Inglourious Basterds (2010)

Fact: Some movies embody the art of cinema. Fact: Quentin Tarantino makes movie art, every scene comprising a collection. Fact: A Tarantino World War II movie was always bound to like no other work ever made before. Fact: If we had the power to rewrite history, Quentin Tarantino should be the man handed the reigns of rewriting the end of the war...

Nazi occupied France is the setting of Quentin Tarantino's world war/spaghetti western/foreign language/fantasy, Inglourious Basterds, where two plans to assassinate Nazi leaders at a movie premier bloodily collide.

It sometimes is hard to believe that this is only Quentin Tarantino's seventh full length feature (and that's counting Kill Bill as two movies, and includes his GrindHouse contribution Death Proof... it does not include his unofficial work before Reservoir Dogs, his many production credits, his Co-Directionals like Sin City &  Four Rooms, or his writing contributions like True Romance and Natural Born Killers). Inglourious Basterds is by no means his greatest movie (and there are many different opinions in this regard), but it is still a brilliant piece of Tarantino work and a worthy addition to the cannon.

From the moment you are introduced to Christoph Waltz as the sick Nazi Colonel Hans Landa in his Oscar Winning Performance, you are well aware that you are in store for a journey. That first scene is so riveting, so masterfully written and executed as it switches from subtitled dialogue to English, the composition of the shots used so striking, that after that first scene you are fully invested - even if you are not a fan of foreign language films (which this movie can definitely be characterised, with over half of it in either German, French and even Italian).

The characters, performances and scenes build up to create a uniquely Tarantino concoction of a movie, and by the end you are mesmerised by the brilliance that is Christoph Waltz. You are left breathless by Diane Kruger in the role of treacherous German screen siren Bridget von Hammersmark. You are struck down by the tragic heroine Shosanna played by Mélanie Laurent. And you are dazed by the hysterically McConaughey-esque Brad Pitt in the role of Lt. Aldo Raine, leader of the titular band of Inglourious Basterds. P.S. Don't blink or you'll miss Mike Myers.

This movie with it's 10 year gestation period, is yet another contribution to cinema from a huge cinema fan, entrenched in tributes from the kinds of movies Tarantino loves - most probably the thing I had the biggest problem with, was the reuse of the score used from Kill Bill (and this is only because the soundtracks of Tarantino are so unconventional, so defining and integral to the tone and structure of his film, that the obvious reusing of the music cheapened the tone for me - but only a little)...

Fucking Love this movie!

So doing good in getting through the movies from the 82nd Academy Award selection (one of the bigger selections I must say), Inglourious Basterds is also the 39th Oscar nominated movie watched since blog commencement.

nuff said...