THE HATEFUL 8 (2015) – My rating: 8.7/10

What a great American Western Mystery. Witty, surprising, well acted, entertaining with non-stop action brought to you in pure Tarantino, outrageous, unpolitically correct style, with the use of the “N” word close to, if not more than 100 times. Minnie’s Haberdashery is where the Hateful 8 mostly took place in the freezing winter during a blizzard that was so forceful, neither man nor beast could survive. The Hateful 8 is split into 6 chapters: “Last Stage to Red Rock”, “Son of a Gun”, “Minnie’s Haberdashery”, “Domergue’s got a Secret”, “The Four Passengers” and “Black Man, White Hell”. For some reason, having the movie divided and labeled brought even more mystery and added to the question, what’s wrong with this picture? Quentin’s direction kept the audience guessing until the very end. No predictions here.  For 3 hours and 7 minutes, the surprises just kept coming.  The cast was brilliant. Kurt Russell plays John Ruth, a bounty hunter aka “The Hangman”, Samual L. Jackson plays Major Marquis Warren, a former soldier turned bounty hunter, Jennifer Jason Leigh plays Daisy Domergue, a fugitive being brought in for trial but ultimately to hang, Walton Goggins plays Sheriff Chris Mannix, a racist and the newly elected sheriff of Red Rock, Demián Bichir plays Bob the new haberdashery manager, aka “The Mexican”, Tim Roth plays Oswaldo Moleray also called the “Little Man” whose job is hanging convicted criminals, Michael Madsen plays Joe Gage, known as “The Cow Puncher”, Bruce Dern plays General Sanford Smithers aka “The Confederate”, Channing Tatum plays Jody Domergue, Daisy’s brother, James Parks plays O.B. the stage coach driver and Danna Gourrier plays Minnie Mink, the haberdashery owner.

I really like the Hateful 8, which has been nominated for several awards winning 7 so far. It borders on being a comedy but is a violent, racist, bittersweet story of crime and injustice, that takes place some time right after the Civil War with the use of very strong language, in the wild, wild west, told Quentin Tarantino style.

NOTE:  Tarantino attended a Black Lives Matters rally in 2015 and supported the violence against Blacks that caused him to be labeled as a cop hater.  Quentin says he’s not a cop hater but when he sees a murder, he must call it what it is and is not threatened by talk of boycotts.

[THE HATEFUL 8 is nominated for Best Supporting Actress, Cinematography and Original Score]

TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION (2014) – My rating: 8.5/10

The only reason I gave Transformers an 8.5 is because of it’s non-stop action and story telling.  I didn’t really care for the endless plots within plots but I realize it’s getting harder and harder to make these sequels interesting and meaningful.  How many times can we humans be rescued by these unwanted machines (Autobots) and how many villains are out there trying to get a piece of the autobot action?  Cade Yeager (Mark Walhberg) a struggling inventor, and his 17-year old daughter Tessa Yeager (Nicola Peltz) along with Shane Dyson (Jack Reynor) who plays Tessa’s not so secret boyfriend, battle the bad guys together.

Transformers: Age of Extinction begins millions of years ago, during the Cretaceous period which include dinosaurs. According to the story, Beings or Creators detonate many seeds causing the dinosaur’s extinction on Earth.  The story then picks up 4 years after the battle in Chicago, we’re now focused on Cade Yeager and his business partner, Lucas Flannery (T. J. Miller).  Down and out, Cade purchases an old truck he is planning to strip down and sell for parts.  The truck turns out to be Optimus Prime who is in dire need of repair.

In the meanwhile, Harold Attinger (Kelsey Grammer), a CIA agent is assigned to hunt down the remaining Decepticons but is secretly hunting down Autobots as well.  Harold gets help from a Transformer named Lockdown, who is a bounty hunter and along with Harold, kills Rachet.  Cade tries to repair Optimus, after his identity is discovered and Optimus activates the remaining Autobots: Bumblebee, Hound, Drift and Crosshairs.

Joshua Joyce (Stanley Tucci is head of the KSI Corporation and has perfected Transformin, which is the metal the Transformers are made of.  Joshua has also imprisoned Brains, the Autobot’s Drone sidekick to decode dead Transformers’ brains, Megatron being one of them, for use in human made Transformer brains.  As a result, KSI’s ultimate Transformer, Galvaton is created.  To complicate matters a little more, James Sovoy (Titus Welliver) is a field leader of Cemetery Wind, an elite CIA unit tracking Decepticons and Transformers along with Harold. James makes up the third bad guy and greedy human to round out this band of bandits.  There are so many players, one can get pretty confused.  You have the original Transformers (Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Ratchet, Leadfoot, and Brains), The bounty hunter (Lockdown), the man made Transformer (Galvaton) and a new species called Dinobots.  You also have the bad guys versus the good guys and all that’s in between.

As usual, the original Transformers prevail and gives a speech about morals, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Transformers: Age of Extinction is 2 hours and 47 minutes long but keeps moving so that you don’t really notice the time.  It started in Chicago and ended up in China.  The destruction was enough to declare the world a dismal, hopeless, disaster.  In case you didn’t get it, this movie was all about getting the Seed, the only one left that could annihilate the Earth.  Overall, lots and lots of action — worthy of the big screen.   In order to put closure to this story so that it makes perfect since, take a leap of faith and buy a ticket, you probably will like it.