The Hateful Eight

[peter]

Saw this last night and was less than blown away. It was done in the vein of Inglorious and Django, but had not the ability to 'hold' that either of those films had. Sam Jack performed well in an almost Sherlock Holmesian way and the rest of the cast also stepped up to the plate to deliver the goods (Kurt Russell was notable) but the overall result was, like the terrain, cold.
Done in sequential chapter form (getting a bit dull now) there was only one 'flashback' that oddly also had the films only voiceover. The story while entertaining enough struggled to fill the three hour running time, and was padded out with long terrain shots which did nothing to hide it's basic simplicity and thinness. One small episode managed to turn Sam Jack in a most odd direction, from which his never quite recovered and for which a measure of ironic retribution was served.
All in all the film would rate a comfortable seven in my book, but one feels that in it Tarantino was just struggling too hard to be, well.........Tarantino!


(Note to the director if he reads this: You need a change - direct a love story, a kids film, a cartoon. Find your mojo again.)

[Hashi Lebwohl]

If I recall, both Inglorious Basterds and Django Unchained were linear so out-of-sequence is a return to his normal mode of storytelling. hrm...so was Death Proof, now that I think about it.

I wouldn't recommend Tarantino for a love story or a kid's film but I would recommend him for a Ghost Rider reboot. The number one problem with that is that he would never be able to sit comfortably under the umbrella of Disney/Marvel Studios.

[I'm Murrin]

I enjoyed Hateful 8 a lot, and will probably end up ranking it as one of my favourite Tarantino films (current favourite: Jackie Brown). It felt almost like a black comedy (there were certainly many moments that provoked laughter in the audience, sometimes from the over the top presentation rather than the content of what was happening). The one bit I didn't like was Tarantino's sudden voiceovers in the middle.

I only just watched Django Unchained last night, and that had a lot of odd humour in it too.

My least favourite Tarantino remains Inglourious Basterds, though I've not seen Death Proof.

[peter]

I need to see Jackie Brown again. I only saw it once and while I liked it, I think all I wanted at that time was Pulp Fiction 2!

[Hashi Lebwohl]

Wow, we have almost completely opposite opinions, Murrin. Jackie Brown was mostly boring while Basterds keeps your attention riveted throughout much of the movie. Most people focus on Waltz and Pitt--as they should, since both actors deliver fine performances--but my favorite is Daniel Bruhl as Private Zoller, in whom Tarantino does something almost unthinkable--he gives us a likeable Nazi. Seriously, he is so polite and charismatic that we forget what he represents while wearing that uniform. By contrast, we never forget what Colonel Landa is even though he comes across as likeable, as well--this man relished his job of hunting people down and having them killed whereas Zoller was really just a soldier doing what any other soldier in his position would have done, shooting at enemy soldiers as per his orders.

When I saw Grindhouse at the theater--yes, I was one of the few who braved a double feature--I thought Death Proof was very thin and weak. Years later, I decided to buy it and watch it again just to see if my initial assessment was incorrect. I was, indeed, incorrect, and now I know why--Death Proof was only weak because Planet Terror is so much better. Still, when viewed by itself Death Proof is a pretty good movie with another good soundtrack.

[peter]

But Zoller isn't really likeable is he: think of his final scene's in the projection room where IIRC he is prepared to force himself on the girl of his desires. This is the true Zoller isn't it? Landa is likeable in spite of his brutalities, because he is what he seems to be - a likeable Nazi bastard!

[Hashi Lebwohl]

No, he was merely frustrated at that point by Shoshanna's continued apathy and rejection. Of course, he had no idea she was Jewish; he though she was merely French. Once she told him to come in he settled down but even that little bit of aggressive assertiveness didn't warrant him being shot in the back.

Did you root for the Basterds, peter? Even when they were committing war crimes such as torturing captured prisoners by carving swastikas into their foreheads? No, Private Zoller is definitely portrayed as a sympathetic character on purpose to make us think about things such as whether or not low-ranking foot soldiers were as bad as the leaders of the Third Reich. Private Zoller had nothing to do with death camps and probably didn't even know they existed. Did the drunken soldiers in the basement deserve to be shot? Being stationed in France they probably hadn't seen much combat in months and, like Private Zoller, had nothing to do with death camps or the Final Solution. Even after Private Wilhelm made a verbal deal with Lt. Ray so that all the survivors would walk away alive, Bridget shot him in cold blood--he had set down the rifle and was unarmed.

The subtle genius of IB is that the Basterds are worse than the Nazis we see, with the notable exception of Colonel Landa. This doesn't excuse what that government did, of course, but it does force us to look at the small picture--not everyone who wore that uniform was a distilled concentration of evil incarnate.

Tarantino likes to make us root for the bad guys, though. Who didn't like Mr. White, Vic Vega (Vincent Vega's older brother, incidentally), even after he danced around with the cop the Dogs had captured? Are we favorably inclined towards Jules, who is nothing more than a hired assassin for Marcellus Wallace? Do we sympathize with Marcellus after Butch rescues him, even though Marcellus is a notorious and brutal crime lord in Los Angeles? How many people do you think he had killed over the years? I don't recall their names, but Woody Harrelson's and Juliet Lewis' characters from Natural Born Killers are definitely the stars of the show, not the villains. Do we cheer Kiddo as she slices and dices through the Crazy 88 even though we know by then that she has spent most of her adult life as an internationally infamous assassin in the employ of Bill?

The only movie to date that Tarantino has made where the normal bad guys are portrayed as actual bad guys is Django Unchained. We are not sympathetic to Mr. Candy's family and henchmen as they are gunned down in sprays of corn syrup and red dye (or whatever they use for blood these days).

[I'm Murrin]

This is pretty evident in Hateful 8 too, Hashi, in the way he makes sure all of the characters - excepting OB, who isn't counted in the 8 - have unlikeable aspects. The closest thing to good guys in the film are the bounty hunter, who uses excessive violence on Donague and is in the job because he gets some thrill from seeing people hang; Major Warren, who fought in the war as an excuse to kill white people and possibly tortured and raped a man (he may have just been provoking the general); and the Sherriff, who is a former southern rebel, extremely racist, and has likely taken part in a lot of lynchings.

[peter]

[ ], Yes Hashi - I'm afraid I did [root for the Basterds, that is {great post by the way}], and one in particular - possibly the worst of the lot...Stiglitz! Who could ever forget [possibly the best scene in the film] his sitting stropping his knife as the toff British officer tells him that he wants to be sure that the people with him at the meeting can be relied upon to keep their calm. Stiglitz's reply "Do I not look calm to you?" never fails to send a frisson of pure cinematic pleasure up my back. Followed by the 'loquatious' exchange with Brad Pitt, the whole thing is pure genius.

Vic Vega and Vince........How did I miss that!

Murrin.... I've got to be with Hashi on this; You need to see IB again with a different pair of eyes [perspective wise]. I'll do it for H8 - promise!

As an aside - I once heard [but didn't take much notice alas] that the color names in Res Dogs had significance to the charachters to which they were given. Take Mr Orange played by Tim Roth [who incidentally I found unconvincing in H8 I'm afraid] - he was of course the undercover agent, and so we have 'agent orange'. I heard the same could be done with the other charachters.....but can't remember for the life of me how it went. Any ideas?

Going back to a comment of a few posts ago Hashi - 'Ghost Rider'. Were you a Ghost Rider fan then. I won't pretend, I found both films a let down and thought them a great opportunity missed. Cage was [imho] just 'marking time' in the roles, and the whole seemed neither to know whether it was aimed at the kids market or at a more adult audience. I've not read the graphic novels, so don't know how dark or otherwise they were, but it seemed to me that the story could really have used some darkening up..... and yes - maybe Mr T. is the man for the job!

[Hashi Lebwohl]

I would have to watch Dogs again to figure out how/why the color names are chosen as they are.

The first Ghost Rider was better than the second and part of that is because Peter Fonda did such a great job as Mephisto. That being said...neither Mephisto nor Blackheart could track down the Contract even though they had more than a century during which to do so? They must not have been spending too much energy on looking for it. Anyway...Cage knows and loves the character so it isn't his fault that there were weaknesses in the screenplay. Actually, Eli Roth would make a pretty good Johnny Blaze, I think. Or Idris Elba. Or Michael Jai White. Or Scott Adkins.

Are you sure Stiglitz is the worst of the Basterds? The most intimidating, sure, but they were all pretty much the same. Except for Donowitz, who actually got to use the baseball bat.

[peter]

Yes - I did think about the bat after I'd posted..........

[peter]

Saw Jackie Brown again last night fir the second time. It does have a slow fuse, but still manages to keep you on board. At the end you finish up rooting for the tough eponymous lady and the final scene of her driving the car with that particular song whose name I cannot recall is just great. And damn, she's a handsome woman! Never going to be my favourite QT film....but a significant addition to his oeuvre.

[dANdeLION]

www.marketwatch.com/story/hateful-eight ... 2016-02-05

A damn shame.

[peter]

Agreed. The story has a sad quality to it; a loss that no one would have predicted or wanted. Russell must have been devastated.

[dANdeLION]

Jennifer certainly was.

[Avatar]

I quite enjoyed this one for the most part. A bit long though. I loved Jackie Brown, but I think it would have been better served by cutting between viewpoints in-scene, instead of redoing each viewpoint from the beginning as it were.

--A

[Hashi Lebwohl]

I quite enjoyed this one for the most part. A bit long though. I loved Jackie Brown, but I think it would have been better served by cutting between viewpoints in-scene, instead of redoing each viewpoint from the beginning as it were.

--A

Tarantino gets that from Rashomon, the Akira Korusawa movie based on the novel of the same name. The same story gets told from every involved person's point of view and every time the story restarts it starts over from the beginning.

Jim Jarmusch references Rashomon in Ghost Dog, as well, but that story isn't retold from each person's point of view even though the initial meeting between Ghost Dog and Louie is viewed different depending upon whose point of view we are seeing.