Things to do in Chicago today

Review by Dave Calhoun The sort of high-wire, playfully enjoyable riff on movies that only Quentin Tarantino could get away with, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood is a massively fun shaggy-dog story that blends fact and fiction, inserting made-up characters at the heart of real, horrible events (Charles Manson horrible) and then daring history to do its worst. Sitting at the mature, Jackie Brown end of Tarantino’s work, the film is also a love letter to Los Angeles and the film industry, bringing his tongue-in-cheek storytelling together with exquisite craft and killer lead performances from Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio. And yet, it’s still very much a Tarantino film, trading in genuine emotion one minute, unapolegetically silly the next. Tarantino starts with Hollywood in the era of the Manson murders—specifically, the slaying of starlet Sharon Tate and her friends in August 1969—and retells the story on his own terms, first over a few days in February 1969 and then, six months later, over the weekend of the killings. That means we’re spending nearly the whole movie wondering how this director is going to deal with the actual historical tragedy. For the answer to that, you’ll just have to sweat it out. Let’s just say this: Tarantino somehow manages to carve good taste out of bad. Nonfictional characters pop up throughout: the doomed Tate (Margot Robbie), Nixon-era celebrities Steve McQueen (Damian Lewis) and Bruce Lee (Mike Moh), the Manson gang (one of whom is played by

Review by Joshua Rothkopf Because it would have been unbearable otherwise, Noah Baumbach begins his churning, deeply felt divorce drama Marriage Story—easily the wisest film of his career—on a note of sweetness. Wedded Brooklyn parents Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) and Charlie (Adam Driver) introduce themselves via a double diary of sorts, co-narrating as we watch snippets of their urban life: pizza slices scarfed down, bedtime stories told, subway stops missed. Both of them are unfailingly generous. Nicole makes people feel comfortable, Charlie says. He rarely gets defeated, she tells us. Each calls the other deeply competitive. Alas, that’s the trait Marriage Story is about. It’s a movie that slowly leeches itself of tenderness, of endearments small and large, climaxing in a ferocious, Bergmanesque verbal showdown (one that goes from cautious chat to wall-punching) that represents a triple triumph for the actors and their director. Rarely has Johansson, pared down and deglammed, been this aching. Never has Driver, even with his Star Wars rage monster Kylo Ren under his belt, torn into his lines with such ruined viciousness. And Baumbach transcends his own The Squid and the Whale, mounting a complex moment in a small apartment that’s almost abstract in its blankness—there’s nowhere to hide. (Presumably, he lived out some version of this scene himself. Let’s not speculate on what Jennifer Jason Leigh, Baumbach’s ex and an obvious inspiration for Nicole, will think.) Charlie