You can't watch Hateful Eight in the winter without cocoa

And that's all I've got to say about that.

Hateful Eight hectoring

If you're a cinephile, sometimes you make the mistake of thinking that everyone else wants to be a cinephile.

Or at the very least, those close to you.

My wife is close to being a cinephile. She's a screenwriter, which means her love for movies is lifelong and self-evident. But especially since we've had children, she just doesn't have the energy for the hard yards required to keep your membership in Club Cinephilia. She'll watch movies with me, sometimes of her own free will and sometimes due to an application of pressure on my part, but watching something independently of me is pretty rare. TV is better equipped to relax her brain after a day of screaming children, and she barely ever gets out to the movies anymore.

But I delude myself that deep down inside her, there's a repressed cinephile just fighting to get out.

Hence my months-long campaign to get her to see The Hateful Eight in the theater.

"But Vance," you say, "how can you mount a months-long campaign to get someone to watch a movie in the theater? By the third month it's available on video."

Ah, but this is a special kind of movie.

One theater near us -- the Sun Theatre in Yarraville -- was so enamored with the unique experience of screening Quentin Tarantino's latest film in 70 mm with an intermission that it continued to do so throughout 2016.

You had exactly one opportunity to see it each month -- on the 8th, at 8 p.m.

Clever.

I can't remember who first noticed this, my wife or me, but she expressed an immediate interest in the idea of going to one of these screenings. This was ages ago, like in June.

Because my brain is funny this way, each month I would remember the approach of the 8th, and remind my wife that her next opportunity to see it was fast approaching.

Soon, I was reminding her of her last opportunity.

And much sooner than that, I was beginning to annoy her.

At first I detected it only in small ways, like a slight shortness to her answer. Eventually, audible sighs became involved. However, she continued to insist that she did intend to watch it. So I gave what I told her was my final reminder this past weekend, promising never to mention it again. Which, now that I think about it, was basically only guaranteeing I would not mention it again on the day it was actually happening. So, not much of a promise really. (Like any of us, my wife can forget the dates even of things she more clearly wants to do, and since I've got this unfailing reminder mechanism that fires in my head, I figured I should put it to use.)

Her most direct comment on this topic came not related to Hateful Eight itself, but to a hypothetical Movie X, which I recommended she see on Tuesday night. She was meeting a friend for drinks at 6:30. The way I typically think of an evening like that, I'm probably free in time to see a 9:30 show. Since Tuesday is cheap movie night at Hoyts and she'd be right near there, I mentioned the possibility to her.

"That's not something I like to do," she said. "That's something you like to do."

She was right. Most people don't like to start watching a movie at 9:30 after they've had two to three drinks. That's a recipe for disaster, for most people. Hell, it's a recipe for disaster for me, too, but I fight through it using caffeine and chocolate, and because I have an all-powerful need not to waste an opportunity to get to the movies.

The reason my wife doesn't want to start a 90-minute movie at 9:30 is the same reason she doesn't want to start a 180-minute movie at 8. They both get out at the same time, and they both involve a huge amount of potential exhaustion near the end. I myself have no idea how I would have done in an 8 p.m. showing of The Hateful Eight. When I saw it in January, I saw it at 10 a.m.

Nonetheless, my wife did tell me at the start of the week that she would pencil in The Hateful Eight for Thursday. I considered it likely enough that I envisioned watching the four-hour silent movie Greed that night for my No Audio Audient series.

Ever the optimist.

By the time Thursday rolled around, the week had worn us both out enough that I knew there was pretty much no way it was going to happen. Which it didn't.

And why do I care so much about this?

That's the question. I don't, really. Or at least I shouldn't. But I know if I were in her shoes, it's an opportunity I would regret missing.

But I'm not in her shoes. She likes her own shoes fine, thank you very much. She doesn't need mine, and she doesn't need me to be in hers.

And for a lot of reasons, it's probably just as well. Maybe she's not in the mood for three hours' worth of Tarantino's racial slurs, blood and guts, and violence against women. Maybe that would be just the wrong thing for her right now, only a month removed from the election. And maybe if she associated seeing it with my urging her to see it, it would blow up in my face.

And this morning, she restored my faith in her own dwindling cinephilia.

My wife isn't working on Fridays at the moment, and she doesn't have any children with her that day either. So this morning she asked my opinion on which of two films to see when she had a rare open window in the early afternoon.

If there's anything a cinephile likes more than being asked their opinion on something, I don't know what that might be.

And what options! She was choosing between Hell or High Water and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, both of which I greatly enjoyed.

I told her that Hell was definitely the better film, but it depended on her mood. If she wanted something grittier -- something more in the Tarantino vein -- then Hell was definitely the better bet. But if she just wanted some escapism, then she'd best choose Beasts.

Yeah, her reason for going was that she had a free pass that's set to expire in a few weeks. But beggars (me, in this case) can't be choosers.

It just warms my heart that my wife, a cinephile who's just out of practice, is getting out to the movies at all.

A late western surge

Either because of a conspiracy of release dates or the prioritizing of my own viewings, I'm finishing my 2015 viewing season with no fewer than four westerns in the final eight days.

All I'd have to do is schedule a viewing of The Ridiculous 6 on Netflix and I'd have a full house.

And without revealing exactly how much I've liked the two movies I've seen so far, let's just say we're off to a good start.

It was a double feature yesterday, as my wife being able to pick up the kids from daycare allowed me to watch Slow West on my laptop at a Starbucks, in anticipation of meeting up with a friend for an 8:40 showing of The Revenant. (The Revenant was playing only two blocks away from where I work, so it seemed silly to go home and get the kids only to return to that exact location two hours later, and fortunately, it worked out for my wife to help me avoid that.)

The second two will be a Kurt Russell double feature. I already know I'm committed to a Bone Tomahawk screening, since I've rented it from iTunes, and that viewing figures to transpire on Saturday night. Then the big news of the last few days: I've found a way to see The Hateful Eight in time for my ranking deadline. Only just. It doesn't open wide here until January 21st, but the road show version (the one I want to see anyway) opens a week earlier than that at exactly one cinema, and if I hadn't been driving exactly where I was driving with my kids on Tuesday, I wouldn't have seen the poster that informed me of that fact. I've already got tickets for a 10 a.m. screening next Thursday, which was scheduled as a day off for me anyway. That will be just 14 hours before the Oscar noms are announced, officially ending my ranking year.

Westerns are not my favorite genre, to say the least. That could explain me dragging my feet on getting to Slow West in particular. However, I'm starting to wonder if 2015 will make up some ground in changing my mind on that topic, and not even necessarily because of a film that came out in 2015. Early on in the year I saw (and was blown away by) Sergio Leone's 1968 film Once Upon a Time in the West, which immediately installed itself among my favorite westerns of all time. I've also got one western (Unforgiven) in my top 20 of all time. So maybe I just need the right kind of westerns, and maybe 2015 is finally introducing me to those.

How will Bone Tomahawk and The Hateful Eight stack up? And for that matter, how much do I like Slow West and The Revenant?

You have only a week more to wait to find out.

Not an anomaly, unfortunately

It's that time of year again -- the time when the buzz is coming on strong for certain awards contenders and potential year-end critic faves.

It's also the time of year when I realize which ones I won't be able to see before my ranking deadline, because I live in Australia.

Tops on that list this year: Charlie Kaufman's Anomalisa.

It seems like barely a month ago, I was not even aware this movie existed. As you can see, it doesn't even have a proper poster yet. When I did learn about it, I heard that it would be popping up in a few film festivals here and there, but still seemed destined for a 2016 wide release. Now it's getting that New York and Los Angeles release before the end of the year, expanding wider not long after the start of the new year. A definite 2015 film.

And a real contender for the top spot in my 2015 rankings, if Kaufman's history is any indication. Two movies he's written (Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) have topped the years they were released in my personal rankings, and the one movie he's directed -- Synecdoche, New York -- would have been a contender for my favorite film of 2008 if I hadn't allowed some of the more befuddled reviews to scare me off. Now that I have seen it, something I finally accomplished back in 2011, it's in my top 100 movies of all time.

So it will be a gaping wound in my 2015 rankings indeed when I don't get to consider Anomalisa alongside all the others.

Up until a couple hours ago, I was hopeful that it not yet having an Australian release date meant that it could still end up coming out before January 14th, when I need to sign, seal and deliver my rankings. (That's the morning the Oscar nominations are announced.) Unfortunately, at that point I found a February 4th, 2016 Australian release date listed for the movie.

For my personal tastes, that's going to be my most regrettable miss this year, but there's one that would be more shocking to most people: The Hateful Eight.

That's right, Quentin Tarantino's ninth feature releases a week after my rankings close, marking the first time I won't have seen a Tarantino movie in its ranking year since Jackie Brown.

His recent history is a little more uncertain in terms of being a contender for my top slot. While Inglourious Basterds was in my top ten of 2009, Django Unchained came in at only 30th for me in 2012. Either way, it will be a bummer not to have it up for consideration.

Also not getting Thomas McCarthy's Spotlight or Lenny Abrahamson's Room, though maybe Room will be getting released early enough in the U.S. for me to rent it on iTunes before my deadline.

All this said, there's cause for some end-of-year optimism, as there are a couple of movies I was sure I'd miss that will indeed be accessible to me before the 14th of January.

One of these is The Revenant, directed by the director of my #1 film of 2014, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. Inarritu will indeed get a chance to repeat the #1 showing he earned with Birdman, as The Revenant makes its Australian bow on January 7th. I'm excited enough about this one that I have been steadfastly refusing to watch the trailer.

Then there's David O. Russell's latest, Joy, which hits theaters on Boxing Day. Boxing Day is also when we get The Danish Girl (awards bait, but I'll still watch it) and The Good Dinosaur (delayed from the American Thanksgiving release date, as always happens with the big animated Thanksgiving release -- Big Hero 6 and Frozen in each of the past two years).

What may have surprised me the most was that it seems like I'll be able to squeeze in Todd Haynes' Carol, which releases here on the day my rankings are due -- in other words, some 12 hours before the actual Oscar nominations are announced, meaning I can squeak it in. I figured this one would be a definite February release, just because I don't know.

Goosebumps also, inexplicably, does not come out until that day, but I probably won't try to cram in a double feature. (Next issue to tackle is to get Australia to care about Halloween, so Halloween movies actually come out in October.) If Carol is to have a double feature partner, it probably has to be Steve Jobs, which I've learned only during the editing phase of this piece is also coming out on January 14th. Danny Boyle just so happens to be another guy who's directed a year-end chart topper (2010's 127 Hours).

As for The Hateful Eight and Anomalisa, I'll have to do a better job prioritizing an eventual viewing than I've done for some of the other late-release casualties since I've been in Australia. One year later and two years later, respectively, I still haven't seen either The Wolf of Wall Street or Inherent Vice. That's Martin Scorsese and Paul Thomas Anderson we're talking about there, people.

There is one ray of hope: the critics screening. In neither of my previous years in Australia was I regularly attending critics screenings, and it's very possible one or both of these movies will screen for critics well ahead of their theatrical releases.

Then I just have to convince the editor at my website to let me go to those screenings instead of him.

He just so happens to consider Adaptation his favorite movie of all time, so that's going to be a tall order indeed.