15 Best Films Of 2016 (So Far)

What if Reservoir Dogs was also The Thing? That’s essentially the pitch of The Hateful Eight, and yet Quentin Tarantino makes something grander than a mash-up idea suggests. So we get landscapes with many shades of white, a "who's not who they say they are?" plot, Ennio Morricone scoring (the first time QT's allowed someone else to make all the music for a film) and a clear love of cinematic construction, but also so much more.

It’s the director working in confident high gear, not trying to be sensationalist or overly grabby, but taking his time to tell an interesting story in an interesting way. All the Tarantino-isms are here, but the key to all this is all the film's contradictions.

Jumping off from the inspirations, every choice is in direct contrast to another. It’s shot on “glorious 70mm”, but takes place almost entirely inside a single location. It’s a who-dunnit where half the cast did it. There’s an overture and an intermission, as if this is a high prestige picture. The genre intensity and revisionist history of his previous films has been replaced by western love and grander metaphors, but at the same time this is firmly rooted in his earlier films, with elements explicitly taken from each. The result might just be his masterpiece.

For more on The Hateful Eight, check out how it's The Culmination Of Quentin Tarantino's Entire Career.