Once Upon a Time in Hollywood 4K Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		5.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		4.0

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood 4K Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman December 12, 2019

Perhaps understandably some social historians may argue that the culmination of 1967’s so-called Summer of Love took place during the summer of two years later, with Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music, but Woodstock itself took place in the pretty immediate wake of such a shocking event that it seemed to almost instantly deflate whatever “flower power” the hippie movement had sought to engender. It’s kind of amazing in a way to think that the infamous and horrifying Manson Family murders of Sharon Tate and several of her friends, and then a night later, of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, took place on August 8 and 9, 1969, a mere week or so before Woodstock tried desperately to remind people about such evanescent phenomena as “peace” and “music”.

Quentin Tarantino, having “rewritten” the arguably an even more epochal tragedy than the Tate murders -- namely World War II -- in Inglourious Basterds (a rejiggering more or less revisited in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood*), now turns his sights to the awful fate which awaited Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), Jay Sebring (Emile Hirsch), Abigail Folger (Samantha Robinson) and Wojciech Frykowski (Costa Ronin) on the evening of August 8, 1969, but he does so through the prism of the relationship between aging western star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Dalton’s erstwhile stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). For those who are concerned the film is moving inexorably toward a gruesome set piece detailing the horrifying Manson Family killings, suffice it to say Tarantino, as seems to be his wont, completely recasts (no pun intended) everything, which may in fact be the biggest issue some fans may have with this enterprise, even if they’re otherwise entranced by Tarantino’s kind of cheeky sendup of late sixties Hollywood life.

There’s a novelistic approach to things in this film, though it’s debatable whether some of the subplots are really developed very fully. Tarantino indulges in the cinematic equivalent of ADHD at times, darting off into flashbacks or other ephemera while attempting to detail the downward spiral of Dalton, a once promising western series star (snippets from the series, Bounty Law, are offered) who has, in true television star fashion, shot himself in the foot by attempting to eschew the small screen for movie stardom, something that has evidently failed spectacularly, leaving him consigned to guest star roles on various series (usually playing the bad guy). There’s a longish vignette woven throughout the film detailing Dalton’s trials and tribulations on a little remembered but actually real life western that ran on CBS for a couple of years, Lancer, in just another indication of Tarantino’s love for some picayune nooks and crannies of pop culture.

It turns out that Dalton lives next door to Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha) and Tate, and Tarantino frequently just kind of drifts over to that house to detail the goings on there, while dropping copious hints about the tangled relationship between Polanski, Tate and Sebring. The Manson Family does in fact show up on the sidelines here, courtesy of a couple of artifices which are at least partially based in fact. Manson (Damon Herriman) shows up one day to the surprise of Sebring and Tate, on the hunt for his supposed friend Terry Melcher, in one of the film’s kind of creepy moments of what turns out to be needless foreboding. But there’s more content given over to some exploits of Cliff, who ends up interacting with some of the Family at the now infamous Spahn Ranch, which Tarantino posits as one of the filming locations for the cancelled Bounty Law.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is stuffed to the gills with little Tarantino-esque “alternate reality” flourishes with regard to “real life” characters wandering in and out of the story. Some of them, like the subplot involving Sam Wanamaker (Nicholas Hammond), are basically harmless, while others, including a vignette involving Bruce Lee (Mike Moh), have raised some pretty serious hackles in certain fans. The biggest “pretend” element here, though, is about the Manson Family and Sharon Tate (and cohorts), and it’s hard to really completely justify Tarantino’s decision to discard such visceral horror for something that plays almost like a live action Chuck Jones cartoon. Hollywood of course has long thrived on happy endings, but in this particular case, that tradition seems kind of oddly ill suited to the actual facts.

Still, the film is relentlessly entertaining, and it features a really stellar array of performers throughout. Production design is superb as well, detailing everything from the mammoth muscle cars of the period to some of the “mod” outfits movers and shakers in Los Angeles were fond of wearing. The film has a kind of loosey-goosey ambience which may stand in the way of a fully realized narrative, but it manages to convey some hard truths about the vagaries of a life in show business, even if it unabashedly ignores some facts in the process.

*There's a kind of funny sidebar here when Dalton is chatting with an agent (played memorably by Al Pacino), and the agent refers to a World War II film that Dalton had made. A brief scene from the film then takes over, and it is more than a bit reminiscent of a moment in Inglourious Basterds, no doubt intentionally.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood 4K Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Note: Screenshots are sourced from the 1080p Blu-ray.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is presented in 4K UHD courtesy of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment with a 2160p transfer in 2.40:1. This is another great looking 4K UHD disc from Sony, one that has a greater delineation of formats (i.e., 8mm, 16mm, 35mm) courtesy of a more precise rendering of grain, though that said, this can be a fairly gritty looking presentation, albeit sometimes evidently by design. One of the things I noticed in the 4K UHD presentation that hadn't struck me quite as strongly in the 1080p presentation was the use of "archival" snippets, like the Columbia masthead, the brief shot of a PanAm 747 landing, or the cheeky homage to The Great Escape can see considerable upticks in the thickness of grain. Another thing that really stood out to me in this version was the obvious "distressing" Tarantino has applied to other snippets, like the crazy World War II film with Rick utilizing a flamethrower. Not only is grain at near "16mm levels", there's a glut of other "damage" including tons of white flecks and little scratches, something that becomes much more evident with the increased resolution of the 4K UHD disc. At times the grittiness can approach noisy levels (look at the skies in the black and white Bounty Law snippet), but, again, this seems to have been done by design. Fine detail is improved across the board in this presentation, and, as with the 1080p presentation, tends to resist changes in lighting or grading. Some of the yellow tones assume an almost orange-umber look here courtesy of HDR, and there are definite improvements in vividness in admittedly little elements like the reds of the kimono Rick wears as he's rehearsing lines for Lancer. The one place where I wasn't quite as impressed as I expected to be was in improvement in shadow detail. It's probably arguable that there is better shadow definition here, but there's still considerable murkiness in any number of dark scenes, as in some interior car sequences or even the big party at the Playboy Mansion. And in fact a lot of this presentation looked at least a bit darker to my eyes than the 1080p version.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood 4K Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

I actually hadn't checked the specs of the 4K UHD disc before I granted the 1080p Blu-ray audio presentation a 4.5 score for its DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track, and I'm glad I left myself a little "wiggle room" since the DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 track definitely provides at least a bit more spaciousness and separation, as well as at times something approaching an Atmos-like verticality with regard to several effects. The great soundtrack is at least marginally opened up in the 7.1 rendering, and the same excellent placement of ambient environmental effects continues apace in this version. But several isolated moments stood out to me in this 7.1 iteration, including the great panning roar of the flamethrower in the film's climax, which definitely has a wider and to my ears higher presence in this mix. Fidelity is excellent, with nicely wide dynamic range, and dialogue is always rendered cleanly and clearly throughout.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood 4K Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

I'm frankly not as conversant with the kind of odd Menu "topography" of Sony 4K UHD discs (you have to navigate both horizontally and vertically to get to everything), since I don't review a lot of their releases. I don't think I've missed anything in the supplements, but if I have, private message me and I'll happily update the review.

• Additional Scenes (1080p; 25:01)

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood 4K Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I frankly can't tell you exactly why I feel this way, but for some reason Tarantino's "revisionist" proclivities struck me as much more disrespectful in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood than they did in Inglourious Basterds. That may be because the appalling murders that took place on August 8, 1969 were so personal in a way that discarding the truth of what happened seems downright churlish. If you can get past that (and, at least for Bruce Lee fans, one other vignette), Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is vastly entertaining and it offers some of the most expert production design recreating a specific era that I've seen recently. Performances are top notch all the way around, even when the material doesn't give the actors that much to work with. Technical merits are first rate and the supplemental package very enjoyable. Recommended.