The Hateful Eight reviews

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Bog
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Re: The Hateful Eight reviews

Post by Bog »

Not to be forgotten he himself won an Oscar as well...which was #2 and while possibly a "makeup" for Basterds was in place, it was at least a little shocking. The first time he took the stage 20 years prior, he was the hot young writer, had something to prove, was the favorite, had a co-nominee, and had a damn good shot at BP as well...this combination spawned his most mature and possibly best film in Jackie Brown. The former situation (after AMPAS basically said QT you can do no wrong!) gave birth to this bloated mess...

This being said...I sure would like to see a little more harsh public critique to see if there is potentially another scavengable gem inside that odd, gifted brain.
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Re: The Hateful Eight reviews

Post by flipp525 »

Getting Waltz Best Supporting Actor Oscars for the last two films could only be seen as encouragement to make more of these by Tarantino.
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Re: The Hateful Eight reviews

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In his defense, his Grindhouse installment, Death Proof, was tightly edited. That was the only thing about the segment that I truly loved.
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Re: The Hateful Eight reviews

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The Original BJ wrote:I haven't seen his Grindhouse installment, but I've seen all of Tarantino's other films, and I think this is the worst. It's not that there's nothing interesting here -- Tarantino is a singular enough voice that he never delivers something mundane -- but I think it exemplifies one of his worst tendencies, and that's a lack of discipline over pace. This has been an increasingly problematic issue in the director's films for me lately. I think Inglourious Basterds is a mostly wonderful film that's just occasionally too padded. Django Unchained has strong elements, and is engaging up to a point, but really starts to run on by the end.
I think that has been the case since "KIll Bill", especially part 2.
Only Peter Jackson can be compared to Tarantino when it comes to a director's inability to control his narcissism and self-indulgence. Maybe its time for both of them to hire a less accommodating editor.
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Re: The Hateful Eight reviews

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Lou Lumenick's review:

A purloined script, leaked on the Internet, with a furious Quentin Tarantino temporarily abandoning the project. A threat of a boycott after the director branded cops as killers. And rolling the film out in a limited “roadshow” release in the long-obsolete 70 mm film format, complete with overture and intermission.

Tarantino’s latest and least, the comic Western “The Hateful Eight,” is far less entertaining or interesting than its years-long buildup, which has been even longer and more annoying than the one for “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”

All this hype, and for what? Three hours or so — the general-release version opening Dec. 31 runs a mere 167 minutes, without an intermission — set mostly in a single room where the unsavory guests and staff trade juvenile and racist insults, periodically murdering each other. I was hoping they’d get it over with already well before the intermission.

There are far too many gratuitous shots of a blizzard raging in the Wyoming landscape as a stagecoach heads for Red Rock, where bounty hunter John Ruth (Kurt Russell) plans to collect a reward for turning over fugitive murderer Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh).

Along the way they pick up Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), a notorious bounty hunter who’s a former slave and Union officer; and Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), a Confederate veteran who claims to be the new sheriff of Red Rock.
Modal TriggerSamuel L. Jackson in “The Hateful Eight.”Photo: Andrew Cooper/The Weinstein Company
At a stagecoach stopover, they meet up with the other half of the titular octet: Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth), who introduces himself as the hangman of Red Rock; laconic cowboy Joe Gage (Michael Madsen); aged Confederate General Sanford Smithers (Bruce Dern); and Bob (Demian Bichir), who explains he’s watching the place in the owner’s absence.

It’s not exactly surprising that virtually no one is telling the truth in their long speeches, which are far from Tarantino’s best. That possibly includes Marquis, who boasts that he sexually abused the general’s son, an act depicted in a graphic flashback; and Chris, who asserts that Marquis locked soldiers in a burning church (mercifully not shown).

When he isn’t beating up Daisy — the film’s least appealing running gag — John is repeating his suspicions that one or more of the others is plotting her rescue. A subplot involving poisoned coffee demonstrates that Tarantino is no threat to Agatha Christie.

The filmmaker further pulls the rug out from under the audience with a flashback sequence he personally narrates, introducing another set of briefly seen characters. The most prominent is played by Channing Tatum, who hams it up as badly as everybody else.

“The Hateful Eight” is basically an expensive vanity project allowing Tarantino to expound on his bizarre theories about race relations.
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The Hateful Eight reviews

Post by The Original BJ »

I haven't seen his Grindhouse installment, but I've seen all of Tarantino's other films, and I think this is the worst. It's not that there's nothing interesting here -- Tarantino is a singular enough voice that he never delivers something mundane -- but I think it exemplifies one of his worst tendencies, and that's a lack of discipline over pace. This has been an increasingly problematic issue in the director's films for me lately. I think Inglourious Basterds is a mostly wonderful film that's just occasionally too padded. Django Unchained has strong elements, and is engaging up to a point, but really starts to run on by the end.

But I think The Hateful Eight is perhaps a compelling ninety-minute thriller stuck inside a bloated three-hour indulgence, and that's just way too much extra fat for me to tolerate. The central narrative has some pull, as Samuel L. Jackson comes to realize that the characters trapped with him inside Minnie's Haberdashery (the name of a Tarantino location if there ever was one), may or may not be who they say they are, and that one or more of them may be trying to free Jennifer Jason Leigh from her impending execution. But I didn't think this plot line really kicked into gear until after the intermission -- the first half of the movie felt like a lot of exposition, full of character introductions and a ton of chit chatting, but not much momentum. I enjoyed the second half more -- it probably goes without saying that eventually things get pretty bloody, and there's some entertainment value in this, even if it's ultimately rather ridiculous. But even there, I thought a lot of the plotting was rather ho-hum. In Pulp Fiction, the wrap-around storytelling was supremely clever in the way it allowed the audience to understand the story we had been watching from new angles. But in Hateful Eight, I didn't think the flashback sequence clicked like an ingenious puzzle piece with the main storyline as much as Tarantino intended, and I just didn't find the revelations terribly compelling. And I think there are a lot of superfluous characters, especially Bruce Dern's, who could be removed from the narrative completely without changing much (though he is involved in the movie's most laugh-out-loud funny bit, at the end of act one.)

I do think there is one element of distinction in the movie, and that's Jennifer Jason Leigh. For much of the movie, she exists as an entertaining presence in the ensemble, throwing away snide one-liners, and seeming to have a great time as a rowdy murderess on death row. But in the movie's final reel, she completely takes hold of the film, getting a dynamite blood-spattered dramatic monologue that she just knocks out of the park. I'm very much hoping she gets her first Oscar nomination for this, especially because some of the other Supporting Actress options (Mirren & McAdams mostly) barely even seem to make an impression in their movies.
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