“This is the unwieldy version of the movie,” said Quentin Tarantino on the Pure Cinema podcast in June about his new 400-page novelization of Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood (2019). “Unwieldy” is indeed the right adjective for QT’s new make-work project, and it’s also probably the last word on his creative sensibility.

By Quintín In one of the first scenes of Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln (2012), a black soldier stands proudly and defiantly in front of the President and, without technically overstepping the bounds of respectfulness, argues that African-Americans (it sounds ridiculous to use that term in this context, doesn’t it?) deserve pay equal to that of white…