Well done, sir!

Rating: 8/10 (18 January 2016)

In many ways, this is a movie of polar opposites. For a start, it was really hard for me to watch – overly long and in many places redundant or simply pointless. After first viewing I wanted to give it a four or five, but then the day after, scene after scene started coming back to me. And chuckle after chuckle, here we are, discussing if it should have been nominated for an Oscar. It certainly has all the makings of a great movie – a renowned director who can have his own way, a stellar cast and plot that is of theatre play variety. But Interstellar, another big movie with all the same ingredients failed miserably. So these things cannot be all it takes.
I believe that one thing to bind them all is simply - spirit. And there is so much spirit in this movie it almost needs an exorcist. You cannot but admire utter insistence to explore every pointless dialogue, action or reaction produced by eight unlikely roommates in snowed-in, of all things – haberdashery! Movie is a testament of because I can" attitude which, after Nolan's great failure (yes, I cannot forgive that one), is probably possible only with Tarantino.
Great theatre plays manage to execute two actions simultaneously simply because you can naturally encompass the full stage in your view. It is almost impossible on screen with focus playing the judge of attention. But there is an entire act in this movie where you have an action defined and demonstrated (Bob trying to perform Silent night") and then only implied through audio cues. And while watching an entirely unrelated scene, I could still hold an image of Bob in my mind and portray to myself exactly what and how he is doing. Only a master director can pull such a thing off, and here we have one, folks!
Cinematography is wonderful, Ennio Moricone's score is brilliant, cast is, well a mixed bag. I did not particularly like how Kurt Russel and Jennifer Jason Leigh worked together. They just appear a bit forced, doubly a failure as movie is all about grotesque and overemphasis. On the other side, Samuel Jackson (as expected) and Bruce Dern (surprisingly) had best performances and steal the show in their respective acts. Oh, and Bob (Demian Bichir). Bob can be my uncle anytime!