The Hateful Eight: The 8th film from Quentin Tarantino

Today, I look at the 70mm western exploitation film from Quentin Tarantino.

The Hateful Eight:
Some ten years after the American Civil War, eight strangers are stranded in an intense blizzard at Minnie's Haberdashery, a small and cozy little cottage inn in the middle of nowhere. One of these men, John "The Hangman" Ruth, a notorious bounty hunter who always brings in his prisoners to hang as opposed to just killing them on sight, is transported vile murderess Daisy Domergue to hang in the town of Red Rock. However, he and his newfound friend Major Marquis Warren begin to suspect one of the tenants in this small cottage is not who they say they are, and may be planning to break Domergue free and kill the rest of them.
    Tarantino returns to the Western genre with a more contained story than in Django Unchained but with a runtime just as long. The limited locations and smaller cast make this feel more like a play (Tarantino even proposed adapting it into one), and sometimes this does make it feel longer than it is.
    The cast, featuring Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Walton Goggins, Demián Bichir, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Bruce Dern, James Parks, Dana Gourrier, Zoe Bell, Lee Horsley, and Gene Jones (most of whom are Tarantino regulars), are fantastic, infusing humor, horror, and wit into every scene. There is one final, surprise cast member whose name appears in the opening credits, whose cameo seems reminiscent of Jonah Hill's in Django in just how unexpected it is. All of the characters are fairly hateable (duh), even by Tarantino's standards of sordid characters, but towards the end you start to root for two in particular who have had the most arc out of anyone and the film does an excellent job of shifting your empathy between characters.
   The score by Ennio Morricone is phenomenal, evoking Morriconne's own earlier work, and all this at Morriconne's ripe age of 87. This score also features unused tracks from his score for John Carpenter's The Thing (also starring Kurt Russell and featuring characters stuck in a blizzard), which fit surprisingly well for this film. There were a number of shots and scenarios that seemed similar to The Thing, which, knowing Tarantino, was most probably intentional.
    While this film still falls back on Tarantino's tropes and doesn't really see him mature or progress as a storyteller (something I was kind of hoping for), I cannot deny it is immensely entertaining and although the violence is more few-and-far-between here than in his other films, the final showdown is spectacularly violent, although a little disappointing considering how good the first two acts were. The intermission was a nice touch, though my theater didn't actually pause for the 15 minutes intermission, but just kept going, making the narrator (Tarantino himself) explaining what happened in "the 15 minutes since we left our characters" at that point during the film potentially very confusing to other audience members who didn't hear there was supposed to be an intermission.
   Tarantino still delivers his trademark long, sharply witted dialogue, now mostly free of pop culture references, so he's matured in that way I suppose. The only problem is it seems that he is getting a little bit self-indulgent, and letting his dialogue go on a bit too long to the point where I could point out what fat could be trimmed to make the film more enjoyable. He also takes such a long time setting up each character that the murder mystery doesn't even begin until the third act, and instead of becoming a complex game of cat-and-mouse with the killer, ti quickly devolves into the type of bloodbath that Tarantino relishes so much.
  A character is shot in the groin in the film's final act, something that made me realize that Tarantino seems to have almost as much of a fetish for gratuitous groin shots as he does for feet. Seriously, he does it in most of his movies, it's almost a strange motif.
    The Hateful Eight isn't as classic nor as entertaining as Tarantino's earlier works, nor even Django, but is still an immensely enjoyable spaghetti western throwback with fun moments, splattery, gore-soaked action scenes, a diverse soundtrack and score, and some terrific dialogue. Though the lack of nominations in comparison to his last film should clue you in to how this film stacks up to it. 8/10 stars (currently, may decrease to a 7 or even a 6 if I watch it again).


                                  (Image: Wikipedia)

The Revenant: A visual powerhouse, but does it deserve the hype?

Today, I look at the latest film from modern filmmaker master Alejandro González Iñárritu.

The Revenant:
Fur trapper Hugh Glass is on a journey with a large party of scouts and trappers with his half-Indian son Hawk. After some unforeseen strokes of bad luck, Hugh finds himself left for dead in the harsh winter. Struggling to survive with vengeance as his only motivator, Glass braves the unrelenting wrath of mother nature. (DO NOT watch any trailers for the film, just take my word for it, they spoil a number of key reveals that I feel negatively effected my viewing experience a bit.)
   After being in development for 14 years, with numerous notable stars and one director (Park Chan-woo) leaving the project over the years, it's a wonder this film turned out as beautifully as it did. While Chan-woo is of course an incredibly gifted director with a keen eye for visuals, I don't even think he would have pulled off what Iñárritu and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki were able to with this film. The long, uninterrupted, flowing movements of the camera throughout incredibly complicated action scenes in uncompromising and difficult filming locations astounds me and it is this monumental task that was accomplished that really pushes this film out of the realm of just general Oscar bait. Iñárritu is one of the most compelling and talented directors working today and I always look forward to his projects. Just one year after his Best Picture win for Birdman, it looks like he'll be taken home the gold statue again because to pull off this absolutely daunting film in under a year is breathtaking.
    Leonardo DiCaprio has always flirted with the idea of method acting but never really gone in full the way Christian Bale does, or Heath Ledger and Robert De Niro did. This is about as close as he's ever come to going complete method acting and it pays off. Despite this role feeling a very obvious plea to the Academy for Leo's ever-elusive Oscar win, his physical commitment to it and the things he reportedly did to prepare for his character are shocking and what most people would consider overkill but I feel without them, this film wouldn't be as impressive.
   Tom Hardy is excellent as the film's antagonist character, and the closest the film gets to a truly through-and-through despicable character. His physical appearance and savage mannerism were executed potently by Hardy and the make-up effects team, turning him and Leo from the handsomest men in Hollywood to disgusting, grungey scavengers.
   Will Poulter, Domhnall Gleeson, Forrest Goodluck, Paul Anderson, Brendan Fletcher, Kristoffer Joner, Brad Carter, Melaw Nakehk'o, Luka Haas, and Duane Howard fill out the rest of the principal cast, and all do an excellent job, except Gleeson. While he was serviceable, he didn't surprise me as much as the rest of the cast and felt like a bit of a weak link.
    While there are some glaring historical inaccuracies, which I won't spoil here for the sake of maintaining surprise for when you see the film, I just recommend to only take the film's story with a grain of salt and read up on it yourself. I also felt some of the political statements on Native Americans, both in the film and in the press surrounding it, were on-the-nose, unoriginal, and overdone. In the opening sequence, it seemed like they were taking an objective stance, portraying both sides as flawed and bit cruel, but then the rest of the film is spent talking about how great Native Americans were and trying to push the stereotype that Native Americans were peace-loving, in touch with the earth, and completely docile until settlers arrived.
    Many of stated the violence in this film is gut-wrenching and hard-to-watch, and although it is, and unlike anything Iñárritu has one before, I felt this hype was unwarranted. I sat there thinking "Sure, this is awful, but I've seen worse. Maybe if I didn't go into this with such expectations I'd be more shocked." Thanks again, social media, for once again overhyping something to no end with your sensationalism!
    Other than those two things, which are more minor complaints than major distractions, I felt this was an absolute dynamo that probably blows every other Oscar nominee out of the water (haven't seen them all yet, so who knows). Iñárritu has yet again delivered a brutal, unflinching film that tests the viewer, even if it does get a little pretentious at times. 8/10 stars.


                         (Image: Wikipedia)