Before I talk about Quentin Tarantino, I have a terrible confession. My first Tarantino film was his most recent effort Django Unchained, and that remains my favourite of his repertoire. That’s right, Pulp Fiction is not my favourite. The scandal. I am a moviegoer who, while in awe of the storytelling and style of his older films, prefers Tarantino’s more recent preference for frolicking in the past. I hope, however, that my love of this film can atone for my previous Tarantino sins.

The film opens with a stagecoach charging across the snow, picking up an eclectic mix of people along the way and eventually arriving at a small inn. Snow closes in and we are left with a small microcosm of American life in the middle of 19th century Wyoming. Simple. Apparently not. What unfolds is a piece of work that combines everything that was great about every Tarantino film. It has the excruciating racial tension from Django Unchained. It has the comedy of Inglourious Basterds. It has the raw violence of Kill Bill. It even has the intricate storytelling of Pulp Fiction. And together they create the great triumph of Tarantino’s time in cinema.

Robert Richardson’s cinematography is understated but brilliant. The viewer is drawn from the sweeping, bleak snow of the American West to the tight and immersive setting of Minnie’s Haberdashery. Fast tracking shots and cross-cuts between characters convey the delectable tension which Tarantino is seeking to create. Richardson’s finest moment is perhaps when James Parks’s character O.B. Jackson is caught out in the snow. His figure seems insignificant, lost amidst the darkness and swirling snow that absorbs the viewer. And it is all done in 70 mm, so even at an ordinary cinema, it looks glorious.

Yet aesthetics do not make a film. The Hateful Eight proves that soundtracks are the heart and soul of cinema. Ennio Morricone has created a score of haunting beauty. Using Morricone was a stroke of genius by Tarantino, with the former’s experience in many great westerns – the most iconic being The Good, the Bad and the Ugly – allowing him to create music that emphasises the harshness of life on the frontier; while harking back to the greatest films of the genre. Tarantino also adds his own unique touches, finishing with a song from an obscure 1960s Western called The Fastest Guitar Alive. It fits with the narrative and only adds to the richness of what Tarantino has created: this is a man in love with the genre and what he does.

Today it is a rare thing for a film to produce a cast in which every single character on the screen is captivating in their own way. Two particular characters, however, leave lasting impressions. Jennifer Jason Leigh plays Daisy Domergue, a convicted criminal being taken to hang by Russell’s character. Leigh lends the role a tremendous physical energy, using her relative lack of dialogue in the film’s first half to astonishing effect, with her strange calculating stare lingering over everyone in the scene. Perhaps her finest moment is her guitar solo of ‘Jim Jones at Botany Bay.’ It is a moment of rustic quiet as Domergue coldly observes chaos unfurl at the inn. As a contrast to this, Samuel L. Jackson plays the bounty hunter Major Marquis Warren. Compared to the more physical performance of Leigh, Jackson uses his lines to terrifying effect. Every word he says leaves the audience on tenterhooks, and immediately ratchets up the tension. His monologue to the Confederate General (played by Bruce Dern) was my favourite scene in the film, a horrifying moment of gripping suspense that was impossible to look away from. You are transported from your comfortable cinema, to the heart of a world driven by violence and racial discord. Both are career-defining performances. Leigh has got her Golden Globe nomination – I hope Jackson can join her for the Oscars.

This is far more than another Tarantino Western. It holds you from its first moment and refuses to let go. And if after all that Mr Tarantino still hasn’t won you over, he even put in an interval for you to leave. What a guy.