It would be a real shame if Quentin Tarantino were to stick to his guns and retire from directing features after his tenth effort, because that means we’re running out of chances to see what one of the defining filmmakers of the last 25 years can bring to the table.
It’s not as though the two-time Academy Award winner will be completely vanishing into the ether, mind you, when he’s been teasing a myriad of ways to continue fulfilling his creativity once he hangs up the megaphone including novels, short stories, comic books and even episodic television, while he still owns and operates the New Beverly Cinema, where he holds regular screenings and showcases of his obscure favorites and classic titles from the world cinema back catalogue.
Tarantino has yet to firm up his next venture behind the camera, but as always, he’s touting about a dozen potential pitches in the interim. That hasn’t stopped Netflix subscribers from revisiting his most recent sprawling epic, though. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood has regularly troubled the most-watched movies list since first being added to the library, and after a brief absence, it’s now back in the Top 20.
As Django Unchained proved, Tarantino and Leonardo DiCaprio work very well together, even if it was Brad Pitt who scooped an Oscar in the Best Supporting Actor category for his laconic performance as Cliff Booth. Co-star Margot Robbie recently teased that there was enough footage in the can to assemble a 20-hour cut, and while that’s excessive even by Tarantino’s regularly self-indulgent standards, the 161-minute version of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is still clearly more than popular enough looking at how regularly it’s surged on the Netflix charts over the last couple of months.
