Whenever I review a Quentin Tarantino I feel like I have to establish where I am on the Tarantino curve. So before we begin, I love Pulp Fiction (who doesn’t?), love Kill Bill, hate Kill Bill 2, don’t like Jackie Brown, loathe the dialogue in Grindhouse and think Reservoir Dogs is just ok – I’ll watch it anytime it’s on TV but it’s just an OK film for me. In this body of work comes Tarantino’s latest Inglourious Basterds. I’m of two minds this, on the one hand the film is pure Tarantino “cliché,” there’s the dialogue – I’ve never understood why everyone thinks it’s always the best – personally I find his judicious use of the N word obnoxious and offensive, I was waiting to see how he works it in here and he does. Of course you get the black title slate that separates each act, the fantastic use of music, the directing style it all screams Tarantino. But there’s a been there done that feeling to watching Basterds – if you judge it purely based on Tarantino’s body of work. On the other hand, in this year of bland, boring, visionless studio films by hacks like McG and Brett Ratner, Ingourious Basterds is a fun, inventive breath of fresh air that I just wanted to keep breathing in and hold as if my life depended on it. There are many things you can say about Basterds but bland isn’t one of them.
The trailers and synopsis are completely misleading, I walked in expecting a full blown action/war film, what I got instead was a talk fest and while I said I generally don’t like Tarantino dialogue here I think it works beautifully. It’s because Tarantino doesn’t use big name actors in this film (other than Brad Pitt) so when the characters speak the way they do it doesn’t come across as A-list actors desperately trying to be hip. It’s why I hated Jackie Brown I never bought Sam Jackson or Robert D’Niro in that movie. It opens with just a 20 minute scene of Nazi Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) and a local French Farmer (Denis Menochet) sitting around a table talking. He suspects the farmer of hiding Jews. The conversation is so natural and relaxed that I didn’t feel like I wanted it to “speed” up to the inevitable conclusion of the scene. It was a weird, but appropriate way to open this movie. Tarantino’s soundtrack made you think of this scene as being a showdown at the O.K. coral kind of moment, but it was just two men talking and drinking milk. This is a very talky movie but the soundtrack makes these moments work because it tricks you into believing that something is about to happen.
The Basterds aren’t in the movie nearly as much as you would think they would be, but their presence is constantly felt throughout. It gave them a certain amount of weight that wouldn’t have been there if they were in almost every scene. Whenever Basterds leader Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) and his merry band of men show up, you knew no good would come of it for the Nazis. We see the aftermath of the brutality they inflict on the Nazis, and occasionally we’ll get some shots, like a scene where one of the Basterds bash a guy’s head in with a baseball bat. Then there are several scalping scenes, but the movie never seems to really focus on the brutality. It felt strangely sanitized. The movie was more about how the French managed to live under Nazi rule as shown in the beginning with the French farmer and then later with a plot involving a French movie theater owner Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent), secretly an escaped Jew who has to smile when she’s approached by a seemingly nice Nazi private Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Brühl) who turns out to be a national hero. Tarantino doesn’t spends a lot more time establishing the Nazi characters than he does the Basterds. Several of them, just when you go, “hey, this guy isn’t so bad – for a Nazi,” they end up showing their true colors right before being dispatched.
Pitt, Mélanie Laurent, Christoph Waltz, and Daniel Brühl (who reminded me of Ewan McGregor) all gave great performances and wouldn’t be surprised to see them nominated for supporting roles come Oscar time. Basterds’ ending is both over the top retarded and brilliantly – I don’t know what to call it, “irreverent,” “glorious,” maybe dumb but sublimely goofy, but all strangely satisfying. Brad Pitt was right when he called this movie “Jewish Porn.” Is this the best film of the year? In a very weak year, I don’t know, but it’s one of the few films this year that I think deserves a solid A. Don’t be surprised if this is one of the 10 Best pictures, I think it’ll play really well in the privacy of Oscar voter homes.
Final Grade A
EM review by
Michelle Alexandria
Originally posted 8.21.09
As a film fan with a brain, how can you not like Jackie Brown? Do you watch anything besides High School Musical BS?
Disregard the previous comment. Jackie Brown is a film worth defending, but with that kind of rhetoric. I do, however, take offense with your review. You have to be smarter about things. This is a badly written review about a movie that you obviously liked. Why? If I had read this review before I'd seen the film, I might have gone to see something else. This was a good film, but yet, you've come across as a repeater. I've learned nothing about you as a film critic, and therefore nothing about this film from you. Please stop regurgitating the same information you've heard, edit out what we already know and get over judging the filmmaker on what he's already done. Every film is a single entity.
Jackie Brown is a dumb, boring movie with a bunch of aging A-List actors "posing" as hipster wannabe gangsters. And the dialogue is nothing but N word and profanity every other sentence. I can't stand that movie. The only good thing in that movie is Pam Grier who is always awesome.
Still the Basterds is a movie of revenge, a movie produced by the Weinstein brother, and Tarrantino attempt to make a pulp fiction out of the criminal behavior of a force of American Jewish soldiers.
Possibly the war could have been prevented, even Churchill called it: "The Unnecessary War'. Jewish Hollywood, and their propagandists advocated war against Nazi Germany, when the war did come the consequences was slaughter on the grandist scale. In 6 years of war 50 million ciivilian Christian and Jews were murdered, and the combatants suffered 25 million killed. Germany suffered the most, more people were suffocated, and died from the fire bombing of Hamburg and Dresden, then the combined atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. Ant the Jewish have nerve to cry anti-Semitism, well let me tell yiu the world is not listening anymore.
Yes the Nazi's persecuted the Jews, and starting with crystal night the Jews were leaving Germany by the thousands. Many Jews at the time felt they had friends and would be safe if they remained in Germany. In America the great aviator Charles Lindberg sensed the dangers of another war, and did all in his power to stop the path to war, denouncing the Jewish influence in Hollywood, and the strenght of the Jewish financiers who would gladly support the war. Lindberg himself was denounced by the Communist influenced FDR Administration, and lost his commission as a Colonel in the Army Reserves. Lindberg worked as an advisor in a Ford bomber factory, he was sent to the Pacific Theatre to councel Marine fighter squadrons on the new fighter planes
Lindberg came up with a method of decreasing compression, and the reving of the engine to save gas, and add 200 miles to their sorties. This enabled the new P-38's to increase their range, and shoot down and kill Admiral Yamamoto over Bouganville. Lindberg flew 50 missions against the Japanese and shot down two zero's. In MAY 1940 Hitler had a full table, and wanted to make peace with England, and considered the English kin, and admired them.. After the fall of France, Hitler wanted to follow through on his plans-he allowed 400,000 British troops to escape from Dunkirk, warned Mussolini not to attack Greece. The German General staff knew Mussolini was all bluff
Field Marshal Rommel would not even meet the the Italian dictator in the desert. Whe the General was told Mussolli said the Italians did not need trucks to move in the desert, they can march. And when he was sending 5 ton armored vehicles with two machine guns mounted, against the British Heavy Malilta tanks, Rommel was furious. They knew they could not win in Africa, the supply situation was critical Italian transports were being sent to the bottom by British submarines, and aircraft flying out of Malta, even Hitler was amazed that the Italians could not take Malta.
Now the Gemans knew, Mussolini was hanging in to collect on the spoils if Germany won the war. But it was impossible, The British Navy ruled the seas, The German Navy would not risk steaming out of their Baltic ports. The Italian Navy who had the best heavy cruisers were being blasted out of the water, because they couldn't see, and the British had radar. and the Italian Navy was restricted to sailing within distance of their airfields, meaning they had to hug the Italian coast. By May 1940, the German knew the war could not be won, and Hitler wanted peace, but the terms were unconditional surrender, and that meant the Nazi's would fight to the bitter end.. Shortly after, Hitler received the news the Jews were behind the severe terms, and Hitler promise, this time the Jews would suffer the most in this war, and he was right more Jews died than Germans, this was when the Jews were being put on freight trains and shipped to the death camps. All this could have been prevented, if hatred, and racial prejudice had over come the desire for peace
correction—but hatred, and racial prejudice had over come the desire for peace