IB reviews

http://abortionsforall.wordpress.com/2010/12/21/inglourious-basterds/

Inglourious Basterds
Posted on 2010/12/21 by Foucault Peck-Malchiodi|

Quentin Tarantino’s 2009 World War II fairytale Inglourious Basterds is an interesting piece of cinema. It deviates drastically from historical events while still sauntering around in historically accurate waters. Essentially it uses reality as a launching point, rewriting history. The film is probably his most accomplished to date and the world Tarantino creates is fascinating. The sets are marvelous, the acting is excellent, the cinematography is stellar, and the dialogue contains Tarantino’s trademark monologues but is far more advanced than in his previous films. It’s also probably his most sadistic film, which is saying a great deal considering Tarantino’s films are rife with violence. Although I really enjoy Inglorious Basterds, there’s something almost vulgar about Tarantino’s use of bloodshed, coming across as needlessly vicious and outright cruel – even though Nazi’s are the predominant focus of the violence.

I feel an exploration of Nazi sadism is unwarranted since just about everybody is familiar with their barbaric exploits. Unless you’re living in a cave and unfamiliar with 20th century world history you’ve heard of the Holocaust; their actions will live in infamy for centuries. Their endeavors were malicious, their schemes grand and thankfully the Allies thwarted their imperialist desires. Their propaganda was extraordinary; films by Leni Riefenstahl such as Triumph of the Will are beautifully shot and it’s a shame such a talent made propaganda films for Hitler. Films comparing Jews to rats, especially in a severely depressed economy, rallied a nation against Hitler’s others, responsible for genocide with very few competitors. However, only limited thinking would assume everybody in Nazi Germany believed the propaganda or supported Hitler’s warped politics. Just like any nationalist cause – America’s post-9/11 actions are a good example – not everybody unites behind a singular cause.

I’m fairly certain the Basterds (the covert Nazi killing team in Tarantino’s film) weren’t interested in civilians, but regardless of this it’s doubtful the entire Nazi army fought voluntarily. Of course in wartime astutely determining which enemy soldiers are unwillingly fighting isn’t possible, yet the soldiers in Tarantino’s World War II film possess a singular objective: killing as many Nazi’s as possible. The film’s male protagonist, First Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), even states to his team prior to deployment:

“When you join my command, you take on debit. A debit you owe me, personally. Every man under my command owes me one hundred Nazi scalps. And I want my scalps. And all y’all will git me one hundred Nazi scalps taken from the heads of one hundred Nazi’s…or you will die trying.”

Naturally their objective isn’t benevolent; their goal is mass murder, potentially outside the rules of engagement or the Geneva Convention (which happened after World War II anyways). This is where I find potential fault with Tarantino’s film.

Of course it’s expected that Tarantino’s films will contain excessive bloodshed; his track record speaks for itself. However, the level of sadism depicted in Inglourious Basterds is outside of Tarantino’s normal range. The film is incredibly aggressive and the violence isn’t fantasy like Kill Bill or Pulp Fiction; the violence is ferocious. The Nazi’s Aldo and the Basterds engage many times seem more complex, more human, than the recipients of brutality in his other films. For instance, in Kill Bill Volume I the Crazy 88’s foot soldiers are nameless automatons, like disposable enemies in a video game. Uma Thurman’s the focal point of the film, where the audience places their empathy, their desires, and so forth; in Inglorious Basterds this isn’t the case. The first group of soldiers the Basterds execute are normal people, placed in extreme circumstances by a power hungry dictator. They have families (one even says he’ll hug his mother when he comes home from war), making them empathetic characters. Sure they’re Nazi’s, but beyond their national affiliation they’re people. Here’s where I find fault with the film.

I feel Tarantino uses Nazi’s as the focus of his film’s violence because they’re an acceptable target. The countless horrors the Nazi’s inflicted upon the world are without question horrific, but the level of violence Tarantino injects into his film would receive less fanfare if the beneficiaries weren’t Nazi’s. Scalping people wouldn’t receive critical praise if the victims weren’t Nazi’s; carving Swastika’s into people’s foreheads wouldn’t meet applause if it wasn’t a Nazi being disfigured; beating a man’s head in with a baseball bat while screaming with joy wouldn’t garner Academy Award nominations if it was American soldiers being executed. Tarantino takes a generally despised historical group and makes them the target of excessive cruelty, using them for his own sadistic cinematic aims. It makes me believe he doesn’t really despise Nazi’s but rather likes depicting unforgivable acts of brutality. The victim isn’t necessarily set in stone, but since Nazi’s are still so reviled it makes mainstream acceptance of these acts simpler.

The way Tarantino plays with violence is another reason for my assertion. He doesn’t depict it as a negative act, instead celebrating it. When Aldo carves swastikas into Nazi soldiers’ heads the act’s portrayed as comedic instead of horrific. He toys with sadism, blurring the line between abhorrent and acceptable acts. To him violence is acceptable if framed in a comedic fashion, regardless of the sadism involved. There are truly cringe-worthy moments in Inglourious Basterds, yet Tarantino presents them as light hearted. Regardless of my criticism of Tarantino’s hyper-violent World War II fantasy, I still think the film is great and probably his best film to date.

Tarantino’s films are always derivative of previous works: Reservoir Dogs is a Scorsese infused version of Ringo Lam’s 1987 Hong Kong film City on Fire starring Chow Yun-fat; there are moments in Kill Bill Volume 1 where he pays homage to Akira Kurosawa’s samurai films; Kill Bill Volume 2 borrows heavily from Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns (even using Ennio Morricone on the soundtrack). However, I feel Inglorious Basterds draws influence from more subtle sources instead of lifting directly from the same medium he works in. For instance, a shot of the film’s female protagonist Shosanna (Melanie Laurent) looks just like an Edward Hopper’s 1939 painting New York Movie. Tarantino reverses the pose and changes the dress color, but the mood, the intention, and even the setting is the same. Of course Tarantino lifts from war films like The Dirty Dozen, infusing much of Robert Aldrich’s sentiment into Inglorious Basterds, but he takes this inspiration and makes it his own. Overall Tarantino’s influences have matured; he’s not lifting shot for shot like he did with Reservoir Dogs or mimicking another film’s aesthetic so literally. Instead he’s culling ideas from the past and making them his own.

Below is a shot of Shosanna and Edward Hopper’s painting.

Accompanying what I consider Tarantino’s best film is a great cast, especially Christoph Waltz, who won a best supporting actor Oscar for his portrayal of SS Colonel Hans Landa. Amidst all the excessive violence, Waltz’s performance as the infamous “Jew Hunter” is both chilling and hilarious. He mixes a lighthearted playfulness with terror, playing both off each other and making laughter possible during anxious moments. Waltz is really the glue holding the film together and without his tremendous performance it’s possible the film would descend into mediocrity. The rest of the cast, featuring Eli Roth as the Bear Jew, The Office’s B.J. Novak as the Little Man, Mike Myers as a high ranking British officer, and many others round out the film. Also delivering great showings are Michael Fassbender as British Lieutenant Archie Hicox, German actress Diane Kruger as the actress turned covert agent Bridget von Hammersmark, and Daniel Bruhl as Fredrick Zoller, a notorious German soldier who stars in the Goebbels propaganda film Nation’s Pride (and is also smitten with Shosanna).

http://ashiesayz.blogspot.com/2010/12/movie-review-inglourious-basterds.html

Sunday, December 26, 2010
IB is no exception to Tarantino's exquisite work
Movie Review
Inglourious Basterds

Director : Quentin Tarantino
Cast : Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Michael Fassbender, Eli Roth, Til Schweiger, Daniel Bruhl, Diane Kruger, Melanie Laurent & August Diehl.

Quentin Tarantino is accliamed for bringing the stories on paper, alive at the silver screen. Inglourious Basterds is simply no exception to his exquisite work. This period drama mentions the story of a bunch of Jewish-American soldiers, referred to as 'Basterds' who intend to kill as many Adolf Hiler's Nazi enlisted men as possible. The Bastards under the command of Lt. Aldo Raine enacted by Brad Pitt are dropped in France with a motive to finish the German soldiers during the Second World War, making sure they leave behind the dismantled and disfigured dead bodies of the Nazis so as to spread the word of fear within the Germans, and they quite make it possible by smashing the brains of German soldiers with baseball bat and leaving their dead bodies of scalp-less. Incidents like these are presented to the audience in a very raw manner, appearing extremely violent and painful. But then this can be easily expected out of a Tarantino's picture.

Tarantino displays great talent by showing two plots running simultaneously in the story, and excels in blending them together. The film begins with the introduction of Col.Hans Landa played by Christoph Waltz who is nicknamed as 'the Jew-Hunter' due to his specialty of killing Jews in Nazi occupied France. He assassinates the Drefuses, a Jewish family, however a girl named Shoshanna played by Melanie Laurent manages to escape.

The Bastards indulge in killing Nazi soldiers with cruelty, bringing fear within the German Army. Meanwhile Shoshanna changes her identity to Emanuele, a cinema owner who works with a negro employee named Marcel. One night she meets Frederick Zoller played by Daniel Bruhl, a German sniper, who fells for Emanuele and in order to develop a sense of friendship with her, convinces Dr.Goebbels, a German director played by Sylvester Groth, to change the venue of the premiere of a German film based on the exploits of Zoller during war time, to Emanuele's cinema. Emanuele realises this as an opportunity to avenge hereslf of her family's massacre from the Nazi soldiers, as she plans to burn all the German soldiers at the premiere.

On the other side the Bastards, unaware of Emanuele and her revenge, devise Operation Kino, which involves killing of German soldiers during the same film screening with the help of a German actress Bridget Von Hammersmark played by Diane Kruger who has a secret identity of a British spy and this action being her Brain child. The development of the plan requires a secret rendezvous between Von Hammersmark and Lt. Archie Hicox played by Michael Fassbender along with two German born Bastards. However things go wrong when Major Dieter Hellstorm played by August Diehl notices the odd accent of Hicox, resulting into a fire fight, leaving everyone dead except Von Hammersmark.

However after learning from Von Hammersmark about the presence of Hitler at the premiere Raine formulates a plan to explode the theatre. Meanwhile Landa obtains an evidence against Von Hammersmark and kills her at the premiere night and takes Raine into custody. On the other side Emanuele gears up for her ultimate revenge but before she could do anything, Zoller comes to see her in projection room where they both exchange fire and die. Landa while interrogating Raine proposes a deal wherein he would let the Operation Kino a success and let Hitler and all Nazi soldiers die only if the American High-command gives him a sign off on his unusual terms including American citizenship for himself post the war. Landa is given the word of agreement by the American General.
Diane Kruger, Michael Fassbender & August Diehl

In the meantime Marcel, Emanuele's lover burns the theatre which is followed by an explosion by the Bastards killing the Germans attending the premiere including Hitler. Landa takes Raine to American borders as per the deal. To his surprise Raine with his knife engraves a Swastika on Landa's forehead so that he cannot conceal being a Nazi even after attaining American citizenship.

Brad Pitt delivers another stunning performance as Raine, but the actor who steals the show is unquestionably Christoph Waltz as Col. Hans Landa. In better words the movie belongs to Waltz as he makes almost his every scene memorable. Be it his introduction scene where he persuades a French Nationale in the most cunning way, or be it a scene where he starts talking in Italian after the Bastards are introduced to him as Italians. His witty lines and spontaneous body language are just flawless. Melaine Laurent plays her part of Shoshanna/ Emanuele brilliantly. Watch her dissolve in tears after she meets Landa the officer who brutally killed her family. August Diehl as Major Dieter Hellstorm is impressive. Eli Roth as Donny Donowitz aka "The Bear Jew" and Til Schweiger as Hugo Stiglitz shines.

 The visuals displaying the no mercy characters surprise you to a great extent. What adds to the flavour is the riveting sound design which supports the story extremely. The variety in the background score ranging from a smooth mouth organ music to a bugle sound to a rock number, gives enough strength to the story. The movie also involves a lot of cameo appearances by several American German actors. The scenes of the film are relatively less in number but involve lengthy conversations, mostly in foreign languages displaying subtitles almost all the time and this tests viewer's patience. IB is a combination of historical and fictional characters, since Hitler was not killed in a cinema tragedy. The Original Screenplay by Tarantino himself is another strength of the movie. Full marks to the writers for the clever one liners used in the film. My rating for IB is a handsome 4/5. For cinema lovers its a delight and for Tarantino fans its a must watch.

Posted by AS at 6:12 PM

http://www.opinioncraft.com/2011/01/inglourious-basterds-review/

Inglourious Basterds Review

Inglourious Basterds

Movie Details:

Release: 2009

Length: 153 Minutes

Rated: R

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Your rating:
0 votes

Cast: Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Mélanie Laurent, Eli Roth, Michael Fassbender, Diane Kruger, Daniel Brühl, Til Schweiger, B.J. Novak, Samm Levine, Paul Rust, Mike Myers

Director: Quentin Tarantino

Genres: Action & Adventure, Military & War Action, Military & War Dramas, Action Thrillers, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Blu-ray

This movie is: Violent, Exciting, Gritty

My Description:

This movie has a lot of real life events, very informative but at the same time it’s very entertaining. I loved how they were able to mix in thrillers with drama and a lot of violence and action and at the same time still have enough time for some teaching. I’ve always found history very fascinating, but I’ve never experienced something like this, usually history videos make me really tired, this one didn’t because it was meant to be like that. I must tell you though, when they force you to read the little subtitles, it gets really boring, I’ve never enjoyed reading subtitles on a movie, but it’s not like that throughout the whole movie, just on some parts.

If you want to see some Nazis get killed and want to see Hitler get shot with an MP40, I highly recommend this movie. That was a joke, if you find history very fascinating though, specially the Nazi era, this movie won’t fail you. Plenty of action to keep you awake throughout the movie.

Official Description:

A Jewish cinema owner (Mélanie Laurent) in occupied Paris is forced to host a Nazi movie premiere, where a radical group of American Jewish soldiers called the Basterds, led by Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), plans to roll out a score-settling scheme. The face-off is about to go down — that’s if Col. Hans Landa aka “The Jew Hunter” (Christoph Waltz, in an Oscar-winning role) doesn’t get in the way. Quentin Tarantino directs this World War II-set spaghetti Western.

http://boardwalkcinema.blogspot.com/2011/01/week-of-films-quentin-tarantino_22.html

Saturday, January 22, 2011
A Week of Films: Quentin Tarantino-Inglourious Basterds
A Week of Films with Quentin Tarantino is coming to an end with the man's latest film, Inglourious Basterds. Looking at it, it's easy to say that the old Tarantino that we love so much is officially back after the much-misunderstood Death Proof. But this isn't directly the darling that it's described as on first viewing. No way, this film takes at least three or four viewings for you to appreciate it.

The first time I saw Inglourious Basterds was at an early screening held in Orange County, and I didn't like it one bit. At first, it seemed as mind-dumbing as the Coen Brothers' A Serious Man or Burn After Reading. Brad Pitt and his so-called 'Basterds' just ruined a film that could have been so ambitious and masterful (it is Tarantino's own interpretation of how World War II was ended, after all!). But it was months later that I viewed it for the second time, and I'm glad to say that it was a much better experience to me, and I learned how to appreciate it. Then, I view it for fourth, fifth, then sixth time, and it easily became one of my favorite films of 2009.

With the undeniably powerful opening scene with Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), or better known as the Jew Hunter, and Monsieur La Pedite, is classic Tarantino. Just like with the opening of Kill Bill Vol. 2, the tension and excitement just keeps building up more and more. You know something bad is going to happen, it's a question of when it's going to happen. The beautiful cinematography and camerawork is just simply impossible to ignore in this 16 minutes-long scene.

Just as Colonel Landa is done killing the Jewish Dreyfuss family, with only the daughter, Shosanna (Melanie Laurent) alive, we move from the ''Once Upon A Time in Nazi-Occupied France'' prologue, and on to the spring of 1944, where Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) is putting together a team of Jewish-American soldiers to do only one thing: kill Nazis.

The Basterds were painted as a bunch of morons to me on the first viewing, but it's only later that the qualities that Tarantino gives them are reminiscent to the ones that are with in The Wild Bunch.

Meanwhile, Shosanna, who managed to escape from the evil nazi that Hans Landa is, is now living in Paris with a different identity and owning a cinema. One night,she meets Private Fredrick Zoller, who is quite a celebrity among the Nazis, and Joseph Goebbels new movie that is based on Zoller's accounts is going to have its premiere soon. And this is exactly where Shosanna enters..

Zoller very soon becomes smitten by her, but she loathes every German Kraut, and neither will she ever forgive one. Her plans? Burn down the whole cinema, but what's the real beauty? It's going to be filled with tons of Nazis, including Hitler...

If I have any flaws with Inglourious Basterds, it would have to be with the overlong basement scene that seems to drag on forever, and remember, I thought that ''girl-talk'' in Death Proof that drags on for 45 minutes wasn't boring. Now, the scen isn't exactly boring, but it's Diane Kruger's movie star Bridget Von Hammersmark that is the problem. She's just too uninteresting, and the whole plot of her being a secret spy for both allies just sounds like some plot of one of those terrible cop shows like Wallander or Beck. The only two things that save this scene from me actually deducting the actual grade of the movie are Tarantino's witty and fun dialogue, and Michael Fassbender.

Tarantino's script that flows and unravels at such an exquisite pace is marvelous, and we can easily declare that any script that is penned by Quentin Tarantino is going to be great. Tarantino manages to give us a point-of-view from not only the German soldiers, but also from the Brittish and the American soldiers and civilians, and by doing that, paints an entire picture of how the Second World War was ended. There might be some errors in facts and such, but it's not supposed to be a documentary, now is it? Just as usual, he wanted to make a fun and entertaining film, which is exactly what he does.

But when talking about the level autheticity in dialogue, the man takes it all to another level. He proves that he can make dialogue in French and German sound as witty and sharp as his dialogue in English.

The musical score by Ennio Morricone is superb as always; and the acting, just like with every Tarantino film, is top-notch. Melanie Laurent's overlooked performance as Shosanna is absolutely outstanding, and so are Pitt's and Fassbender's performances. But the real gem here has to be Christoph Waltz. In Inglourious Basterds, not only has Tarantino created his greatest villian, but he's also created the greatest villain of all time with his Colonel Hans Landa, that is so marvellously played by Christoph Waltz, and I don't think there's ever been a more meaner Nazi than Colonel Landa.

Inglourious Basterds isn't Tarantino's best to me; that's either Pulp Fiction or Jackie Brown for me, but that doesn't take away how ambitious and grand Basterds actually is. Maybe if I view it another ten more times, I'll consider it to be ranked alongside Pulp Fiction, and that's the beauty with Tarantino's movies: you discover something new in them with every viewing..
Upplagd av Ken Adams kl. 11:52 AM

http://adaheartsfulms.blogspot.com/2011/02/happy-holidays-you-basterds.html

Monday, 7 February 2011
Happy Holidays, You Basterds

There is truly no greater joy than sharing a film you love with someone who has never seen it before- or at least there isn't for a rampant cinephile like me. Much debate has gone on over the merits of Quentin Tarantino in class (I've resigned myself to the fact that Andy and I are at a stalemate, and that one time he referred to him as 'a great director' will forever remain the most thrilling of small victories). Even I reckon that his contribution to the Grindhouse double bill was the weaker of the two, and I wasn't as huge a fan of Kill Bill in retrospect as I was at the time. Still, this is the man who gave us Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, (the criminally overlooked) Jackie Brown and, of course, wrote the story for my favourite film of all time. As well as having a hand in Sin City, From Dusk Til Dawn and True Romance. He's, like, untouchable.

When I found out about Inglourious Basterds, alot of things were running through my mind. Like, will it be good old fashioned Tarantino on form? Will it be another self-indulgent, "I really don't need the money" effort? Is it supposed to be spelled like that? Watching and re-watching the film since getting it on DVD last year.. the year before... 2009?... has only served to confirm my belief that this film is NOT Tarantino back on form, but on a compeltely new form altogether. The opening scene, in which Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) interrogates French dairy farmer Msr. LaPadite (Denis Menochet) about the Jewish family hiding under his floorboards is a gripping and unbearably tense start to what quickly chops and changes straight into Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), aka Aldo the Apache, and his merciless band of Jewish-American soldiers known as 'the Basterds'. The difference between the two chapters is quite unreal, as is the story of Shoshanna Dreyfuss (Melanie Laurent), a cinema owner who was part of the family under Msr. LaPadite's floor- and the only survivor. Then there's the story of British officer Archie Willcox (Michael Fassbender) and his dangerous liason with German double agent Bridget Von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger)- who happens to be not only a spy for the Allied side, but the biggest movie star in Germany.

Every story, every facet of it, involves characters plotting their own form of revenge in some way. It's alot to get your head around but the culminative chapter in the cinema ties it all together and the result is a glorious mess of rewritten history. That it is divided into chapters is typically QT and helps the running time fly by, as we trangress from one story into the next and see how they all fit together. The actual scenes themselves are notably long- while they may feature fast cuts when we get to action sequences, the actual locations themselves are very few. It allows the film and its ambition to feel a bit more 'contained'.

One thing which struck me the most was the way the film looked... It shows a progression in Tarantino's work, in that it doesn't look like a Tarantino film. Shot by long-time Olver Stone collaborator and all-round genius Robert Richardson (who also shot Kill Bill 1 & 2), it looks gloriously cinematic... as obvious as that may sound... and looks fitting of its time but with a subtle hint of modernity. According to Richardson, “It’s at times playful, at times brutal, at times wildly humorous". What appealed to me is that there is nothing CG about the film- AT ALL. Given my snobbish disdain for 'fixing things in post', Inglourious Basterds was developed as a 'purely chemical film', with 'no digital intermediate'. Tarantino's insistence that nothing of the film would rely on new technology was a gamble that paid off in dividends. The scalping scenes, even the *SPOILER ALERT* huge explosion at the end, were all to be done on camera. Sadly, Richardson and Tarantino found that the digital era had seen an erosion in chemical labs sympathetic to old school styles of film making.

Still, there are instances in which the black and white footage- which had been intended to take up a much larger proportion of the film- work well. Nation's Pride, the film-within-a-film, was supposed to have been shot in the early 1940s and the stock looking footage fits its period well. The film wears its influences on its sleeve in terms of stylistic reference. Each chapter has its own unique look, which might make it sound somewhat disjointed but actually works well as its subtle enough to only enhance what we're watching, rather than distract/detract from it. The opening chapter was to have a Sergio Leone, 'once upon a time in the west' look to it. The 'French' section of the film reflects the French New Wave and mixes pulp with propaganda. Tarantino-esque nuances still find their way in too, like our introduction to German-enlisted Basterd Hugo Stiglitz.



The sound is terrible, and it cuts a few seconds off of the end, but you get the gist- it's pure Tarantino, complete with badass voiceover by Samuel L Jackson in full Jackie Brown blaxploitation mode. It's this mixture of recognisable director's traits, bold mixing of technology and things being seen through a different (and more mature) eye than his earlier works that make this film what it is. The fact that QT also used his long-time editor Sally Menke helps maintain much of his own idiosyncracies with regards to pacing and cuts etc, as well as moving his work out of the 1990s.

Of course, given our last few weeks working with actors, the performances are crucial too. Christoph Waltz is, for me, the undeniable standout of the whole thing- a smarmy, self-righteous, interminably clever, charming creep; he is frightening in that we always know that he knows something... we just don't know what. Waltz'z Oscar for Best Supporting Actor saw a triumphant air-punch from me when I watched the ceremony, and it's even more amazing given the company that he is in.
Denis Minochet as Msr. LaPadite is not someone I've seen before but he is outstanding as he breaks down in front of Landa the 'Jew Hunter' and sacrifices his old neighbours to sprae his own family. Brad Pitt is CLEARLY having a blast as Aldo the Apache, and his over the top performance never seems to far-reaching or out of place. He's the natural leader of the Basterds, and is ably supported by surprise choice Eli Roth. Control of the scene ably flits from one character to the next and, depsite feeling a little dense at times, we'd feel short-changed if it were the opposite.

This film is Tarantino all over, but not at the same time... It's as focused as Death Proof was a glorious B-movie mess; the titular characters are barely introduced singularly; the opening sequence is a 20-minute conversation... every time we think the film is going in one direction it jerks into the other. Which is pretty much typical from a director who gave us a heist movie in which we don't actually see any of the heist itself, yes? The final line, for me, summed up how I felt about the film, especially after watching it repeatedly- and it's also sneakily how I suspect Tarantino feels about the film himself. When Lt Raine is craving a Swastika into Hans Landa's forehead- his favourite punishment for those he decides to let live- he comments confidently:
"You know somethin', Utivich? I think this just might be my masterpiece"
I can't disagree with that.
Posted by Ada Calgie at 06:59

http://voice-of-film.blogspot.com/2011/02/review-of-film-inglourious-basterds.html

Sunday, February 27, 2011
Review of film: “INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS”
2010, 01-16:

Director:Quentin Tarantino

Writer:Quentin Tarantino

Starring:
Brad Pitt
Mélanie Laurent
Christoph Waltz
Eli Roth
Michael Fassbender
Diane Kruger
Daniel Brühl
Til Schweiger
Gedeon Burkhard
Jacky Ido
B.J. Novak
Omar Doom
August Diehl
Denis Menochet
Sylvester Groth
Martin Wuttke
Mike Myers
Julie Dreyfus
Richard Sammel
Alexander Fehling
Rod Taylor
Soenke Möhring
Samm Levine
Paul Rust
Michael Bacall
Christian Berkel
Anne-Sophie Franck
Ludger Pistor
Jana Pallaske
Buddy Joe Hooker
Carlos Fidel

MPAA Rating:

Rated R for strong graphic violence, language and brief sexuality.

Quotes:

“Facts can be so misleading.”
“Your family will cease to be harassed.”
“Nazis ain’t got no humanity!… They need to be DESTROYED.”
“They seem to be able to elude capture.”
“We let you live so you can spread the word.”
“I will be the German Van Johnson.”
“It appears I’ve created a monster.”
“All our rotten eggs in one basket.”
“There’s a special ring in Hell for people who waste.”
“I’m a German, you idiot!”
“I want to trust you.”
“It’s called ‘suspicious’…”
“It appears somebody’s missing.”
“… dashing as me.”
“I tease rough!”
“If the shoe fits, you must wear it.”
“If I were sitting where you’re sitting, would you show me mercy?”
“Finding people is my specialty.”
“She got what you deserved.”
“… And, yes, it will RUIN the evening.”
“You have to make a deal.”
“Every once in a while, FATE reaches out.”
“That’s a bingo.”
“I’ve been chewed-out before…”

MY Rating:

9 of 10 stars (based on viewing the DVD version of the 153 minutes film).

Revisionist RETRIBUTION “sets you FREE”

QUENTIN TARANTINO has a reputation for self-indulgence in his films. He was comparatively SELF-RESTRAINED in this latest production of his…

… The basic story is REVISIONIST history wherein Jews go actively hunting & killing NAZIS during World War II… The above Quotes will give you a good “overview” of this fascinating concoction…

… Tarantino’s divided the overall story into 5 separate chapters: Chapter 1 is “Once Upon a Time In Nazi Occupied France (1941)”. Here, we meet very charming but ruthlessly vicious SS Colonel Hans Landa (excellently played by CHRISTOPH WALTZ)…

… He speaks fluent French & English, & interrogates a French farmer (DENIS MENOCHET). After bragging “I can think like a Jew”, Waltz tries to get the farmer to give up Jews who had been concealed from his hunters… He tries to kill many in hiding, but one girl named Shosanna (MÉLANIE LAURENT) escapes…

… Chapter 2 = “Inglourious Basterds”. This introduces us to the military group headed by Lt. Aldo Raine (BRAD PITT) from the deep South. He describes himself as supposedly a descendant of Mountain Man Jim Bridger, &, at one point, comments, “We aren’t in the prisoner-taking business.”…

… Supposedly because he’s part American INDIAN, he wants all the guys in his specially-put-together group of Jewish soldiers to be not only KILLERS of Nazis, but to bring him SCALPS of those killed…

… His band of revengists consists of guys such as Sergeant Donny “Bear Jew” Donowitz (ELI ROTH), PFC Omar Ulmer (OMAR DOOM), PFC Smithson Utivich (B.J. NOVAK), Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz who had to be rescued from Nazi clutches (TIL SCHWEIGER), PFC Andy Kagan (PAUL RUST), PFC Michael Zimmerman (MICHAEL BACALL), & PFC Simon Sakowitz (CARLOS FIDEL)…

… Spearheaded by the attitude of Brad, his guys are purposely ruthless, wanting the Germans to know about their exploits and to FEAR them, which they do. In fact, Hitler (MARTIN WUTTKE) rails against his subordinates for not capturing & stopping the Basterds…

… Flashbacks show Brad threatening German soldiers with death by baseball bat-wielder Bear (Eli), in a story partially told by Private Butz (SÖNKE MÖHRING) to Hitler… He relates some details of an infamous “carving” done by Brad…

… Chapter 3 is called “German Nights in Paris”… Here, we meet a young female French Parisian cinema-owner named Emmanuelle Mimieux -- who is actually the runaway Shosanna living under an assumed name. ..

… She chances to meet an outgoing German soldier named Fredrick Zoller (DANIEL BRÜHL), who describes himself as “a fellow cinema lover”. She soon discovers he’s famous to the Germans, for having mowed down loads of American soldiers from the birdsnest atop a bell tower…

… Daniel fancies himself as “the German Sgt. York”, & is so popular, Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels (SYLVESTER GROTH) wants to show a MOVIE he’s produced about Daniel’s exploit called “A Nation’s Pride” (starring Daniel in a recreation of his famous feat)…

… Daniel works to convince racist Goebbels to premiere the film at Mélanie’s theater-- which gives her an idea for a plan to get VENGEANCE against the Nazi leadership (scheduled to attend the screening) for what they’ve done to her family & friends…

… Life starts getting very tense, when slimy Christoph starts to QUESTION Mélanie, seemingly having “caught-on” to the fact that she was the Jewish ESCAPEE from the farmhouse… He seems to not trust having her black assistant Marcel (JACKY IDO) around (although he’s not aware of just how close he is to Mélanie)…

… Things are very cleverly set-up, in the way Christoph works to extract information from her, without letting on exactly what he really “knows”…

… That brings us to Chapter 4, “Operation Kino”, wherein the British learn of Shosanna’s plan, & want to be part of it along with the Basterds. The Brits send one of their soldiers -- Lt. Archie Hicox (MICHAEL FASSBENDER) -- to the Paris area to try to help with things…

... Brad is upset when he learns the meeting place is to be in a difficult-to-control basement bar, where the British agent is to meet a double agent in the form of famous German actress Bridget von Hammersmark (DIANE KRUGER), who he’s never met before…

… In the bar, she chances to get involved in a celebration by a bunch of drunken German soldiers for the birth of a baby boy to Master Sergeant Wilhelm (ALEXANDER FEHLING)…

… English agent Fassbender is very uncomfortable having the unexpected German celebrants around as he tries to plan things with actress Diane...

… When he tries to get rid of Wilhelm & his friends, he’s confronted by a German Gestapo Major Hellstrom (AUGUST DIEHL), who starts to “question” his unusual-sounding German “accent”…

… After a game of “Who am I?” played with cards, the confrontation becomes unusually intense and violent when “mistakes” are made by agent Fassbender…

… Concluding Chapter 5 is called “Revenge of the Giant Face”… Wouldn’t you “know” it, ever-troublesome Christoph finds some damning evidence against one of the participants in the afore-mentioned fierce conflict in the tavern-- someone who’s closely involved in the plans against the Nazi hierarchy at the cinema…

… Some of Brad’s men are set-up to be at the cinema for use in attacking the high-ranking Nazis… But, once again, CHRISTOPH is there, & he plays “cat & mouse” games with various conspirators…

… Sacre bleu! -- There’s a sudden “TWIST” that comes up concerning Brad & Christoph and others!… Is there a “TURNCOAT” somewhere in the mix?!…

… Is the “Twist” going to AFFECT the players in the drama?… WILL the grand Plans succeed towards the Nazis?… Who will “SURVIVE” the Plans, & what kind of “shape” will they be in?…

… There’s a bunch of CLEVER work done in setting up this swirling drama, with Oscar-caliber acting done by Christoph Waltz… Overall, an effectively multi-layered film highly WORTH seeing…

[And, as a postscript: Waltz WON the OSCAR for Best Supporting Actor… ]

(o_
/\
= = = … ( <> ^ <> ) ...
Posted by The Voice Of Silence at 10:35 PM

http://film-a-day.blogspot.com/2011/04/who-do-you-think-you-are-kidding-mr.html

Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Who Do You Think You Are Kidding, Mr Hitler
Today, I figured I would take a brief look at a film, in addition to making a lot of idiots very angry, is one of the best exercises in tension of recent times. It’s a film by one of my favourite directors, and possibly his best work – if not in the top 3. It’s a film that turned me into a fan of two people who I had never heard of before seeing this film. It’s a film that was both my favourite film of 2009, and in my top 15 of all time. The film in question? Inglourious Basterds.

Now, what you have to know is, while this film is called Inglourious Basterds AND does indeed feature a group by the same name – it is not a film about them. They are merely a tool at best, and a distraction at worst, for a much bigger plan – kill Hitler[1]. No, the film is far more about SS Captain Hans Landa – “The Jew Hunter” and Shosanna, the girl he let get away and her plans of revenge. Just go into the film knowing that and you will be fine. And really, how the hell could you not be far more pleased with that than what we actually get? Just because Brad Pitt is the biggest name in the cast (and, I’ll admit a pretty darn good actor when he wants to be) does not mean he gives the best performance – hell, I’d be hard pressed to put him in the top 5 performances. In fact, I’ll give a quick rundown of the top five performances of Inglourious Basterds:

1. Christoph Waltz as Cnl. Hans Landa. Hero to all Germans, eradicator of Jews. There is no wonder that Herr Waltz both won the Oscar AND gave himself a career outside of Germany based on this performance. He is so brilliant in the role and is probably Tarantino’s best casting decision ever – and, to me, QT is a man who KNOWS how to cast. It takes a very special man to make a character who is both so morally reprehensible and flat out likeable, but Waltz plays both sides with aplomb.
2. Daniel Brühl as Pvt. Fredrick Zoller. Reluctant, but willing, propaganda hero to the Germans. Brühl manages to convey innocence mixed with the fear of knowing that he’s been thrust basically into a lie, yet is fully relishing the position and fame that this lie has afforded him. Every time I see this film, I like his performance just that little bit more.
3. Mélanie Laurent as Shosanna Dreyfuss/Emmanuelle Mimieux. The one that got away. Once again, QT is a man who KNOWS how to cast – Mme. Laurent conveys nothing but disdain, anger, fear and moral disgust at the Germans who have not only killed her family, but taken over her town and forced her to move among their ranks...well, until the sheer glee on her face when her revenge plan moves into motion.
4. Denis Menochet as Perrier LaPadite. The farmer. Sure, he may only be featured in one scene, but not only is it one of the more crucial scenes, showing the audience just what a monster Cnl. Landa actually is, but it is the scene that sets up just what sort of tone the whole film will give. And the tenseness, the fear, the sadness that Menochet shows within those first five minute convey more than almost any other opening of Tarantino’s catalogue.
5. Michael Fassbender as Lt. Archie Hicox. Superspy extraordinaire. Another character who exists primarily in a single scene, but that scene is probably one of the tensest scenes that I have ever seen (and I have seen a lot, mind you). Granted, this scene is as strong as it is due to all performances, not just his – but Herr Fassbender conveys such an egotistical swagger that you just know he’s going to bring it all down around everyone’s ears.


Now, I said that this was an exercise in tension and it truly is. I don’t care who you are, but you will be on the edge of your seat during several scenes – in particular (and not spoiling too much), the farmhouse scene, the dinner scene and the meeting in the inn. I know I was.

[1] I’ll freely admit that I can see how some people would be pissed off, since the advertising was built around a team of sadistic Nazi hunters, and instead they play a second banana role to, well, everyone else.
Written by ShaneC at 4:09 PM

http://travissaves.blogspot.com/2011/05/old-flud-reviews-part-one-inglorious.html

Friday, May 13, 2011
OLD FLUD REVIEWS PART ONE: INGLORIOUS BASTERDS, MYSTERY TEAM & IN THE LOOP

INGLORIOUS BASTERDS
First off, lemme say that Tarantino is incapable of making an un-entertaining film. He has an understanding of movies that a lot of American directors don’t have, and I appreciate that. Now, with all that nice s$#! outta the way, I have some MAJOR issues with his most recent film; “Inglorious Bastards”. Just like all of Quentin Tarantino’s other films, Inglorious Bastards is a “movie mix tape” of a specific drama. In this case, it’s the “men on a mission” war movie genre (“dirty dozen”, “the great escape”, “ice station zebra”, “inglorious basterds” (1978), etc). Tarantino (kinda) stays true to the formula of those movies. For example, a ragtag group of WW2 soldiers are sent off to do a special side mission, which usually includes killing Nazi’s. In fact, the final Mission in Inglorious Bastards is a direct homage to the final mission in; “Dirty Dozen” & “Inglorious Basterds” (1978). The first major problem with the film is that it’s called “Inglorious Bastards”, but the “bastards” are only in about 1/3 of the film. Yes, the trailer is quite deceiving. One of the key elements of the of the old WW2 action movies that the film was paying homage to, is that they always give a back story on each member in the group of solders sent off to do the mission. In Tarantino’s film, they only do this with one of the “Bastards” at random (which is one of the best parts of the movie, but still…). The next problem I have with the movie is the same problem I’ve had with Tarantino since the last half of Kill Bill 2. And that is; the unnecessary, sometimes forced, wordy dialogue. Sometimes Tarantino gets so caught up in trying to write “cool” sounding dialogue that it just goes on and on, and it eventually takes you out of the movie. For example, at the beginning of the film, the main villain asks someone if it’s ok for them to continue their conversation in English and not German. This would be fine, but it took about a page & a half of the script for him to get to the simple point of asking if they could continue their conversation in English. Sometimes the script in Inglorious Bastards is quite similar to the pointless talk between the female characters in “Death Proof”, you find yourself wanting to scream; “GOD, GET TO THE f#%@#&! POINT ALREADY!” My last issue with the film is that I couldn’t help but imagine how much better the movie would’ve been with the originally intended cast, including Tarantino regulars; Michael Madsen and Tim Roth (they were officially signed on at one point), and rumors of Samuel Jackson (who ended up narrating the film) and Sylvester Stallone making appearances in the movie as well. Now, don’t get me wrong there are some Great parts in the film, mainly by actors; Til Schwiger, Michael Fassbender and the main villain character played by Christoph Waltz. Plus Tarantino doesn’t hold back on the violence (which is something new, because in the past most of the violence in his past films are shot just off camera). Plus, I’m aware that this is a Tarantino movie, and just like the Coen Brothers, you’re still probably going to see it no matter what. But just be aware, you might find yourself day dreaming off from time to time, and the TITLE CHARACTERS aren’t in the movie as much as the trailer would have you think.

http://www.4thwalloffilm.com/2011/07/inglourious-basterds-2009.html

Tuesday, 5 July 2011
Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Once upon a time in Nazi occupied France...

A terrific film in almost every aspect: story, characters, script, direction and acting. After the doldrums of Kill Bill 1 (2003) (so disappointing that I couldn't bring myself to see Kill Bill 2, 2004) and the IQ-lowering Death Proof (2007), this is a welcome return by Quentin Tarantino to the kind of brilliance displayed in the earlier work, Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994), that inspired a generation of young film-makers. According to Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inglourious_Basterds], the first draft of the script was written in 1998, before Kill Bill and Death Proof. It seems the script went through some significant changes along the way, so hopefully this current return to form is not limited to projects from his back catalogue but is a pointer to the future.

The story is set in Nazi-occupied France during World War II, in a kind of alternate universe where the fixed historical realities of our world do not apply. The plot essentially centres around an Allied mission to assassinate a number of prominent Nazi government officials at a film premiere. The Basterds of the title are a volunteer group of Nazi-hating American soldiers, headed by First Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), working clandestinely behind enemy lines to instill fear into the hearts and minds of Nazi soldiers through acts of ruthless savagery, consciously creating a word-of-mouth reputation of mythical terror that can strike with impunity, anywhere, anytime. The other characters include French Jews, notably Shosanna (Mélanie Laurent), either in hiding or striving to maintain a false public identity; a magnificently skillful Jew-hunting "national security" SD officer, Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz); an equally perceptive Gestapo officer, Major Dieter Hellstrom (August Diehl); a British secret agent with fluent German, Lieutenant Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender); and German film star Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger).

As well as these principal characters, there are a good number of ordinary German soldiers and civilians. With the premise of the Basterds' mission being that it is fine to kill Nazis, interestingly, these "ordinary" Germans are written and played not as cartoonish caricatures, but as fully realised, rounded, sometimes likeable, even in some cases admirable human beings. I found myself wondering what part if any these people would have played in the atrocities committed by their government. Did they all deserve a grisly fate, or were some just soldiers at war, patriotic as any people at war might be about their country? The mission of the Basterds, to kill all Nazis, seemed harsh to my modern eyes, if the term "Nazi" includes normal German people caught up in a war not of their own making.

The film is a showcase for and a discussion of Hitchcock's famous formula for suspense (Hitchcock/Truffaut, 1985, by François Truffaut, Simon and Schuster, see also Themes and plot devices in the films of Alfred Hitchcock) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Themes_and_plot_devices_in_the_films_of_Alfred_Hitchcock], in which, as I understand it, explaining how to create suspense, Hitchcock describes a scenario where two people are talking in a room with a bomb under the table. In order to create suspense, Hitchcock explained, the audience needs to know about the bomb. If the audience doesn't know about the bomb, and the bomb goes off, it will be a surprise but nothing more. It is with the knowledge of the existence of bomb, that in the minds of the audience, over time, suspense can be built. In fact, the longer the bomb does not go off, the greater the suspense. In Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino puts metaphorical bombs under a lot of tables, and tells the audience about many of them. As the audience spend time with the participants, the metaphorical bomb under the table raises the level of the stakes (the perceived value of the outcome) for each participant, and correspondingly, ratchets up feelings of suspense.

Amusingly, in one key scene, Tarantino reverses the formula, so that for most of the scene, while the participants know, or suspect, that there's a non-literal bomb under the table, the audience is only later told of its existence, though, from the demeanour of the characters, the audience will rightly suspect that something is amiss but not quite know what. This is more like the Hemingway edict, if memory serves, consciously trialled in the short story "A Clean Well-lighted Place" (1926), where a tragic event is never explicitly stated, that you don't need to explicitly include the main event driving the plot, e.g. the climactic suicide, as its occurrence will be active in more or less subtle ways in other parts of the story, like the invisible parts of the iceberg that hit the Titanic. (For interesting discussion of alternatives to Hitchcock's classic formula for suspense, see "Building a Better Bomb: The Alternatives to Suspense" Peet Gelderblom, 19 October 2008, [http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/?p=2030])

The other edict Tarantino seems to follow (one for which I can't find a reference online, and would welcome one) is that, films being essentially a sequence of scenes, if a filmmaker aims to make a great film, it must include half a dozen or so really great scenes, which Basterds does. Where Tarantino excels, in Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Inglourious Basterds, is in setting up (physically) fairly static scenarios marked by really kick-ass dialogue. The dialogue, in itself, is often concerned with apparently mundane topics, such as pop culture, food and drink, but nevertheless, because of clear conflict of interests and high stakes (such as a figurative bomb under a table which the audience is well aware of), Tarantino's scenarios are full of suspense. One scene in particular in Inglourious Basterds, full of pleasantries about a family's health and the quality of drink on offer, parallels the technique used by Hemingway in the superb short story "The Killers" (1927), where the menace of two gangsters waiting in a restaurant to murder another character is mainly conveyed through the most banal exchanges, largely relating to the availability - or rather lack of availability - of food, but covering a potential for great violence.

The script includes some nice interplay between art and life, where one character, interacting with another character in person and also able to see that character in a fictive role on screen, is undone when the response to the fictive role supersedes that of the real person, fatally attributing the fictive character's motivation to the real person. While watching this film-within-a-film, which seems to be little more than a series of back-to-back killings, appreciated hugely, for the wrong reasons, by the kind of people most of us would not wish to be associated with, I thought it a neat commentary (inadvertent or not) on the poverty of interest of pure action films such as Kill Bill 1, to my mind is more like a test run of action sequences than a fully-fledged storied film. My brother, Rob, however, suggested that this partially glimpsed film sounded more like a Nazi version of the biopic, Sergeant York (1941) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergeant_York], for which Gary Cooper won a Best Actor Oscar in the title role, which follows a similar plot-line, or alternatively, To Hell and Back (1955) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Hell_and_Back_(film)], starring Audie Murphie as himself, another film about a WWII expert marksman who single-handedly takes on a large number of enemy soldiers.

As for the performances, as a director, Tarantino must be doing something very right, as he has assembled a brilliant cast and got fantastic performances by almost everyone. Of particular note are:

Christoph Waltz, superb as the character of the charming "national security" officer and rightly received various prestigious awards, including "Best Supporting Actor" Oscar, BAFTA and Golden Globe, as well as (confusingly), Best Leading Actor at Cannes
August Diehl as the Gestapo officer in the beer cellar
Michael Fassbinder as a British secret agent
Diane Kruger as a German film star
Mélanie Laurent as a French Jew
Daniel Brühl as a German hero

The only slight question mark in my mind hangs over Brad Pitt's portrayal of First Lieutenant Raine, leader of the Basterds. It's a difficult role, with little shading to it, and he plays it with a good deal of swagger, like an old-fashioned swashbuckling Douglas Fairbanks or (American) Errol Flynn, mixed with the ruthlessness of a military Clark Gable or a mercenary Lee Marvin. My reservation is that his portrayal, or at least the camera's representation of his portrayal, does not take us into his thought processes, resulting in a person without depth of feeling beyond the actions required, so it's tricky to judge whether or not he is a trustworthy guide to the rights and wrongs of dealing with Nazis. Is he a good man who has embraced a distasteful but essential duty, or a cheerfully heartless executioner? Trying to think of another actor for the role, Sam Shepherd as Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff (1983), comes to mind as having the requisite phlegmatic unflappability and toughness and machismo. There's a quiet intelligence behind the eyes there that Pitt doesn't seem to attempt.

Director: Quention Tarantino
Writer: Quention Tarantino
Starring: Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Michael Fassbender, Mélanie Laurent, Diane Kruger, Daniel Brühl, Til Schweiger, Eli Roth

Rating: Exceptional 5 stars
When seen: 24 Jun 2011
Where seen: Home
More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Posted by Geoff Taylor at 20:09

http://1001plus.blogspot.com/2011/07/usa-usa-usa.html

Monday, July 4, 2011
USA! USA! USA!
Film: Inglourious Basterds
Format: DVD from personal collection on kick-ass portable DVD player.

Ask most Americans how they spend the Fourth of July, and the majority will probably include barbecue, beer, and fireworks. I love barbecue and fireworks; I’m not that much of a drinker. So instead of beer, I’m substituting watching a film that glorifies the horrible slaughter of enemies of the American people and the world: Nazis. A few days ago, watching Das Boot, I was seeing German sailors not as enemies, but simply as men. That changes in a film like Inglourious Basterds in which Germans are essentially their 1940s propaganda counterparts, suitable mainly for extermination.

In the modern age of film, admitting that you aren’t a Tarantino fan is sort of like saying you don’t like coffee. Well, I don’t like either. Coffee tastes like ass, and Tarantino’s films always feel to self-referential to me. He likes his dialogue a lot and likes to show off his knowledge of obscure things. There seems to be a part of Tarantino that can’t resist demonstrating the sort of obscure knowledge he carries around in his cranium so that his fanbase can titter about just how awesome Tarantino really is.

So it was mildly surprising to me that Inglourious Basterds doesn’t contain much in this respect. It’s essentially a dark, violent fairy tale, even starting with the words “Once upon a time” before it gets into the meat of the story. Here we have a few stories that all converge on the same point, leading to a fiery, explosive conclusion.

For one story, we have SS Colonel Landa (Christoph Waltz), who has recently been given the task of rounding up all of the Jews still in France and sending them off to concentration camps. We see him in action at the start, brutally slaughtering a French Jewish family hiding out on a dairy farm. One member of the family, a daughter named Shoshanna (Melanie Laurent) escapes, and naturally this will become important later.

A second story concerns a group of American Jews who have been airdropped into France. Nicknamed “The Basterds” by the Germans, this group scours the countryside slaughtering every German soldier they can find. Their leader, Aldo Raines (Brad Pitt), has demanded a bounty of 100 Nazi scalps from each man under his command, and thus his soldiers do scalp their kills. The idea is to put incredible fear into the German troops and wear on their morale, and kill as many of them as possible. Included in the group are a couple of German-born Jews who defected to America and signed up to kill their former countrymen.

A third story concerns the premiere of a new propaganda film. This film concerns the exploits of a German sniper who single-handedly fended off an enemy column by killing several hundred enemies over the course of a couple of days. The private in question, Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Bruhl) becomes entranced with the owner of a small cinema in Paris, and he demands that the premiere be held there. Of course, as it turns out, the owner of the cinema is none other than Shoshanna from the start of the film.

With the premiere of this film involving many members of the German High Command, the British decide to take a whack and getting rid of many “rotten eggs in one basket,” sending in a British expert on German film to infiltrate the showing and blow everything to hell. This man, Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender) is to meet up with the Basterds and then a German double agent—a famous German actress named Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger).

Death, blood, explosions, and all manner of insanity ensue.

I was prepared to dislike this film, but found that I couldn’t. I already don’t love Tarantino in general, and there’s an additional reason for this not mentioned above. When he first hit, I loved his work and thought he might be a genius. And after Pulp Fiction…he didn’t do anything. It was as if he did nothing but believe his own press and rest on his laurels, and I really started to not give a crap about him. Compound that with the fact that one of the actors in this film is Hostel director Eli Roth, and you get a collection of things that really don’t interest me at all.

And yet this film has a peculiar manic energy to it. It’s bloody like all Tarantino movies, violent and disturbing in places, and with a strange humor in other spots. Landa is such a complete prick that it’s impossible not to hate him, and yet played so well that it’s impossible not to enjoy having him on the screen. The film slows down in parts—particularly the sections regarding the film premiere—and is far better and more interesting when we are dealing with Brad Pitt and his crew.

So it turns out I liked this film, save for one enormous ego-stroking dick move pulled by Tarantino at the very end. I’ll put this under a spoiler tag.

*** NO PEEKING ***

Raines and his men mark the few survivors of their attacks by carving swastikas in their foreheads. Confronted with a situation in which they have to allow Landa to live, Raines carves his forehead up and says something to the effect of, “I think this is my masterpiece.” The very next frame is “Directed by Quentin Tarantino,” essentially declaring his own work a masterpiece. It may well be, but the man has gone beyond simply stroking his ego to publicly masturbating it.

*** ALL DONE ***

It goes to show that the movie really is the thing, and even someone who appears to be out of surprises can still surprise us.

Why to watch Inglourious Basterds: Quality, splattery death.
Why not to watch: Tarantino’s biggest dick move.
Posted by Movie Guy Steve at 11:52 PM

http://jasonhesch.blogspot.com/2011/07/inglourious-basterds-2009.html

Sunday, July 17, 2011
Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Tarantino's latest film Inglourious Basterds was the movie we had from Netflix, so we decided to put it in. Basterds stars Brad Pitt as Lt. Aldo Raine, the leader of an anti-Nazi group charged with hunting and killing every Nazi they find. Pitt is joined by a huge cast of people I was unfamiliar with such as Melanie Laurent, Christopher Waltz, Eli Roth, Michael Fassbender and Daniel Bruhl. A few of the others I did recognize were Diane Kruger, Til Schweiger and B.J. Novak. We even see a cameo performance by Mike Meyers.

Tarantino's filming and directing style is immediately recognizable in the opening credits. The music gives you a first clue, and when paired with the credit style you know instantly it has to be a Tarantino film. That is presuming you didn't know prior to watching the film obviously. Tarantino keeps his unique style going through the entire film, with similarities to many of his previous films in this one as well.


He shows his unique filming abilities in features such as muted battle scenes throughout and popping vivid color scenes such as near the end when Melanie is on her balcony in her red dress. He brings in his usual bloody and gory motif with sick and twisted characters. Tarantino is even able to bring in his personal women's foot fetish! His use of color, camera angles and other filming techniques make this film very unique. Filming and directing are both genius. I would dare to say Basterds is the best visual film he has done to date.

One of the most confusing aspects of this film we could not figure out immediately was if it was based on real events or entirely fictional. Having an interest in Hitler myself, I ultimately figured it out a while in to the film, but I think it is a touchy subject to be vague with when you are dealing in real events.

Tarantino left out his confusing timeline in this film, but he did have many items that were left unanswered, or just plain not explained. This was another frustrating feature of the film, but at the same time it did create some valuable and interesting additions. While I did think there were too many of such instances in this film, I do not think they should have all been removed as a lot of them are needed to make the film what it is.

Can I voice one more frustration? Of course I can, it's my blog..that was rhetorical. My biggest frustration of this film is when we come upon a scene that is narrated, and the narrator is none other than...can you guess it?...Samuel L. Jackson! I know, I know. I wanted to turn off the movie too, but you need to power through as it is not that long of a narration and the film is worth seeing even with that horrendous addition. At least Samuel didn't add his trademark "mothah fuckah! (mother fucker) into the film.


Acting is exactly what I imagine Tarantino wanted it to be. It was a bit comical, a bit off kilter, a bit what the hell are they doing and a lot of perfect for this film. Pitt's character is the epitome of this example, and you will know what I am talking about after viewing the film. I was very impressed with Melanie Laurent's acting. I did not think there were any subpar performances delivered, but every time I see B.J. all I can think of is The Office series. Mike Meyers' cameo performance was similar to B.J.'s where I saw some of his goofy previous performances, but overall Mike delivered very solidly as did B.J. in serious roles.

My overall impression of this film is that if it were based upon real events it may go down as one of the best Hitler films of all time. I fear that others will feel the way I do; it was too touchy of a subject to base from and make a work of fiction. I felt it detracted from the overall feel of the film. If you were to temporarily forget the entire WWII era and Hitler, this movie would be near perfect on all levels.

Despite the above, Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds (which by the way both words are misspelled on purpose) is one of the best films of 2009. I am ultimately giving Basterds a 4 star rating because of some of my strong feelings, and the large amount of unanswered questions left. Ciao for now and see you for the next review!
Posted by Jason Hesch at 11:02 AM