Fairy Tales

ONCE UPON A TIME ... IN HOLLYWOOD (B+) - This ode to a lost era (the end of the 1960s) is an intriguing concoction of macho bunk and addictive nostalgia from a fading Quentin Tarantino. This is much more a return to "Jackie Brown" and "Pulp Fiction" than the endless string of pulp fantasy and genre wanks Tarantino has indulged in during the past 20 years. (I wrote, after seeing "Django Unchained": "It's as if his true 12-year-old was finally set free by his '90s successes, and the Weinsteins' blank checks gave him free rein to wank off. ... It is simply stylized and soulless nihilism.")

Here, he focuses on Leonardo DiCaprio as Rick, an aging TV Western star, and his stuntman buddy (and Man Friday) Cliff (Brad Pitt) as they struggle with a changing world, where hippies are replacing cowboys and the postwar high has gotten sucked into the quagmire of Vietnam. Cliff keeps seeing a seductive teenage girl (Margaret Qualley) on the streets of Los Angeles, and when he finally invites her into his car (Rick's actually), he manages to resist her come-ons but does take her to the Spahn Ranch, the former movie set (in real life) where Charles Manson and his "family" were shacking up with the aged owner (a fine cameo by Bruce Dern in a role meant for Burt Reynolds) while plotting their crimes. Pitt's visit to the spooky ranch, under the glare of Manson's zombies, is by far the high point of the movie. (Qualley, the daughter of Andie MacDowell, is invigorating here but she sticks out as too clever and self aware to be a Manson devotee.)

The brilliance of the movie is the way Tarantino re-creates L.A. at that moment in time, with granular precision. There are many driving scenes and thus endless snippets of AM radio sounds: songs, DJ banter, ads. The soundtrack itself is rife with period AM treasures, with some deep cuts like album tracks from Paul Revere and the Raiders and Jose Feliciano's mournful version of "California Dreamin'," plus a renewed appreciation for muscle songs like Bob Seger's "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man" and the Rolling Stones "Out of Time" -- the latter a little too cleverly on-point. Tarantino also has a gas coming up with fictional Spaghetti Westerns for Rick to star in during a six-month sabbatical in Italy, Eastwood-like.

This really is a high achievement of period filmmaking. With much more of a sheen than Paul Thomas Anderson's "Inherent Vice" (which spilled into the '70s), Tarantino serves up a bubblegum-drenched memory of his (and my) childhood, when it was daunting even to be a 6-year-old in 1969. The attention to detail is obsessive. One quick scene -- a series of neon signs coming to life at iconic L.A. landmarks, at dusk at the onset of the fateful night of the Manson slayings -- is as brilliant a slice of celluloid as you can hope to see. Even in his bad movies, Tarantino can bowl you over with his mastery of the craft.

Not that there's much of a plot. Weighing in at 2 hours 40 minutes, "Once Upon a Time" is very much a hang-out movie, very much a shambolic sunshiny noir. And it's quite a ride up until the climax. Not only does Cliff visit Manson's compound, but Rick lives next door to Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), who represent Hollywood's future (Polanski as a budding auteur who could potentially do for Rick in the '70s what Tarantino did for John Travolta in the '90s). Tate here is portrayed as an innocent naif, ripe for slaughter, romping at the Playboy Mansion while being ogled by Steve McQueen (Damian Lewis), bopping to records as she sets up her nursery, or sneaking into a matinee of her latest film and drinking in the audience reaction around her.

But she's a woman, so she doesn't matter as much as do the macho men who soak up most of the screen time. Cliff, especially, gets to beat up hippies, kick Bruce Lee's ass, and repair a rooftop TV antenna shirtless. And, oh yeah, he reputedly killed his ex-wife back in the day, maybe by accident, maybe not. Pitt is the star of the show here, still somehow flashing "Thelma & Louise" charm (and abs). DiCaprio adds layers to his portrayal of Rick (a stutter is a nice touch), and he goes deep during Rick's interaction on the set with a child actor (Julia Butters) -- of Glassian precociousness -- who shakes him out of his late-career stupor.

But this wouldn't be a Tarantino film if he didn't ruin it with cartoon violence and buckets of blood pouring out of people's heads. The final reel finally brings together the two main camps -- our twangy good ol' boys and the Manson family. The horrors that ensue come with a twist, and whether you buy into the ending or not, there's no denying that it feels tacked on and utterly gratuitous. It leaves a bad taste as you walk out of the theater. For a couple of hours, though, that old magic -- L.A. before the fall, Tarantino before grindhouse -- was back on the big screen.

SWORD OF TRUST (C+) - A serious misstep by Lynn Shelton ("Humpday," "Your Sister's Sister"), coming off the quiet gem "Outside In." Here, she offers a broad comedy about a mismatched group of people in Birmingham, Ala., dealing with Civil War deniers. She handles the set-up well -- a pawn store owner stumbles on a sword purportedly related to the North's surrender to Gen. Lee -- and assembles her characters before setting them off on a shaggy-dog road trip. But nothing really gels, and the actors seem to be competing with each other to see who can be the quirkiest. Marc Maron has an appealing melancholy as the store owner, but the three other actors -- Michaela Watkins, Jillian Bell and John Bass -- never take it to the next level.

The banter can be clever, suggesting a loose improvisational shoot. Shelton herself steals the show with a funny, bittersweet cameo as Maron's drug-addicted ex. Toby Huss and Dan Bakkedahl (HBO's "Veep") inject some giddiness as Deep South villains, but this all falls apart by the end as our bumbling quartet tries to out-maneuver the bad guys. Shelton pretty much ignores the real-life dangers of truthiness and the resurgence of the white nationalist movement with this lightweight romp.This is more on a par with her lesser work, such as "Laggies" and "Touchy Feely."