Good weekend. Wife took the kids to her mom's for teh weekend, so I was a bachelor again. Time to hit the theaters:
The Revenant
I wasn't sure what to expect, other than noting the 2.5 hr runtime. The story was ok, as was the cinematography and dialogue. But here's my major takeaway - it could have been real. I was 1.5-2 hrs into it when I realized I had forgotten I was in a movie theater. The imagery was breathtakingly frontier and plot seemed plausible. The only doubts I had were a) is the lead (Leonardo) really capable of coming back through such injuries, the weather, etc; and b ) do we have accurate tribes (were Pawnee up there, were the Arikara that driven and are they a real tribe?). My doubts were negligible. I was impressed with the way I fell into the movie and found it as believable as if I were recalling memories. That impressed me more than anything. Though, I'll have to give a nod to the effort for location, wardrobe, and setting as they were all very well done to build that effect.
Then....I sneaked across the hall to watch Hateful 8, making my own 2-for-1 movie evening. That was a mistake.
Hateful 8
From the opening credits and over the top music, you knew it was a Tarantino film. My mistake was coming straight from Revenant into this film, because H8 was definitely a movie experience and my mind was still adjusting from the full immersion effect of Revenant. Had I not seen Revenant first, I probably would have liked it more, but you knew it was Tarantino every moment of the way. It reminded me a lot of Reservoir Dogs in that there were a few outside shots to set things up, then everything else was dialogue and action in a confined setting for the remainder of the film. My Revenant reality had me groan everytime the dialogue included modern swear words (Fk, Btch, etc) which was A LOT, because they constantly reminded me this was pretend, this was for entertainment not truism. Like I said, I came in with the wrong mindset. However, I'll get to the point for anyone interested - it will probably stand well on it's own as a Tarantino film with a really good cast (Jennifer Jason Leigh playerd her part exceptionally well, IMO, whereas Samuel L was exactly as you'd expect him to be). It also echoed R. Dogs in that all the scenes revolved around figuring out who was who, and what angle each one was playing - to include narrative oversight by Quinten where needed, a flashback 75% thru the movie to help explain what happened earlier, and the last act solely focused on dialogue driving to the conclusion and a not-to-surprising Tarantino ending if you look at who died. A good film, but not one of his best, IMO, but that opinion may change if I can watch it again with the right mindset. EDIT - I did notice the homage to John Carpenter's "The Thing" in the early part of the movie and was delighted to see there were musical samplings taken directly from "The Thing" (presumably played at that time of H8) which confirmed the connection. Delightful.