The Hateful Eight

Dustin: 4 of 5 stars Nick: 3 of 5 stars Average: 3.5 of 5 stars (Live canary)

Dustin: The Hateful Eight is a sequel to The Magnificent Seven, following the recent release of the classic western’s prequel, The Ridiculous Six (right?). It’s an “ark movie”--a mixed bag of characters thrown together at random in order to survive an ordeal (in the words of Roger Ebert)--set in the American frontier in the tradition of Stagecoach, but with the violence of Sam Peckinpah’s and Sergio Leone’s westerns, and the bloodiness that is a trademark of Quentin Tarantino.

Nick: The Hateful Eight is a beautiful-looking film with a great cast of characters and some of the best Quentin Tarantino dialogue he’s ever written, but the film really could have used a producer who could convince the auteur director that a three-hour runtime that is mostly talking with little plot might be better if he cut at least 20 minutes out of his film.

Dustin: I didn’t think Tarantino’s writing was quite as sharp here compared to his other films. But I’m not sure that’s a fair criticism, because the writing is still so much better than the average Hollywood film. I agree it was a bit overlong, but I wouldn’t know what to cut.

Tarantino is so great at creating tension within scenes. So much so it’s almost overwhelming. My favorite Tarantino scene was the beginning of Inglorious Basterds when Christoph Waltz’s “Jew Hunter” was talking to a man who had a Jewish family hidden in his crawl space. The Hateful Eight has many such scenes where the stakes are life and death and Tarantino draws them out to the point where you can barely stand it. I don’t know any other filmmaker who is quite so talented in that respect.

Nick: I’m not convinced the movie needed to be broken up into chapters like some of Tarantino’s previous efforts. The only reason I can think they would be necessary is the chapter that starts a flashback to show what happened before John Ruth (Kurt Russell), Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh), and Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) enter that hellish haberdashery.

Dustin: I don’t really have an opinion one way or the other about whether it needed to be broken into chapters. It did establish continuity with Tarantino’s earlier films, an idea, I think, that was borrowed from the Japanese film Lady Snowblood, but it wasn’t strictly necessary. The flashback could have been more seamlessly woven into the film, like the movie’s spiritual ancestor, Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West, which used a flashback to spectacular effect.

Nick: I wonder if Tarantino used the “N word” so much in this film as a response to lots of people being upset that he used it to the degree that he did in Django Unchained. I’m not for or against it, but was curious if it was a simple artistic choice, a retaliation or a mixture of the two. The film is being called very mean-spirited as well for all the violence and gore especially that done to *gasp* a woman!... who was a violent murderer. I thought those scenes where she was hit in the face were played off as funny maybe because I laughed every time. Domergue would say something against Ruth and get punched in the face. Domergue spits on the letter from Lincoln, and Warren punches her in the face and so on. Most of the extreme violence in Tarantino films I think are supposed to make the audience cringe with laughter. The amount of blood that comes spewing out of two characters who are poisoned at some point in the film seems quite over-the-top and had me cringing with laughter.

Dustin: I think that word is historically accurate, and in the context of the film was appropriate. It is put in the mouths of racist characters, and doesn’t mean the writer himself is racist. Although part of me suspects Tarantino likes the idea of being a white person getting away with using that word.

Having said that, this was a very mean-spirited film, which did somewhat hinder my enjoyment and prevented me from giving it five stars. There are other violent films that are actually very kind-spirited (see Schindler’s List). But here, every character is despicable with few or no redeeming qualities. In the end, the racist sheriff turns out to be the only character who has an arc that could be seen as not-so-mean spirited. He goes from being a slimy Confederate lost-causer to somewhat allying with Samuel L. Jackson’s former-Union bounty hunter. But that was a very small point in the movie. There was a part when Jackson was talking to Bruce Dern (the Confederate), and I was thinking they would have a “moment,” but it turned out Jackson was really manipulating him into a gunfight.

Nick: It was more like Jackson was getting him to draw first so he could shoot him within his rights. So I was curious on what you think of “Why wouldn’t John Ruth recognize the other gang members of the Domergue clan who were all worth quite a pretty penny?” I just had this thought. It’s been three weeks since I saw the movie so there might have been something that I can’t remember. If there is I will delete the question!

Dustin: I don’t know either. It’s possible they weren’t long-time members of the gang. Good point, though.

Also, why is it called “The Hateful Eight” when there are more than eight people in the haberdashery?

Nick: Only Eight of them are Hateful!

Dustin:  Also, it’s Tarantino’s eighth film and it resembles “The Magnificent Seven.”

So… What did you think of the rape scene?

Nick: I thought that scene was way over the top and was easily the most mean-spirited moment, but it might have been the only thing to make the Confederate draw his gun. I think it would have been better as just a story Warren tells the Confederate, but then they actually showed images of the supposed forced fellatio.

Dustin: Showing the images made me think it was supposed to be literal, even though other movies have showed images we couldn’t trust (Rashomon).

I had a problem with that scene, as it turned my opinion against Jackson’s character. Granted, the Confederate’s son had deliberately sought out Jackson to murder him, so he sort of gave up his rights at that point, but it was still pretty dirty. There was also a rape scene in Pulp Fiction, my favorite of Tarantino’s movies, but that one didn’t bother me as much as we already disliked the characters involved.

Nick: I never believed it was actually happening. I thought it was the Confederate imagining the action. Regardless, that moment definitely lets the viewer know that there will be no heroics in the film.

Dustin: There was a lot I liked about the film. The constant tension mentioned earlier, the cinematography, and especially Ennio Morricone’s soundtrack.

Nick: Those are the things I enjoyed as well, but adding some of the dialogue. This is sadly my least favorite Tarantino film. Jackie Brown movies up a spot! It’s possible after repeat viewings I would come to appreciate it more, but the funny thing is I have no intention of ever watching the film again unless it's in theaters showing on 70mm, and I have never not wanted to watch one of his films a second time.

Dustin: How would you rank Tarantino’s filmography?

Nick: It’s difficult because I sometimes rate films on how much I enjoyed them compared to  how well they are made, but Tarantino really goes back and forth between each film in those two ways. But here’s a try:

1. Pulp Fiction
2. Kill Bill
3. Inglourious Basterds
4. Django Unchained
5. Death Proof
6. “The Man from Hollywood” segment from Four Rooms
7. Reservoir Dogs
8. Jackie Brown
9. The Hateful Eight

Dustin: My order:

1. Pulp Fiction
2. Jackie Brown
3. Kill Bill
4. Django Unchained
5. Reservoir Dogs
6. Inglourious Basterds
7. The Hateful Eight
8. Death Proof

The Big Short

Dustin: 4.5 of 5 stars Nick: 4.5 of 5 stars Average: 4.5 of 5 stars (Tweety canary)

Dustin: The Big Short is the true story about how several groups of savvy investors, including two of the greatest businessmen of all time (Michael Scott and Bruce Wayne), managed to predict the housing market crash and reap massive profits from it.

Nick: I’m not sure if I have ever said this, but this movie deserves to win the Oscar for Best Sound Editing! Or Sound Mixing? There are many scenes where levels of sound drop or add while making way for a new sound that adds another layer for that only to be dropped and add another layer of sound on top of that one. Since the first thing I’m praising is sound editing you might think this movie is a dud, but far from it, and I’m only getting started with the praising.

Dustin: Yeah, when a movie buff praises a technical aspect of a film before the story, normal people can probably guess the movie is awful. But we’ll let that slide. The movie is great in every respect. It takes a dry and confusing topic (finance), and creates a compelling narrative with interesting, relatable characters and an exciting story arch.

Nick: Is anyone better at becoming their character than Christian Bale?

Dustin: I assume that’s a rhetorical question. But the answer is no.

Nick: In every movie he is in this question pops into my head because I stop seeing Bale and start believing he truly is a different person. I love actors like George Clooney, but I never see beyond Clooney. Bale is so phenomenal in this film in such a short and sporadic amount of time it’s somewhat frightening how much depth he is able to give his character.

Dustin: Christian Bale is one of the few actors who can draw me to a movie just by his presence. He immerses himself so completely in his characters, whether he’s shedding pounds (The Machinist), putting on weight (American Hustle), getting ripped (Batman Begins), getting younger (Empire of the Sun), his dedication comes through and you believe him as the character. Like his performance in The Fighter, I totally forgot I was watching the same actor who played Batman.

Nick: Did you like the breaking of the fourth wall (talking to the camera)? How often they used it and how they used it?

Dustin: I think in a movie dealing with a topic average audience members wouldn’t really understand, it was unavoidable to break the fourth wall. Most of the time is was helpful and not very distracting. Ryan Gosling’s character narrates almost the entire time, and this is established early. But other instances were distracting and took me out of the movie. For example, when Selena Gomez explains a sort of stock option by directly addressing the audience as herself seemed a bit gratuitous. This is still better than trying to explain it to the audience through the characters’ dialogue, which would be awkward as they told each other things they already understood for the benefit of some unseen observer (us).

Nick: While I thought it was a funny idea to cut to Margot Robbie in a bathtub to explain the technical jargon of Wall Street, I don’t think it added anything to the film besides being a funny idea. Which, for these cut away scenes, Gosling breaks the fourth wall to get to the next scene for that to break the fourth wall. While it worked, I just think it would have been better if there was an animated clip with Gosling’s character talking over it, using something from everyday life as an example to describe what is going on. The movie goes at such a fast pace and these actors (Robbie, Gomez, etc) talk at such a fast pace to keep that pace alive it was hard for me to follow.  Though it might be that I saw this on Christmas day and the mimosas were catching up to me.

Dustin: The movie did a good job indicting the real villains of the financial crisis. I remember early on pundits were pointing to people like Christian Bale’s character, the people who saw the crash coming and set themselves up to profit from it, as the bad guys. But the movie showed these people went out of their ways to tell the banks, government and accrediting agencies what was going to happen, and they were dismissed, ignored or laughed out of the room. The real villains were the banks who set up the house of cards that came crashing down, and not caring because they knew the government/taxpayers would bail them out, so there would be no real consequences to their actions.

I remember in April 2005, I was sitting with my then-girlfriend on the floor in her apartment listening to talk radio. Some brain donor on the radio pointed out the rising number of first-time homeowners as proof of how great the economy was. I said something like, “Wait until they default on their loans in a few years to see what kind of mess we’re in.” This was just one month after the events depicted at the beginning of this film.

Of course at the time I had no idea how severe the crisis would be, and it didn’t occur to me to place options on the housing market. But I remember in late 2008 mentioning to a friend, How come I could see this coming, but the experts didn’t. Now we know the experts did see it coming, but did nothing about it.

Nick: There were many parts in the film where you didn’t know whether to laugh or feel an insight of terror. When Brad Pitt’s character yelled at the young uns about their gleeful celebrating on becoming rich because they didn’t understand what that meant for millions of Americans. Though that part also made me laugh because it made me think of Pitt’s character in 12 Years a Slave where he is the one insightful white man who wants nothing to do with the sad plot of the film he is in, and I wondered at this moment in The Big Short if Pitt was a producer of the movie (like 12 Years a Slave) and sure enough he is. Brad Pitt starring as The Voice of Reason.

Dustin: I thought the same thing, but then I thought it was kind of funny, because I saw Pitt’s character here as something of a parody of himself/other characters in his recent films. His character is an insightful do-gooder, but portrayed as a little too neurotic and a little too out there compared to his character in 12 Years a Slave. I wonder if it was unintentional, or he was doing a parody of himself.

The Big Short is a great movie--Adam McKay’s best film about shady financial affairs since Get Hard.

Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens

Dustin: 4 of 5 stars Nick: 4 of 5 stars Average: 4 of 5 stars (Live canary)

Dustin: If you haven’t seen Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens yet, go do so now as there will be spoilers in this review. We’ll wait…

Welcome back!

The Force Awakens is the first Star Wars movie in 32 years, and is basically an amped up version of the original 1977 film.

Nick: Which was the film’s biggest problem. All it did was set new characters in the old shoes and the old characters in the shoes of the wise leaders. While The Force Awakens is a better film than any of the prequels, they at least had stories that had not been told before while expanding on the distant galaxy of the Star Wars universe. But this ends up being such a small problem because I was never bored or rolled my eyes at any of the dialogue, which was always a problem when George Lucas was writing the script.

Dustin: This was substantially better than the prequels and fit more easily into the series. It fixed a lot of the problems with the prequels, and in a way was sort of a reaction to them. The prequels were roundly criticised for the overreliance on CGI, wooden acting, tonal dissonance between scenes, boring/predictable shots, sensory overload in action scenes. This movie used more practical effects and only CGI where necessary, solid actors, was funny at times but also had emotional weight, and was exhilarating overall.

Nick: I’m sure Lucas will order that the films have upgraded CGI in ten years when they’re out on whatever we are watching movies on in that time!

The three main characters Rey (Daisy Ridley), Finn (John Boyega) and Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) are well sculpted and overall a more interesting trio of characters than the original three--Han, Luke and Leia. Rey is basically a version of Luke that is not annoying while being able to kick ass from the get-go. Though she was even forgotten by the merchandising crew! http://www.dailydot.com/geek/star-wars-force-awakens-wheres-rey-action-figure-set/

Sex sells, but apparently women don’t!

Dustin: They must not want the fanboys to think they’re playing with a doll rather than an action figure. #TriggerWarning

I immediately like Finn, I warmed up to Kylo Ren as the villain, but I still haven’t warmed up to Rey. But still, these movies had characters I would like to see again. They had personalities and are will carry on the series nicely.

Nick: I must say I don’t think Han Solo’s death was done to the potential a scene like that could generate. Harrison Ford was my first favorite movie star with roles like Han Solo, Indiana Jones, and Dr. Richard Kimble. I should have cried, but it didn’t even register with me emotionally. It felt more forced with Ford not being a fan of the character, but doing one last film for the fans (and a huge paycheck) to give the character an ending. I think it would have been better to build him up again and kill him during the second film. Wasted opportunity. Maybe he will somehow show up as a Force Ghost!

Dustin: I think the biggest problem was it felt a little too much like the first movie. Information is put into a droid that falls into the hands of a nobody on a desert planet, they have to take it to Princess Leia with the help of Han Solo. Then they end up having to blow up a new Death Star. There’s a scene where they show the new Death Star (forgot what it’s actually called), and Han Solo just says, “So it’s bigger? How do we blow it up this time?” Sort of acknowledging then dismissing the expected criticism. I don’t really think that makes it any better.

Nick: The film is basically a polished version of A New Hope. Adding layers that were missing from elements that lacked depth while keeping the details that worked the first go around. Which hopefully means Finn and Rey are brother and sister! (fingers crossed)

Dustin: Even though I thought many elements felt too familiar, I still enjoyed a lot of it. The new Death Star can blow up an entire solar system, using the energy sucked from a sun to blow up the planets in another system. The stakes felt real, and I was actually on the edge of my seat for most of the movie.

Nick: Well the stakes felt real in the original! Blowing up one planet just isn’t enough to scare good ol’ Dustin! It has to be a whole solar system!

Dustin: I was comparing it to the prequels, where there was literally nothing at stake, making it hard to care. See, for example, the robots-making-robots conveyor belt scene in Attack of the Clones. It looks like a cartoon, then, when the machine pounds down on Anakin’s hand, it somehow forms a space around his hand. At that moment you realize the characters can’t even get hurt and you don’t care as the tension has been removed. That’s why so many people described the prequels as “boring,” despite the overblown set pieces.

Nick: Sorry, thought we were still on comparing it to the originals! Darth Maul still might be my favorite villain in terms of badassery! I wonder if Supreme Leader Snoke is pulling a Great Wizard of Oz with his size? I bet he’s a small fry like Yoda, but with a Napoleon complex!

Dustin: I was happy with this film overall. It felt like a legit Star Wars sequel, and got the movies back on track after the mess that was Episodes I through III. I was embarrassed to admit I was a Star Wars fan for a long time. I’m a fan of the original original trilogy (not the special editions that progressively got worse). I liked what they did with The Force Awakens, and hope they can keep up the momentum.

Nick: As long as the next one’s not a beat for beat reboot of The Empire Strikes Back.

Krampus

Dustin: 4.5 of 5 stars Nick: 3 of 5 stars Average: 3.75 of 5 stars (Live canary)

***The following review contains spoilers***

Dustin: Krampus is marketed as a holiday horror/comedy mash-up. It has solid comedic stars such as Adam Scott and David Koechner, while also delivering on creepy horror imagery. It’s a comedy much in the same vein as Gremlins or Christmas Vacation.

Nick: After the first scene of the family having dinner together I had an inkling on how this film would continue and finish. We would see family members killed off in a non-gruesome way, but at the end everyone would be perfectly fine through some mystical thing that can’t be explained ala Click. This is exactly what happened, but I will say the way the film ends makes that all kind of OK. Mostly because it doesn’t end on a happy note, but the moment after the happy note ala The Graduate.

Dustin: I went into this film fresh, not familiar with the German legend that inspired it (although I seem to remember Dwight from The Office dressing up like such a character). For those of you too lazy to search Wikipedia, Krampus is like the evil Santa who punished the children on the naughty list. I only knew from the marketing it was a comedy/horror mashup for the holidays. The ads didn’t look very appealing to me. But I think the execution was wonderful. Yes, it was somewhat predictable because it felt like a morality play where it was clear who were the wicked children and who would be saved. Krampus was kind of a less creepy Willy Wonka.

Nick: At least in a non-pediphilia type of way! The film was enjoyable throughout even with that knowledge, but I don’t think it hit the comic highs nor the gruesomeness of Gremlins, which to me is the bar set for family horror/ comedy.

Nick: If you look at reviews of Gremlins, many critics think the film went too far and ruined its tone because of that, but I think the opposite. This film has no real bite, and therefore lacked the depth of character that Gremlins, for me, achieved. It could be because our main character is a child instead of a teen, like in Gremlins, that the film goes more on the soft side and is intended for children as they will be the only ones who get scared. The best scene is the animated sequence that shows the Grandma’s first encounter with Krampus. It was so good that I wished that was the film I was watching.

Dustin: I think the movie did a lot right. I actually thought it was really funny. Most of the jokes landed, even the more juvenile ones (the squirrels on the roof are “playing with their nuts”). I think the cast was perfect and were able to deliver lines that would fall flat in lesser hands.

I didn’t think it needed to be gruesome. There was enough creepy imagery, like the giant slug thing with the clown mask. Visually, the film was very impressive. CGI was used sparingly, and the monsters were well-designed, giving it all a more realistic look that was strictly necessary.

Nick: When I say gruesome I don’t mean gore just more dark in terms of the character’s “died” or that they actually died. The CGI was great, but I wish the shots were less edited when showing those amazingly designed monsters. The only ones that weren’t impressive were the elves. I was expecting a lot considering they were the last to be shown of his minions, and then they just ended up being creatures in cloaks with brass masks on. The giant slug creature and the Knife-Angel were certainly creepy and unforgettable. I just don’t think I heard a single gasp or shriek from our theater. There were certainly lots of laughs though so the comedy was undeniably spot on.

Dustin: The best thing I can say about this movie is that I want to watch it again. I definitely plan on catching it before Christmas next year, and if it still holds up, watching this as a holiday tradition.

Nick: So your Krampus is my Gremlins!

Dustin: Pretty much. I loved Gremlins growing up. I was terrified as a child, but laugh a lot now.

About the ending. I guess it could come off as a cop out the way the entire family seemed happy and safe, but I don’t think it was meant to be taken literally. The scene had a sheen of unrealism compared to other shots in the movie. It looked like it was filtered. I would describe it more as an emotional ending to the film rather than a logical one. Sort of like Taxi Driver or Edge of Tomorrow.

Nick: I think it was very emotional, but I’m quite torn between whether all those snowglobes were people Krampus has terrorized and trapped or if there a snowglobe for every family in the world and it’s how he keeps tabs on them. Either way it is very creepy considering I collected snowglobes as a kid and probably freaked me out more than anything else in the film. I ended up liking the ending, but it was still a slight cop out of the things that happened before. Just like how I felt about Edge of Tomorrow.

Dustin: Would you make the same criticism of Taxi Driver?

Nick: What do you exactly mean? He dies in the film…?

Dustin: No, after shooting up the brothel, and lying covered in blood, the next scene shows newspaper clippings of him in a coma, but being hailed as a hero for saving the young prostitute. Then you see him with normal hair again, driving his taxi, and Cybill Shepherd who thought he was creepy before now admires him. I didn’t know what to make of it, and my theory was Robert De Niro is in a coma and this is his coma dream, since it seems to be a fantasy where he’s the hero.

Anyway, I think the epilogue in Krampus is sort of the same thing going on. But I won’t be so forgiving of Hunger Games. Fuck that ending.

Nick: So Max is in a coma and his family is nice, but still saying the same awful things to him? “Maxipad!” But agreed on Hunger Games. Fuck that series!

In all honesty I don’t think it’s exactly the same. I think the image is hazy when none of them knew what had happened previously, but as soon as they start to realize what they had been through the screen becomes more clear (wink, wink) and that’s when the camera pans out of their “world” out of the snowglobe into Krampus’ lair (where there are a fuck ton of snowglobes).

I thought the adult actors did a phenomenal job with the comedic one liners and the overall lifting of all the dramatic tension, but the kids were forgettable. It might not be their fault, but their parts were virtually one-note and less interesting. The only one who stood out didn’t say a word (which was hilarious), but he was the second to be offed.

Dustin: So in conclusion, take the whole family to see Krampus this holiday season!