The Hateful Eight - a quick review...

What's it about?
Quentin Tarantino's eighth film (second western) in which a disparate array of ne'er do wells find themselves trapped together in a lonesome cabin in the middle of a blizzard. Someone isn't who they say they are, and with thousands of dollars worth of bounty at stake, tensions soon run high.
Who would I recognise in it?
Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Walton Goggins, Demian Bichir, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Bruce Dern, James Parks, Zoe Bell, Channing Tatum.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
Taking a few cues from John Carpenter's seminal 1982 film "The Thing", QT's western is at times, more like a horror movie. Utilising deftly-chosen cuts from Ennio Morricone's score for that film, numerous scenes are afforded an unrelenting sense of tension and menace. As QT said himself, it is as if the blizzard is the monster swirling around outside, trapping the characters together inside. Indeed, Morricone provides QT's first custom-fit score - a sumptuous aural feast - while the tone of Carpenter's film bubbles under the surface. Both films feature a strong cast of characters, whose egos and suspicions clash ferociously. Here, each character is afforded much to work with, everyone standing out in their own regard. That said, Jackson, Russell, Goggins, and Leigh shine out in particular - the latter of whom sinks her teeth into the role with such relish that you can't help but be reminded of John Travolta's savouring of Pulp Fiction. Hopefully we'll see a grand revival for Jennifer Jason Leigh worthy of her impressive showing here...

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Who Saw Her Die? (Aldo Lado, 1972) DVD Review

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Opening in the snowy hills of France in 1968, it's not long before Ennio Morricone's eerily memorable score seeps into the film (children singing the title like a nursery rhyme), as we are plunged behind the veil of a killer – a twisted psychopath whose modus operandi relates to red-haired girls – in one of a series of effectively orchestrated scenes of stalking. At these times, and indeed throughout the film, Aldo (Night Train Murders) Lado's tight direction, Franco (Amityville 2) Di Giacomo's gorgeous cinematography, Morricone's score, and Angelo Curi's skilled editing, combine to create a sinister journey through the echoing waterways, canals, stairways, rooftops, and breath-taking architecture of Venice.

Pre-dating the much more widely recognised Don't Look Now (Nicolas Roeg, 1973), which tread similar ground a year later, Who Saw Her Die? details the trauma suffered by sculptor Franco (a rail-thin George Lazenby) and his estranged wife Elizabeth, after their red-haired daughter Roberta is taken by the veiled woman in black and found dead in the waters of a fruit market. However, Massimo D'Avack and Francesco Barilli's script (with help from Aldo Lado and Ruediger Von Spihes) opts to pay more attention – in true giallo fashion – to a civilian's (Franco) quest to find the killer when an ineffective police force can't help (you'll find similar narrative approaches in the likes of Dario Argento's The Bird With The Crystal Plumage).

 

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