There’s mixed early buzz from Cannes right now for Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood.” It’s his first movie without Harvey Weinstein. I can’t publish spoilers, but I’m hearing that what I wrote yesterday may be close to what happens. What’s interesting is that I’m hearing there’s a lot of concentrated violence, a la “Pulp Fiction.” Weinstein was always able to reason with Tarantino to get very good results (except with “Hateful Eight”). So it will be interesting to see if anyone was able to counterbalance Tarantino’s extremes.

Owen Gleiberman, Variety: “By the end, Tarantino has done something that’s quintessentially Tarantino, but that no longer feels even vaguely revolutionary. He has reduced the story he’s telling to pulp.”

Reviewers are being careful. Eric Kohn of IndieWire Tweeted: “ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD is a meandering Tarantino hangout movie, plays w/history, celebrates the art of the TV western & the creative thrill of performance. DiCaprio & Pitt are better than ever. Lots of nostalgic Easter eggs. It’s fun! But manage expectations.”

One reviewer from Europe told me: ” The film is really long, sometimes fun but also so disengaging. Like a collage of ideas that are poorly glued together.”

Stuart Oldham, from Variety: ““Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” is a surprisingly sweet, almost melancholic love letter to 1960s and 70s Hollywood. I loved it”

Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair: “There were stretches during my screening when I was a little bored, even as I was tickled by Tarantino’s offbeat cadence, his commitment to specificity and idiosyncrasy. But it also felt like the movie wasn’t getting anywhere, amounting to a collection of shapeless set-pieces that verge on the indulgent. In Hollywood, the lack of real connective tissue is often more frustrating than it is charming.”

Of course, I love Tarantino and like everyone else, I’m stoked to see this movie. The studio took a gamble unveiling it two months before its release.

Right now, I’m that the main players– Tarantino, Pitt, Robbie, DiCaprio, Fanning– plus their agents are having an intimate dinner for just 20 people. Then a party will take off on the rooftop of the JW Marriott, at Club Albane, for the select few who could score an invite. Sony/Columbia is indeed managing expectations. They only brought four cast members, and didn’t even include Fanning on the red carpet.

Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood” is unspooling right now in Cannes.

Meantime, there’s a new trailer for the movie set in 1969. Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Margot Robbie are all featured.

Among other things, the clip shows that there’s a riff on the Hitler killing scene from “Inglorious Basterds.”

We wait for word from our spies in Cannes.

Fox Searchlight has rolled the dice on its first big purchase under the Disney umbrella.

For $13 million, they’ve bought Terrence Malick’s “A Hidden Life,” a World War II film without any stars, spoken partly in German and mostly without dialogue.

FS is hoping that “A Hidden Life” will be received the same way as “Tree of Life,” which was a critics’ delight from Cannes several years ago but made only $13 million in the US. Worldwide it took in $54 million in 2011.

I slept through “Tree of Life” twice. It was an utter bore despite Jessica Chastain’s great performance.

Malick, who was a genius in the 70s, followed it up with several more colossally sleep inducing films that made no money. On top of that, he refuses to appear in person at events or promote his films.

This one should prove an uphill battle. All the actors are German or European, they are unknown to anyone in America. Plus, it’s described as a meditation on faith. Ask Martin Scorsese how “Silence” went, and he had two stars, Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver.

Malick’s great movies were “Days of Heaven” and “Badlands” in the 1970s. After that, he became a cult figure for Pauline Kael-trained movie critics. At film festivals, his movies are celebrated. In theaters, they insufferable.

But who knows? Maybe August Diehl, the star, will become the Jean DuJardin of 2019 and “A Hidden Life” will surprise us. It’s funny: the still I’m using here reminds me of “Days of Heaven.”

I have no clue and no spoilers about Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood.” But it’s written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, so anything is possible. He’s posted an open letter on Twitter begging fans in Cannes who see the movie– more than two months before its release– not to reveal its secrets.

So this raises a question, since Tarantino’s never done that before: is it possible Sharon Tate lives, and that Charles Manson botches his murders? The movie is set in 1969 and it’s a 50 year flashback to the summer of “Helter Skelter” and the Manson family killings of Tate and the LaBiancas.

Margot Robbie plays Tate. If the movie were historically correct, she’d be dead, a victim of a grisly murder. But that is not what anyone wants to see, and doesn’t sound like Tarantino.

You may recall that in “Inglorious Basterds,” Brad Pitt, Eli Roth and pals actually kill Hitler and bring an end to World War II and the Nazis. It’s a fantasy turn of events, totally unexpected, and a great twist.

It’s possible that Tarantino has decided to rewrite history with “OUT.” Since this is a fable, and not a documentary, he’d have quite a turn in the story if Manson attempted murder but didn’t accomplish it. Imagine how lives would have been changed. Maybe both Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio save her–the reverse of “Basterds.”

Again, I have ZERO info. But it’s just a guess. Imagine Margot Robbie as Tate becoming a big star, as planned, winning an Oscar, etc.

You never know.

#NoSpoilersInHollywood pic.twitter.com/d2cZcNfibh

— Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (@OnceInHollywood) May 20, 2019