Film

Pulp Western

The Hateful Eight

Quentin Tarantino returns to form after the just OK Django Unchained with yet another masterpiece in The Hateful Eight, a grandiose Western potboiler that boasts his best dialogue in years and an Oscar-caliber performance from Jennifer Jason Leigh. I didn’t dislike Django, but I thought there was something a little off and sluggish about it. It definitely left me wanting more from Tarantino on the Western front. I thought he had a better, grittier Western still in him, and this film proves that he did. Many of the Tarantino cast regulars return, including Samuel L. Jackson, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen and Kurt Russell. Russell, who delivered what I believe is his best career work in Tarantino’s Death Proof as Stuntman Mike, gets another chance to go to town with a Tarantino script, and he embraces it with much enthusiasm. Russell plays John “The Hangman” Ruth, a bounty hunter renowned for bringing in his prisoners alive so that their necks meet the noose in the end. Riding in a stagecoach to Red Hook, with the notorious Daisy Domergue (Leigh), his latest bounty, chained to his arm, he comes across bounty hunter Major Marquis Warren (Jackson), and this is where the fun begins. The party rescues one more man, future Red Hook Sheriff Chris Mannix (an outstanding Walton Goggins), from an oncoming blizzard. The stagecoach heads for Minnie’s Haberdashery as a means of shelter, where they meet the rest of the cast and tensions soar. Ruth deduces that one or more persons in the party aim to stop him from reaching Red Hook with Daisy Domergue and her huge bounty. Russell is doing his best John Wayne here, and he’s scrappy fun, still sporting his mustache and chops from his other 2015 Western effort, Bone Tomahawk. Jackson

hasn’t gotten a chance to be this devilish since Pulp Fiction, and he goes off. The performance likely to make the most waves is that of Leigh as Daisy. John Ruth is prone to elbowing and punching Daisy in the face throughout the movie, and the looks Leigh sports in the hit aftermaths are proof that this lady is not to be messed by Bob Grimm with. Leigh’s Daisy is definitely full bore crazy, but she also gives us something to bgrimm@ sympathize with in her plight. She’s a marvel newsreview.com in this movie in a role that almost went to Jennifer Lawrence. Lawrence is a great 5 actress, but Leigh proves she was the right one for the role. Shot in 70mm, the film is being offered in a Roadshow version complete with an intermission for those of you willing to take a drive to a limited engagement location and see it in the old school format. The impact and beauty of the film will not be lost in the digital projection, I assure you, but seeing a film in a traditionally projected state is a lot of fun if your projectionist is on the ball. After a bit of bad blood working on Django Unchained, composer Ennio Morricone reteams with the auteur for a soundtrack that will more than likely put him into Oscar contention. Also, it draws a lot of comparisons to John Carpenter’s The Thing, which also contained snow, group paranoia, Kurt Russell and a Morricone score. The Hateful Eight score, along with the camerawork of Tarantino cinematographer mainstay Robert Richardson, makes this perhaps Tarantino’s best looking, and sounding, movie. With The Hateful Eight, Tarantino finds his rhythm with editor Fred Raskin, who replaced the late Sally Menke on Django. Menke had edited all of the previous Tarantino films, and her presence was sorely missed on Django, a movie that felt like its beats were a little off. As things have turned out, Django was a decent warm-up for Tarantino and Raskin, because every beat is on the mark in The Hateful Eight. There’s a beautiful sense of tension from the first frame that doesn’t let up for three hours. Tarantino has been saying he will retire from filmmaking in the classic sense after 10 movies. If you count the Kill Bill movies as one, as he does, The Hateful Eight is his eighth movie. That would mean that there are only two left, which means modern cinema could take a serious hit two Tarantino films from now. Ω

"You want a foot massage?"

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4The Big Short Director Adam McKay, the master behind such broad comedy gems as Anchorman and Step Brothers, flexes his slightly more serious muscles for this one, a take on the housing bubble that nearly destroyed the global economy. An ensemble cast featuring Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt make this a funny-yet-scary look at how big banks nearly sent us back to the stone ages. Carell is especially good as Mark Baum, a banker with a conscience who realizes a little too late that things are going bad, and his wealth is going to come at the expense of a many U.S. homeowners. Bale is typically good as Michael Burry, the man who saw the storm coming and made a boatload of money betting against the biggest monsters of modern finance. Pitt has fun as a financial guru who has taken to the hills in anticipation of the oncoming financial apocalypse, while Gosling gives the whole thing a nice Martin Scorsese vibe as a fast-talking banker/narrator. It’s a drama, but it’s often funny. (Margot Robbie in a bubble bath … brilliant!) McKay shows that his chops go well beyond directing Will Ferrell with a fireman’s mustache.

2Concussion This is an odd, misguided movie. Will Smith plays Dr. Bennet Omalu, a pathologist studying the cadavers of former football players dying in mysterious ways. His studies eventually lead to the discovery of CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy), a brain disease resulting from repeated concussive hits to the head. Director Peter Landesman’s film makes the mistake of focusing on Smith’s character, and pushing the stories of the suffering football players into the background. Does anybody really care about Omalu’s love life when football players are killing themselves after retirement? For instance, the story of Pittsburgh Steeler Mike Webster (played movingly by David Morse) only gets a few minutes of screen time, while Omalu’s television habits and dancing prowess get more than one scene. The film goes for a strange emotional payoff regarding Omalu’s triumphant discovery rather than really focusing on the treacherous cover-ups by the NFL when it came to CTE. Again, a movie that pushes the stories and fates of the NFL players into the background in favor of giving a big Hollywood star a beefed-up role to sink his teeth into feels mighty self-indulgent. This could’ve been the incisive, important film the subject calls for, rather than a melodramatic excuse for Will Smith to try out a new accent.

4Creed Director Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station) and actor Michael B. Jordan (also of Station) resurrect the Rocky franchise with the best Rocky film since the 1976 original. Jordan plays Adonis Creed, son of Apollo Creed (played in past films by Carl Weathers) and born out of wedlock. Adonis goes to Philadelphia and enlists the help of his father’s former foe and friend, Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone), to coach him into becoming a professional boxer. The story is a familiar one, and it’s told with style and class in rousing fashion. Coogler does some of the best fight sequences since Scorsese’s Raging Bull, including a first fight that plays like one take. The final bout between Adonis and overseas Irish villain ‘Pretty’ Ricky Conlan (Tony Bellew) is sports cinema at its very best. Coogler also finds a way to weave that iconic Bill Conti music into the score at perfect moments. Jordan proves a more-than-worthy new addition to the franchise, while Stallone delivers a career best performance returning to his most recognized role. Heck, the man could find himself in Oscar contention.

3Daddy’s Home The second pairing of Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg isn’t as funny as their first offering, The Other Guys, but it’s still funny enough to warrant a look. Ferrell is in bumbling mode as Brad, stepfather to a couple of kids who hate him and the husband of Sarah (Linda Cardellini). Just when the kids are starting to only hate him a little, Sarah’s ex-husband Dusty (Wahlberg) comes back into the picture in a boorish bid to win back his ex’s love, reclaim his children and get Brad out of the house. This provides a setup that sees Ferrell’s Brad subjected to all forms of humiliation and injury, including a calamitous trek through his house on a motorcycle and a rendezvous with electrical wires after getting some impressive air off a half-pipe. Ferrell and Wahlberg are funny together, and the movie does a decent job of making them both likeable idiots. Thomas Haden Church steals scenes as Brad’s obnoxious boss at a smooth jazz radio station, as does Hannibal Buress as a handyman who winds up crashing on Brad’s couch. The film is nasty, but it’s neutered a bit by it’s PG-13 rating. It’s clear this is being marketed at families, but that’s a mistake right there. I’m sure there’s a nastier cut of this movie, and if I have a complaint it’s that the movie doesn’t go all the way with its sinister message. It pulls some punches, keeping it from being the dark comedy it deserves to be, and making it more of a feel-good film with some sinister undertones. Still, I laughed enough, and the film is recommended to fans of Ferrell and Wahlberg.

3Joy This is a goofy, uneven, yet entertaining showcase for Jennifer Lawrence, who delivers a fun and strong performance as the title character. Joy has a tough life, with a mother (Virginia Madsen) addicted to TV and her divorced husband (Edgar Ramirez) and father (Robert De Niro) sharing her basement. She’s working crap jobs, but an idea for a revolutionary mop gets her on TV and eventually changes her life. Director and co-writer David O. Russell reunites with his Silver Linings Playbook star, and the results are a bit strange to say the least. Lawrence puts the proceedings over the top with the sort of commanding performance that has become routine for her. De Niro has fun in his standard dad role. His roles in O. Russell films are his best in years. Isabella Rossellini gets her best role since Blue Velvet as De Niro’s rich girlfriend who finds herself bankrolling Joy’s mop scheme. Bradley Cooper barely registers as the TV executive who gives Joy her break, although that has more to do with his lack of screen time than his performance. It’s a good ensemble in service of a movie that's a little beneath them, but it all comes together for something worth seeing.

3Krampus Horror fans have had a good year in 2015. It Follows, We are Still Here, Bone Tomahawk, Ash vs Evil Dead all did a lot of good for genre lovers. While director Michael Dougherty’s Krampus isn’t quite up to the level of those I just mentioned, it does do the Christmas horror subgenre proud in many ways. For starters, this sucker has a majorly grim attitude that it sticks with until the very end. There will be no happy Christmas message in the land of Krampus, so don’t take this one in if you have eggnog on your breath and are looking to get into the holiday spirit. It’s more of a film for somebody who pisses and moans when the Christmas decorations show up at Macy’s before Halloween. Max (Emjay Anthony) still believes in Christmas and Santa Claus, and he takes a lot of crap for it from family members. When a bunch of family come to his house for Christmas, his cousins taunt him, while his parents (Adam Scott and Toni Collette) deal with an annoying aunt and uncle (David Koechner and Allison Tolman). Throw evil Aunt Dorothy (Conchata Ferrell) into the mix, and Max’s family is in for one lousy yuletide season. They eventually must confront evil Christmas demon Krampus and his scary henchmen. It’s not a great film, but it qualifies as a fun, nasty diversion.

5Star Wars: The Force Awakens With this seventh chapter in the Star Wars saga, J.J. Abrams and crew have done exactly what they did with Star Trek, and created a fun movie that not only respects the blessed canon of a beloved franchise, but stands on its own as a piece of supreme entertainment. It’s 2015’s most entertaining film, for sure, and a movie that stands up proudly in the realm of Star Wars movies. In many ways, Star Wars: The Force Awakens is the best movie in the franchise. I won’t say it’s my personal, sentimental favorite. (I think The Empire Strikes Back still holds that post, but a little more time will tell.) The Force Awakens has solid storytelling, its special effects are first rate, and the performances are, undoubtedly, the best the franchise has ever seen. That’s due in part to Daisy Ridley, an incredible talent who becomes an instant star for the foreseeable future as Rey, a scrappy scavenger on a Tatooine-like desert planet. I don’t think I’m overdoing it by saying she delivers the all-time, all-around best dramatic performance in the Star Wars universe in this role. The film will leave you craving for more, and a good Star Wars craving is a nice thing to have.