I Haven't Seen "The Hateful Eight" But I Agree With This Review

Okay... I tentatively agree.

And, as always, I'm prepared to stand corrected.

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-hateful-eight-2015

At regular intervals, I see movies that impress me as "transgressive" for trangressiveness' sake.

In the absence of a central inspiration that truly informs a movie (by "growing up" - and out - from the "inside"), it increasingly feels that there's a de rigeur committee of "sub-directors" who convene to decide how to make the next scene "far out," most often by trying to find a taboo (or long-held norm) that can be broken outrageously.

Most recently I had this feeling with "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri," a movie that I found plenty entertaining but which, upon reflection, impresses me as all vapor and mist. 

Similarly, I think we agreed that "trans-species sex validation" in The Shape Of Water represented a kind of avant garde "normalization" that is essentially fatuous, emphatically questionable, and probably destructive in light of the rubric that "evil is to delight in destruction (de-structuring) for destruction's sake."

Admittedly as "fish" go, there are much bigger ones to fry.

But for me at least this observation needs expression.