HOLLYWOOD and FAREWELL

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a lengthy (2 hours and 39 minutes) Quentin Tarantino rambunctious flick starring Leonardo DiCaprio (who was kind of playing Burt Reynolds of those days) and Brad Pitt (beat out Tom Cruise for the role of the real life side-kick of Reynolds in the 60's, and performed well), with a bunch of others, like Al Pacino, Dakota Fanning, Michael Madsen, Kurt Russell (who was also narrator), and Bruce Dern (in a role that was supposed to be filled by Burt Reynolds, who passed away before filming began).  Luke Perry also died, for real.  Other actors portrayed people like Bruce Lee, Steve McQueen, Michelle Phillips and Mama Elliott.

Rotten Tomatoes reviewers gave it a decent 85% rating, but audiences only 71%.  I can see why, for the film was rambling and threw a curve ball at the end.

Some of the script built up the Manson clan and the home and lifestyle of Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski.  Leonardo DiCaprio as a fading cowboy star lived next door to them.  You knew something was going to happen, and it did, but not in the expected way.  It was kind of a dirty trick.  But, heck, this is only a movie, not a documentary.

OUaTiHollywood is Tarantino's first film without producer Harvey Weinstein, of sex abuse fame.  The film was Tarantino's "love letter to Los Angeles of the 60's."  I drove all over the area in those days, and the nostalgia exuded.  The soundtrack of the 60's featured the Mamas and Papas, Los Bravos, Paul Revere and the Raiders Neil Diamond and others.  Cost $110 million to make.  Reviewers used terms like heady, disorientating, irresponsible, brilliant, outrageous, too long and such.  All appropriate.

The Farewell was a totally different kind of movie.  Rotten Tomatoes bestowed 100% reviewers and 91% audience ratings.  You only very rarely get this kind of approval.  Here is an RT list of the best.

Writer and director Lulu Wang deserves most of the credit:

The Farewell, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2019, where it was picked up for worldwide distribution by A24. The film follows a struggling New York City artist, played by Awkwafina, who travels to China for a family reunion to visit her dying grandmother.^[17] Wang based the film on her grandmother's illness, a story she first told on an episode of This American Life.^[18][19] It is set to be released in the United States on July 12, 2019.

Wang (to the right of Awkfina in this photo) was born in Beijing, at six moved with her parents to Miami, is trained in classical piano and graduated from Boston College in 2005 with a double major in literature and music.  Her first film five years ago was Posthumous.

Awkwafina (Nora Lum), born and grew up in New York City, but also studied in Beijing.  She was first a rapper, then appeared in a few films, including Oceans 8 and Crazy Rich Asians, where she played a role (right) about as different as you can imagine.

The film, well, as the family kept the bad news of lung cancer from the afflicted grandmother (Zhao Shuzhen), everyone was sort of morose and sad.  The only personality with energy was Nai Nai, the person who was dying, and she was the great spirit of the film.  I shouldn't say this, but as much as the film made a case for her imminent passage, six years after the story was first written, she is still alive.  Kind of a Hollywood ending.

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Hurricane Erick is now a Category 3, but is expected to ease south of Hawaii.  However, Hurricane Flossie seems headed straight towards the state, with predictions of a more northernly path:

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