Inglourious Basterds is a brilliant movie. It’s probably Quentin Tarantino’s best film yet (something he himself seems to acknowledge
with the final line of the film, spoken directly into the camera by Brad Pitt), fusing the wacky, over-the-top style of Kill Bill with the more mature storytelling of Jackie Brown.Like a lot of Tarantino movies, the pacing of Inglourious Basterds is very weird (huge chunks of dialogue, quick bursts of violence), even more so than usual with his movies, but it still all works somehow. It's filled with things that left a lot of people cold in his previous film, Death Proof – very long stretches where nothing more happens than characters converse in an almost direct challenge to the viewer’s patience – but unlike that film, where I (and just about everyone else) felt bored more than once and really just wanted everyone to shut the hell up and just DO something already, in Inglourious Basterds I was in no real rush to get to the inevitable violence that breaks the tension in Tarantino films; the scene in the basement bar, for example, I could have happily watched go on for another 10 or 15 minutes (and it already runs close to a half-hour, by Tarantino’s own estimation). This is a movie filled with things that shouldn’t work, but they do, and they work spectacularly.
Inglourious Basterds is Tarantino’s most audacious movie, and not just because he changes the history of WWII. The fact that he made a comedic action movie about World War II, one that doesn't attempt to gloss over the Nazis but in fact rather is very much about the Nazis (the movie is chock full of Nazi imagery, more than any recent WWII movie I can recall), and takes such gleeful pleasure in their slaughter...it’s amazing that he pulled off a film that’s so filled with grisly violence, but is also hysterical.
As much as it’s a war movie, Inglourious Basterds drips with cinema, somehow being both an insane triumph of the medium, and also being about it, but without getting too precious about it. The fact that Tarantino’s movie about movies is actually a WWII picture (as opposed to a more traditional Hollywood spoof where it’s a movie about how movies are made) just makes it weirder, but it also makes a certain sense, as WWII was the last black-and-white, good-vs.-evil war, which therefore makes it the last great war you can make a fun action-adventure movie about. There have been brilliant movies about all
sorts of depressing, more recent wars, from Platoon to 2009’s phenomenal Iraq War thriller The Hurt Locker, but I don't think anyone would call any of those films “fun.”The cast also deserves a huge amount of credit. Brad Pitt, despite being the focus of the marketing, has a relatively small role, though he made me laugh just about every time he opened his mouth. (I happen to think Pitt, despite his movie-idol looks, is an incredibly underrated comic actor.) Christoph Waltz is getting the bulk of the attention (and it’s all deserved; this is the best villain performance I’ve seen since Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight, which doesn’t sound like much, as that film came out in 2008, but that was one of the best villains I’d seen in a movie in many years), and it looks like he’s still a shoo-in for an Oscar. His Col. Hans Landa is alternately charming, terrifying and ridiculous (that pipe!), and it’s a truly special performance. But it’s Mélanie Laurent as Shoshanna, the revenge-seeking cinema proprietor, who really blows me away every time I watch the movie (which has been a few times now). She gets the best character arc in the movie, and Tarantino once again displays his flair for creating truly strong female protagonists. Laurent’s Shoshanna goes right up there in the pantheon with Pam Grier’s Jackie Brown and Uma Thruman’s Bride. Just fantastic stuff.
I mentioned not too long ago when I ran down my list of favorite movies that Kill Bill is my favorite Tarantino movie, and it still is. But Inglourious Basterds is his best so far. It’s so good that I spent a chunk of this review fighting against my dark urges to use awful movie-review clichés like calling it “a towering achievement,” but that’s exactly what this movie is. Inglourious Basterds is a great movie, and like just about all of his previous films, it’s one that only Quentin Tarantino could have made.
GRADE: A
THE EXTRAS
of Death Proof, was initially issued as a bare-bones disc, with the proper special editions coming later...and I’m still waiting for the long-promised Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair, but I'm starting to think the Maple Leafs will win a Stanley Cup before that happens. But I’m digressing). The two-disc special edition DVD comes with some nice extras, though no commentary; Tarantino still seems to record commentary tracks only for other people’s movies. There are some extended and deleted scenes on disc 1, as well as the full version of the Nazi propaganda film featured in the latter part of the movie, A Nation’s Pride. Disc 2 has a nice extended junket discussion between Tarantino, Pitt and New York Times film critic Elvis Mitchell, which manages to cover plenty of ground in about 20 minutes or so. There’s a making-of bit for A Nation’s Pride that, unfortunately, is actually just a lame comedy bit purporting to be a featurette about the actual fake movie, featuring interviews with “Joseph Goebbels” and a particularly irritating Eli Roth (who plays Donny “The Bear Jew” Donowitz in the film) pretending to be the director of the film within the film, complete with a painfully hammy accent. It’s only a few minutes long, but it falls flat and feels considerably a lot longer than it actually is. Also included is a montage of the actors greeting Tarantino’s longtime editor, Sally Menke, in various outtakes, (it’s weird, but also oddly charming) and some more goofy behind-the-scenes footage. It’s not as comprehensive as I wanted it to be – I’m a sucker for lengthy making-of documentaries and filmmaker commentaries for movies as fantastic as Inglourious Basterds – but the movie itself is the main attraction here. This is a very solid DVD for what's easily one of the best movies of 2009, and it deserves inclusion in the collections of anyone who considers themselves a movie buff.
Labels: DVD review, Quentin Tarantino
¶ 10:30 AM 0 Comments
When I was growing up reading comics, Marvel had a book that I bought sporadically (and, in retrospect, I wish I’d picked it up more) called What If...?, and the concept was to tell single-issue, “alternate universe” 
stories that diverted from famous (as well as obscure) stories, like “What if Spider-Man joined the Fantastic Four?”, a twist on Spidey’s unsuccessful bid to join the FF in Amazing Spider-Man #1. Most of the fun of the What If...? books was due to the fact that they weren’t chained to Marvel continuity, so crazy things could happen, usually involving the deaths of major characters (one issue I remember reading, “What if the Punisher killed Daredevil?”, included not just Daredevil’s death, but also the demise of Aunt May, Spider-Man and eventually the Punisher himself), and that unpredictability was the main thing that made the books fun in a way that no other comics were. Superhero stories already take place in a realm of fantasy, but What If...? took that fantasy to another level.
Which brings me, in typically meandering (and comic book-related!) fashion, to Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino’s World War II What If...? story. It’s already topped the box office and garnered plenty of critical acclaim, but as a movie buff and Tarantino fan (also, as a guy with a movie blog) I have to add my voice to the chorus singing this movie’s praises. Inglourious Basterds is an absolute blast. It’s the film where Tarantino combines the promise hinted at in Jackie Brown – still considered by some to be his best film, at least pre-Basterds – with the flair for balls-out action he displayed in his genre diversions Kill Bill and Death Proof, though to be honest, I was actually struck with how little violence is actually in Inglourious Basterds. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still got moments that will have some people cringing – Tarantino’s never shied away from violence, and more than one Nazi scalping is shown in grisly detail – but much of the action in Inglourious Basterds is verbal. That’s not a complaint either, as the dialogue is easily among some of Tarantino’s finest.
Speaking of finest, I also have to jump on the “Just give Christoph Waltz the Oscar now” bandwagon. He’s utterly amazing as the film’s villain, Col. Landa, a.k.a. the Jew Hunter. Tarantino’s always had a knack for finding excellent, little-known actors, and Waltz may be his best discovery yet. His performance as the surprisingly pleasant Nazi officer (who can turn to terrifying violence on a dime) is easily one of the best of the year, and right now Waltz appears to be a Heath Ledger-like slam dunk.
Tarantino’s known for filling his films with references to other movies, with the most obvious example being Kill Bill, which is more of a 4-hour homage to genres Tarantino loves than a proper movie on its own merits (but that’s also why I personally love it more than his other movies), but Inglourious Basterds is his gushiest love letter to the cinema yet. It’s dripping with movie references (the climax is in a movie theater, one of the characters is a former film critic, another a German movie star...there’s easily a dozen similar references in there, if not more). While they never threaten to overwhelm the actual plot, Inglourious Basterds is as much about the movies as it is World War II or Nazis or anything else. And while I’m reluctant to spoil too many details about the story, Inglourious Basterds is also Tarantino at his most audacious: what other filmmaker would have the stones to make a movie that changes the ending of World War II?
A few months ago, I was resigned to seeing Inglourious Basterds purely as part of my personal duty as a movie fan, but I wasn’t really excited about it at all (World War II movies have never been my thing). Imagine my surprise that it turned out to be a potential masterpiece by one of the best filmmakers working today, and proof that just because a movie’s set in the darkest period of the 20th century that doesn’t mean it can’t be one of the most fun movies of the year.
Labels: Movie review, Quentin Tarantino
¶ 10:31 AM 0 Comments
