Hateful Eight

[OldCorpse]

I saw this with a friend and we had a terrific disagreement about the merits of this film, even though usually we agree 99% of the time about films. He thought it was the worst Tarantino movie ever, and a poor film in its own right - self-indulgent dialogue, terrible acting including Jackson and Jennifer Jason Leigh embarrassed herself, farcical that 70mm is deployed for essentially confined spaces, scenes that don't pay off (example: a lot of time and emphasis was spent on putting in that rope for the storm, but we never see any payoff from that later on etc.); outrageous makeup, like the black eye on Jennifer Leigh

I had a different view. My #1 criterion is: "is the film involving" - to me it was, I wanted to find out what happens next pretty much throughout. That by itself was enough for me to call the film a success - the way for me, Kill Bill I and II were not involving. Acting: I liked Madsen, and Demian Bichir, Kurt Russell is always watchable and the rest were adequate (though Dern was poor here). Dialogue was just Tarantino, no worse than ever. Nothing stood out particularly in the film - there were always things in other Tarantino movies that were better, even the first 15 minutes of Kill Bill, but the sum is greater than the parts in T.H.E. for me. Not a masterpiece, but I personally enjoyed it more than Django.

Where do you guys stand on this?

 

[Gillvane]

I haven't seen the film yet but when you always want to know what happens next it's called narrative drive.

 

[OldCorpse]

I haven't seen the film yet but when you always want to know what happens next it's called narrative drive.

However you want to call it - cool by me - if a film has it, it's successful in my book... although I've seen plenty of cheating, where they string you along, and then when the final act comes, it's terrible or implausible or otherwise underwhelming - hate when that happens. But a film with an honest "narrative drive" as you call it - SUCCESS! (IMHO). T.H.E. had it, IMHO.

 

[Batutta]

I didn't care for this one. It's basically a western remix of Reservoir Dogs, the main difference being I liked Tim Roth's protagonist in Reservoir Dogs a lot more than Sam Jackson's character in this. Roth and his relationship with Keitel gave that film a moral centre. This was just a bunch of vipers in a pit fighting to the death. Did I want to see what happens? Sure. Did I enjoy seeing what happened? Not really. For the amount of awful stuff they subject Daisy to in this movie, I wish we had seen what she did, been given some context to make us believe she truly deserved it. As is, it's just a woman we don't really know getting the sh*t beat out of her for 3 hours. Also didn't care for the interior cinematography. Looked very artificial. Richardson's pools of light has been one of his signatures, and you can justify those light sources in a modern, post lightbulb world, but here they felt totally unmotivated and made it look soundstagey. It's probably my least favourite Tarantino film. Death Proof would be a close second, but that car chase redeems it somewhat. Wouldn't outright call this movie bad, I just didn't see the point in any of it, and found the whole affair kind of ugly.

 

[OldCorpse]

There are movies one enjoys OK, but feels no need to ever see again - that's where T.H.E. falls for me. For Tarantino movies, I keep rewatching Reservoir Dogs, his absolute best (IMHO), also Jackie Brown and occasionally even a few scenes from Pulp Fiction. That's it for QT as far as I'm concerned. But then again, he didn't make a whole lot of movies so far, and Reservoir Dogs is a legit masterpiece, so I'll always give any new film from him a look. I can see where QT wanted to go with T.H.E., inspired, I recon, by Spaghetti Westerns, but it comes nowhere near the top shelf of those - like "The Good The Bad and The Ugly" which is again, a masterpiece. T.H.E. is nowhere near that quality - but the idea is a good one. It would be marvelous to see another TGTB&TU, and one would've hoped it would be QT who would be qualified to do it, but this effort was not it.

 

[David Jimerson]

I got bored. The ending was not even a little believable.

 

[scoop2622]

I got bored. The ending was not even a little believable.

The whole movie bored me, it was just so conveient. I never knew what Sam Jacksons need to hang the brawd at the end like he owed him or something. I mean I get it but why is he so loyal to a guy he met once before over dinner.