Cinemazlowski "The Hateful Eight" and "Sisters" -- one brutally impressive and one brutally unfunny

Christmas movies are like a pile of presents under the tree: there's hopefully something for everyone. This season is no exception, with an eclectic array of films for seemingly every taste, and then of course the "Star Wars" movie, which is making so much money one might think Congress made viewing it a requirement for citizenship.

 

This week, we're looking at two movies that couldn't be any more different: Quentin Tarantino's latest bizarro epic, "The Hateful Eight," and the Tina Fey-Amy Poehler comedy "Sisters." One is one of the year's most brutal yet impressive films, while the other is just brutally unfunny.

 

Feel free to read on, but I highly recommend seeing "Joy" or "The Big Short" instead – two movies I haven't had the chance to see, but which have extensive awards buzz.

 

"Hateful" is Tarantino's second Western in a row, following 2012's superb and superior "Django Unchained," which rode a powderkeg mix of racial tensions, ace performances and crackerjack action all the way to huge box office,  a Best Picture nomination and a Best Screenplay Oscar.  That movie was wildly original in every frame, but "The Hateful Eight" doesn't have that fresh sense of unpredictability.

 

Rather, "Hateful" plays like a combination of "Django" and Tarantino's debut film, "Reservoir Dogs." Both are great films and "Hateful" is also entertaining, but there's definitely a sense of " been there, done that" in much of it. Tarantino's creative muse, Samuel L. Jackson, is back as Major Marquis Warren, who claims his military title from fighting against the Confederates in the Civil War and also claims that he has a letter of support from President Lincoln himself.

Warren is trapped in the middle of nowhere with a blizzard approaching, when he encounters a stagecoach with two passengers: a self-proclaimed bounty hunter named John Ruth (Kurt Russell in his coolest role in years), and his latest capture, a hard-as-nails woman with a black eye and bloody mouth named Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Soon, they pick up yet another passenger: a man named Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), who claims that he's the newly elected sheriff in the town that Ruth is bringing Domergue to for his reward.

 

The four pull up for the night at a remote store and boarding house called Minnie's Haberdashery, only to find that Ruth's old friend Minnie is mysteriously missing, with four other men (Bruce Dern, Michael Madsen, Tim Roth and Demian Bichir) as the only occupants. As they settle in for a long night huddled against the elements, it becomes clear that no one in the store has friendly intentions for anyone else, and that everyone has a hidden agenda.

 

You truly don't want to know more than that. While "Hateful" does copy the "Reservoir Dogs" setup of putting a bunch of dangerous and untrustworthy thugs into a confined area and watching them turn on each other, Tarantino is still utterly incapable of writing a bad screenplay. There are surprises throughout, although if there is one big complaint to make, the film is nearly three hours long and takes nearly half that time for the first gunshot to be fired.

The second half is much more action-packed, but it's also hard to watch at times. Tarantino's largest budget expense appears to have been the buckets of blood involved from shootings, stabbings and worst of all, the vomiting that occurs after two of the men drink poisoned coffee.

 

Tarantino also is likely to rile some viewers with another problematic aspect:  his characters' copious use of the N-word towards, against and about Warren. But taken in the context of its setting – a bunch of tough white men being outwitted by a black man shortly after the Civil War – and the fact that Jackson always defends Tarantino completely for his uses of that word, should make it tolerable to viewers who know they're in for a very wild ride.  Of course, there's also a heavy amount of heavy-duty profanity, and one sickening monologue from Warren, as he describes the horrific way he abused and murdered the son of one of the men in the room.

Meanwhile, "Sisters" is the latest team-up between Fey and Poehler, adding to their decade-plus collaboration in everything from "SNL" to the hit movie "Baby Mama" and co-hosting the Golden Globes awards. This time, they play two middle-aged sisters named Kate and Maura Ellis, who have grown apart as adults, only to be drawn together when their parents (James Brolin and Dianne Wiest) decide to sell their childhood home, and they refuse to let that happen.

 

Fey's Kate is a former hard partier, while Poehler's Maura has spent her life in ridiculous levels of repression. But with Maura refusing to stop grieving the end of her marriage a full two years after her divorce and Kate learning that their home's new buyers will only purchase the place if it's in great shape, the two decide to hatch the wildest party of their lives and invite everyone they knew from high school to the house for one last rager. 

 

From there, the movie's script feels nonexistent, as the movie drifts into endless scenes of bad behavior that seem disconnected from not only each other but any sense of compelling narrative. It seems that Fey and Poehler talked a studio into spending about $30 million on letting them turn on a camera and speak and act as crudely as possible.

 

The movie is packed wall-to-wall with nearly as much swearing and bad behavior  - including a heavy amount of sexual innuendos and a surprising amount of drug humor - as "Hateful," but is even less funny despite trying to be a straight-up comedy. Director Jason Moore seems to have turned the camera on and walked away in frustration. Viewers will think about doing the same.