Inglourious Basterds (2009)

"Say 'auf Wiedersehen' to your Nazi balls. "

Inglourious Basterds (2009) is Quentin Tarantino’s unique WWII epic about language and revenge. The film simultaneously follows Lt. Aldo Raine and his group of Nazi hunting Jewish American soldiers called "The Basterds" and Shoshana a French Jew who barely escapes death at the hands of the Nazi SS and sees and opportunity to exact revenge on the National Socialist German Worker's Party.

I really like how Quentin Tarantino, who is known for his dialogue filled with pop culture references, uses pop culture to his advantage in this film. The characters in this film still talk about pop culture in a very Tarantino fashion, but they talk about actors, movies, music and even historical events that were important and hot topics during the time this is supposed to take place. I think this is very interesting and super smart of Tarantino, and not many other writers could actually pull something like this off in a film.

I believe this film is proof Quentin Tarantino finally settling into his own way of storytelling that works for him. This film stops with clever attempts to reinvent how to tell a film story with different formats, instead with this one he kind of makes up his own quirky way to tell a story. The majority of this film is actually straight linear storytelling, but through clever editing (and some other small tricks) Tarantino cuts away in the middle of a scene or action to explain anything further than the linear story can tell. This is evident more than anything in the sudden interrupting flashback/voice over to explain Hugo Stiglitz, the German soldier who went AWOL and killed 13 Nazi officers. It's stylish and still better than random exposition. Kill Bill (2003, 2004) did this also, to a much lesser degree actually (on top of the mixed-up-chapter nonlinear storytelling) in Volume 1 it cut away to set up a lot of the story while the Bride was trying to 'wiggle her big toe' and in Volume 2 it cut away to explain the Pai Mei flashback while she's stuck in a coffin buried alive. And now, retrospectively, I can see Django Unchained (2012) did this for all of its nonlinear cuts, essentially it's just a stylish and very streamlined way to do a flashback and relate relevant exposition or backstory.

My biggest problem with this film is it doesn't feel like one film, instead it feels like a bunch of separate incidents that are loosely connected. The film is essentially telling two different stories moving forward about about the same thing. For my taste I would have liked to see these two stories crossover more, because as it is side characters cross over and (a couple) events cross over from one story to the other but otherwise they're pretty much completely separate stories. There's actually some kind of humor in the fact that they both climb to basically the same climax and never actually cross [though I liked this better in True Romance (1993) where they actually crossed at the end,] and maybe that's what he was going for, but to me this feels incredibly like a serial TV show with a bunch of different characters moving forward and doing different things than a movie that is nicely interconnected.

Also adding to the feel of a TV show, there's too many characters in this film for my taste. This just makes it so that there's a lot of different things going on in this movie that we have to keep track of, I really didn't even appreciate how much is actually really going on in this film until subsequent viewings. Now a majority of the characters come from the fact that he's telling two separate stories, the antagonists (thankfully) carry over in both stories but each has its own set of protagonists and then halfway through we add even more with the advent of "Operation Kino." I've got to ask why the heck there's so many Basterds? It's fine we show 9 Basterds at the beginning of the film (some of which actually never do anything!), and then we add in the German Stiglitz (that's 10) and then we add the two foreign British agents in Operation Kino. I'm not a fan of useless characters or characters who's sole purpose is to die. At least why couldn't we just start with less soldiers in the Basterds to begin with? And all these protagonists are just for one story of the two in this film.

There's also a couple times the film's characters switch language kind of sloppily for convenience more than anything else. The first one is in the opening sequence, and I always find myself asking would a French dairy farmer really actually be proficient at speaking English during this time? This is somewhat excusable because it's in the very beginning of the film (where coincidences slide) and it sets up the language switching and how it will be used for the rest of the film, but I gotta wonder if it would have been easier and more historically possible if they instead switched over to German? Another time that I noticed this is in the pub shootout the German soldier Wilhelm (who is there celebrating the birth of his son) switches to English, this is solely to accommodate the fact that Aldo Raine shouldn't be able to speak anything else, and we wanted him in this scene even though he had another German-speaking Basterd up top. This convenience is pretty well swept under the rug with a "you speak English pretty well for a German soldier." and an "I know... [lets move along.]" Kinda sloppy, not going to lie but hey at least they addressed it?

When I heard the Quentin Tarantino was working on a World War II war film, I was a little disappointed. I personally don't care much for war films and just assumed this film would be a reason-less gorefest (funny how it actually turned out to be one of his tamer films gore-wise). Instead Tarantino decided to shoot the film like a spaghetti western, and I think that is simply genius. I'd never seen anything like that before, and to combine two seemingly completely different genres in one like this is (in my opinion) absolutely brilliant. Think about it, does this film seem like any other war films you've seen before? No. Tarantino used a majority of western music, had the cinematography mimic that of (primarily spaghetti) westerns, and even put in a lot of little nods to westerns story-wise like dynamite and even throwing in a very dramatic Mexican standoff! The result is very smart, interesting and super unique.

This film, like many other Tarantino films, has an absolutely amazing cast. I'm super glad that Tarantino decided to use some foreign actors in the foreign parts because Christoph Waltz really makes this film for me, I just think he's simply amazing as "the Jew hunter" Colonel Hans Landa. But Brad Pitt, Michael Fassbender, Mélanie Laurent, Diane Kruger and Daniel Brühl all have very awesome and memorable roles in this film also, the acting is just great all around.

But my favorite thing about this film is the use of language. Unlike countless American films that use a cheap dubbing of sorts on the script level and subbing in say English in place of German (and maybe adding in an accent) when characters are in other countries, this film doesn't and as a result uses Language to build suspense for the characters in the story. This story takes place in Nazi-occupied France, there's Germans walking around in France and most of our protagonists are American, the film takes this even further by adding in British soldiers and a brief stint of Italian too as the plot develops. The film has a series of sequences (at least 3?) that are interrogations and a character's knowledge and use of language is a key factor in each of these conversations. Also the way that Tarantino masterfully divulges a little information about who knows what in each conversation adds so much suspense not only for the characters but also the viewer who is right there with characters during these sequences, trying to figure out how much each character really knows.

Inglourious Basterds (2009) is something new for Tarantino but also a return to great form too. Highly recommend it. 5/5 Stars.

Happy watching!





Want more Tarantino goodness? Check back all month for my Tribute to Tarantino in honor of his latest film Django Unchained (2012).

Go back to Tarantino's first film with Reservoir Dogs (1992), check out the first script he wrote (but didn't direct) True Romance (1993), The smash hit that really put him on the map Pulp Fiction (1994), another film written by him but in the hands of another director From Dusk till Dawn (1996), his blaxploitation-influenced crime film Jackie Brown (1997, The two part revenge epic Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003) and Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004) or his tribute to grindhouse cinmea Death Proof (2007).

Even though I've gone through every film he's directed, I've got more films planned all month so be sure to check back!



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The Last King of Scotland (2006)

"If you're afraid of dying it shows you have a life worth living."

The Last King of Scotland (2006) is a British historical drama, loosely based on true events. Set in the 1970s, the film follows a young Scotsman named Nicholas Garrigan who is a recent graduate of medical school. Nicholas decides that instead of following his father's footsteps as a local doctor he will to travel to Uganda and try and make a difference in the world (while seeking a little adventure at the same time). Little does Nicholas know that a new dictator named Idi Amin has recently come to power in the country, and after a chance encounter with Amin, Nicholas quickly and unexpectedly finds himself accepting a job as his personal doctor and adviser.

The story of this film is quite good. I coudn't help but think that it was a little too good to be true while it was happening (only to find it's really not true later), I guess the reason for that "breaking of believability" would be too many coincidences around one person/character. Also the story telegraphs where it's going a too easily and ends up being very easily predictable, but its still a fun ride and a very interesting story.

I felt like a majority of the characters were very one-dimentional. Amin and Nicholas being the exceptions (and even Nicholas seemed that way at times, I would guess my exception for him is more thanks to the actor than to the script), but everyone seemed like they were there for their one purpose in the story. You're supposedly basing this film on real people, make the characters feel as interesting and complex as real people.

I have a big problem with films like this that are paraded as real events or "historical" when they do something as big as making up the main character! I don't have a problem with historical fiction at all, but I think that it should be called what it is. I understand with a film like this it's hard to tell where reality stops and fiction starts but I have to say it was a big buzz kill when I looked the film up after the credits rolled. At the very least I think you shouldn't start with a title card that says "based on historical events" or finish the film with an ending coda telling what happened in the conclusion of an actual historical event (especially since it was wrong!) These are tricks that mislead the audience into believing the entire film is fact.

I really enjoyed the films direction. There were multiple scenes where I found myself going: "wow, that was amazingly executed." One in particular is the scene with the Ox where Nicholas first meets Amin, such a great use of drama and heightened tenseness achieved through cutting, acting, camera moves and sound design, the scene has a sharp climax and then relieves itself and opens the door for a great friendship. Also I like how the film starts in the rural African landscape and as Nicholas travels to the capitol it's this great moment where the character and viewer both realize how there are parts of Uganda that are actually very built up and developed (for better or worse).

The film has a really amazing soundtrack, mixing traditional African music and music from the 70s and each song seems like it's perfectly placed within the film at just the right part.

But the real reason to see this film is Forest Whitaker's portral of the paranoid Ugandan president Idi Amin. He's amazing in the role, first making you think (along side Nicholas) that this guy is the greatest leader ever and then as the film goes on and his paranoia increases he achieves very, very high levels of suspense and fright that will keep you on the edge of your seat. He won much acclaim and awards for this role, and I think it's very well deserved. The film just woudn't have worked without such a convincing portrayal of this very interesting man.

The Last King of Scotland (2012) is a very well executed and acted historical drama, with a story so good that it will suck you in. Just try not to be disappointing when you find out later that the story is in fact too good to be true. 4.5/5 stars.

Happy watching!





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Lincoln (2012)

"We're stepped out upon the world stage now, with the fate of human dignity in our hands..."

Lincoln (2012) is a historical film that is very relevant to today, this film has been Steven Spielberg’s dream project for a number of years. Unlike what you might assume from the title or trailer this film isn’t a biography of Abraham Lincoln, it just revolves around the struggle Lincoln had and the strife he went through trying to get the 13th Amendment passed during the last four months of his life.

With an icon like Abraham Lincoln it’d be tempting to want to show how he got that way or things earlier in his life that impacted him and changed the ways he made his decisions. But I really like how Steven Spielberg just focused in on one small part of his life and told a story just around the 13th amendment. I also appreciate how the film made not attempt to canonize Lincoln, he made mistakes and he make choices that weren’t favorable or honest but the film made you look behind his eyes and show that all of this had a huge impact on him personally and this was something he felt was absolutely right and necessary.

Also the film is (obviously) highly historical and very highly political. This could have easily been a big problem for the film attempting to explain some of these things to audiences. But the film does a really good job at breaking down the political process to simpler terms and not attempting to explain who every person in Lincoln’s life is, instead (for the sake of the story) the film breaks down all the major characters into simpler terms, almost showing moral character and stance on the objective more than who they were and what their job was. Which I appreciated because I personally am not by any stretch a history buff, civil war junkie, or in love with the political process but I’m sure if you do fit into any of these categories the film has some extras in store for you.

There is some small things and minor specifics and small things that may be hard to understand for the average viewer but for the most part as I said above, this isn’t the case for most of the film and you will at least understand the "gist" of anything you don’t understand fully.

I really loved the depiction of Abraham Lincoln by Daniel Day-Lewis. Almost instantly you forget you’re watching an actor and you’re immersed the story before you. You can tell he and Spielberg did their research about this historical figure that is so iconic and did their best to depict him as true as possible.

There's a few times in the film where absolutely nothing is happening in frame except people sitting and listening to Abe tell a story or anecdote, but yet it's done in a way that is so captivating and interesting.

I was really blown away by Steven Spielberg’s direction of this film. It was such a subtle and soft movie, mostly the film is just inside with people talking over tables (so if that’s not your thing you might want to skip this but) personally I was just so interested. I enjoyed the very limited use of a soundtrack, used only for impact and to build slowly to a point. And I’m not sure if this was Spielberg’s intention but honestly I don’t think this film could have come out at a more relevant time. I recently discovered that the best Science Fiction stories aren’t actually about the future but more of a statement about the events of the day and state of things when the story was written. I believe this same theory applies to Lincoln this film is HIGHLY relevant to today with the topics of today and the recent 2012 American Presidential Election. I go to a movie usually to escape my day to day but it was very interesting to find a story waiting for me that is so topical and relevant.

Lincoln (2012) wasn’t what I was expecting at all and I really found myself enjoying it. Part biography, part history, part art-film, character study and partially a look at our own political process that I found to be very relevant to today, even 147 years after these events took place. 5/5 Stars.

Happy watching!





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