Quentin Tarantino’s last few films have crept closer to cinema’s theatrical roots. Sequences occur in contained rooms, recalling the claustrophobic, object-driven narrative environment established by the physicality of the stage. These scenes are dominated not only by the director’s trademark dialogue but also by an assured language of compositional details, which guide our eyes through the frame and divulge information with a meticulous sense of craft. Tarantino’s detractors are bothered by his compulsion to bloat his works with references to cinema’s long, colorful history, as well as an occasional penchant for comically distorting his vested tone. But after recently having the opportunity to re-watch Inglourious Basterds, it became clear that the work overall was more significant than the handful of lame gestures that prevented me from outright embracing it. A filmmaker calling attention to himself is often irritating, especially when he uses dialogue to inject his own opinion of what he’s created. But this isn’t, and shouldn’t be, anything but an unfortunate stumble along a journey that’s far more complex and rewarding than the singling-out of that gesture would imply.

The Hateful Eight is Tarantino’s most confined feature yet, which initially calls into question his use of the 70mm format. Upon first blush, the decision registers as an arbitrary homage to the golden age of American Westerns. While it is that to some degree, it’s also a method to capture minuscule details in the expressions and appearances of each duplicitous character.

The film begins in the early stages of a Wyoming blizzard as John Ruth “The Hangman” (Kurt Russell, channeling The Duke) nears the end of a journey to collect his reward, Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Along the way, they encounter two stranded individuals who Ruth reluctantly adopts as passengers. The first man is the clever and cruel Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), a bounty hunter we learn fought in the union army during the Civil War and the closest thing the film has to a lead character. The second scoundrel to be happened upon is Chris Mannix (a viscerally animated Walton Goggins), who identifies himself as the newly appointed sheriff in the town of Red Rock, where the entire ensemble is headed.

The four arrive at Minnie’s Haberdashery, a cramped, one-room lodge where they meet the remaining faces that make up the titular hateful eight. Bruce Dern’s Sanford Smithers was a Confederate general during the war. He has made the trek to Wyoming in the twilight hour of his life hoping to learn how his son was killed. John Gage (Michael Madsen), is a reserved, weathered cowboy who is almost certainly hiding something. Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth, chewing scenery in the best possible way) is a sly Englishman who claims to be Red Rock’s new hangman. Last but not least is Bob (Demián Bichir), the suspiciously gauche steward purporting himself as an employee of Minnie, thus the caretaker of the haberdashery in her absence.

It’s easy to argue that the narrative in which characters trapped in an inescapable setting are driven to face one another has been cinematically exhausted in decades prior. But Tarantino’s perspective on popular hatreds harbored throughout American history is strangely essential and unpacked with a necessary dose of self-awareness. He illustrates the tight-knit relationship between prejudice and contempt by procuring a tonal delirium punctuated by comic terror. Underneath lines of dialogue, which are programmed to register as humorous, lie disturbing implications about who our characters are and what they represent. At first, animosity is personified only through verbal slander. When tensions begin to rise, Mobray decides to split the room in half, sending Confederate sympathizers to one corner and supporters of the Union to the other. Later on, as viewers familiar with the sensibilities of Tarantino would predict, this animosity is emulated through the graphic mutilation of flesh. The segregation, however, isn’t the first instance in which folly manifests itself physically.

A percentage of those who see The Hateful Eight will be crushed by the weight of unflinching cruelty that man is capable of. But the film, circumventing all expectations, has the audacity to end on a note of coarsely drawn optimism. We’re shown the worst sensibilities of the soul through bloodied eyes, and as the tumult begins to dissipate, it becomes clear that someone’s hatred eventually had to be compromised. In a sea of gore with no redemption in sight, a subconscious shift in mindset embodies what is perhaps the most vulgar step toward progress ever captured on film.

Opening this Friday, Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq is a modern-day retelling of Aristophanes’ ancient Greek play Lysistrata set in Chicago’s South side. Nick Cannon stars as the titular character, a drill rapper caught up in a gang war with a crew led by a man they call Cyclops (Wesley Snipes). With men, women and children dying on the streets every day as a result of the rivalry, the gangsters’ female counterparts decide to deny their partners sex until they stop the violence and come to a peace agreement. Led by Chi-Raq’s girl, Lysistrata (Teyonah Parris), the militantly celibate women hold their ground as the gangs, the police and politicians ponder the price of their senseless dick-measuring.

In a roundtable interview in San Francisco we spoke to Cannon about the film, which opens this Friday and also stars Samuel L. Jackson, Angela Bassett, Dave Chappelle, Jennifer Hudson and John Cusack.

This role is different than anything you’ve done before.
It’s quite different. [laughs]

What was the biggest challenge for you, working on a movie like this?
The overall piece is a challenge, to take something Aristophanes created over 2,000 years ago and set it in Chicago with Spike Lee at the helm…that’s brave, you know what I mean? That’s a challenge because Spike is a visionary, but it’s also taking something that’s so classic and true, and the film’s in verse. [Spike said,] “I feel like you can fulfill this role.” Him making that creative choice, it’s like, it’s an honor, and I’m going to give you my all. Everything I could do to honor the authenticity of the souls in that community is what I attempted to do.

Spike Lee said recently that everything he’s done has led to making this film.
He did say that! It’s true. He came to me before I saw the script, before I heard the full synopsis. He said, “I want to save lives on the South side of Chicago. I was like, “I’m in!” It’s true when he says, “If I save one life, if I bring awareness and stop one senseless act of violence, I’ve done my job.” For all the other films that he’s made that have made strong statements and empowered so many in front of the camera, behind the camera, people whose lives have been changed by this gentlemen…for him to really get connected with the community and say, “We have to stop the killing of our own,” not just in Chicago, but all over the world…that’s a big task. I understand why he’d say everything he’s done has led to this point. He knows how precious life is, and if he saves a life, that’s tremendous.

There’s been some controversy surrounding the film.
See, that’s the thing. I’m all up for opinion, all up for the debate. But I want it to be intelligent, you know what I mean? I want people to understand—it’s a satire. Some people don’t even know what that is, but they want to comment. You’re more than welcome, but understand that satire is what Kubrick did with Dr. Strangelove, what Spike has done before with Do The Right Thing. There were some hilarious moments in Do The Right Thing. There’s nothing exploitative about what’s going on in that film. The same thing is true with Chi-Raq, if not even more. You can’t judge anything off of a two-minute trailer. That’s coming from a place of ignorance. No one has seen it. I still haven’t seen it. You can’t speak on it in that sense. The devil is the author of confusion. We should be upset about a lot of things, but not this. The man is using his art to raise awareness, to create a conversation. Let’s be upset about what’s going on in our community. Let’s be upset that there was a 9-year-old executed in the same neighborhood we shot this film in.

I’ve been coming up with all these different ways to digest what’s going on in the social media aspect [of the film.] It’s as if someone’s like, “Man, look at that Picasso. That don’t make no sense! It’s too colorful! He’s coloring outside the lines!” If you don’t understand what Picasso’s artistic vision was…this is this man’s artistic choice to [use] an elevated sense of satire and a classic tale to portray this story. This is art. He’s using art to evoke change.

Hopefully, once the film comes out, people can have an intelligent debate about what’s going on. There are so many powerful messages in this movie. I think a lot of people are going to take back the things that they’ve said once they see it. That happened with Do The Right Thing. When that came out, people said, “This is going to cause riots. This is bad for our community. It’s a hate film!” And then it went on to be one of the greatest films for our community ever. Spike knows what he’s doing. I’m saddened by a lot of the voices that have come out to speak against the film and haven’t seen it.

Do you think the movie’s trailer is a good representation of the film?
I love the trailer. I think it’s exactly what it’s supposed to be. It’s created this interesting conversation. It’s got people stirred up. That’s what art’s supposed to do. The thing that saddens me are the comments coming from some of people speaking out. Do you see that you don’t sound intelligent the way you’re speaking right now? That you don’t even understand what satire is? It makes me cringe. People who understand satire and Greek theater, they love it. People who don’t understand what art is…I guess we probably didn’t make this for you. It hurts my soul when people say, “They ain’t got no real killers in this movie! It’s real out here!” What?! We know, but we don’t want to glorify that. Let’s tell it in an intelligent way. Spike chose a high-versed style, something most can’t do. People will see that he’s a genius and he knows what he’s doing.

I’m a huge fan of hip-hop culture.
Thanks for that…I am, too! [laughs]

I’m a big fan of battle rap, too. You’ve given a platform to Hitman Holla and Conceited on Wild n Out, so thanks for that.
We got a couple of new cats coming too. We gon’ go in next season. We got two new secret weapons we gon’ lay on ya’ll.

It was striking to me that, in the lead-up to this film, you released a song in character.
Yeah.

And people don’t get it.
Yeah! The crazy thing is, I’ve got a whole album of that drill shit! I’m sitting on it. I ain’t ready yet, but it helped me get into character. Wesley Snipes plays the antagonist of the film. His name is Cyclops. They’re the Trojans and we’re the Spartans. There are these Greek war references but in a drill music fashion. I was like, they’re not ready for it. Hamilton’s on Broadway right now. You can take elements of hip-hop and teach history and show the juxtaposition between love and war. But some of these cats ain’t ready for that. I think hip-hop has evolved. You wouldn’t be mad at Frank Sinatra for releasing a record from one of his movies in character. “That ain’t you, Frank!” Yeah, of course it’s not me! It’s the character I’m playing! When you think about embracing the art, how dope is it that I can release a whole project as a character from a film? I would love hip-hop to understand that we can evolve to that space, but we’re still kinda stuck in that mentality of, “If you ain’t real, you shouldn’t be talking about it.” So Al Pacino couldn’t be Scarface? He wasn’t from Colombia, you know what I mean? He don’t talk like that. But he embodied a character and gave you a piece of art. That’s what we did with Chi-Raq, not just with the film, but with the music as well.

Rappers have been killing people on records for years, but none of them want to come out and say that, really, most of them are playing a character.
You know what’s interesting? Hip-hop has always been about how “real” you are. “Keeping it real.” But none of those guys are really who they say they are! I don’t have no fake name—my name is Nick Cannon, and I’m never trying to be anything that I’m not. I’m happy being this guy. But some of the guys we look up to and call themselves “the realist”—it’s like, yo dawg, you stole someone else’s name, someone else’s whole persona, and you think that because whoever you’re affiliated with you’re allowed to talk tough-guy gun talk? You’re an entertainer. You’re an artist. If you were the biggest dope dealer in the game, you’d still be doing what you were doing! Unfortunately, what has gone on even in the South side of Chicago is, we got it all screwed up and misconstrued. We think, “I gotta really be a killer to be a dope rapper. I really gotta have bodies.” No! We’re kings and queens. Respect life. Let’s focus on that. We can talk about the hardships we’ve experienced, but let’s not think it’s cool to kill somebody to make us more popular and make us more money. We’ve gone down a demonic path if that’s what we’re doing.

Quentin Tarantino‘s really got his hands full, huh?

Following the director’s recent comments regarding police brutality—“I’m on the side of the murdered,” he said at a New York City rally on Oct. 24th—police unions across the country, including the Border Patrol and the Fraternal Order of Police, have called for a boycott of all Tarantino films, including his upcoming snowy western The Hateful Eight.

Tarantino’s been defending his stance on the issue, claiming he’s “not a cop hater.” The murder of a New York police officer, Randolph Holder, just a week before his appearance at the controversial protest, didn’t help quell the fiery national debate that quickly erupted around the director’s comments.

Fighting tooth and nail for his right to speak publicly against police brutality is surely the last thing the widely beloved director was planning to do in the final weeks leading up to his eighth feature film, but a shiny nugget of good news has arrived today in the form of a new, awesome trailer for The Hateful Eight.

The movie’s had a rough road—if you remember, it almost didn’t get made at all when the script was leaked to the public by one of star Bruce Dern‘s people (that bastard!). Tarantino scrapped the project in a fit of rage, but thankfully for us he changed his tune. Perhaps most members of law enforcement won’t be coming out to watch the film in “glorious 70mm” this Christmas like the rest of us, but maybe the latest trailer will compel some of them to show up in disguise.

The Hateful Eight stars Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Bruce Dern, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Walton Goggins, Demian Bichir, Tim Roth and Michael Madsen. Here’s the official synopsis:

Set six or eight or twelve years after the Civil War, a stagecoach hurtles through the wintry Wyoming landscape. The passengers, bounty hunter John Ruth (Kurt Russell) and his fugitive Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh), race towards the town of Red Rock where Ruth, known in these parts as “The Hangman,” will bring Domergue to justice. Along the road, they encounter two strangers: Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), a black former union soldier turned infamous bounty hunter, and Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), a southern renegade who claims to be the town’s new Sheriff. Losing their lead on the blizzard, Ruth, Domergue, Warren and Mannix seek refuge at Minnie’s Haberdashery, a stagecoach stopover on a mountain pass. When they arrive at Minnie’s, they are greeted not by the proprietor but by four unfamiliar faces: Bob (Demian Bichir), who’s taking care of Minnie’s while she’s visiting her mother, is holed up with Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth), the hangman of Red Rock, cow-puncher Joe Gage (Michael Madsen), and Confederate General Sanford Smithers (Bruce Dern). As the storm overtakes the mountainside stopover, our eight travelers come to learn they may not make it to Red Rock after all…

The Hateful Eight drops on Christmas Day, but only in the 70mm format. It releases wide on January 8th on all formats.

Quentin Tarantino‘s long-awaited 8th film The Hateful Eight is set for release this Christmas, but the first real glimpse at footage has just arrived in the form its new trailer. The Hateful Eight collects an impressive ensemble of actors including Taratino’s returning favorites (Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Walton Goggins, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, and Bruce Dern) along with a couple of new faces (Jennifer Jason Leigh, Demian Bichir, a perhaps-under-wraps cameo from a Foxcatcher star) for this tale of betrayal “six or eight or twelve years after the Civil War.” Filmed in gorgeous 70mm against the snowy mountainscapes of Colorado (in place of Wyoming, where the story is set), this trailer reveals the central cast of characters in all their fur coat, brimmed hat, twanged accent glory.

The Hateful Eight centers on a stagecoach lead by bounty hunter John “The Hangman” Ruth (Russell) as he drives toward the town of Red Rock, where his passenger Daisy Domergue (Leigh) is set to hang. On the road, the two come across Major Marquis Warren (Jackson), a former union soldier who has taken up bounty hunting himself, as well as Chris Mannix (Goggins), a Southern renegade that claims to be the town’s new Sheriff. Attempting to escape an intensifying blizzard, the four duck into Minnie’s Haberdashery to discover four unfamiliar faces in Bob (Bichir), Oswaldo Mobray (Roth), Joe Gage (Madsen), and Confederate General Sanford Smithers (Dern). The travelers attempt to outlast the storm as well as each other, and make it to Red Rock alive.

Let us know in the comments what you think of the latest trailer for The HateFul Eight

Before we get into this, let’s first talk about Samuel L. Jackson. Let’s talk about how he was, for a time, the highest-grossing actor of all time and still hangs out in the top 5. Let’s talk about how the man has acted in over 160 films; about how at 67 years old he’s still playing the badass in charge in movies like, well, every Marvel movie for one where he’s basically the leader of the superhero pack as Nick Fury. And all with no superpowers, only an eye patch and a degree in kicking ass. Let’s focus on all these good things before we remember that Samuel L. Jackson has never played the President of the United States in a film…until now. He’s been a Jedi already for Pete’s sake. What’s unfortunate for the great Mr. Jackson, is that the first time he chooses (or is offered) to play the President is for a film that truly underutilizes the talent he possesses. Heck, Samuel L. Jackson took on the seemingly insurmountable task of facing off against snakes on an aircraft and turned camp into cult history, so why have we never entrusted him with the (fake) care of the most powerful country in the world until now?

What makes even less sense is that the film in question, Big Game, is directed by a man, Jalmari Helander, who has already created what can only be defined as a Finnish cult Christmas-horror film, Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale. So here’s a man with some experience in turning ridiculousness into something fun. Big Game is neither ridiculous or fun. This is a film full of talented actors (Felicity Huffman, Jim Broadbent, and Victor Garber are all featured in addition to Samuel L. Jackson), who are given low-substance dialogue and the essence of a plot in what is essentially a high budget National Geographic explosion pic.

The film tidily leads us through its third-grade reading level script with dozens of aerial shots of the Nordic mountains. Then on to Air Force One where President William Alan Moore (Jackson) laments the day’s headlines—no explanation for how the current printed paper could make its way onto an aircraft flying over Finland; we couldn’t have written in an iPad here?—that exclaim how poorly he’s tracking in the approval polls. He jokes with his head of secret service, Morris (Ray Stevenson), about how he’d rather take a bullet than never eat a cookie again. An insensitive thing to say to a man who obviously very recently took a bullet for the President—wait, a President who underwent an assassination attempt is polling low?—and conveniently expresses his regret for forcing Morris into retirement in the near future. Morris doesn’t seem too happy about the forced career move. He could be wearing a shirt that reads “Traitor” at this point and it wouldn’t be more obvious where the film is going.

Meanwhile, on the ground below in Finland, Oskari (Onni Tommila), a boy on the brink of 13 goes with his father to the wilderness to begin his rite of passage in their community: a solo hunt where he’ll prove himself a man by bagging a large animal or come back to embarrassment. Without much faith from his father, Oskari takes off on his four-wheeler. The young man gets bigger game than he could have imagined, however, when Morris’s partnership with a terrorist, Hazar (Mehmet Kurtulus), brings down Air Force One and the President escapes in a capsule that the boy stumbles upon. This short action sequence of the film, albeit the catalyst for the film’s entire plot, focuses on spectacle with nary a thought for consistency. For one, the President has only just risen for the day and dressed, unable even to finish putting his shoes on, when Morris ushers him off the plane, and yet all the next frames involve the plane going down in the night-darkened forest. I mean, I get it, explosions look much better in the dark, but it’s a weird discrepancy. Morris’s means of ensuring no one can get to the President is also too simple, and one has to wonder why some people die so easily and yet Morris deliberately makes killing the President more difficult.

But in a film titled Big Game, it’s reasonable to expect the action will focus on “the hunt.” So, Oskari finds the President, and they banter about him not recognizing the most recognizable man in the world—a little funny since he’s played by a highly recognizable actor. Oskari proceeds to keep the President alive, using his camping skills and bonding with President Moore over his fears of disappointing his father. There’s a lot of talk of bravery in its many forms. Then the very next morning the bad guys show up and immediately overtake the President. Well, so much for “the hunt” theory. They are about to cart the President off when Oskari finds his bravery and swoops in to save the President.

Back in the U.S. the assembled leaders watch all of what’s taking place via satellite like it’s some sort of movie, no one taking any real action only sipping on their coffee, eating their takeout food, and putting on their worried faces. Victor Garber is the Vice President and he does a good job yelling maniacally in frustration. Jim Broadbent has an excellent intelligent deadpan, and yet as the retired “best CIA agent” the country ever had, he mostly keeps his cool while stating the obvious while everyone ogles. This depiction of American political-military efforts, if enacted in real life, would have meant our demise as a country long ago.

With explosions galore and enough aerial widescreen shots to make up an impressive Finland tourist video, Big Game has a fair amount of spectacle, but all of its substance lies hidden away within the treasure troves of talent possessed by its widely underutilized cast. As an actor who’s proven he can lead films to success when given enough freedom, it’s astonishing how passive a character Samuel L. Jackson plays in this film. The man isn’t even given any good one-liners to laugh at. Tommila ends up being the real star, so younger audiences may find appeal in the film, but he plays Oskari as always serious, there’s no real youthful playfulness found within the film. There’s also hardly any stakes. The terrorist should be the most frightening aspect of the film, and yet he literally has no agenda, no real reason for choosing to capture and kill the most powerful man in the world.

Big Game benefits from its location’s beauty, and it will earn a certain draw with Samuel L. Jackson on its poster, but Helander has definitely missed a chance to play up the campy action potential of Jackson, the premise, and a script with built-in inanity.

Three years ago, Joss Whedon was given an awesome set of toys to play with: a bounding, hulking man-beast; a crimson-haired femme fatale; a hammer-wielding Norse god; a deadly archer super-spy; a ballistic man made of iron; a patriotic super soldier; Samuel L. Jackson with an eyepatch. He had a big sandbox to play in, too; 2012’s The Avengers ran a whopping 2 hours and 20 minutes, giving him plenty of room to smash his new toys together, give them quippy things to say and conjure up some villains (alien invaders and a smirking, meddling trickster) for them to save the world from. It was big, it was loud, it was a hell of a lot of fun, and all us kids standing around the sandbox showered him with applause once the dust settled and the show was over. Then, he called it a day, putting his action figures away until his next grand production of geek theater.

That brings us to The Avengers: Age of Ultron, Whedon‘s hotly anticipated encore performance. The super-sequel has got everything you’d expect: insane action scenes, clever one-liners, high-stakes drama and geeky easter eggs galore. It’s exciting to have Whedon return to the MCU playground, but there’s a problem: he’s got about twice as many toys as he did last time. Suddenly, the sandbox seems a bit crowded. With four major storylines going on simultaneously and a staggering number of superheroes and villains to keep track of, Marvel Studios’ latest summer blockbuster feels stretched too thin.

On the other hand, it never feels jumbled or messy; Whedon is a seasoned storyteller, and he somehow manages to make this tightly packed mega movie feel pretty well-organized, streamlined and easy to follow. He never loses command of his band of heroes, but what he’s lacking is prioritization. Each of the nine (!) primary characters is given a rich backstory and emotional arc to explore, which sounds cool until you realize that, due to time constraints, they have a mere handful of scenes to get the job done. As a result, the storylines feel abbreviated across the board.

It’s unfortunate, because there’s some really interesting stuff going on here that could have used more time. Robert Downey Jr.‘s Tony Stark sets up the main conflict early on, strutting unknowingly into a world of tech trouble when he and The Hulk himself, Dr. Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), inadvertently birth Ultron (the villain of the film’s subtitle, voiced by James Spader), a sentient A.I. designed to protect the world, but who instead decides to purge it of the “poison” that is humankind. What hath Stark wrought? A.I. panic is fascinating, relevant subject matter that Whedon unfortunately has precious little time to explore (look to Alex Garland’s recent Ex Machina for deeper insight).

Where Whedon excels is at building his characters in quick strokes with tasty details that stick to the back of your brain like bits of candy. It’s amusing, for example, when you realize that Ultron has somehow inherited Stark’s glib, quick-fire sense of humor: When a group of scientists run away from him screaming after he brutally murders several of their colleagues, he sarcastically pleads, “Wait! Guys?!” as if he’d made an innocuous party foul. The tyrannical robot is clearly his father’s son, and yet throws a fit at the slightest notion that he’s anything like his genius-billionaire-playboy-philanthropist daddy. Whedon’s always been great at giving his villains a human dimension (Buffy fans holler), and Ultron is no exception.

Iron Man’s robo-baby issues aside, the relationships between he and the rest of the Avengers are deepened and expanded. Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Dr. Banner explore further the flirtation teased in the first film, providing an unexpected taste of romance. Captain America (Chris Evans) takes issue with Stark’s reckless exploitation of technology (setting the foundation for the impending Civil War), and Thor (Chris Hemsworth) does some extraneous soul-searching that’s mostly there to set up his next solo movie. Franchise newcomers Elizabeth Olsen and Aaron Taylor-Johnson join the fray as Wanda and Pietro Maximoff, a pair of “enhanced” twins who carry a deep-seated vendetta against Tony Stark.

Surprisingly, the film’s most poignant presence is that of Jeremy Renner‘s Hawkeye, who’s been significantly upgraded from his second-tier role in the first movie. We get to see a bit of his refreshingly ordinary home life; his wife is played by Linda Cardellini, who gives a terrific, grounded performance that comes completely out of left field. Through Hawkeye, who’s essentially a man amongst gods, Whedon defines both the story’s stakes and what being an Avenger truly means.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the thing most ticket-buyers will be paying to see: the action. The sweet, sweet, fist-pumping, “I can’t believe I’m seeing this” action. The movie opens with a snowy raid on a Hydra fortress in the fictitious Eastern European country of Sokovia. There’s a slo-mo shot (featured prominently in the trailers) of all six heroes charging through hoards of Hydra henchman phalanx-style, each Avenger locked in the most badass action pose you’ve ever seen. It’s ridiculously cool. On the other end of the film, we see Iron Man, Thor, and their new buddy, a monk-like floating android called Vision (Paul Bettany), attacking Ultron with laser beams and lightning bolts in unison. Again, ridiculously cool!

Moments like these are so slathered in comic-book awesomesauce my inner geek spontaneously combusted with excitement. Yes, the action can be a bit hollow and flashy, like watching the Harlem Globetrotters light up the court. But you know what? I love the freaking Harlem Globetrotters! (Especially when they were on Gilligan’s Island!) If I’m being honest, I could watch Iron Man pile-drive The Hulk through a skyscraper over and over without a word of complaint.

Avengers: Age of Ultron has no obligation to be the be-all-end-all epic most people want it to be. In reality, it’s nothing more than the action-packed culmination of three years-worth of superhero solo movies, and that’s fine by me. I did have problems with how evenly the narrative focus was spread across the main characters (I’d have much preferred Thor’s lame side story be cut in favor of more “Hawkeye at home” time), and I do feel like the existential quandary embodied by Ultron could have been fleshed out more.

But then I think about a fantastic party scene early in the movie in which the gang make a fun wager to see who can lift Thor’s precious Asgardian hammer, Mjolnir. Cap gives it a wiggle; a look of panic flashes across Thor’s face. The friends exchange Whedon-esque banter, sip some bubbly, talk a little trash and share some laughs as they use their incredible powers for cheap entertainment. It’s lighthearted, juvenile fun. Can’t be mad at that.

In 2010, Matthew Vaughn’s Kick-Ass, based on the Mark Millar comic book, sent up, honored, and brutalized the super hero/crimefighter mythos. With Kingsman: The Secret Service, another comic book adaptation, Vaughn and Millar do the same for the myth of the English gentleman superspy; tailored suits, martinis, highly improbable action set pieces, flamboyant criminal masterminds–no cliché is safe. It’s a sadistic 21st-century attitude adjustment for the sub-genre that Bond built, a gory, vulgar, hilarious frenzy of a movie. It’s a bit of a mess, with wonky pacing and several underdeveloped ideas, but it’s got the same appeal as a rickety wooden roller coaster: it’s dangerous and questionably constructed, but that makes it exciting and fun, in a perverse, death-wish sort of way.

Those who’ve watched the misleading trailer for the film and expect an elegant, international spy thriller populated by posh English fellows will be thrown for a loop, and I’m pretty sure Vaughn’s laughing his ass off about it. It’s apparent that you’re getting more than you bargained for from the get-go, when a man gets split in half, dome-to-balls, by a blade-footed female assassin (Sofia Boutella), his halves flopping to the floor like sliced bread. The assassin works for the film’s big-bad, an American psycho-billionaire with a Mike Tyson lisp named Richmond Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson), who’s scheming to cleanse the world via bloodlust-inducing microchips.

The only ones who can stop him are Kingsman, an independent espionage league made up of dapper chaps who speak the Queen’s English, have Arthurian codenames, and have a secret stockpile of deadly gadgets (bulletproof umbrellas, cigarette-lighter grenades) hidden behind a secret door in a Savile Row tailor shop. Colin Firth plays Harry Hart (codename “Galahad”), a Kingsman who, in the movie’s first scene, leads his team on a Middle East interrogation mission that ends with the death of his protégé. 17 years later, another Kingsman dies on a mission (the poor “sliced bread” guy, “Lancelot”), and Harry must find his replacement. He chooses his deceased protégé’s now-adult son, Eggsy (Taron Egerton), to be his new recruit and, potentially, the new Lancelot. The parkour-practicing Eggsy leaps at the opportunity; since his father’s death, he and his delirious mom have been stuck in a ratty apartment, having to put up with his drunk stepdad’s abuse on the daily. He’s had a tough upbringing and is thoroughly rough around the edges, a far cry from the immaculately-dressed and composed Harry or Arthur (Michael Caine), the dignified leader of Kingsman, but he’s willing to learn the ways.

When Harry brings Eggsy back to Kingsman HQ to meet the other young candidates for the Lancelot position (Oxford-educated snobs who look down on Eggsy’s working-class pedigree), the film goes the teenage-bootcamp route, á la Ender’s Game, Harry Potter, and Vaughn’s own X-Men: First Class. Eggsy’s interactions with the sniveling bullies (his only friend is Roxy, played by Sophie Cookson, the sole girl in the group) aren’t nearly as entertaining and easy as his scenes with Firth. The superspy training segments, which include a superfluous synchronized skydive and an exercise in seduction that has “deleted scene” written all over it, are the least engaging bits of the movie, and always seem to drag on longer than you’d like.

Business picks up when Harry is attacked whilst investigating Valentine’s operation, and from there the film gets injected with a giant shot of frenetic mega-violence akin to the films of Neveldine and Taylor (Crank, Gamer), which I happen to get a kick out of despite them being widely panned by critics and audiences alike for their excessive use of blood and mutilation. Vaughn’s bravura scene involves Harry, brainwashed by one of Valentine’s microchips, going on a rampage through a Kentucky church, slaughtering dozens of white supremacists in a flurry of gun ballet, set to “Free Bird”. Depending on your taste in action movies, you’ll either find it disgraceful and repulsive or gloriously entertaining. I fell on the side of the latter, and while Kingsman is a largely indulgent and sometimes shallow affair, I couldn’t help but have a good time. The bite of the goriest moments is also alleviated by the film’s cheeky, jocular tone; it’s not taking itself too seriously, and we’re not meant to either.

There are some seeds of ideas peppered throughout the script (written by Vaughn and regular collaborator Jane Goldman) that are meant to turn the notion of the spy-thriller on its head, but they aren’t given enough time to grow. When Jackson’s Valentine breaks away from the Bond-villain stereotype by shooting one of the main characters in the head instead of inexplicably imprisoning them, he hits the nail squarely on the head when he taunts, “This isn’t that kind of movie” (a line that’s revisited later in a similar context). It’s true that this isn’t your average spy movie by any measure, but it isn’t a revelatory twist on the sub-genre either. When a great stand-up comedian like Chris Rock or the late Richard Pryor exposes the absurdity of a subject on stage, like racism or the government or sexism, they do it from all angles, with no mercy, dissecting and dissecting until there’s nothing left but a bloody pulp. Then, they provide new insight that reveals the real truth of the matter. Kingsman forgets to do that last part.

Vaughn is a filmmaker of flair, and with Kingsman he struts his stuff like there’s no tomorrow. Whenever violence erupts, it’s with the force and magnitude of a supervolcano, and though the cuts and zooms are frequent, they never become redundant, and the staging is well organized. The film jumps around a lot (across the globe, across themes), but Eggsy and Harry are the glue that keeps the film from spinning out of control. Egerton’ street-smart swagger just right, and though the movie isn’t exactly brimming with heart or sentimentality, he manages to imbue it with a sense of youthful nobility. Through the success of his previous films, Vaughn’s earned the prerogative to make the kind of movies he wants to make, throwing convention to the wind. He’s not going to please everyone with Kingsman, but there’s no doubt he’s pleased himself. It’s a treat for genre nuts with a fondness for the grotesque, silly, and outlandish, its cult status is sure to grow with time.

What’s in store for the fantastical world of Tim Burton?

Aside from the incredible confirmation that he will be directing Beetlejuice 2 which is rumored to be in the works for 2016 and includes a screenplay by original screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith (and for which Michael Keaton has expressed deep enthusiasm for reprising his role as the title character) he is in post-production right now for Alice in Wonderland: Through the Looking Glass, that is also set for 2016.

Burton has also been slowly but surely adding to the cast of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. Based on the 2011 YA novel of the same name, the freshman work of author Ransom Riggs, it follows the story of tragedy-stricken 16-year-old Jacob, who Asa Butterfield has been cast to play. He discerns that there are clues in his grandfather’s old photographs—which, in the book, are actual professional photographs picked from archives. He is led to a former home for special children that is no longer occupied… or is it? And said former occupants might have a lot more to them than meets the eye. The book was a New York Times Bestseller and was #1 on the list for children’s chapter books for 45 weeks.

Along with Butterfield, the newly announced cast includes Burton favorite Eva Green as Miss Peregrine and the great Samuel L. Jackson as Barron.

It seems the sort of work written especially for the unusual and strange talents of Tim Burton. According to IMDB, the film is slated for an early 2016 release as well. Is there really a possibility for three movies from Tim Burton in one year? Our hearts can barely sustain it. What can we say? It sounds like it is going to be a mystical Burtonesque 2016! All we have to say is, Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice!!

The highly anticipated American remake of Park Chan-wook’s Korean cult classic, Oldboy, finally has a trailer for your viewing pleasure. While many diehard fans of the original are clamoring that a remake is completely unnecessary, others are glad that the film (both versions) will reach a new audience. Time will tell if Spike Lee’s version with Josh Brolin as the lead and co-stars Samuel L. Jackson, Elizabeth Olsen, and Sharlto Copley will meet everyone’s expectations are not. The trailer confirms that the violent hammer scene from the original is still intact, though the scene involving the live octopus is anyone’s guess at this point.

Watch the official trailer for Oldboy (2013):

Quentin Tarantino continues his new fascination of blending period pieces with grindhouse revenge films in Django Unchained, a movie that fans of Inglourious Basterds will surely enjoy. The setting this time is America several years before the civil war. Slavery is still going strong in the south, and Django (Jamie Foxx) is lucky enough to get freed by King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), a bounty hunter who needs him to identify a group of criminals he’s searching for.

Django tells Schultz his story: Him and his wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) were branded and auctioned off separately after trying to escape a plantation together, and now with his freedom Django hopes to find his wife and buy her freedom as well. Schultz takes a liking to Django and offers him a deal: Train and work as a bounty hunter through the winter, and once the snow melts they’ll go rescue Broomhilda from the evil plantation owner (Leonardo DiCaprio) who owns her.

Tarantino surprisingly goes for a straight linear narrative here rather than breaking his story up into chapters, but the film still feels like it’s broken up into sections. The first hour or so follows Django and Schultz around as they try to collect different bounties. This section is probably the strongest part of Django Unchained, with Waltz doing his Hans Landa routine all over again. Naturally Waltz is a delight to watch, and his pairing with Foxx make the two of them a good team. There are plenty of flourishes here on Tarantino’s part, mainly a subplot involving a plantation owner (Don Johnson), but they’re so entertaining that it’s understandable why Tarantino wanted to keep them in the final cut.

Once DiCaprio finally shows up and the plot to rescue Broomhilda starts to take centre stage, the entertainment factor starts to decrease significantly. Foxx, spending most of his time staying quiet when he doesn’t have to make witty comebacks, barely registers once he’s put in the same room as Waltz or DiCaprio. When DiCaprio’s servant Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson), a slave whose dedication to his master makes him end up becoming the film’s big bad, enters the picture it’s hard to even remember Django’s presence in some scenes.

And as Django becomes the sole focus towards the end, the bloated 160 minute runtime starts to show. The climax, taking place after an incredibly bloody shootout that showed Tarantino firing on all cylinders, doesn’t have much power to it. Of course Tarantino is still a terrific writer/director, and Waltz, DiCaprio and Jackson are all worthy of awards for their brilliant performances, but Django Unchained doesn’t come close to matching the same level of giddy amazement as Inglourious Basterds. Fans of Tarantino won’t come away disappointed, but he can do a lot better than this.

The Samaritan is something of an enigma to me. I honestly wasn’t expecting too much from the film as the previews really didn’t intrigue me too much. The film starts out with some promise and along with the casting choices (Tom Wilkinson and Samuel L. Jackson are two major players), I start thinking that this could actually be something worthwhile. For a while, it actually is. The Samaritan begins with a bang. Literally. The first scene has Jackson pointing a gun at a man’s head. The man begs for his life. It doesn’t work.

The film starts out with our hero, Foley (Samuel L. Jackson) who is getting out of prison after twenty plus years. Foley was a grifter and plans on starting over. He wants nothing to do with his former life. Grifting to me is a fascinating lifestyle. Your life revolves around conning people out of money. When I was younger I used to have these film noir fantasies that I, along with others, would travel the country planning elaborate cons. The great thing about being a grifter, other than the potentially vast amounts of money you could amass, is that you can essentially be who you aren’t. You got to make up biographies and be someone that you weren’t.

So Foley is now out of prison and ready to start over. He meets his parole officer and he tells Foley what every parole officer in every other movie tells him. You make one mistake you’re going back in. Foley already has no intention of going back. He is given a job at a construction site, one which he hates but takes it because anything is better than prison.

Foley spends his nights at bars drinking his ugly memories away. I experienced this first hand years ago when I worked a construction job. I myself never really hit the bars after work, but knew many who did. It’s an ugly lifestyle, although Foley has plenty more to drink about than any of my coworkers did. On one of these late nights Foley runs into a man who brings back some dark moments in his life. The man is Ethan. We find out that Ethan is the son of Foley’s ex-grifting partner. Oh yeah, he’s also the son of the man who is shot in the opening scene. Ethan doesn’t want revenge, but he does believe Foley owes him a favor. Ethan wants one more job out of Foley that will make them both rich.

Ethan insists Foley joins him at a nightclub one night. Ethan half owns the night club with another man who is a ruthless. His name is Xavier (Tom Wilkinson). Our first scene with Xavier has him shoving a broken Champaign bottle into a man’s face repeatedly. Even more relevant during this nightclub visit, Foley is offered a young woman for the night by Ethan. He declines the offer, even insulted by it.

On one of these dark and depressing nights at his favorite spot, Foley sips on his drink when all of a sudden the young woman offered to him previously walks in with a man who is heavily intoxicated. They drink more through the night and eventually make their way into the bathroom where the man tries to rape the woman. Her name is Iris. Foley comes in to save the day and now the woman is actually smitten with him.

This starts an actual very sweet part of the film. Iris and Foley begin a legitimate relationship, one that benefits them both. Foley fresh out of prison has something real to cling on to, someone who will seemingly take him away from his past. Iris a young woman addicted to drugs and is in the wrong business as a prostitute, now she has a man who genuinely loves her and not because he’s paying for it. But remember in film noir, nothing or no one is ever what they seem. There is always a dark current that runs under what is visible. The Samaritan is no different, bad things are coming.

What happens next will not be described here. The film actually has some pretty interesting twists and turns. One of them, I had no clue was coming and the handling of it is pitch perfect. What I enjoyed mostly about The Samaritan was how much the film depends on characters and their choices and not by having to fill the plot of a movie. These people make their own choices based on who they are and their wants and needs.

What makes Samaritan interesting is that it really doesn’t have a plot. It’s more or less a character study that just unfolds for 90 minutes. For the first hour of the film you just watch these characters as they are basically trying to get by, it’s not until the hour mark when something really galvanizes the movie to something remotely close to a plot. I actually kind of liked that.

One thing I’ve always struggled with film noirs is how they keep the viewers at a distance from their characters. Most characters in film noirs are bad people with bright spots. The Samaritan is no different. I’ve always found it hard to root for people when the film keeps you far from them. The film does a good job of letting you get close to a couple, but others that are important you’re left wondering why you should care for them.

What’s really unfortunate about the film is how routine it becomes. As a film noir you know certain things have to happen in order for the plot to succeed. The last 15-20 minutes of the film goes down the same old road most film noirs have gone before. It’s too bad because The Samaritan actually showed some real promise by dancing to its own tune. It’s too bad that tune becomes the same old song and dance. It’s is a miss, but not by much

Black Snake Moan had so much potential with its dirty style of visual and unique characters and performances, unfortunately by the conclusion that potential withered down to hardly mediocre.

Black Snake Moan is set in the deep south in a small town where a former blues musician named Lazarus (Samuel L. Jackson) lives. He finds a young girl who was severally beaten and dumped on the road nearby his small farm. The girl he finds is named Rae (Christina Ricci) is the town whore and has been taken advantage of by nearly every man in town. She has an uncontrollable need for sex, so after Lazarus takes care of her back to life he chains her up to control her. Her boyfriend Ronnie (Justin Timberlake) comes back after being discharged from the army, misunderstands the relationship between Lazarus and Rae, and tries to kill him.

The film started out wonderful and enjoyable. It was raw, depressing and most of all it had character. Samuel L. Jackson does an excellent job with his character. As usual he has a worry-free manner and full of smart remarks. You instantly get a feel for how sick Christina Ricci’s character is from the start. Unfortunately, that’s where the good things end, which is a shame because it definitely had potential. It was as if the first 30 minutes was a completely different movie from the rest. It simply didn’t have enough conflict throughout the movie. I felt there were more opportunities it could have used rather than the one inner-conflict with Ricci.

The middle was flat out boring, I kept waiting for something big to happen and instead it kept going on as if it was building up to something. This wouldn’t be such a bad thing if there was actually something that happens after the buildup. Black Snake Moan doesn’t have a solid climax and a very weak resolution at the end. The ending of the movie felt rushed and unsatisfying.

Started out with potential of being decent but the end result was a barely mediocre film. It was disappointing and forgettable.