Quentin Tarantino's "The Hateful Eight"

Otm, they have big, basic story problems

He also lost his longtime editor who I think was crucial in helping shape his pre-Django films.

Yes definitely

i didn't know about his involvement w crimson tide!

Django was terrible, his worst film. Hateful Eight was ok, but I don't have much desire to sit through it again. It was basically Reservoir Dogs turned into a Western, minus lots of necessary editing.

was the "she started letting dogs in" line supposed to be some mega-hilarious zing?

finally saw this.

well it had some aspects that were exceptionally good. The haberdashery was an outstanding setting, really well-realized and easily understandable in terms of where anyone was at any given moment. i was surprised that ultimately Walton Goggins had a role that was almost a co-lead, but he certainly deserved the chance and really pulled it off. i get what Tarantino was trying w/Jennifer Jason Leigh's role so I wasn't bothered by the treatment she received and the fact that she was great certainly helped (only breaking character vv slightly when Kurt Russell inadvertently destroyed that 140+ year old guitar in the scene vs the stunt guitar he was supposed to wreck). Everyone else was good, to varying degrees. I appreciated the homages to The Thing. And the weird homages to Inglourious Basterds were ok too (though I guess a Hicox being in both isn't an homage as much as it is Tarantino doing the "shared universe" thing for himself). The poisoning scene is good. The ending is good.

let's see...the rape scene is dire. SLJ's interrogation of Bichir sucks. in the scene immediately following Tatum shooting his nuts off from the basement, SLJ is curiously really chill about the whole thing. Actually SLJ just generally gives maybe the worst performance here in terms of frequently falling back on his tics and not being a character. Not that there weren't tics from the other actors as well, but they played better in the roles due to being more subtle. SLJ was fine here in some instances when he was low-key, conversational, etc. But much of the time he was pretty bad. I didn't necessarily like the flashback either, it just seemed like a very lazy explanation for what occurred and seemed like unnecessary padding. The scene didn't have much tension (it felt like perhaps he was trying to create some much like he did in the much superior tavern scene in IB but it didn't work except as a showcase for a massacre and even as that it didn't really do much).

ultimately it just had some egregiously bad bits weighing down what was ultimately otherwise a pretty decent Agatha Christie mystery western. Lower tier Tarantino, obv. Maybe he should just stay away from westerns.

second watch i found worked completely differently once the agatha mistrie isnt pulling the viewer left and right

all fair comment tho

I finally saw this - the Extended Version! The build-up was interminable. The repartee not nearly so clever as to justify the length. A couple of slightly amusing jokes (coffee, Domergue mispronunciation).

All characters were cardboard cutouts - they should have used name tag balloons like in IB. The payoff was decent, bloody fun, but for a movie trying at Agatha Christie locked room it was utterly lacking in suspense (deus ex Channing didn't do it for me). Like a lot of Tarantino an enjoyably bad genre film.

yeah i think a fundamental miscalculation that QT arrived at (& one of the reasons i got off-board) is that simply making the audience wait /= building suspense

The whole project was pretty misbegotten, imo. Good cast, good setting, but just falls flat for lack of substance and suspense. This and Django are his worst scripts.

I wish I'd been able to bring a book during the screening.

This movie is all cover, no book.

I mean, its def in the lower half of Tarantino flicks, and easily his weakest on dialogue; but there was some really beautiful parts and hilarious violence. The whole time I was think it wasn't as good as Dead Man tho

― poorzingis (Whiney G. Weingarten), Monday, January 4, 2016 12:37 PM (eight years ago) bookmarkflaglink

I rewatched this via the Netflix Extended Version and now think it might be in the upper half

Did it feel like a different movie? Was there a lot of added material?

I don't remember exactly how they are different but I do know I liked the extended version more, at least because it broke the film into more digestible chunks

Given Tarantino's love for physical media, it's kinda wild to me that Netflix is the only way to see the extended version of this.

I think it's mostly just more yapping.