10 Reasons to avoid this boring, pretentious rubbish.

Rating: 1/10 (8 January 2016)

1. Some outstanding actors (including two of my favorites in Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel) being completely wasted on an indulgent, pretentious, artsy-fartsy script/story line. A solid performance by Michael Caine etc. does not save this film from being a disaster.
2. Extremely self indulgent and pretentious direction. All about the director showing us how clever he thinks he is. A sad case of "look at me, look at me, aren't I so clever" as he uses ever trick in the artsy film director's book of tricks.
3. To a large extent, no real plot, just too many rambling irrelevant scenes running in to each other. I kept waiting for something to happen, to involve the viewer, it did not happen. Boring, boring, boring!
4. Some wonderful cinematography wasted on meaningless scenes. Unfortunately, the film includes a large number of wonderful camera shots and marvelous scenery that just don't mean a thing in terms of the supposed point the director thinks he is making. Again they are in there to say "look at me, look at me, aren't I so clever" to make you think they must be so meaningful. Again wasted talent.
5. A movie perhaps made subconsciously by the director pandering to his own ego and to please the people in the circles that he moves in and the Film Critics, who could not wait to jump on to this director's bandwagon. Budget: US$13,000,000 (estimated). Gross: $1,650,314 (USA) (1 January 2016). Unlike the film industry critics, the general moving-going public was not taken in by this example of film making made for the sake of film making.
6. The meaningless "parade of weird characters in the Alpine luxury resort where the entire film is set - from an obese football player with a tattoo of Karl Marx on his back to a masseuse with braces who declares she likes touching more than talking, and imitates dancing cartoon characters in her spare time" (This quote taken from another IMDb member). It's so way out there so it must be great cinema, right? Wrong! Pretentious self-indulgence.
7. It tries so hard to be "film art" that this gets in the way of making a film for an audience to enjoy and become involved with. This movie is so focused on being different and unique, but there's a difference from being different and making art and being different and making a load of meaningless garbage.
8. As another IMDb member has already noted, "The film is over filled with one surrealistic trope after another to the point of bursting." I could not agree more.
9. So much of the dialogue is to a great extent meaningless and rambles on and on.
10. Stringing together cliché after cliché about old age and life is no way to make a good film, it all simply ends up as a huge cinematic mess.
I appreciate that all of these views are my subjective opinion and there is no absolute right or wrong when it comes to film and the arts, and so my aim is not to criticize others who take a different view.
I simply write this comment in the hope that anyone looking for an enjoyable, interesting, involving and meaningful movie will be saved from wasting two hours of their lifetime that they will never get back. I regret being put through what turned out to be for me, two hours of nauseating torture.
Virtually any other movie you may be considering to watch would be a better choice than this dreary, self-indulgent and pretentious waste of time, money, talent and effort.
If I could give this film a rating lower than 1 (awful) I would do so.