Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019)

 "Now, that's the way a cigarette should taste..."

This is, seen one way, a typical Tarantino film. It has his signature cinema-literate metatextuality (there’s an extended riff towards the end on spaghetti westerns and the whole Italian B movie industry, which I much enjoy), his narratives within narratives, his sense of controlled irony, his non-linear narratives and his deliberately ambiguous elements- did Cliff kill his wife or not, as many seem to think? He seems a decent man, but people are complicated.

And yet, in another sense, this is a real outlier in that it is not an action film at all but a serious drama with big themes- how one responds to the approach of middle ag;  male friendship and how it develops when the two men are not of equal status, with one living in a Hollywood mansion and the other in a trailer; how, in 1969, the era of Westerns and war films is slowly ebbing away towards an era of auteurs, hippies and changing values. It’s a film that uses footage cleverly to show us all the different sides of 1969, with Tarantino’s usual visual wit, and has a similarly evocative soundtrack, as his films invariably do.

This is not really a film about the Manson “family”, despite Margot Robbie’s splendid turn as Sharon Tate: it’s appropriate that Charles Manson himself only appears briefly and is told to go away. His “family” are shown as shallow, duplicitous petty criminals, manipulating a blind old man with dementia to get a place to stay- and, arguably, raping him. It’s fitting that Tarantino should do as he did in Inglourious Basterds and have history pan out differently and far more pleasingly.

This film is superbly shot, superbly made, and full of both heart and complexity. It may well be Tarantino’s masterpiece.

Birds of Prey (2020)

 “You killed my sandwich!"

I absolutely love this film. It is, of course, beyond its obvious and rather successful feminist credentials as a superhero film with a female director and mostly female cast, a blatant version of Pulp Fiction for the superhero genre, complete with the nin-linear storytelling, fetishised ultraviolence and witty pop culture dialogue. This works rather well. There is indeed an uplifting and vaguely feminist message, one might say a fantabulous emancipation of one Harley Quinn, but above all this is a fun, entertaining film.

It's also, of course, a film about Gotham and its characters without Batman or his main supporting cast: the Joker is at least noticed, as Harley's ex, by his absence, but Batman has nary a mention; this isn't his film. Instead we have a superlative Margot Robbie as the undoubted star, with Black Canary, Renee Montoya and Huntress very much taking a back seat, and Ewan McGregor in a rare outing as a baddie, almost nailing his American accent as Black Mask.

It's a brave decision to make a superhero film like this, violent and revelling in it, and thereby excluding the younger audience, but the film is just so damn good and witty, almost DC's Deadpool. Script, direction and acting are all first class and the whole thing is just so damn life-affirming. More like this please, DC.

Suicide Squad (2016)

"We're bad guys. It's what we do."

Well, I don't care what the critics say. Oh, this film may not be right up there with the greatest- sorry, DC, Deadpool was better- but it was stylish, cool and great fun. Here's your warning: this is a positive review.

I never read the Suicide Squad comics; Batman aside (I certainly read a lot of that) I was more of a Marvel kid and tended to read specific DC titles for the writers- Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and the like- rather than following titles religiously as I did with Marvel. So I'm not writing this as an uber fanboy and can't comment on how the film compares to the comic.

Also... I'm aware that this is the third film of the DC Universe and I haven't seen the others yet. I'll be approaching the DC films as I did the Marvels- obviously I won't watch any Batman II film before a Batman film or anything like that, but I won't be necessarily watching and blogging DC Universe films in strict order, within reason. Anyway...

This is an awesome film with awesome characters, most notably Deadshot and Harley Quinn, and both Will Smith and Margot Robbie are awesome. Jared Leto, too, was a nicely old-fashioned psychopathic Joker, rubbish though his emo band may be. I'm not sure, yet, about the brief glimpses I've had of Ben Affleck as Batman but, well, we'll see about that. 

This was a stylishly directed film, fast-paced and with plot beats perfectly laid out for maximum entertainment value as a blockbuster should. The use of its mainly rock soundtrack was awesome. And I'm genuinely puzzled at the critics' insistence on the supposedly uneven tone- I found no such thing.

Yes, perhaps this is a case of relatively low expectations making me like a film (It has that in common with Citizen Kane...) but I had a good night at the pictures tonight and I'm curious about the previous two DC Universe films. Bring it on.