1/15/10- Inglourious Basterds

Tim
1/15/10: Inglourious Basterds (2009) (3.5 stars) - I probably liked it a little more than Liz, but by no means did I think it was as good as the hype I remember it getting when it came out. It has the mastery tension buildup and release that Tarantino does so well and so dramatically. There is some really nice camera work and really nice visuals, but there are also some things that just don't seem to jive well together, such as the bold 70's era name title that springs up on the German "basterds" name and the strangely modern song choice that plays under the lead female characters preparation for the movie house slaughter night. All of these things could be called "classic" Tarantino but in this more historical setting it seemed a little out of place. The brutal violence can also be called "classic" Tarantino and definitely lives up to the standards he has set in other movies. In the "Kill Bill" series, the violence seemed more cartoony, here it was just brutal, but effective at telling the story. The characters were engaging and enjoyable to watch, despite a definite mis-casting of Mike Myers as a British military general with a horrible fake British accent. The movie seemed to have a bit of a slow pace for an action movie. Overall, I think the biggest problem I had with the movie was that it seemed like a sort of "fan fiction" taking actual historical people and putting them into completely made-up situations. Yes, it would be great if WWII could have ended as swiftly as it ended in Inglourious Basterds, but the truth is even more brutal then in Tarantino's fantastic mind.

Liz

Inglourious Basterds-3 stars

I wanted to see this movie when it first came out, but mainly because I think Quentin Tarantino is a good director and his movies are always interesting to watch. Nevertheless, I have seen enough of his films to know that he is notoriously violent and “Basterds”, which focused on a group of Nazi-killers, was going to be no exception. So, I went into watching the movie, fairly terrified, and pretty much stayed that way the entire time (2 and ½ hours). I don’t like watching extreme violence. I don’t like the sight of blood- real or even something I know isn’t real. I’m extremely squeamish. Now you might say, I was setting myself up to not like this movie from the beginning. I would probably think that was true as well, but I actually really liked Tarantino’s Kill Bill volume 1 & 2 (2 being my favorite), and those were probably the most violent movies I’ve even seen. The big difference between Kill Bill and Basterds for me was the storyline. I found the storyline in Kill Bill, even though it covered a lot of different people, to be much more interesting and a lot less all over the place feeling than Basterds. The different stories felt disjointed to me and left me not really interested in the outcome until about 30 minutes from the end of the film. Having said that, I was probably most interested in Shosanna’s story and really thought the actress who played that part (Melanie Laurant) and the actor who played Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) were standouts in terms of their acting. Most scenes in the movie were filled with intense suspense. You knew something was going to happen and that it was going to be really bad, but the scenes that featured those characters were especially tense. The scene they had together in the restaurant was one of the highlights of the film. Tarantino often adds touches of things that you aren’t expecting, and I’m usually fine with that, but in this film, those quirky touches just came too infrequently and seemed too out of place. Some examples of this were the titles that introduced the Basterds, the infrequent narration by Samuel L. Jackson, and the music that played over Shosanna getting ready for the premiere. So much attention was paid to the details of making the film feel like it took place in the 1940s, and things like this just really took away from it. SPOILER ALERT: My biggest problem with the film was its rewriting of history. It was weird to me to include a well-known historical figure like Hitler, and then almost live out this fantasy of killing him and all his men in a fiery inferno at the end. I’m not quite sure why I feel this way, but it was just weird. It was almost like that weird kind of fan fiction, where people come up with false scenarios for historical figures, but in this case, it is one of the most hated people in history. Just wasn’t what I was expecting… Oh, one more thing- the movie is called Inglourious Basterds, but I felt like I barely saw them in action!