Enjoyable Eighth from Tarantino

Rating: 8/10 (1 March 2020)

'The Hateful Eight' seems to be a film that reflects it's auteur writer-director perfectly. His animating interests in life and film and the art form of film composition.
Storytelling and it's elegant unrealness seems to preoccupy Tarantino here and he has produced a feature where narrative build and release via a seriously plotted script is the point in of itself rather than a means to display the intent of the story.
I think that 'The Hateful Eight' almost makes this work for Tarantino but not necessarily for his audience.
The cast realise, as far as I am concerned, that they are pawns in the experience of tale telling and give very "scripted" performances: what's on the page is what ends up on the screen from every actor.
The wonderful photography confirms Tarantino as an explorer in his own creation of visual narrative fantasy.
There is a long time allowed for the real complex of violence and physical discord to unleash out of the carefully orchestrated plot lines which with hindsight prefigures Tarantino's next film 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood'.
I prefer this film a great deal over it's successor however and I rate an 8/10 and recommend it to fans of layered narrative form in cinema and to fans of Samuel L Jackson! Other positives include a typical virtuosity of character actors in supporting roles and musical score from the eminent Morricone.