Got Room for One More?
In this edition, I reveal my updated top 100 movie rankings. But first, a closer look at Quentin Tarantino’s Snow Western, “The Hateful Eight.”
Welcome to the fifth edition of The Martell 100 newsletter. Today is the first day of the month, which means it is time for the latest ranking of my 100 favorite movies!
I’m shaking things up a bit in this edition, though. Instead of writing about the movies that made the biggest leaps from the January list, I am going into more depth about one particular movie, The Hateful Eight. Below that, you’ll find the February rankings, along with brief explanations for the two additions to the list.
During the first snowstorm of every winter, I make a pot of coffee, nestle under a blanket and watch the ultimate Snow Western, Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight (No. 25).
Set in the 1877 Wyoming mountains, four stagecoach passengers — two bounty hunters, John “The Hangman” Ruth and Major Marquis Warren; Ruth’s prisoner, the outlaw Daisy Domergue; and Chris Mannix, the son of a former Confederate soldier who led a militia of Lost Causers after the Civil War — and one hell of a driver named O.B., take shelter from a raging blizzard at Minnie’s, a remote haberdashery. When they arrive, they find four mysterious characters: Señor Bob, Oswaldo Mobray, Joe Gage and a former Confederate general, Sanford “Sandy Don’t Give a Damn” Smithers. Minnie and her partner, Sweet Dave, are not there. Soon, John Ruth (Kurt Russell) and Major Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) begin to suspect that at least one of the other men at Minnie’s is not who he says he is.
This is the classic setup for a whodunit, strangers stuck in a location trying to determine which one is the murderer. Except, in this case, everyone at Minnie’s is a killer. What keeps me coming back to this movie year after year, even after I know who did it, are the big performances, the rich dialogue and the claustrophobic mania of the characters once they are inside.
At nearly three hours, The Hateful Eight is Tarantino’s longest film to date, and some people I know think it is too slow and too long. I disagree. The length allows us to experience the isolation and exasperation that the characters feel.
This is also Tarantino’s most socially conscious film, with ideas about the history of American racism and its enduring impact in the 21st century. In October 2015, two months before the movie’s release, Tarantino participated in a Black Lives Matter protest in New York City.
“I’m a human being with a conscience,” Tarantino in a speech he gave at the protest. “And if you believe there’s murder going on, then you need to rise up and stand up against it. I’m here to say I’m on the side of the murdered. When I see murders, I do not stand by … I have to call a murder a murder and I have to call the murderers the murderers.”
His participation in the protest prompted some U.S. police groups — including the NYPD and LAPD — to call for a boycott of The Hateful Eight. Less than two weeks later, Tarantino said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, “Frankly, it feels lousy to have a bunch of police mouthpieces call me a cop hater. I’m not a cop hater. That is a misrepresentation. That is slanderous. That is not how I feel.” He continued:
“Instead of dealing with the incidents of police brutality that those people were bringing up, instead of examining the problem of police brutality in this country, better they single me out. And their message is very clear. It’s to shut me down. It’s to discredit me. It is to intimidate me. It is to shut my mouth, and even more important than that, it is to send a message out to any other prominent person that might feel the need to join that side of the argument.”
Let’s be clear: The Hateful Eight is not a woke film, and Tarantino certainly is not a woke filmmaker. The purpose of this movie was not to serve as a microphone for him to make a grand statement about institutional racism or our divide country, but to entertain us. As he told GQ magazine: “I wasn’t trying to bend over backwards in any way, shape, or form to make it socially relevant.”
And yet, those ideas are there, especially in the characters John Ruth, Major Warren, Mannix (Walton Goggins) and General Smithers (Bruce Dern). The movie opens with John Ruth taking Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh in an Oscar-nominated performance), who has a $10,000 price on her head — dead or alive — to Red Rock to be hanged. On the way, Warren stops the stagecoach and asks the driver, O.B. (James Parks), if he has room for one more passenger. O.B. tells him that he needs to ask Ruth, who paid for privacy. Ruth is worried that a fellow bounty hunter will kill him and Domergue before they get to Red Rock and claim the reward as his own. You see, based on principle, Ruth always brings his bounties into town alive because he doesn’t want to take business from the hangman. But Ruth recognizes Warren, and after some conversation, allows him to ride with them on account of the steak dinner they shared in Chattanooga about eight months earlier. There, Warren showed Ruth a letter he said he received from Abraham Lincoln, his pen pal during the Civil War.
John Ruth is a Northerner who adores Lincoln, opposes slavery and despises secessionists, but he is still a white man whose understanding of Black people is shaped by his 19th century environment. He is supportive of racial equality, at least in theory, but that belief has never truly been tested. When his support is challenged later in the movie, he wavers. In that way, his character is similar to Sal in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (No. 40), though Sal’s turn is a far more damning one.
Not long after, O.B. spots a man in the distance, stranded in the snowy mountains and desperately hailing them for a ride. Ruth is paranoid that the man might be working with Warren to claim the bounty on Domergue. But once he realizes it is Mannix, who claims to be the new sheriff of Red Rock, Ruth begrudgingly lets him in. After all, Ruth knows that the son of the Rebel Renegade Erskine Mannix would not be in business with a Warren, a Black man who killed a lot of “white Southern crackers” when he was a Union cavalry officer in the Civil War. Once inside the stagecoach, Goggins gets worked up defending the Confederacy.
Mannix: “Don’t you say anything about my daddy. What he fought for was dignity in defeat. And against the unconditional surrender. We weren’t foreign barbarians pounding on the city walls. We were your brothers. We deserved dignity in defeat.”
Warren: “Just how many n––––– towns did y’all sack in your fight for dignity in defeat?”
Mannix: “Oh, my fair share, Black major. ’Cause when n–––––– are scared, that’s when white folks are safe.”
At that, Warren cocks his pistol, holds it next to Mannix’s temple and tells the racist that if he keeps spewing white supremacist nonsense he can ride up top in the snow with O.B. It’s at this moment that Goggins gives perhaps my favorite line reading of the movie:
“No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You gone got me talking politics. I didn’t wanna. Like I said y’all, I’m just happy to be alive. I think I’ll scoot over here right by this window, let this beautiful carriage rock me to sleep and dream about how lucky I am.”
This response from Mannix is essential to understanding his character’s motives later in the movie, when he teams up with Warren to figure out who is trying to free Domergue. It’s why this film doesn’t fall victim to the tired trope — a white supremacist who in the end realizes that racism is bad — that is depicted in movies like Green Book, Driving Miss Daisy and The Defiant Ones. With Mannix, everything is about self-preservation. At the end, he is not cured of his racism; rather, he feels the surviving gang members post the greatest threat to him, and aligning with Warren gives him a better chance to survive.
100. Witness (1985)
Director: Peter Weir
Cast: Harrison Ford, Kelly McGillis, Lukas Haas
99. Anatomy of a Fall (2023)
Director: Justine Triet
Cast: Sandra Hüller, Swann Arlaud, Milo Machado Graner
Admittedly, there may be some recency bias in my adding a fourth from from the most recent year to this list, but oh well. I saw this movie for a second time on Saturday, and I was so impressed by the script and the performances.
What allows Anatomy of a Fall to transcend the traditional courtroom drama — a genre that I love — and in some ways exceed it, is the son, Daniel. Yes, this movie is about a wife accused of murdering her husband, but it is also a story of a blind boy finding his voice, learning about the world’s messiness and grappling with the most devastating loss imaginable.
Now that it has been nominated for Best Picture, Anatomy of a Fall is back in theaters. Go see it if you haven’t already.
98. The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Director: Charles Laughton
Cast: Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish
97. Yojimbo (1961)
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Cast: Toshirô Mifune, Eijirô Tôno, Tatsuya Nakadai
96. Inside Man (2006)
Director: Spike Lee
Cast: Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, Jodie Foster
95. No Country for Old Men (2007)
Director: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Cast: Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Tommy Lee Jones
94. Little Women (2019)
Director: Greta Gerwig
Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh
93. Devil in a Blue Dress (1995)
Director: Carl Franklin
Cast: Denzel Washington, Tom Sizemore, Jennifer Beals
92. Past Lives (2023)
Director: Celine Song
Cast: Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, John Magaro
91. Django Unchained (2012)
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Cast: Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio
90. On the Waterfront (1954)
Director: Elia Kazan
Cast: Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Eva Marie Saint
There is so much to write about On the Waterfront, but I don’t have the space to do it here. Maybe I will do a future edition about Blacklist era movies. In the meantime, I will mention that I had not watched Kazan’s masterpiece since I was a college freshman, when I saw it in one of the two film classes I took that year. Watching it now, in my late 20s instead of my late teens, was an entirely different and far more rewarding experience.
89. Mikey and Nicky (1976)
Director: Elaine May
Cast: Peter Falk, John Cassavetes, Ned Beatty
88. Spirited Away (2001)
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Cast (English Voices): Daveigh Chase, Suzanne Pleshette, Jason Marsden
87. Michael Clayton (2007)
Director: Tony Gilroy
Cast: George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, Tom Wilkinson
86. Frances Ha (2012)
Director: Noah Baumbach
Cast: Greta Gerwig, Mickey Sumner, Adam Driver
85. Silence (2016)
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver, Liam Neeson
84. Out of the Past (1947)
Director: Jacques Tourneur
Cast: Robert Mitchum, Jane Freer, Kirk Douglas
83. Seven Samurai (1954)
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Cast: Toshirô Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Keiko Tsushima
82. Once Upon a Time in America (1984)
Director: Sergio Leone
Cast: Robert De Niro, James Woods, Elizabeth McGovern
81. The Right Stuff (1983)
Director: Philip Kaufman
Cast: Sam Shepard, Scott Glenn, Ed Harris
80. Toy Story 3 (2010)
Director: Lee Unkrich
Cast: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack
79. City of God (2002)
Director: Fernando Meirelles
Cast: Alexandre Rodrigues, Leandro Firmino, Douglas Silva
78. A Few Good Men (1992)
Director: Rob Reiner
Cast: Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson, Demi Moore
77. Star Wars: Episode VI — Return of the Jedi
Director: Richard Marquand
Cast: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher
76. Babylon (2022)
Director: Damien Chazelle
Cast: Margot Robbie, Diego Calva, Brad Pitt
75. Road to Perdition (2002)
Director: Sam Mendes
Cast: Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, Tyler Hoechlin
74. To Live and Die in L.A (1985)
Director: William Friedkin
Cast: William Petersen, Willem Dafoe, John Turturro
73. The Insider (1999)
Director: Michael Mann
Cast: Al Pacino, Russell Crowe, Christopher Plummer
72. North By Northwest (1959)
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason
71. There’s Something About Mary (1998)
Director: Bobby Farrelly, Peter Farrelly
Cast: Cameron Diaz, Ben Stiller, Matt Dillon
70. The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)
Director: Martin McDonagh
Cast: Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon
69. Boogie Nights (1997)
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Julianne Moore, Burt Reynolds
68. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
Director: Frank Capra
Cast: James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore
67. High Noon (1952)
Director: Fred Zinnemann
Cast: Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly, Thomas Mitchell
66. 12 Angry Men (1957)
Director: Sidney Lumet
Cast: Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb, Martin Balsam
65. JFK (1991)
Director: Oliver Stone
Cast: Kevin Costner, Gary Oldman, Tommy Lee Jones
64. Moneyball (2011)
Director: Bennett Miller
Cast: Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Philip Seymour Hoffman
63. Malcolm X (1992)
Director: Spike Lee
Cast: Denzel Washington, Angela Bassett, Delroy Lindo
62. Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004)
Director: Rawson Marshall Thurber
Cast: Vince Vaughn, Christine Taylor, Ben Stiller
61. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)
Director: Peter Weir
Cast: Russell Crowe, Paul Bettany, James D’Arcy
60. Licorice Pizza (2021)
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Cast: Alana Haim, Cooper Hoffman, Bradley Cooper
59. Thief (1981)
Director: Michael Mann
Cast: James Caan, Tuesday Weld, Robert Prosky
58. Bull Durham (1988)
Director: Ron Shelton
Cast: Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins
57. Tár (2022)
Director: Todd Field
Cast: Cate Blanchett, Noémie Merlant, Nina Hoss
56. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Tom Hanks, Tom Sizemore, Edward Burns
55. The Irishman (2019)
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci
54. The Social Network (2010)
Director: David Fincher
Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake
53. Back to the Future (1985)
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Cast: Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson
52. Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
Director: Sidney Lumet
Cast: Al Pacino, John Cazale, Chris Sarandon
51. Star Wars: Episode V — The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Director: Irvin Kershner
Cast: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher
50. Phantom Thread (2017)
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Vicky Krieps, Lesley Manville
49. Oppenheimer (2023)
Director: Christopher Nolan
Cast: Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr.
48. The Third Man (1949)
Director: Carol Reed
Cast: Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Orson Welles
47. Good Will Hunting (1997)
Director: Gus Van Sant
Cast: Matt Damon, Robin Williams, Ben Affleck
46. Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
Director: Sergio Leone
Cast: Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, Jason Robards
45. After Hours (1985)
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Griffin Dunne, Rosanna Arquette, Verna Bloom
44. There Will Be Blood (2007)
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Ciarán Hinds
43. That Thing You Do! (1996)
Director: Tom Hanks
Cast: Tom Everett Scott, Liv Tyler, Tom Hanks
42. Lincoln (2012)
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field, Tommy Lee Jones
41. Rear Window (1954)
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Wendell Corey
40. Do the Right Thing (1989)
Director: Spike Lee
Cast: Spike Lee, Ossie Davis, Danny Aiello
39. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
Director: George Roy Hill
Cast: Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Katharine Ross
38. Goodfellas (1990)
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci
37. When Harry Met Sally (1989)
Director: Rob Reiner
Cast: Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan, Carrie Fisher
36. Apocalypse Now (1979)
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Cast: Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall
35. Get Out (2017)
Director: Jordan Peele
Cast: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Bradley Whitford
34. The Other Guys (2010)
Director: Adam McKay
Cast: Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, Eva Mendes
33. In a Lonely Place (1950)
Director: Nicholas Ray
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame, Frank Lovejoy
32. Zodiac (2007)
Director: David Fincher
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo
31. Almost Famous (2000)
Director: Cameron Crowe
Cast: Billy Crudup, Patrick Fugit, Kate Hudson
30. The Nice Guys (2016)
Director: Shane Black
Cast: Russell Crowe, Ryan Gosling, Angourie Rice
29. Parasite (2019)
Director: Bong Joon Ho
Cast: Song Kang-ho, Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong
28. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Director: Jonathan Demme
Cast: Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Ted Levine
27. The Big Short (2015)
Director: Adam McKay
Cast: Steve Carell, Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling
26. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Harrison Ford, Sean Connery, Alison Doody
25. The Hateful Eight (2015)
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh
24. Heat (1995)
Director: Michael Mann
Cast: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Val Kilmer
23. Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone, Robert De Niro
22. Spotlight (2015)
Director: Tom McCarthy
Cast: Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams
21. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Cast: Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden
20. Taxi Driver (1976)
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Cybill Shepherd
19. Reds (1981)
Director: Warren Beatty
Cast: Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton, Jack Nicholson
18. Network (1976)
Director: Sidney Lumet
Cast: William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Peter Finch
17. Magnolia (1999)
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Cast: Tom Cruise, Jason Robards, Julianne Moore
16. Rio Bravo (1959)
Director: Howard Hawks
Cast: John Wayne, Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson
15. The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie
14. All the President’s Men (1976)
Director: Alan J. Pakula
Cast: Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, Jason Robards
13. Casablanca (1942)
Director: Michael Curtiz
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains
12. Chinatown (1974)
Director: Roman Polanski
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston
11. The Fugitive (1993)
Director: Andrew Davis
Stars: Harrison Ford, Tommy Lee Jones, Sela Ward
10. A League of Their Own (1992)
Director: Penny Marshall
Cast: Geena Davis, Tom Hanks, Lori Petty
9. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie
8. The Godfather Part II (1974)
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Cast: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Robert Duvall
7. Gangs of New York (2002)
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis, Cameron Diaz
6. Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Cast: Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Mélanie Laurent
5. L.A. Confidential (1997)
Director: Curtis Hanson
Cast: Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, Kim Basinger
4. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, Paul Freeman
3. The Godfather (1972)
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Cast: Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan
2. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Director: Frank Darabont
Cast: Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman, Bob Gunton
1. The Departed (2006)
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson
Additions:
Anatomy of a Fall (No. 99), On the Waterfront (No. 90)
Subtractions:
The Age of Innocence (No. 89), Up (No. 86)
Highest Risers:
Rear Window (+10), High Noon (+8), The Insider (+7), Past Lives (+7), The Nice Guys (+4), To Live and Die in L.A. (+3)
Farthest Fallers:
Star Wars: Episode V — The Empire Strikes Back (–8), That Thing You Do! (–5), A Few Good Men (–4), The Other Guys (–4), Babylon (–3), The Banshees of Inisherin (–3)
Toughest Cut:
The Age of Innocence
Honorable Mentions (Non-Cuts):
Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Bridge of Spies, Citizen Kane, Jackie Brown, Metropolis, Lady Bird, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Nope, Reservoir Dogs, The Color of Money, The Heiress, Vertigo, Wedding Crashers