The eighth film from Quentin Tarantino has arrived and while it may not be his magnum opus, it certainly is one for the books.
The idea is simple: in post-Civil War Wyoming, several bounty hunters happen to cross paths in the dead of winter on the eve of the greatest blizzard they've ever seen. In order to survive, they have to trust in each other and wait out the storm in a habadashery just outside the biggest town. But, you might think to yourself, all that greed has to come out somehow, right?
That's where Tarantino's expert mind excels. Over the film's staggering three hour, seven minute runtime he coaxes patience from the audience like a snake charmer, drawing us deeper with each tick of the clock. He makes us beg, tongues wagging, for the rest of the backstories on these eight characters he has stranded in Minnie's Habadashery—and it's so worth it when he finally does.
Tarantino's 2013 film "Django Unchained" was unrepentantly a story-driven flick, pushed through its runtime by the juggernaut of Tarantino's screenplay. His newest venture leans much farther towards a biting character study in frontier justice and the microcosms of society that form within small groups of people that are stuck together for a long period of time. It's a classic trope on television shows that have a "bottleneck" episode in which all the characters are trapped, seemingly without hope, and yet the show brings out secrets or teases relationships and actually cause us to see those caricatures as real people with real experiences.
This is Tarantino's point: he wants us to look at these eight actors and say, "Samuel L. Jackson, who's that?" It's why he makes movies. He creates individuals that could never really exist, with all their mania and greed and deception, and dares us to believe in them.
Maybe he's not a master of empathy (blowing up someone's head onscreen tends to ruin any previous relationship you had with that character), but he's certainly a master writer and an important director to keep in the rotation.
Of the Oscars, I couldn't really say for sure. The Academy has been known to favor his films with technical awards (Directing, Editing, etc.) but this year has been a complete mess of critic disagreement and murky shortlists. A safe bet might see "The Hateful Eight" crop up in the Best Screenplay category at the very least. Some critics think the acting may get recognized as well, especially Jennifer Jason Leigh's performance, but that remains up in the air with all of the other fantastic female contributions this year.
Not that it matters, anyway. Tarantino will make movies whether he gets Oscars or not, he just wants to get his brand out there and seen. The least you could do is indulge him.
