There’s only one way to cure the space fever that’s infected movie watchers worldwide this holiday season, and that’s by seeing a film that takes place on God’s great ground. This doctor would recommend a few syringes full of The Hateful Eight, a new horse-drawn bleeder from the Stud of Blood himself, Q. Tarantino.
If you prefer your earth muck-brown or grass-green then maybe should keep your melon on the moon because this baby is teeming with the white stuff and I’m not talkin’ whipped cream. It’s a snow-covered epic that screams, “I’m a cowboy movie”, although I felt I was watching award-winning actors playing dress up with clothes and hats by award-winning costume designers influenced by an old Pendleton catalog they found at the famous Rose Bowl Flea Market. Let’s just say that the leads look more “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” than “These Are Horsey Gentlemen”, know what I mean? I’m all for being stylish but when the guy steering the carriage looks more more fashionable than me–a hip, youngish northern urbanite with a keen eye for flair–I can’t help but get taken out of frozen Hell and into Elle.
It’s cool though, this is a movie, not the New York Times. There’s plenty of dirt, blankets, fur, chunky stews and wood-paneled shacks to evoke feelings of a time before non-stick pans.
The story is about a bunch of assholes who happen upon each other on this shitty mountain in Wyoming. There’s one woman whom everyone else revolves around like a nerd at a movie museum revolving around a life-sized BB-8 droid who’s revolving around itself while revolving around a made-up universe with planets named after nothing but human imagination. To tell you anything more than that would be to betray Me-Everyone else who doesn’t jam hard like me confidentiality, so let’s just say that they don’t spend their time in the shack exchangin’ boot sizes and fried bread recipes.
With Tarantino telling everyone what to do and say you get a lot of adult themes, liquor use, swearing and shooting. There’s more than enough snow and a couple mentions of J.C.’s b-day to designate it a Christmas movie, with enough western themes to trick your dad into seeing it.
I’d give The Hateful Eight a “yee haw I didn’t mind paying for this” out of 10 and hope that Tarantino’s next movie has a few cell phones in it for Christ’s sake.
GLENN W. MACAULAY 