HATEFUL EIGHT and REVENANT - not interested

[jkholm]

Usually Christmas break is a great time to go to the movies but this year there doesn’t seem to be much to get excited about. Two of the most notable movies, and ones getting lots of hype, are THE REVENANT and THE HATEFUL EIGHT.

I find it interesting that both of these films are being marketed not based on their respective stories, but more on their technical merits. Tarantino’s movie is a roadshow version! Filmed in 70mm! With a Morricone score! It’s really long! The trailer even plays up the title with the tag line, “See it with someone you hate.” THE REVENANT, we are repeatedly told, was hard to make. Really hard to make. You just can’t imagine how incredibly hard it was to make. And we put DiCaprio through hell to make it. Don’t you want to see it now? This doesn’t exactly inspire me to go see either movie. And then there’s the extreme violence promised in both.

Of the two, I’m less likely to see THE HATEFUL EIGHT. I used to appreciate Tarantino’s movies for their technical craft but have grown increasingly disturbed by his obsession with violent retribution. His worldview seems to be the world is a violent place, humans are violent to each other and the only way to rectify the situation is to engage in violent revenge. It’s very nihilistic.

I’m not saying there isn’t a place for violence in movies. In the right context, it can be an asset. Mel Gibson, for example, used violence to great effect in several of his movies. THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST used the violence of the crucifixion to demonstrate the suffering of Jesus, an event which many people believe led to a greater good, the salvation of mankind. APOCALYTPO used violence to subvert the idea of the “noble savage.” Recent TV shows like BREAKING BAD and FARGO used violence in a moralistic context in which the evil deeds were counteracted by goodness and justice.

I’m not sure there will be anything redemptive in THE REVENANT and almost certainly not in THE HATEFUL EIGHT. I may just watch STAR WRAS again.

[DavidBanner]

I have seen The Hateful 8. Don't waste your time on it. Yes, it was filmed in 70mm. Of course, it also is 3 hours long, the first of which is mostly spent in a stagecoach interior, and the rest of which is almost completely inside a single room. Morricone's score is okay, but they also lift sections of two other Morricone scores, including three tracks from "The Thing" and one from "Exorcist 2: The Heretic." The movie itself is a long shaggy dog story that goes nowhere. You have an hour of nearly nothing happening, followed by repeated acts of vicious and nasty violence.

My description of this movie lines up with a philosopher from another time: "Nasty, Solitary, Brutish and Long."

[AndyDursin]

I've never been a Tarantino fan -- for all the reasons you cited John -- so I will be thrilled to pass on a 3 hour western thats been tagged for aficionados only. From what I read Morricone only wrote 30 mins of original music and the rest of his score is recycled from other movies like David said. Easy pass for me especially after what David wrote.


I do plan on seeing Revenant eventually but I really disliked Birdman and a depressing, downbeat slog through the forest with loads of violence is the last thing I want to see at Christmas time. The look of the movie though I do find interesting so I want to see it from that angle....but even some of its positive reviews are tempered with comments that the character development is minimal and human interest negligible.

But your larger point John is dead on: not a lot of options out there. That's only going to add to Star Wars' repeat business. Avatar's days as the reigning box office champ are numbered.

BTW Even though it's the Rocky formula I do recommend CREED if anyone hasnt seen it.

[DavidBanner]

I will be watching Revenant very shortly. We were hearing about what those guys did in shooting the movie - trying to do everything at dusk, etc. By all accounts, it was a brutal shoot.

The irony is that the main thing getting people's attention is Leonardo and the Bear. That gave us many good laughs at work...

[Monterey Jack]

Dying to see both of these...Tarantino is one of our greatest living filmmakers.

[Paul MacLean]

Yes, it was filmed in 70mm. Of course, it also is 3 hours long, the first of which is mostly spent in a stagecoach interior, and the rest of which is almost completely inside a single room.

Sounds like great use of 70mm!

[AndyDursin]

Dying to see both of these...Tarantino is one of our greatest living filmmakers.

But an acquired taste...and I'm not a devotee. I find most of his films pretentiously talky and dare I say boring ...but there are those who think he's brilliant. He does know to shoot a film that looks like film I always give him that much.

[Monterey Jack]

Dying to see both of these...Tarantino is one of our greatest living filmmakers.

But an acquired taste...and I'm not a devotee.

Fair enough...there are plenty of critical darlings I'm left cold by (Terence Malick, Wes Anderson), but I can understand why others adore their work. For me, if it's Q.T., it's a Must.See.

[DavidBanner]

This one may test your limits on that idea.
I've enjoyed his work in the past also.

Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill pt 2, the first half of Inglourious Basterds - all great stuff.

I gave this one a lot of time before I realized it was for naught.

[mkaroly]

Not really a fan of QT either - I did enjoy parts of PULP FICTION; the KILL BILL films were fun, and RESERVOIR DOGS was good but I honestly cannot remember much of it. Those are the only films of his I have seen; not interested in the others.

[AndyDursin]

Dying to see both of these...Tarantino is one of our greatest living filmmakers.

But an acquired taste...and I'm not a devotee.

Fair enough...there are plenty of critical darlings I'm left cold by (Terence Malick, Wes Anderson), but I can understand why others adore their work. For me, if it's Q.T., it's a Must.See.

Sure, I respect that. I just look at Tarantino as a glorified cult filmmaker. To me he would never fit the tag "one of our greatest living filmmakers" -- I'd use that term to talk about someone like David Lean. Tarantino has his fans but they are usually confined to his little cult. There are probably more people turned off by his films than appreciative of them.

I'd say the same thing about Anderson, perhaps even more so. He's made a couple of movies I've liked a lot, but too many others that are obtuse and impenetrable, appealing only to his fanbase.

As for Malick, his critical darling status rubbed off YEARS ago. His comeback has hurt his rep more than helped it, that's for sure.

[Monterey Jack]

"Cult" filmmakers don't make hyperviolent, three-hour Westerns about slavery that gross nearly $200 million in the U.S. alone. Tarantino is definitely a "brand name" at this point, like Tim Burton...you know pretty much what you're gonna get every time, but for the most part, if you're a fan, you know you'll like it to one degree or another (although let's be charitable and forget Burton's Alice In Wonderland ). And remember, Pulp Fiction made over $100 million back in the day, which for a $7 million indie filled with graphic, black-comic violence and a dense, tricky time structure, was the staggering, game-changing pop-culture equivalent of Star Wars in the 70's. Tarantino's only major commercial misstep to date was Grindhouse, and I lay that mostly on the grounds of an awful, misguided ad campaign that spent more time telling a younger audience what a grindhouse was than by selling the two movies contained therein. Hell, they should have just cut a trailer that consisted of nothing more than Mary Elizabeth Winstead in her cheerleader outfit...

[AndyDursin]

He's coming off two popular hits and PULP FICTION was huge, sure -- everything else? Not so much. I think you could argue his entire career for nearly 20 years was cult-driven. JACKIE BROWN did poorly for all its hype. Ditto for FROM DUSK TIL DAWN. The KILL BILL movies did well, but not gangbusters. $60-$70 million each, definitely good, but not mind blowing. GRINDHOUSE was a huge box-office disappointment like you said. Going back, TRUE ROMANCE bombed and he was the talk of the day even back then based on RESERVOIR DOGS' success, which was entirely critically-based because that film itself did nothing before video. He had a segment in FOUR ROOMS -- that was a disaster on every level. NATURAL BORN KILLERS did well but was a hot-button kind of thing and had as much to do with Oliver Stone's brand at the time of its release.

I agree he's a brand name, and I'm not saying he's Larry Cohen, but he's not Tim Burton either because it's only the last two films that have had major mainstream appeal since PULP. There is no way HATEFUL EIGHT is going to do anywhere near DJANGO's business. It's probably going to do a fast fade after expanding, so I think saying he is primarily a "cult" guy isn't that far off when you look at how many of his films haven't made a dime outside his fan base.

Overall, my main hang-up with Tarantino is that I'm constantly detached watching his films. I'm constantly aware I'm watching one of his scripts, with his voice, where most of the time, people sit around and talk about doing something, instead of actually doing it. Where most of the characters sound alike. The eclectic use of other film soundtracks, homages to other movies...some people love it. I never really have, though obviously I do like pockets of his filmography. I respect his enthusiasm for "cinema" but I'm not a big fan of his, and I also find most (not all, but most) of his films -- with their bloated running times -- tedious to sit through.

[DavidBanner]

Quentin Tarantino, with all due respect, is a video store clerk who got lucky enough to make movies of his own. His first movies were direct commentaries on the cheap schlock he'd been watching for years - kind of like Mystery Science Theater 3000 played out for real. Reservoir Dogs is a genuinely fun script, as is Pulp Fiction. Both reflect the store clerk's wisecracks back to the screen when various parts of the plot unfold. With Pulp Fiction in particular, you see the consequences of some of those memes. Jackie Brown is actually a more complex and interesting work - it didn't do as well financially because people expected another Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown took more time to do different things. The first Kill Bill is frankly an exercise in gore for gore's sake, but the second one more than redeems the first - the closing 30 minutes of the second Kill Bill may well be the best filmmaking Tarantino will ever do. Grindhouse was a disaster from the start - essentially Robert Rodriguez and Tarantino indulging in their worst excesses without anything to redeem the project. Inglourious Basterds actually starts with some great scenework but falls apart and winds up as a ridiculous spectacle. Django similarly starts off fairly strong, in spite of Tarantino's wild mock-70s zooms, but winds up grinding to a halt once we get to Leonardo DiCaprio's plantation. The new movie, as I've stated, is a long, pointless grind.

I wouldn't compare Tarantino to Wes Anderson or Terence Malick. Malick is genuinely an artist - his movies, like them or hate them, are the work of an artist trying to present different stories, sometimes more effectively than others. Anderson is a completely different animal - his movies only occasionally work. When they do (like Rushmore or Grand Budapest Hotel), they're utterly charming. When they fail, it's like having tons of sugar cookies thrown at you in rapid succession - it doesn't taste that great in the end, and you get a headache. But both Anderson and Malick do have some kind of vision. Tarantino's ideas seem to have sprung from his years behind the counter at the video store, and he seems to be running dry. Maybe it would be a good idea for him to go back to the store and ask for his old job back?...

[Paul MacLean]

My friend Chris Regan (a TV writer in LA) had this to say about The Revenant...

"The Monty Python & The Holy Grail "Black Knight" sequence? But 3 hours long? That's 'The Revenant.'"

He added "I was laughing during a lot of it."

Maybe I DO need to see this movie!