Once Upon A Time In Hollywood: Ranking Every Major Performance

Fresh off of his Academy Award-winning performance in The Revenant, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood sees DiCaprio returning to the big screen for the first time since and delivering an all-around astounding performance that is destined to go down as one of his all-time bests.

As Dalton, DiCaprio crafts an intricate portrait of a performer coming face-to-face with his own mortality and it's kind of enthralling to witness. He's anxiety-ridden, full of guilt, and ultimately just kind of a mess. In the same way that Tarantino allows us to simply sit with and marinate in Robbie's performance as Tate, we're allowed to simply witness Dalton doing daily routines such as rehearsing his lines for the next day's filming and DiCaprio turns these intimate moments into some of the film's best.

His best sequence in the entire film though is the quietly revolutionary setpiece centering around the filming of his Lancer episode. The episode is shown to the audience as an edited, finished product, except for when Dalton makes a mistake. Then, the form itself will rewind or reset without ever removing us from the episode itself. It's a brilliant stylistic choice, one that allows Tarantino and DiCaprio to essentially break down the bounds of the form by acknowledging it.

It sees them turning the artform into visual jazz and allowing DiCaprio to give a mesmerizingly affecting performance that is simultaneously funny, compelling, and emotionally poignant.