“The Revenant” and “The Hateful Eight” have some things in common.
Alejandro González Iñárritu and Quentin Tarantino, their respective
directors, are widely considered to have “indie” credibility, pushing at
the barriers of Hollywood but not breaking them. The two films are
nominally Westerns but like just about all that are made nowadays wear
their “revisionist” colors proudly. Finally, I came to them with low
expectations since their last two films—“Birdman or (The Unexpected
Virtue of Ignorance)” and “Django Unchained”—were major disappointments.
While “Birdman” received the Academy Award for best film in 2014, I was
unimpressed:
The film plays with notions of art versus commerce but only in the most
superficial way. I suppose if you’ve never seen Preston Sturges’s
“Sullivan’s Travels” or Jean-Luc Godard’s “Contempt”, “Birdman” might
pass muster. My misfortune is to be old enough to have seen such films
in my youth and being spoiled by the experience.
The less said about “Django Unchained” the better. In fact I walked out
on it after fifteen minutes. When Django shows up at slave-owner’s
plantation wearing a powder-blue costume that appeared to be borrowed
from a low-budget production of “Don Giovanni”, my patience wore out. I
guess my logic fetish got the better of me.
full: http://louisproyect.org/2016/01/23/the-revenant-the-hateful-eight/
_______________________________________________
pen-l mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
