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Quentin Tarantino is a filmmaker who simply can't be ignored, especially when he lobs a three-hour wide-screen epic whodunit Western into the cinema. This strikingly entertaining film is packed with his trademark plot twists and dialogue that snaps and crackles in every direction imaginable. So even though it's mainly set in a single room, it's never boring. But with no discernible point, it also leaves the audience rather cold.

In the snowy Rockies of southern Wyoming, cavalry officer turned bounty hunter Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) hitches a ride on a stagecoach with shifty gunslinger John (Kurt Russell), who is escorting feisty outlaw Daisy (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to collect the reward on her head and see her hanged. They also pick up lost new sheriff Chris (Walton Goggins) before an intense blizzard forces them to take shelter at a mountain lodge run by the suspicious Bob (Demian Bichir). Inside, hangman Oswaldo (Tim Roth), war veteran Sandy (Bruce Dern) and their mysterious friend Joe (Michael Madsen) are also waiting out the storm. And as these eight people circle around each other, it's clear that each of them wants the others dead.

No, there's not a single trustworthy person in this story, and Tarantino has a great time revealing the inner murkiness within each one. This gives the actors plenty of texture to work with, as they deliver their lines with knowing innuendo, razor-sharp wit and glowering loathing. The set-up feels somewhat belaboured, but the film's second half is a cracking Agatha Christie-style mystery as we wait for the first shot to be fired. With its single setting, it feels like a particularly nasty stage play, livened up by Tarantino's wordy writing, which drops in big issues like racism and sexism without ever quite grappling with them. And there's of course also a steady stream of vicious violence, including an extended flashback featuring Channing Tatum.

Continue reading: The Hateful Eight Review

In the wake of "Reservoir Dogs," "Pulp Fiction" and "Jackie Brown," film buffs have come to expect intrepid sub-Hollywood scavenger Quentin Tarantino to bowl us over with ingenious, amped-up, style-blending B-movie off-shoots made with a quantum leap of depth and cinematic panache.

Influenced by cut-rate, under-the-counter samurai imports, spaghetti Westerns and popcorn-munching exploitation flicks of bygone eras, the writer-director's two-part revenge saga "Kill Bill" ("Volume 2" is due in February) has sexy, gritty, droll, deluxe Tarantino élan coming out its ears -- and absurdly grisly dam-bursts of stage blood spurting from other violently severed body parts in ambitious marathon swordfight scenes. But while the picture oozes style (and blood), it comes up short on substance -- which is what has always set Tarantino's grindhouse homages head and shoulders above the pulp pictures that inform them.

Choreographed by both kung-fu genius Yuen Wo-Ping ("The Matrix" movies, "Charlie's Angels," "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," etc.) and Japanese Kenjutsu legend Sonny Chiba (who plays an eccentric master sword-maker in the film), these focal-point fights are the culmination of a plot about a sultry, strong-willed former assassin (Uma Thurman) who was left for dead when her employer -- possibly peeved by her resignation, although "Volume 1" is vague on that point -- turned her wedding into a massacre.

Continue reading: Kill Bill: Volume 1 Review

Everything the kinetic, colorful, superficially violent "Kill Bill: Volume 1" lacked in depth and character is remedied tenfold in Quentin Tarantino's stunning, cunning conclusion to his epic revenge fantasy.

Gone are the absurdist bloodbaths and the superficial grindhouse storytelling, and in their stead the wily writer-director transitions (with masterfully effortless cinematic aplomb) into a character- and dialogue-driven feast of substance and surprises -- which is, nonetheless, still punctuated by spectacularly stylish swordplay.

After a winking mock-noir prologue of recap narration, Tarantino opens "Volume 2" with a parched black-and-white flashback to the wedding rehearsal (glimpsed throughout last year's installment) at which The Bride (Uma Thurman), an unnamed and incognito former assassin trying to go straight, was brutally gunned down (along with everyone in attendance) by her former compatriots.

Continue reading: Kill Bill: Volume 2 Review

Until director Lee Tamahori blasts right past a perfectly good ending, only to burn a superfluous 20 minutes on an all-action, all-gimmick epilogue that leaks suspension of disbelief like a sieve, "Die Another Day" is as stimulating and heart-rate-raising as any James Bond thriller.

It has fresh new stunts (Bond goes surfin' surfin' MI6) set to energetic renditions of the Bond theme. It has an exhilarating sword fight (things get out of hand at a fencing club) and an awesome gadget car chase across a vast frozen inlet in Iceland (Bond drives an Aston Martin V12 Vanquish with missiles, pop-up machine guns, ejector seat and invisibility). It has a slithering, credibly psychotic bad guy (Toby Stephens, "Possession") who literally never sleeps, and a henchman (Rick Yune, "The Fast and the Furious") whose face is scarred by diamonds that became embedded in his skin when Bond almost blew him up with a briefcase full of jewels and C-4.

"Die Another Day" also has a modicum of success updating the series' style (slick, kinetic cinematography with swing-perspective camera tricks works well but virtual reality sequences and rock tunes on the soundtrack do not), and it takes risks with 007's invincible image. Bond is captured in the film's requisite action-packed pre-credits sequence and his torture by North Korean interrogators is blended into the sexy title song (a throwaway rave-mix tune from Madonna).

Continue reading: Die Another Day Review