the greatest movie ever that i saw last weekend
tarantino's a nerd.
a great big film nerd.
even his most accessible film (the criminally underrated 'jackie brown') is chock full of blaxploitation references.
inglourious basterds might be the nerdiest film he's made to date.
fair warning: SPOILERS ABOUND!
ok, that should be enough space.
not that he really cares, but quentin tarantino will probably never make a huge blockbuster movie. for better or worse, he dives so deeply and passionately into style and craft and homages that the casual movie-goer can probably get turned off pretty easily. reservoir dogs was all about the mexican stand-off. death proof was the 60's/70's car movie. kill bill was the classic kung fu flick. jackie brown was blaxploitation. which brings us to basterds.
the easy reference to pick is that it's a war movie. a WWII movie, specifically. but really, basterds is a movie about movies. countless directors, actors, and actresses are mentioned in the movie. entire scenes and monologues are crafted around italian and german film makers that may or may not be real people. if you know who they are, then there's a much higher level of appreciation of this film for you. again, assuming they weren't a bunch of names made up for this movie. and considering the basterds killed hitler real good in this movie, historical accuracy certainly wasn't the primary objective.
so, what was the objective? style? craft? showing the influential power of the 1940's film industry?
how about all of that. the biggest knock against tarantino has always been (and will more than likely will always be) that he doesn't give his characters much emotional depth. they're all about cool attitudes, cool dialogue, and killing people in cool ways. i challenge anyone to watch jackie brown or even kill bill vol. 2 and tell me that they see no emotional depth those characters.
but, i digress...
there's plenty of style and cool to go around. Lt. aldo raine (brad pitt) is all cool and collected, despite his country bumpkin accent and proclivity for carving swastikas in foreheads and his complete butchery of the italian language. the coolest of them all was probably colonel hans landa. that's right. a dirty nazi. he's reprehensible and vile, to be sure. but when he's on screen, you can't take your eyes off of him. he's another in a line of arresting tarantino villains. the way he finds (and of course kills) the hiding jewish family in the opening scene is clever and despicable. you have to hate him, but you love when he's up there on screen.
even with the cool characters and snappy dialogue and war-fantasy gunplay, what really makes the movie (for me, anyway) is the tension. since this movie makes no efforts to be historically accurate, you never know what's gonna happen until it happens.
"will the basterds make it out of this one?"
"he's too cool to get killed, right?"
"will they off the soldier that just had a baby?"
"is she really a double agent?"
the scenes unfold at a painstakingly deliberate pace (maybe a little too slowly in some areas... the movie clocks in at over 2 and half hours). people are literally delivering awesome monologues and engaging in conversation all while pointing pistols at each other. you never know if or when someone's gonna pull the trigger. "OH SHIT!" moments abound.
the biggest "OH SHIT" moment being when a british spy and and a german officer shoot each in the testicles, setting off firefight in a small bar that naturally ends with pretty much everyone dead.
classic tarantino.
speaking of classic tarantino, a few of his trademarks that pop up:
1. the gruesome death - the infamous baseball bat beating; right up there with the ear slicing from 'reservoir dogs.'
2. the foot - in all of tarantino's movies (except 'reservoir dogs'), there is a close up of a woman's bare foot or feet. this time, it's the german actress/spy who has to give her foot to hans landa right before he kills her. i'm convinced that the only reason a foot scene never appears in 'reservoir dogs' is because of the all-male cast
3. untold backstory - what's with the scar on brad pitt's neck? they never even mention it in the movie, it's just there. the germans talk about a killer called 'the hangman' in one scene. my guess is that pitt's character had a nasty encounter with this hangman fellow. but that's just a wild guess.
i have to admit, the title is potentially a bit misleading. for much of the movie, the basterds are nowhere to be seen. and they utter maybe 15% of the movies dialogue. that's not a complaint. but if you go in expecting to see two hours of brad pitt and a bunch of guys with guns... well, that ain't happening. speaking of dialogue, half of the movie is in french or german, or italian, so bring your reading glasses.
so... yeah. clearly i could go on for days about this. i'd been looking forward to this movie since i saw the first teaser trailer months ago. the movie did not disappoint.
500 days of summer
inglourious basterds
the hangover
up
star trek
public enemies
district 9
the taking of pelham 123
night at the museum 2
wolverine
transformers 2