Inglourious Basterds

[pointedview]

I was thoroughly entertained by Inglourious Basterds. I think Tarantino has matured a bit, and the film is nicely balanced between his signature dialogue and cartoonish blood spatters. Brad Pitt certainly couldn't have asked for a more memorable monologue, and, as many reviews have said, Christoph Waltz is outstanding as Colonel Hans Landa

Comments

(Spoilers)

[mumpish]

We saw it this weekend, too. I thought it was a little slow and needed tighter editing. I didn't feel like we really got to know any of the Basterds well enough to really care when they died. I was also assuming throughout the film that it would eventually integrate itself into recorded history; I was completely unprepared for it as an alternate history, and again, it seemed to take away a bit of the impact.

Completely agreed about Christoph Waltz; he was a fascinating villain. Oh, and Mélanie Laurent has a wonderfully expressive face; she can say a lot with just eyebrows. She reminded me of Katie Sackoff, and she and her lover were the only characters I really ever connected with emotionally.

Re: (Spoilers)

[pointedview]

I knew going into it that it was going to radically diverge from history, but I can imagine being surprised if you had kept yourself spoiler-free (Tarantino was interviewed on Fresh Air the week of the movie's release, and I happened to catch it on my drive home).

To me, Inglourious Basterds was so much larger than life that it wasn't the sort of movie where I really needed to know each of the characters well: Aldo Raine, Shosanna Dreyfus, Hans Landa, Frederick Zoller, Archie Hicox ... while we may not have learned a great deal about their specific backgrounds in many cases, I felt that the conversations they had said much about their characters.

I agree that Laurent was very expressive. I also liked Til Schweiger as Hugo Stiglitz.