Inglorious Basterds: A review WITH SPOILERS!!! LOTS OF EM!!!

[dimafleck: the living legend.]

just got back.

a few points with SPOILERS:

1) give credit to QT for having the balls to rewrite history and end up having balls big enough to actually pull it off without the movie looking like schlop.

2) I love how completely reflexive the movie was. Here we have a climax where we see a room full of Nazis watching American bodies dying everywhere and gigglin with glee. We feel they are evil. We know they are stupid and mindless. They are horrible heartless humans. Yet, here we are, sitting in a theatre, watching Nazis being killed and burned alive and most of us are giggling with glee. hmmm. there's a lot of that reflective quality in the movie. It’s very conscious of its own outlandishness.

3) Every situation in this movie is full of incredible tension. The dairy farm and the bar scene especially. Great stuff. Such masterful use of tension/release.

4) Tarantino had a real free pass with the basterds as a vehicle to just show mindless and fun violence. They are Jews, and they are hurting Nazis, so no matter how grotesque, its still comical. He never crosses the line. In the bar scene, he leaves his audience waiting, for 20 minutes no less, for Schliptz to lose his cool and go on a killing spree... never happens. It doesn’t happen for the same reason Spielberg regrets the dive scene from Jaws where the corpse scares the shit out of everyone. Spielberg left it in, and it’s the biggest scare of the entire movie. The climax on the boat isn't as intense as it should because the audience blew its load. With Basterds, its all about pre-cum.

Instead of the much longed for Schliptz kill spree, we have to wait another 45minutes until we finally reach our climax and get the violence we've aching for. If the movie was riddled with the basterds killing people left right and centre, the theatre scene would never have as much of an impact. The audience eats up every second because the movie finally gives us everything we've been wanting. Tarantino fucked his audience slow and steady...and then blew his load all over our faces and we lapped up every minute of it. incredible film making.

5) THE THEATRE SCENE: this scene is like nothing I’ve every seen. Such orchestration. such beauty. such an intense conceptualization. What a set peice. wow. The air in that theatre was thick with atmosphere.

One moment that stands out: the Jew shooting Hitler with his machine gun. Shooting, over and over, emptying his round into Adolf fucking Hitler. Imagine being that Jew, imagine having a ticking bomb with seconds to go strapped to your leg. Spending your last seconds on earth in a room full of burning Nazi’s shooting Hitler with a machine gun knowing the war was over. Real or not real, absurd revisionist history or not, that is a powerful fucking concept for a situation and tarantino pulled it off. I FELT IT. The fact that he is able to do this, without it falling into the “this is nonsense†bin, proves the guy isn't a wash up. Proves the movie is a success.

6) The Jew Hunter. Goes with out saying, what a fucking performance. Even better than the Joker.

7) Lastly, a little on the man himself. The guy was young. He was hungry. He made an incredibly unique and powerful statement with reservoir dogs, and pulp fiction. Incredibly powerful and incredibly influential. With Jackie Brown (its a great movie non the less)...he matured, he refined his craft, but at the end of the day, had he continued to go down that road, he would be a rehasher.

This new era of Tarantino is simply an auteur that has reached what I like to refer to as "grand master" status. The guy is well aware that he will never top Pulp Fiction. He has no intention in ever doing so. The fact that this is the man that made Pulp Fiction and he still hasn't sullied his legacy is an accomplishment in and of itself. He knows who he is, and he knows he has a free pass to do whatever the fuck he wants and to have as much fun as he wants. He wants his audience to have as much fun as he's having. As far as pop art goes, Tarantino is the shit and he is as relevant today as he was in the nineties. That is some powerful fucking artistry right there. Every movie the man makes is an “event†and the fact his next film will be even more an “event†than Basterds demonstrates that this film is successful. This isn't a hollow movie with QT just throwing out a bunch of shit kicking violence, references and kooky dialogue. This is a deep artistic statement, and a very brave and powerful one at that.

This is by far his best work since PF in both concept and execution.