Average in a sea of spectacular Tarantino films.

Rating: 6/10 (21 December 2015)

It seemed like Tarantino movies were on the course to the stratosphere. His new movies out performed his already amazing previous movies in creative and brilliant ways. I walked out of Django Unchained saying to myself, it's a treat to be alive as we witness Tarantino continue to do what only he can do. As you can imagine, my expectations were at their all time high for The Hateful Eight.
In my opinion, this movie was missing Tarantino's signature. The dialogue, plot, and acting performances were all missing a level of his style of cleverness. Cleverness is replaced with explainable logic and reason due to previous events in the back-story. Nothing seemed to happen that was not expected. There was no character development, no clear protagonist or antagonist, and no character to identify with or particularly like. The story seemed to unfold mostly in one afternoon, on a mere few dots on a map.
Did I miss something? Maybe I was too distracted by the details and didn't get the social commentary, overall message, or the new frontiers reached in cinematography.