The Magnificent Eighth

Rating: 9/10 (7 January 2016)

Finally Tarantino delivers us a real Western. Yet, "The Hateful Eight" is much more than just that. The multiple homages to that and to other genres are more than the wet dream of cinephiles, is the opportunity Tarantino takes advantage of to recreate the type of cinema that's hardly ever done anymore.
What was his singular cinematographic language in the 90's has almost become stereotypical nowadays, that's why he takes his particular subtleties (which to him can include blowing up heads) and includes them in a theatrical and operatic period piece. It's almost a literary type of cinema, that dares to take its extensive time and space to sufficiently develop its characters and story. It's a cinematographic novella in which its inevitable violence isn't just strong (or, even worse, unnecessary, like in some of other titles from his repertory), it's powerful, and gracefully it never overpowers the themes of justice, ethics, morality, race, gender and politics, that give this epic essential content. This is where "12 Angry Men" meets the first scene of "Once Upon a Time in the West", with all which that could mean.
"The Hateful Eight" is magnificent; it isn't a tribute to great films, it is one.