The Hateful Eight (2015)

While a horrendous blizzard rages outside, eight people are trapped together at a stagecoach stopover station in Wyoming: a black bounty hunter (Samuel L. Jackson), a white bounty hunter (Kurt Russell) and his prisoner (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a Mexican (Demian Bichir), a cow puncher (Michael Madsen), a sheriff (Walton Goggins), a hangman (Tim Roth) and an ex-Confederate General (Bruce Dern). And there's a reason they're called the Hateful Eight ... a nastier bunch of people you'd never want to meet. Quentin Tarantino continues to surprise and if you're expecting another INGLORIOUS BASTERDS or DJANGO UNCHAINED, forget it! If you told me it was based on a play, I'd believe it. The first half is talk, talk and more talk but no one writes better dialogue than Tarantino at his best. After the intermission, we're in more familiar Tarantino territory as the blood flows like a river. It's an ensemble piece and the eight actors are pitch perfect. Tarantino shot the film in Ultra Panavision 70 millimeter, the first film since KHARTOUM to be shot in the format and only about 100 cities in the U.S. are showing it that way so if you get the opportunity, see it the way Tarantino intended. The 70 millimeter version is a Roadshow so there's an overture, intermission and entr'acte as well as glossy souvenir programs. It features a new Ennio Morricone score, reputedly the first he's composed for a western in 40 years. With Channing Tatum, James Parks, Zoe Bell, Lee Horsley and Dana Gourrier.