The Hateful Eight 2015

Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times: This is one of the best movies of the year. Read more

Lou Lumenick, New York Post: All this hype, and for what? Three hours or so, set mostly in a single room where the unsavory guests and staff trade juvenile and racist insults, periodically murdering each other. I was hoping they'd get it over with already well before the intermission Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, TIME Magazine: People do terrible things in The Hateful Eight-no matter what you make of the movie, the title doesn't disappoint. But its glorious, snow-capped visuals aside, The Hateful Eight comes off as haggard and atrophied. Read more

Peter Debruge, Variety: Familiarity aside ... the movie absolutely delivers on the sheer moment-to-moment pleasures fans have come to expect, from dynamite dialogue to powder-keg confrontations. Read more

Lindsey Bahr, Associated Press: While cinema's favorite cinephile is up to some of his old tricks in his eighth feature, this over three hour long drawing room thriller also feels like a step forward for the wayward enfant terrible -- a step toward maturity. Read more

Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, AV Club: Shot in 70mm, but largely set in one room, this is the writer-director's take on the betrayed promise of America: a perverse vision of sadistic men comforted by false causes. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: Tarantino seems to have no shortage of creativity or inspiration. What he needs to find is someone who isn't afraid to occasionally say, "Cut." Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: This is Tarantino. And it's very entertaining, even when it's entertainingly vile, which happens a lot in this overlong movie's extended third act. Read more

Tal Rosenberg, Chicago Reader: This is Tarantino's bleakest and most violent film, but it's also his slowest, a meditation on vengeance and justice in America and possibly in his own movies. Why he needs three hours to draw no apparent conclusion is unclear. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: As the bodies pile up in the second half, along with the switchback narrative reveals, "The Hateful Eight" becomes a hermetically sealed exercise of a dispiriting sort. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: The film is pointless, even as entertainment, because it builds to nothing more than a comic book blood bath. Read more

John Wenzel, Denver Post: Like Tarantino's best work, the film forces you to see and feel something on its own terms -- in this case, loyalty and identity unraveling under extremes. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: This is an impressive ensemble, and Tarantino has a true gift for dialogue and story twists, but in the end, all that talent seems to have been spent on pretty empty notions. Read more

Cary Darling, Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com: The Hateful Eight is an easy film to admire for its creator's singular and distinct vision. But it's tough movie to love. Read more

Chris Nashawaty, Entertainment Weekly: As someone who's loved almost all of Tarantino's films, I felt-for the first time-something close to disappointment. Read more

Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News: Put your hand in your pocket, real slow-like, and get out your wallet. You'll want to buy a ticket for The Hateful Eight, the Western that Quentin Tarantino was born to make. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter: As ever with Tarantino films, however, some of the performances are lip-smackingly delicious. Read more

Tony Hicks, San Jose Mercury News: Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight is a lot of things. Boring, of course, isn't one of them. Read more

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: The Hateful Eight is a movie about the worst aspects of human nature, which is why the film can't be quite described as "fun," at least in the traditional sense. But Tarantino isn't glorifying the ugliness; he's condemning it. Read more

Anthony Lane, New Yorker: By the end of "The Hateful Eight," its status as a tale of mystery and its deference to classic Westerns have all but disappeared, worn down by the grind of its sadistic vision. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: One of my favorite Tarantino movies since "Jackie Brown." Read more

Scott Tobias, NPR: The Hateful Eight is a big, shambling, audacious inversion of the Western, held together by Tarantino's sincere conviction that beyond his high juvenilia, American audiences might recognize their own fractious nation. Read more

Joe Dziemianowicz, New York Daily News: Toss a classic Western, a Miss Marple mystery and gobs of gore into a big-screen crockpot and you get Quentin Tarantino's weird, wild and way-too-long new movie, "The Hateful Eight." Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: Some of the film's ugliness is therefore a sign of integrity, and of relevance. But much of it seems dumb and ill considered, as if Mr. Tarantino's intellectual ambition and his storytelling discipline had failed him at the same time. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: An epic work of self-indulgence and smug riffing, stringing together tropes from TV and screen westerns and closed-room whodunits, The Hateful Eight announces itself with all the pomp and circumstance of a mid-century cinema spectacle. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: Best film of the year? Yes. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: Tarantino writes like a flamethrower in this western whodunit. He brings the war home, baby, with all the political, geographical, social, sexual and racial implications we're still wrangling with today. Read more

Soren Anderson, Seattle Times: Yep, we're in Tarantino territory for sure: way too self-indulgently long, and way, way overboard with that N-word. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: If you see "The Hateful Eight," you'll see an almost three-hour film that never drags, that is enjoyable from beginning to end. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: "The Hateful Eight" is outrageous, extraordinary, extreme filmmaking at its most confident. Read more

Calvin Wilson, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: "The Hateful Eight" is a cinema buff's dream - and unlike anything else in theaters this season. But that's only to be expected from Quentin Tarantino, one of the few directors with the clout to pursue his vision wherever it takes him. Read more

David Sims, The Atlantic: The Hateful Eight is too extreme, too ghoulishly violent, too besieged by its ensemble's overriding villainy, to feel like anything but a dark chamber piece. Read more

Kate Taylor, Globe and Mail: The Hateful Eight is devilishly good. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: This just isn't the Tarantino of Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs or even Inglourious Basterds, although any film that gives Samuel L. Jackson a chance to talk and glower at length is a film worth seeing. Read more

Alonso Duralde, TheWrap: If you enjoy a Tarantino-scripted conversation or two or five, "The Hateful Eight" may well engage you as a darkly funny locked-door mystery that's in no hurry to show its hand. Read more

Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out: Composer Ennio Morricone's seesawing score sometimes brings to mind Tarantino fave Sergio Leone, but the real ancestor here is John Carpenter's 1982 The Thing, another thriller percolating with close-quarters paranoia and Hawksian gab. Read more

Bruce Kirkland, Toronto Sun: The Hateful Eight is a crackling yarn with a deep well of meaning and socio-political commentary. Read more

Brian Truitt, USA Today: While not as cinematically game-changing as Pulp Fiction or as gore-spattered as the Kill Bill films, The Hateful Eight doles out all of Tarantino's favorite things. Read more

Alan Scherstuhl, Village Voice: Tarantino seems determined to upend your every expectation. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: The movie is a lot of gore over a lot of nothing. I hope that won't be Tarantino's epitaph. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: The Hateful Eight wears out its welcome well before the halfway point, leaving the equivalent of a whole other movie to sit -- and suffer -- through. Read more

Will Leitch, The New Republic: There is a sameness to The Hateful Eight, a sense that we have been down this road before, with higher stakes, with a firmer hand on the till. Read more

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: The climactic bloodletting may make for merry times for fanboys and fetishists, but it's difficult to reconcile Tarantino's infectious joie de vivre with the scorched-earth nihilism he uses it to celebrate. Read more