Film The Only Tarantino Movie I Would Watch Once
Tarantino movies are an unashamed tributes to trashy movie genres. They could be trashy ninja/kung fu movies or trashy crime movies, or grindhouse or western or war or whatever. The Hateful Eight is something of a departure from this, because it is less interested in idolizing the western genre, and more so in simply using the setting to tell a very unfamiliar story. All this means is that you aren't quite sure of what the film is doing whilst you watch it.
The Hateful 8 takes a very leisurely pace in setting up the story. It feels like a good forty or so minutes are spent just introducing you to a few of the characters, before they are eventually stuck together in a log cabin with another five people, waiting out a blizzard with a mysterious female prisoner. Tarantino is known for is long, banal conversation scenes, and here he is still quite good at not testing the audience's patience with them. But whereas in the past a ten minute chat about European burgers or "Who Am I?" games gets punctuated by a rapid decent into the worst violence, Tarantino goes a lot further this time around. Outside of the occasional, cringe inducing violence against the prisoner, it is hours before any violence occurs. As a largely character driven piece, the film's crowning achievement is providing you with a bunch of villainous characters who are all equally despicable, and yet it still manages to make you feel a twinge of sympathy for each of them at some time.
When the actual plot starts, the story becomes something like Reservoir Dogs, in which a group of angry guys stare each other down, trying to figure out who is a traitor. That's where the real fun (and tremendously over the top violence) comes in. I was a little disappointed with the resolution of this however. It is kind of introduced as a mystery that you want to solve along with the characters, but it is impossible for you to do it, as the story resorts to a couple of ass-pulls you could never see coming. That said, after an hour and a half or so of no action, it is still very much appreciated when things kick off to lead the story to some resolution.
I can give The Hateful Eight a recommendation, but it just isn't anywhere near as fun or economic as Tarantino's other films. That's why I will only ever watch it once.
Film Tarantino's Narcissistic Meltdown 3
Quentin Tarantino has talent, but hasn't made a decent movie since CSI: Grave Danger.
He desperately tries to recall the anti-heroic charm of his past movies and fails miserably at it, he has become completely drunk on his own grind-chic ego, and to make it worse now he tries to talk serious issues, with a tone-deaf approach that would make Zack Snyder cringe, with results contrived at best(Django Unchained) and abhorrent at worst(Inglorious Basterds).
Hateful Eight is proof of every single one of these problems:
None of the characters, bar one(and he's the second one to die), are even remotely sympathetic. Now i can enjoy anti-heroic or even villainous protagonists, ex. Pulp Fiction, but they must have at least some positive or at least relatable traits...too bad that Tarantino is too obsessed with going full "Wo-hoo behold how edgy i am!". This is a movie where half the cast is composed of uber-racist assholes, the one woman is a racist ass and the men around gleefully abuse her for shit & giggles, the one black man is so evil you cheer when his junk is blown off, and the rest are murderous outlaws that commit a completely unnecessary slaughter for their demented plan, so when his usual pointless masturbatory dialogue is suddenly interrupted by his usual burst of cartoonish violence you do not care if someone dies or lives, you just want these piles of crap to be flushed faster.
His addressing of racism in 19th century America is even worse than in Django Unchained, at least there the main black character wasn't a rapist(because hey, that's totally not a racist stereotype that resulted in countless black men lynched or unjustly jailed IRL) that is even less sympathetic than the confederate characters calling him the N-word...speaking of which, the machinegun-spouting of the aforementioned may have been 'accurate' but still sounds an excuse for him to just keep spouting it given he always did no matter the context...no Quentin, you're not being edgy or provocative, you're just sounding like a boring 13-year-old whose parents gave up on telling him to not say fuck at the dinner table.
As for his narcissism, the mere fact he used those uber-expensive 70mm camera lenses "just like Lawrence Of Arabia! ain't i talented?" oh great, 70mm lenses for a movie that is 90% set inside a small house, Tarantino wastes such money and equipment in the name of his out-of-control referential masturbation.