Hostiles

Director:
Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart, Out of the Furnace, Black Mass)

Starring:

Christian Bale (The Dark Knight, American Psycho, The Prestige)

Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl, The World's End, A United Kingdom)

Wes Studi (Dances With Wolves, The Last of the Mohicans, Heat)

Plot: 

In 1892, a Native American-hating U.S. cavalry officer (Bale) must lead an escort party protecting a Native American family back to their home in Montana. 
En route, they discover the sole survivor of a Comanche attack (Pike) who joins their party.

Verdict:

When I was in high school, I was assigned a project that I put my heart and soul into; to create a clock.  Not that difficult, right?

For weeks, I obsessed over ideas for how to make my clock stand out against others in my class.  

Maybe the clock face could be slanted? 
Maybe the numbers could be Roman numerals?  
Maybe the arms could go *gasp* counter-clockwise?!

Little did I know, it didn't matter what clock I made, because three years earlier my sister had created a clock that was being used as the epitome of what a student could create.  It was spoken about in hushed tones and sat proudly on the fireplace in my house.  
If they gave awards for Clock Projects, she'd win them all.

My efforts were earnest but ultimately outshone.

So, what is the point of this story, you might think?

Scott Cooper is me.

Hostiles is my clock project.

My sister's clock project is The Revenant.

And damn, Hostiles would be impressive if The Revenant wasn't released three years ago.

Perhaps I'm slightly biased when it comes to Westerns since, like boxing films, I haven't found many that actually entertain me.  They usually plod on a bit of a slow pace, with ultimately the cowboys triumphing over the Native Americans, or the man in the white hat beating his darker suited rival.  Ho-hum.

But The Revenant really shook things up for me and my expectations of the genre back in 2015.  Gritty realism, gory injuries and, finally, an Oscar-winning performance from Leo.  
For the first time, I was made to sit up in my seat.  Not just from the action on-screen and trying to figure out just what Tom Hardy was mumbling, but the beautifully-shot landscapes of rural America made me gasp and stare at the screen slack-jawed at the natural wonder of the American West.

And all that still can be found in Hostiles, but simply to a lesser extent.  Breath-taking vistas are underplayed by foreboding and ominous tones, but the setting never feels like a character in itself.  Shoot outs are still tense, but they lack a sense of fear and dread.

Similarly to Three Billboards... earlier this year, Hostiles focuses on the pointlessness of rage and hatred against our enemy when ultimately, we are all the same underneath.  Characters on opposite sides find themselves fighting alongside each other before the whole thing is over, but in a film like this, you can tell that is where the film is heading.

Again, I'm not saying Hostiles is without heartfelt emotion, as Rosamund Pike acts the hell out of her role.  Seeing true tragedy befall her early on in the film leaves Pike a shell of her former self and she seems genuinely struck with PTSD for a large portion of this film (I've been so impressed with Pike's work since Gone Girl and I really hope she is recognised for her talents in the coming years).  

The same goes for Christian Bale's stoic performance as the 'Indian'-hating cavalry officer.  He gives a subtle and believable turn as Joseph Blocker, learning ways of the Native American people as he continues to spend time with them over their journey across their 'shared' home, resulting in a logical conclusion that succeeds where many 'Gone Native' films have failed in the past.  Plus his moustache is just glorious, I mean, look at that pushbroom!

Hostiles is not a bad film at all; it's an entertaining and thought-provoking amount of minutes.  However the same can be said about my clock project; that work-of-art told people the time whenever they wanted.  But damn, it was nothing on my sister's.

Rating
6/10

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The Hateful Eight

Say the name 'Quentin Tarantino', and you usually get one of two responses:

"Ahhhh! The voice of a generation! One of the greatest auteur directors of our time!  Constantly reinventing and imitating the film genres he loves because he's a film fan, just like us!"

or

"Oh, that overrated guy who just makes every actor speak like him?  He had one good film back in the early 90s and been riding that ever since?"

Since I would find myself more in the former camp than the latter one, I was cautiously anticipating his newest release The Hateful Eight / The Hateful 8 / The H8ful Eight / Da H8fl 8.

However since QT's recent flicks have been best described as 'revenge porn', such as Inglorious Basterds' exuberant murder of Adolf Hitler from a tommy gun to the face, wielded by the soldier known as The Bear Jew, or Django Unchained's black protagonist shooting white slave owners with rightful justice in his eyes, I couldn't see how The Hateful Eight could contain such over-the-top nonsense. 

It was just eight horrible people stuck in a cabin, right?  Well, yes and no.

PLOT

To shelter during a blizzard, eight people find themselves sharing a little haberdashery in the snowy forests of Wyoming.  All eyes are on bounty hunter John Ruth (Kurt Russell), known as The Hangman, and his captured bounty, the despicable Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) who is worth $10,000 dead or alive.

Joining Daisy and The Hangman are fellow bounty hunter, Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson); the new sheriff in town, Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins); Daisy's court-ordered executioner, Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth); mother-loving cow-puncher Joe Gage (Michael Madsen), the haberdashery's Mexican caretaker Senor Bob (Demian Bichir) and an elderly Confederate Civil War General "Sandy" Smithers (Bruce Dern).

John Ruth believes that the scenario is far too convenient, and at least one of these strangers is in cahoots with Domergue to free her before her execution.  But who can be trusted?

OPINIONS

Now one piece of information about The Hateful Eight that you already may have heard is it's running time. 

Whilst you may hear that the film is over 3 hours long, that is just the version with an intermission shown at roadshows across America.  The film on general release is instead 2 hour 45 minutes long. 

Whilst 20 minutes might not seem a big difference, that's the point at the heart of it.

The film's running time shouldn't put you off from visiting the cinema to watch it this weekend.  Whilst Tarantino is usually best when reigned in and not allowed to wander off on tangents, the film's relatively lengthy duration doesn't make the experience boring or tedious, rather the opposite.

Whilst all of these characters are truly despicable heels, Tarantino's fantastic screenplay is allowed the time to develop the titular eight hateful people into believable and complex characters, through sharing their stories and opinions in a steady and patient way.  No information is just shouted out in an expositional diatribe; everything is said for a reason.

If you plan on seeing this film (and I do encourage you to do so), try and watch it on the biggest screen you can.  Tarantino has utilised the beautiful mountainous landscapes of Colorado and captured them all in stunning detail. 

Combine that with the beautiful score by Ennio Morricone and you have one of Quentin Tarantino's most visually-captivating films.  And not just in the sweeping vistas of mountainside snow drifts, but also the interior shots.

With the film essentially being a stage play for the last two hours or so, you'd imagine Tarantino being quite restricted in the angles and shots he's allowed to make within this single location. 

However he manages to create a compelling and visually striking film regardless of the cramped space the eight characters inhabit.  Every single nook and cranny of Minnie's Haberdashery is utilised during the course of the film and you find yourself immersed in that world.

Let's just say if you were a fan of the claustrophobic and paranoid qualities of films like John Carpenter's The Thing or Tarantino's own Reservoir Dogs, The Hateful Eight will be right up your alley.

ON THE OTHER HAND...

I'm not trying to say that The Hateful Eight is perfect.  Far from it.  Similar to there are some fantastic high points, there are some disappointing low points.  Mainly how everything seems to be style over substance.

Not to take anything away from the amount of effort Tarantino has put into making the film look as beautiful as it can be, but without any heart or soul at the centre, the film just leaves the audience feeling pretty empty.  Impressed with the technical side, but disappointed with what Tarantino is trying to say.

Whilst Basterds made fascism it's target and Django was focussed on America's history of slave-owning, what is The Hateful Eight satirising? 

Some have criticised the way that men of all colours and creeds apparently can put aside their differences and become closer than most brothers when it comes to committing a heinous assault or verbally abusing a woman, even if that woman is a murdering psychopath like Daisy Domergue, but I don't see it that way.

Every time Daisy is elbowed in the face or shot in the foot, it is done with sincere realism and the film almost pauses to let the audience contemplate the violence they've just seen, and not in an exploitative way.  Tarantino might be a fan of a lot of things, but violence against women is not one.

LET'S WRAP IT UP!

With brilliant performances from a completely stellar cast, a powerful and evocative score twinned with majestic and stunning landscapes, The Hateful Eight is one of Tarantino's strongest films in a long time.

Whilst the running time might put off a lot of people, it is still an entertaining ride that might take a while to get going, but is worth it when the credits roll.

The film might be a bit self-serving and self-referential but it's a Quentin Tarantino film at the end of the day, you should expect that going into the auditorium by now. 

Finally giving time for his script to create a fully-formed and three-dimensional world, filled with realistic and horrible characters, it's a world in which you might lose yourself, even if you wouldn't want to.

Rating - 8/10

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Django Unchained

The N Word, Poorly Knitted Hoods and One Awful Accent

Unfortunately, as I currently write this review, Django Unchained has been released for a few months, so this review is hardly timely. However, I feel that the ability to look retrospectively on how the film was gauged by audiences gives me a better understanding of my own opinions on Quentin Tarantino's latest film as it has taken some time for me to fully verbalise my thoughts.

Tarantino has built his entire filmmaking career on shocking the audience whilst simultaneously referencing films and genres that he grew up watching.  His first film, Reservoir Dogs, captivated and intrigued audiences, providing inspiration to aspirational film-makers.

He followed this with Pulp Fiction, which cemented his place in the public's common knowledge. Critics loved him and his fresh, innovative approach to gritty American films. However, in recent years, Tarantino has been acquiring his share of negative criticism, with viewers becoming tired of his constant pop culture references and infatuation with sleazy exploitation. With 2007, came Death Proof. Critics and audiences were labelling it Tarantino's least beloved film, a sentiment that the director shares to this day.

However, Inglorious Basterds was a return to form, certainly in this critic's opinion and with QT branching out to work within genres, such as Basterds' war-time era, hopes were high when he announced his next feature Django Unchained was going to be Tarantino's first foray into the genre of westerns.

The story of Unchained centres around the relationship between the bounty hunter/dentist Dr Schultz, played effortlessly by Tarantino's latest muse Christoph Waltz, and the titular slave Django, played by Jamie Foxx. Django is the only alive person to have seen Schultz's latest bounties so acquires his help in locating these ruffians.   In return, Schultz will split the bounty money with Django and promises to try and free his wife, Broomhilda, from the clutches of slave-owner and plantation baron Calvin Candie, ruthlessly portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio.

The promise of a Tarantino film starring three fantastic actors in Foxx, Waltz and Leo had me salivating like a goth at a Tim Burton meet-and-greet when I saw the teaser trailer for the first time.  Tarantino usually can be counted on to give worthy actors an amazing script with which to work; Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt and Christoph Waltz in Inglorious Basterds; Tim Roth, Harvey Keitel and Steve Buscemi in Reservoir Dogs; Bob de Niro, Robert Forster and Samuel L. Jackson in Jackie Brown. He continues the trend here with the script being pithy and tongue-in-cheek but also quite vicious and scandalous, particularly in the continued use of 'the N word'.

Tarantino seems to have quite an affinity for this word, as Samuel L. Jackson uses it in nearly every film in which QT casts him. In this instance, Tarantino has said it is to bring the audience into the era in which the film is set, and to give us an example of how black people were treated. While this does produce the desired reaction at first, the effect becomes tedious the hundredth time you hear it and starts distracting from noticing what else is being said in the dialogue.

The script is also thirty minutes too long, as an appropriate ending to the storyline presents itself and I was left thinking, “Ah, here is a perfect place to finish it and it will seem like a rip-roaring revenge epic, the like that only QT can produce!”, but no, it continued for a full half an hour more! Here comes Quentin himself, with a god-awful Australian accent! It goes from bad to worse!

As well as the screenplay beginning to falter in the final act, so does the calibre of it's leading man. I have nothing against Jamie Foxx as an actor whatsoever, but unfortunately late on into the film, both Leo and Waltz's characters do not feature and the action is laid solely at the feet of Mr Foxx, and he doesn't really grab the audience's attention. This isn't due to Foxx not portraying Django properly, as I felt he acted perfectly fine in the role. However, the first hundred minutes of Unchained make the dynamic and animosity between Leo and Waltz's characters, Candie and Schultz, feel as if this is the main backbone of the film, rather than the titular hero's. So when they leave the film, the audience is left with the silent slave-turned-gunslinger, and we don't have that much passion for his journey to be fulfilled as much as Schultz's growing vendetta against Candie.

However, those criticisms aside, it still was an outstanding experience, filled with laughs, grimaces and overall entertainment from start to finish. Tarantino manages to produce a very decent entry into the western film genre, and now can move onto whatever project he now wants to focus on, word is it is a sequel to Kill Bill.

But regarding Django Unchained, it is not one of Tarantino's best, but even that is better than most of the production-line fare that is coming out of Hollywood these days.

Rating - 6/10

Two For Tuesday: True Grit / Rango

Two films have recently been released that are fairly similar: the Coen brothers' True Grit and Gore Verbinski's Rango. Both are set in the Old West and feature the same themes of retribution and proving oneself. However, Grit features an Oscar-winning cast with names like Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon and Josh Brolin. Rango revolves around a chameleon teaming with a gecko to fight off a turtle and snake. Despite this, I believe both can be compared when it comes to the quality that the films possess.

True Grit, a remake of the 1951 Western of the same name, begins when outlaw Tom Chaney (Brolin) guns down the father of Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) and steals his possessions and horses. Maddie decides to pursue Chaney with the help of hired US Marshall Cogburn (Bridges), and Texas Ranger LeBoeuf (Damon), who also seeks Chaney for personal reasons. Along the way to bringing Chaney to justice, they each learn that the others have the 'true grit' necessary to each get what they want.

Despite Jeff Bridge's scene-chewing performance as the cycloptic US Marshall Rooster Cogburn (originally played by Uber-Cowboy John Wayne), True Grit is a character ensemble film, with Matt Damon and Hailee Steinfeld being equally important and impressive as Bridges. Steinfeld deserves mentioning especially, due to her incredibly impressive debut, delivering the Coen's fast-paced dialogue with the confidence of an actor 20 years her senior and she genuinely seems to be enjoying herself doing it. Matt Damon also deserves praise for his performance, as I was honestly surprised at how well he suited the role of the cocky and arrogant LeBoeuf, as well as the Western setting. However Bridges, as always, steals the show with a stellar performance worthy of a Best Actor nomination, with his drunken slurring and violent nature feeling very realistic and making you forget he ever starred as the free-living pacifist “The Dude” in the Coen's epic The Big Lebowski.

The only problem I had was the underused Josh Brolin. The main plot revolves around the three characters searching for this elusive, crafty and murderous 'Tom Chaney'. But when they discover him, he only appears on screen for the last fifteen minutes or so, and after Brolin's performance in the Coen's No Country For Old Men, he was one of the main reasons I wanted to see this film. A talent such of his should have had a bigger role for certain, but what he had to deal with, he handled expertly as usual.

True Grit marks the Coens' first real attempt at a 'genre' film, instead of making a film in that certain 'Coen Brothers' way. Whilst Westerns have certain aspects that need adhering to, such as gunfights, the double-crossing and the authentic dialogue, the Coens handle it incredibly well as well as adding their own style to things, such as Rooster's dry humour and a situation involving a man in a bearskin. The Coens make sure that everything looks sublime, with BAFTA-winning cinematography from Roger Deakins, as well as the costume and music. I am certain I will be labelling this one of my films of the year come December.

It is possible that Rango will be up there too. High praise indeed for an animation that isn't made by Pixar or Dreamworks, but Gore Verbinski's Rango isn't really aimed at the same audience, which is quite refreshing. Verbinski did it for a change of pace from the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, and that is exactly what it is.

Rango tells the tale of a chameleon who ends up lost in the Mojave Desert. When he happens upon the town of Dirt and it's inhabitants, the chameleon takes on the persona of 'Rango', a tough gunslinger. The townpeople are thoroughly impressed by 'Rango' and make him their Sheriff, and put him in charge of finding out what is happening to their ever-diminishing water source, as well as defending their town from Rattlesnake Jake.

Now the storyline isn't really going to enthral the little 'uns and it might go a little over their heads. Some of my colleagues walked out of the film due to 'being bored', so it isn't for everyone. I got the feeling that it was mainly aimed at film fans, as the film features many references to Westerns of the past, such as Rango speaking to a Clint Eastwood figure, as well as nods to other films, such as Rango landing on the car windshield of Raoul Duke, a character Depp played in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The animal characters are quite grotesque, and look truly anthropomorphsised. The script is quite witty and sharp, with Johnny Depp doing a great job as usual as the titular chameleon. It might be a little complicated but it is fresh and original and I sincerely hope for more in the future.

With both True Grit and Rango making a decent impression on the box office figures, and with the upcoming Cowboys and Aliens, it looks like Westerns may be coming back from the dead. I just hope that Jeff Bridges stars in ALL of them. Sorry, make that ALL films. Eye-patch: optional.

Ratings: 8/10