The Hateful Eight (2015)

The Hateful Eight is a 2015 American revisionist Western mystery film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. Set in Wyoming during a blizzard shortly after the Civil War, the film gathers eight strangers in a remote stagecoach stopover called Minnie's Haberdashery: a bounty hunter transporting a female prisoner, another bounty hunter carrying three corpses, a man claiming to be the new sheriff, and four other suspicious individuals already present. As the blizzard traps them together, suspicion, deception, and the toxic legacy of the Civil War fuel escalating tensions that will inevitably erupt into violence.

Tarantino shot The Hateful Eight on Ultra Panavision 70, a wide-screen format that hadn't been used since 1966's Khartoum, and premiered it in a limited 70mm "Roadshow" release with an overture, intermission, and program booklet — a conscious homage to the grand theatrical presentations of classic Hollywood epics. The irony of using cinema's most expansive format to film what is essentially a claustrophobic stage play set in a single room was intentional and provocative. The ensemble cast — Samuel L.

Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Walton Goggins, Demián Bichir, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, and Bruce Dern — delivered uniformly excellent performances, with Jennifer Jason Leigh earning an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her fierce, feral portrayal of the prisoner Daisy Domergue. Ennio Morricone composed an original score for the film, incorporating unused material he had written for John Carpenter's The Thing, and won the Academy Award for Best Original Score — his first competitive Oscar after decades of legendary work. The Hateful Eight earned $155 million worldwide.