Homescreening: The Hateful Eight

I don’t watch movies as often as I should, I know I’ve been missing out on a lot of new good films. I decided to turn this assignment into a family movie night because my father and I love military action and western films. Of course, I had to pick an action film! I remembered The Hateful Eight because Nick from class was very enthusiastic about it, and it’s a Tarantino (I Love Kill Bill), and, it’s western, and it’s on Netflix! We started 8:44pm, I fell asleep an hour into it, my father was glued to the TV. After several failed attempts, I gave up and went to bed. I was determined to finish this movie, so I attempted to finish the film the next day, I woke up with my laptop sliding off my lap.

Oh, my god! I never realized the beauty of 70mm film. I didn’t think Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk was all that. The opening shots were breathtaking, image as crisp as the fresh snow, and because of the wide aspect ratio, you get a sense of the vast west in late 1860s. I am trying to analyze each scene, especially that long shot of wood carved Christ statue. My mom comments on this shot too. So, I explained to her that the filmmaker is holding this shot and slowly backing up because he wants us to examine everything we can see in the shot, and that his choice in showing a Christ statue in the middle of nowhere will tie into the theme later. I found it so impressive how he is progressing the narrative as the stagecoach advances, and for me the story kind of halted when the stagecoach rested at Millie’s (this is also the part I keep falling asleep on). It was interesting to see how African Americans were treated shortly after the emancipation proclamation. Samuel Jackson’s character is a Major, an incredibly high military position, yet Jennifer Leigh’s character, a low life criminal, refuses to ride the stagecoach with the major simply because he is black. I want love this movie but my father’s review is that it is so slow and barely any fighting. Being a Tarantino film, I want to at least finish it.

Research Paper- Option A: Before We Go (2014)

For this research paper, I want to explore the production side of this indie film by first time director, Chris Evans. I initially watched this film solely because Chris Evans stars in it. However, now thinking about this film critically as a film student, I think this film has been wrongly trashed by big outlet film critics and deeply underappreciated. Usually I find indie films boring because although they have artistic values, they lack the attraction to bring in potential audience who don’t share mindset as the filmmaker. Often times it feels like indie films are specifically catered to certain group of people, alienating large group of people.

In this film, Evans is able to express himself as an artist in a way that he won’t be able to do in his marvel franchises. Going into this production, he knew he wanted everything handheld, long lens, and practical lights as much as possible, thus creating a unique night time New York city space to already a cliche two strangers meeting in nocturnal New York city story. I personally love that he used his stardom to attract viewers because not only is it economically beneficial but also introduces mainstream audience to indie films and possible develop a better understanding of indie film. I am going to be critically analyzing the not so mainstream story line and how he used different techniques (camera, lighting, editing, color, etc) to achieve the emotion and tension.