Eight down, two to go. Do something!

Rating: 6/10 (31 December 2015)

I just got back from seeing "The Hateful Eight" and my head is spinning because it's such a weird movie I'm not sure if it's somewhat good or exceedinly awful. What's sad is that it starts off wonderfully -- I felt myself getting excited by the prospect of Tarantino returning to form for about a half hour -- then keeps getting sillier and sillier until it's nothing but a comedy -- and the comedy is so unsubtle, it might have been made by Mel Brooks or Jerry Lewis on acid.
What's funny is the much touted, rich color of the Panavision stock and the fake cabin interior of "Minnies Haberdashery (not a hat in sight)" makes the film look like the over-saturated movies from the sixties like "Paint Your Wagon" which always looked vaguely fake to me -- a plastic universe cobbled together on a back lot and lit with huge overhead arc lights. Add big splashes of red blood and it started to look like the garish color of some the 60s Disney films, so there was this bizarre set of associations going through my head.
When the finale of the film turns to grand guignol slapstick in these hyper-pumped colors, I felt like I was having a flashback to a bad 60s Dick van Dyke comedy like "Fitzwilly" or "Cold Turkey," and, honestly, I left the theater stunned by the near absurdity of it all. It's as if someone unearthed an awful 60s comedy (Sergio Leone? Hah? That's a laugh) that was buried in the vaults by the studios.
This "love letter to the cinema" is really a love letter to himself, as Tarantino riffs off elements of his own movies like "Reservoir Dogs" and throws in some steals from Paul Thomas Anderson (it almost sounds like Anderson doing the narration. Narration? Where the $%^& did that come from? Wow, talk about the weakest attempt I've ever seen to clue an audience when some sloppy structuring fails the film.)
The dialogue is Tarantino-lite, like a second-rate writer trying to imitate him (Samuel Jackson's goading of Bruce Dern is probably the worst monologue Tarantino has written) and the story is Agatha Christie with a lobotomy. There are some good performances (Kurt Russell is great as John Wayne) and some awful ones (Tim Roth at his over-the- top worst) but the film itself unravels like a spoonful of spaghetti Western. And this isn't a spaghetti Western, it's a pizza and beer comedy. I'm sure it will be a big hit at frat houses across America.
I'm amazed how some people (known critics, as well) even venture to justify the racial undercurrent as social commentary. Tarantino has never written symbolically or allegorically. He writes character, and that's that. "The Hateful Eight" is a "political statement" in the same way that "I Spit on Your Grave" is an indictment of contemporary religion. Please.
How do I sum this movie up in one word? Well, the one that comes to the top of my head right now is: "Goofy." Maybe those big Panavision camera got to Tarantino because he subconsciously started to think he was making a bloody version of "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World."
I need to have a drink. At this rate, I have to say "thank god there's only two more to go."