Lazy Film Critic Movie Reviews
The Hateful Eight
The Hateful Eight is the latest film from Quentin Tarantino himself, and the 8th film he's done as a director. Much like his last film, Django Unchained, The Hateful Eight is also a western but with Tarantinos personal touch. The film follows a group of eight different people who are all stuck inside a log cabin during a blizzard, and they're stuck with a bounty hunter and the woman he's taking with him. What follows is a series of mysteries, interesting Tarantino-style dialogue, and lots of gratuitous violence.
As you can probably guess, this film is a total Tarantino style movie. If you're not a fan of his style of filmmaking, chances are this movie won't be for you. Once again, Tarantino brings back his style of dialogue that is damn near impossible to describe why it's so good. Every conversation and line of dialogue between the characters is really interesting, and even though for the first hour of the movie there isn't any action, you're still entertained. This also goes hand in hand with the way the characters are written, which has them both be interesting characters who you want to know more about.
The cast of this movie also does a great job, and as much as I'd like to talk about all of them, there's only three performances that truly stuck out to me. The first was Jennifer Jason Leigh, who gives hands down the single best performance in her career as this sort of bloodthirsty maniac with a twisted sense of humor, and she has the most fun of the cast for sure. Samuel L. Jackson is as entertaining as ever, and really makes the most of playing the lead role in this movie (not something he usually does). Bruce Dern was also great as ever, and although his character is quiet most of the time, whenever he starts talking it's fantastic.
However, unlike say Django Unchained or Inglorious Basterds, I wouldn't call The Hateful Eight one of Tarantinos best. Did I love the film? Absolutely, but that's not to say it didn't have its issues. The main issue I had with this movie was the tone, which just felt mean-spirited. Sure, most of Tarantinos films have that, but either the lead or one of the supporting characters is likeable enough to create some balance with the unpleasant-ness. It's likely "unpleasant" was what Tarantino was going for, but for me it just made the movie feel really mean. However, that's a minor complaint, nothing that would ruin the movie.
Final Rating
The Hateful Eight, while not my favorite Tarantino movie, is still a great film, and one of the best of the year. If you can get over the mean-spirited tone (which I certainly could) then I guarantee you'll love it just as much as I did. It was violent, it had great dialogue, and some great performances. Check it out as soon as you can.
No comments:
Post a Comment