THE HATEFUL EIGHT [2015]

Writer/director Quentin Tarantino packs in some good ol' fashioned snowy film-making with his off-beat Western/thriller The Hateful Eight.
A pack of thugs, all strangers to each other, are trapped in a isolated cabin during a snowy blizzard, which inevitably leads to...well...some serious cabin fever aka obligatory Tarantino bloodshed and vulgar but engrossing monologues.
With this film, it's become clear the smug director has the rights to be smug, as he's got a confident and well-developed grasp on the art of cinematic storytelling.  It's beautifully shot, well-paced, jammed to the brim with wonderful performances from it's genre cast and never ceases to keep you guessing who's who and what's what.
It's essentially Rawhide meets Reservoir Dogs but, hot damn, if it's not a fully captivating mash-up of the two films.

4 Silent Nights out of 5

RAZE [2013]

Josh C. Waller's vicious exploitation flick, Raze, is guaranteed to make even the strongest of stomachs wince at least once.
50 women are abducted by bored rich folk and forced to beat each other to death in one-on-one matches to save their own loved ones from being murdered.  Sound familiar?  Probably.  It's nothing new with the exception of it being women this time around and it wisely avoids all the gratuitous nudity, lesbianism and rape scenes one would expect from such a film.  However it doesn't skimp on the stomach-turning bloodshed.  The level of graphic brutality earns the film a comfy spot in the horror genre based on the violence alone.  At first the film doesn't offer much but mind-numbing cruelty but as we become more familiar with the characters and they with each other, the choices, consequences and sacrifices make it both interesting and distressing to watch.  It's decent performances and clever writing raise the film above it's spotty premise and that's a disturbing yet pleasant surprise.

3 Death Proof girls out of 5

DEATH PROOF [2007]

Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof is the 2nd half of the Robert Rodriguez/Tarantino Grindhouse double feature.
Tarantino's low budget ode to 70's exploitation slasher flicks should have been more fun than it actually turns out to be.  Instead it's filled with long scenes of senseless babble which he usually writes quite well, which is a shame because here he had a chance to do it with a nearly all female cast rather than his usual all male cast.  There's two wonderfully entertaining vehicular carnage chase scenes that are well worth checking out but the rest is boring garbage that doesn't rise to the potentially campy fun it could have been.

2 twisted nerves out of 5