Leonardo DiCaprio is hardly prolific by the standards of the modern movie star, with this year’s Netflix comedy Don’t Look Up marking just his tenth onscreen appearance in the last decade, but you can’t deny that the man opts for quality over quantity.
Of the previous nine, six have been nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards, while he made the Best Actor shortlist for his performances in three of them, finally picking up the coveted trophy thanks to his incredible turn in The Revenant. Whenever you see DiCaprio’s name attached to a project, it’s almost guaranteed to be of the highest quality, while the A-list status he’s retained for almost a quarter of a century ensures healthy box office takings to boot.
The 46 year-old’s most recent effort, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is currently climbing up the Netflix most-watched list this weekend, as subscribers rush to visit his second collaboration with Quentin Tarantino after Django Unchained. The semi-fictionalized love letter to 1969 Los Angeles might have seen Brad Pitt walk away with an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, but Leonardo DiCaprio is every bit his equal, and the dynamic between Rick Dalton and Cliff Booth is the beating heart of the movie.
A critical and commercial smash hit that raked in close to $400 million at the box office while receiving widespread critical acclaim, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood might not be as propulsive as Tarantino’s typical output, but it’s nonetheless a precision-engineered callback to the Golden Age of Tinseltown, a period that was clearly instrumental in shaping the taste and mindset of the filmmaker himself, one that’s definitely worth adding to your Netflix watch list.
