Exactly What I Was Expecting

Rating: 6/10 (15 January 2016)

I went into this moving expecting a very average movie and got pretty much exactly that- definitely not Tarantino's best. Like, I am a huge Tarantino fan; I love Kill Bill and Inglorious Basterds and the gratuitous violence and the monologues I love it. But this just wasn't that great of a movie.
There were definitely good things about it (I'm about to spoil the sh!t out of some parts so stop reading now if you haven't seen it): The scenes in the snow were visually the high point in the movie and specifically, the part where Samuel L. Jackson is dragging the general's son naked through the snow is really, really cool looking and almost looks like an art house film even.
The soundtrack was extremely enjoyable throughout the movie and always added to the scenes. Jennifer Jason Leigh does a song on guitar that is super cool and adds some much needed suspense to a scene that had been leeched of it due to poor writing and editing choices.
Speaking of Jennifer Jason Leigh, her performance was extremely good as were most of the performances in the movie. Samuel L. Jackson was the only person that felt kind of underwhelming acting-wise. During his big monologue I felt like I was watching a high school student give a monologue for his theater class, honestly.
For every really good thing about this movie, there were some notably bad things though.
The pacing was terrible. Terrible enough to completely take me out of the movie at points in the second act because it was so awkwardly spaced. The beginning was dragged out way longer than it should have, and the second act was shockingly short (the locked room murder mystery lasts a total of 15 minutes, I would guess). By the end of the movie, I had whiplash. And not in a good way.
There were some editing choices that frankly made me cringe. Specifically: the voice over parts, the weird slow motion talking that Samuel L. Jackson does, a couple of weirdly uh, jagged (I guess that's the word) cuts, and one shot that should have been cut way earlier than it was.
I guess ultimately, I was left with the feeling of "What was the point?". Also: "I wish I was watching Django right now." Not a terrible movie, but definitely not a great one. I expect more of Tarantino.