena Dunham is a member of the Manson family, and Margot Robbie flexes more of her turn as Sharon Tate. Oh, and you get DiCaprio – as his actor character Rick Dalton, playing another character in a movie-in-a-movie – shouting “burn you Nazi bastards!”
We also have a more concrete synopsis now, which pitches this as a potentially Pulp Fiction-esque tapestry of stories that weave in and out of each other. “Quentin Tarantino’s ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD visits 1969 Los Angeles, where everything is changing, as TV star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his longtime stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) make their way around an industry they hardly recognize anymore,” it reads. “The ninth film from the writer-director features a large ensemble cast and multiple storylines in a tribute to the final moments of Hollywood’s golden age.”
Stay tuned for those initial Cannes reactions, and catch the film in UK cinemas on 14 August – frustratingly three weeks later than the 26 July US release.
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