Dogs Bark

Once Upon A Time In The Snow - - The Hateful Eight (2015, USA, Color, 167 min) - - 30 December 2015

Not recommended. The sumptuous opening minutes of The Hateful Eight are promising. This is a Quentin Tarantino (Kill Bill) Western, in Ultra-Panavision (How The West Was Won), played to a Ennio Morricone’s (Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo) score. We’ve waited 23 years for this. And the set-up also looks sweet, Kurt Russell (Grindhouse), cheerfully abusive . . . Sam Jackson (Pulp Fiction), “Hell, yeah!” But the homage to Sergio Leone stops there, as the characters crowd into a snowbound stagecoach way-station that starts looking like a Tarantino warehouse in east LA. Tim Roth and Michael Madsen (Reservoir Dogs) are even waiting up for them, but at 1000 kilowatts-hours less energy. Only Jennifer-Jason Leigh seems charged up. The Hateful Eight spills buckets more blood, bloody barf and brain matter than any spaghetti Western but with very little Leone pizzazz. This seems to be a disappointing trend in Tarantino’s recent offerings; perhaps he’s bleeding out.

Jenn Mops Up - - Joy (2015, USA, Color, 124 min) - - 25 December 2015

Recommended. Those of us who loved Winter’s Bone have waited for five years now to see Jennifer Lawrence occupy another intense dramatic role in a movie “inspired by the true stories of daring women.” This quote opens David O. Russell’s (American Hustle) entertaining movie . . . Joy; however, this is not that film. Russell simply can’t resist showing off his madcap humor and his stock players - - Lawrence, Robert DeNiro (Silver Lining Playbook) and Bradley Cooper (American Hustle) - - interpret his jokes so well that grumbling would be churlish. Company newbies Isabella Rossellini (Big Night) and Diane Ladd (Rambling Rose) also contribute solid work. There’s just enough feminist gusto in Joy that we do get a social message . . . perhaps even too heavy in places. Regardless, Lawrence so totally buries her wackiness in service to the part that an Oscar nod is likely. The flash forward ending seemed forced but most of Joy was delightful.