THE HATEFUL EIGHT

There are two things Quentin Tarantino loves to have in his movies: characters talking and lots of violence.  He gets to indulge both in The Hateful Eight, a combination western and mystery.

Shortly after the end of the Civil War, bounty hunter John "the Hangman" Ruth (Kurt Russell) is outracing a blizzard in the mountains on Wyoming.  He's captured Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and is bringing her by stagecoach to the town of Red Rock, where he'll collect a $10,000 bounty and she'll be tried and hung.  He's also not above beating her to keep her quiet.

 Along the way, Ruth reluctantly picks up two passengers.  Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) is a fellow bounty hunter, bringing three bounty corpses worth $8,000 total.  Chris Mannix (Walter Goggins) is a former Confederate who claims to be the new sheriff of Red Rock.

 The travelers can't outrun the blizzard, so stagecoach driver O.B. Jackson (James Parks) stops at an outpost called Minnie's Haberdashery to wait out the storm.  There's they find an array of assorted characters.  Senor Bob (Demian Bichir) is a Mexican feller left in charge when Minnie went over the mountain.  Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth) is a British gentleman who's a professional hangman, who'd hang Daisy.  Joe Gage (Michael Madsen) is a cowboy planning on visiting his mother.  And General Sandy Smithers (Bruce Dern) is an elderly former Confederate leader.  The group are stuck together until the storm passes; but Ruth is convinved that one or more of them aren't what they seem, and that they're working with Daisy to free her -- even if that means killing everyone else there.

The Hateful Eight feels like two separate movies.  For the first three quarters of the movie, Tarantino (who wrote and directed the movies) is content for the movie to meander, as characters engage in long conversations with each other.  Then at the end, the screen turns into a splatterhouse, and violence and gore pretty much engulf all the characters.  There's an artificial feel to the dialogue (which goes on and on, leading to the movie's excessive running time) and the excess of violence at the end (and often directed at the film's main female character) feels self-indulgent.

That's not to say there aren't some good parts to this movie.  There's a stellar cast assembled, and if Tarantino doesn't always get the best of them here, the talent still shines through (especially from Jennifer Jason Leigh, late in the movie).  The gallows, crude, and racist humor sometimes works, though it can be off-putting as well.

The Hateful Eight isn't a terrible movie, but it is a terribly flawed film.

Overall grade: C-
Reviewed by James Lynch

DJANGO UNCHAINED

If there's a mix of fine cinema and nostalgic trashiness, there must be a new Quentin Tarrantino film.  Django Unchained is profile of the brutality of racism in the pre-Civil War south, as well as a shoot-'em-up with an ultra-cool, ultra-lethan man on a mission.

Django Unchained begins with Django (Jamie Foxx) getting recsued from a chain gang of slaves by Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz).  Schultz, a German-born multilingual gentleman, poses as a dentist -- even having a stagecoach with a large bouncing tooth -- but he's a bounty hunter, focusing on finding criminals that are wanted dead or alive, killing them, and bringing their corpses in for the bounty.  He needs Django to identify the Bitter Brothers -- and once they are found and killed, he'll give Django his freedom, $75, and a horse.

But Django wants more than his freedom.  His wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), who conveniently speaks German, was sold into slavery and Django wants to find and free her.  So Schultz and Django become partners, and the trail to "Hilda" leads to Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), the owner of a giant cotton plantation known as Candyland.  Assisted by an Uncle Tom manservant named Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson), Calvin fancies himself a man of gentility and culture, yet he has a passion for watching black man fight to the death.

There's a wide range of things going on throughout Django Unchained.  On the one hand, this shows the brutality and inhumanity of slavery, from the tortures and treatment of people as property to the "n-word" being thrown about casually and the frequent amazement and often hostility at the sight of a black man riding a horse.  At the same time, the opening music and titles have the feel of a blackploitation film, and the movie often goes for glorified shootouts (with no sympathy for Django's victims) as bodies literally explode after being shot.

Overall, these elements make the movie a little long -- but they all work well.  While there are painful moments of cruelty and gore, there are also plenty of comic moments, from Django's overly-fancy valet costume to some wannabe Klan members complaining that they can't see through the eyeholes in their masks.  The action scenes and gun glorification are over the top, but that's tempered by Tarantino's love of scenes of one or two people talking; and the cast is terrific.  Django Unchained isn't the best Tarantino movie -- but it is pretty good.

Overall grade: B+
Reviewed by James Lynch

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS

War is hell, and in the hands of Quentin Tarantino it's also quite talky. His new movie Inglourious Basterds is a strange mix of exploitation flick and cinema discussion.

Towards the end of World War Two, Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt, using a comical Southern accent) leads an eight-man squad of Jewish-American soldiers called "the Basterds" out to spread death and fear in Nazi-occupied France. They use what Raine calls "Apache methods" -- scalping their Nazi victims -- and permanently scarring a survivor who is sent to tell the tale of the Basterds.

On the German side, Colonel Hans Landa (a brilliant Christoph Waltz) is seemingly in the middle of everything. Nicknamed "the Jew hunter," Landa is always sophisticated, charming, easily switching back and forth between English, French, and German -- and always menacing.

Shoshanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent) is a French Jew who Landa let escape after he had her family slaughtered in 1941. Three years later she owns and runs a cinema. She gets the romantic attention of Private Frederick Zoller (Daniel Bruhl), a Nazi war hero made the star of hus upcoming propaganda film. He arranges for the film to be shown at Dreyfus' cinema, and the premiere will include most of the Nazi high command -- including Hitler. This makes it a perfect target for Dreyfus to have her revenge -- a thought shared by German film star and double agent Bridget von Hammersmark (Dianne Kruger), whose mission is to bring the Basterds in to destroy the Nazi leadership. But nothing ever goes right, and Landa is always around...

Inglourious Basterds is an uneven mix of a movie. There are several elements of exploitation cinema -- the early scalping, the fiery finale, an over-the-top telling of one soldier's Nazi-killing exploits -- but the majority of the film consists of people sitting around and talking, often about films. The movie is divided into chapters, showing that Tarantino (who wrote and directed this movie) didn't know how to transition from one part of the movie to another.

As with most ensemble war movies, the actors making up the Basterds are pretty indistinguishable. (The notable exception is director Eli Roth, who as Donny Donowitz likes to beat prisoners to death with a baseball bat.) Brad Pitt has a lot of fun as the laid-back leader of a bunch of soldiers for whom "killin' Nazis" is a lot of fun. Christopher Waltz' role as Landa should make him the villain of the year, and while the women here aren't given a wide range, they are certainly not frail and helpless, waiting for men to rescue them.

Inglorious Basterds isn't trashy enough to be sheer exploitation cinema, nor is it self-analytical enough to explore the themes it presents. (For example, no one ever comments that the American good guys are killing prisoners and torturing survivors.) But while this movie is uneven, there's plenty of dark humor and good acting to keep it entertaining.

Overall grade: B-

Reviewed by James Lynch

Grindhouse

Do you long for the old days of cheap, exploitative double-feature flicks chock-filled with little plot and lots of gratituous violence and sex? If not, you really need to stay away from Grindhouse, the Quentin Tarantino-Robert Rodriguez double feature that revels in old sleaze nostaglia. There are deliberate elements of old cheap movies -- scratches on the film, "reel missing" announcements as the action is interrupted, fake trailers for more exploitation flicks -- mixed in with modern elements (text messaging, discussions of CGI and Bin Laden) -- but both movies act like they're in the '70s.

The first feature is "Planet Terror," Rodriguez' homage to cool kids and killer zombies. Melodrama abounds as Cherry (Rose McGowan), the go-go dancer with big dreams, meets up with her old flame Wray (Freddy Rodriguez), a bad boy with a mysterious past and dangerous skills. Meanwhile, at the hospital beautiful Dr. Dakota Block (Marley Shelton) is planning to leave her abusive husband Dr. William Block (Josh Brolin) for her lover (Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas). So what else could happen? Zombies!

Thanks to a clash between corrupt scientist Abby (Naveen Andrews) and military officer Muldoon (Bruce Willis), a green gas is released that's turning everyone into disgusting cannibalistic zombies. Who will survive? What is Wray's mysterious past? And will anything this summer be cooler than seeing Cherry wasting zombies with the assault rifle that replaced her missing leg? (The answer to the last is "no.") This movie is impressively superficial, which is both a blessing and a curse: You really get the feel for the simple good-vs.-evil conflicts the old movies gave their patrons, but very few actors stand out. It's sheer exploitation.

Such excess would be welcome in Tarantino's "Death Proof," the second full-length feature in Grindhouse. Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell) is an older stuntman, charming ladies at a bar despite his scar. He's also a homicidal maniac, using his specially-reinforced car to terrorize and kill young women. Of course, some of these women have to fight back, leading to a long, wild car battle! This may sound exciting, and the car scenes certainly are, but Tarantino drags down the action with long scenes of dialogue that slow things down considerably. (It's a worse offense since he dedicates large amounts of time to characters who are soon killed and forgotten.) Russell has a fun time as the older guy maneuvering like a shark around the youngsters who ignore or make fun of him.

Grindhouse is fun fluff, albeit gruesome and t&a-filled fluff. It's nothing extraordinary and there's little you'll remember afterwards, but it is a fun ride while it lasts. And be honest: You really want to see the trailer for Werewolf Women of the S.S.

Overall Grade: B

Reviewed by James Lynch