Inglourious Basterds

[Rendakor]

Christoph Waltz was amazing; never heard of him before this. (Fake edit: Oh, he's a german actor, that explains it).

Very good Tarantino flick, much better than his other recent works.

[Ookii]

How can anyone not like this movie? Fuckin' great.

Also I third the Christopher Waltz love, the man needs to win an Oscar.

[proudft]

I liked it a lot.  I'm sorry I knew even a little about it before seeing it -- though I did try to avoid spoilers, even the trailer was a bit too much.

Really you should go into it completely cold, avoiding all spoilers and internet information possible.  I think it has a lot to say about violence and differing reactions to it, and for that reason really benefits from being seen with no foreknowledge in a semi-full theater so you have plenty of people around you to gasp, laugh, and otherwise react at the proper times.

[ahoythematey]

I loved it.  Pitt and Waltz were great.

[dusematic]

This movie was masterful in its creation of suspense through dialogue.  Pitt was serviceable, but that Christoph guy put on a godamn tour de force.  Definitely the best acting in a Tarantino film to date.  Those European actors made the most of their opportunity and crushed it.

[Samwise]

I enjoyed the movie, but I could have done with more Nazi-killing and less amiable conversation over glasses of milk.

[Fraeg]

just go rent the original and enjoy the real deal.

[Samwise]

My understanding is that they don't have much in common apart from the title and being set in WWII.

[Samwise]

Heh.  I just read on Wikipedia that the Bear Jew was originally written for Adam Sandler.  Goddamn that would have been something.  Not that Eli Roth wasn't awesome.

Tim Roth and Simon Pegg were both considered for the British film buff role.

[DraconianOne]

Pegg was asked but had to turn it down due to a scheduling conflict. He was, by all accounts, gutted.  Hadn't heard that Tim Roth was asked to do it but on the basis of the script alone, I don't think I would have cast him in that role.

[Ookii]

Tim Roth could play every part in the movie if he wanted, including the women.

We are talking about Tim Roth here.

[schild]

I enjoyed the movie, but I could have done with more Nazi-killing and less amiable conversation over glasses of milk.

Tarantino.

[Samwise]

I enjoyed the movie, but I could have done with more Nazi-killing and less amiable conversation over glasses of milk.

Tarantino.

I know.     I was hoping for more Kill Bill and less Pulp Fiction, though.  I mean, Nazis.

[Tale]

Saw it last night. A very good Tarantino film with some of the best scenes ever made. The camera did amazing things. The tension and unpredictability within scenes was awesome.

Despite that, it was not as satisfying as it could have been. While the story ended brilliantly, the final scene was predictable. Some devices were overused, such as the scrawly Tarantino writing with arrows pointing to key figures, which has worked better in his other films than this one.

Overall a big achievement. But I'd like to team Tarantino with a director known for just telling great stories. Put Tarantino in charge of making (love to) the scenes and how they hang together, and have the other guy focus on tweaking the overall depth and storytelling. If they could get along (unlikely), it could be epic.

[LK]

[Rendakor]

[NiX]

I enjoyed the movie, but I could have done with more Nazi-killing and less amiable conversation over glasses of milk.

Made me not enjoy the movie. The dialogue did nothing for me and pitts accent annoyed the shit out of me. They marketed as more and pushing the whole "100 nazi scalps" thing implied there would something, not just a bunch of schlock scenes of guys cutting off scalps.

God, I hate tarantino.

[LK]

It felt like this movie skipped any scenes that didn't have any direct contribution to the plot that would have connected the whole thing together. I liked Pitt's character a lot, as well as the accent, because it was all building up to the scene in the theatre.

Very entertaining flick and worth the money. Each scene with Waltz was magic though after awhile I began to identify the techniques they were using to create suspense because they did it in every damn scene.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Bon-joor-no

[Murgos]

Bon-joor-no

Yep.  Totally read that in his voice.

[kaid]

I enjoyed it but I heard a funny comment on my way out of the movie. Somebody said that it felt like they had just read a quinton tarrentino novel.

I felt the movie was good and I am a fast reader but QT's whole thing is snappy dialog and when a large chunk of that dialog is via subtitles it loses some of its punch. I can understand why that may detract from the movie from some viewers.

[Tale]

quinton tarrentino

when a large chunk of that dialog is via subtitles it loses some of its punch.

Only for fucking stupid people who shouldn't have bought a ticket.

[ahoythematey]

America, dude.  People here complained about subtitles in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and that wasn't exactly the most talkative movie.

[Samwise]

I thought the early scene where they switch to speaking English for no particularly good reason was a funny nod at American audiences not wanting to read subtitles if they can help it.

[Rishathra]

I thought the early scene where they switch to speaking English for no particularly good reason was a funny nod at American audiences not wanting to read subtitles if they can help it.

I thought that was what it was at first, but then it turned out there was an actual reason he wanted to switch to English, which made me like the scene even more.

[LK]

The movie and how it's structured is intelligent, I'll give it that.

[Samwise]

I thought the early scene where they switch to speaking English for no particularly good reason was a funny nod at American audiences not wanting to read subtitles if they can help it.

I thought that was what it was at first, but then it turned out there was an actual reason he wanted to switch to English, which made me like the scene even more.

I figured it was some of both.     Making the guy switch to German would have made a little more sense in context but wouldn't have been nearly as entertaining.

[stray]

I was expecting a schlocky Dirty Dozen tribute, but it wasn't that at all. Felt like a heady Euro flick in some ways (and not for the obvious reason that it took place in Europe..).

I was listening to an interview on NPR and Tarantino was saying he was going through a lot of talented German actors for the part... And that while many were good at English, many weren't good at his version of it. He said Waltz nailed it right away. Apparently though, the guy isn't even that famous in Germany. He was just a TV actor.

[Endie]

Flying flopping limbs and road-graded chins are hardly playing down the violence. You can have a car crash that shows NO BLOOD WHATSOEVER and it still be effective, and cringeworthy. Fuck's sake, I'm not arguing against the use of gore and violence in movies, I'm just saying motherfucker at his best takes it up about 2 notches more than needed and at his worst (Kill Bill) just flat out goes full retard.

I have to agree with this.  Reservoir Dogs was famous for what you didn't see in the ear scene, and yet how coe-turlingly horrifying Tarantino made it for the audience.  In Inglourious Basterds, you're shown close-ups of scalpings and brandings that add nothing to the flim.  at first I sat there and thought "we're being shown this for a reason: this is exposition and Tarantino is going to have something go wrong, or make some jarring equivalence later on, or something like that."  But of course it was just scalping for the sake of it.

My major problem was that while it was like someone had said "go back to the dialogue, Quentin: that was what made your films great," nobody had then dared to say to him "there are two big set-pieces in there and one needs to be two minutes shorter (the potentially great opening scene) while the second (the pub scene) needs to be a good three or even four minutes shorter.  I also disliked the commedia dell'arte die-stamped characters, whether or not he was referencing earlier works in the genre.  It was dreary (after the first) that every SS member was a cultured and menacingly polite polyglot with the detective skills of Sherlock Holmes, that pretty much every German soldier was just a square-jawed, ordinary guy, that I couldn't shake off the feeling that I'd seen Mike Myers play that spoof brigadier-general type before, or that Brad Pitt just did what he did in Burn After Reading: choose two mannerisms and a funny accent then ham madly (although it's been almost exactly a decade since his last truly great performance, so I didn't hope for much).

Quibble: the dress of the cinema attendants in the premiere was dumb: Hitler would have had an apoplexy.  It was like Tarantino got mixed up between the post-33 Reich and the pre-33 weimar Republic.  It was more revealing of Tarantino than anything else.

Oh and
All that aside, it was an ok film.  It was too long, but I didn't really start watching the time: I was just aware that a better, tauter film was possible.  I did like the ridiculous nature of the ending, which I thought was a funny, brave decision and tied in well with the comic-book references.  I just know that Tarantino can do better.  Although I admit that he can apparently only write at his best when, as with Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, Roger Avery is there and helping him do so.  Ooh, controversy.

Edit: I meant to say that the time saved by cutting the duller dialogue should have been used, instead, to add one or even two more action scenes.

[stray]

I don't see the problem with showing scalpings or other overt violence. This movie only has one real direction: That it's fun to hate Nazis. Hence, why QT will even invent an alternate history just so he can have fun with hating Nazis even more. It's not supposed to be much deeper than that.

I'd agree though that Avary could have contributed something great. He was actually the Euro expert out of the two (and especially with France).

[Margalis]

My opinion of Tarantino dropped when I realized that the ear-cutting scene in Reservoir Dogs, one of his most memorable, is ripped straight from another movie. (Forget which one, saw it rather recently)

[stray]

There's enough going on in that scene that I would have never said it he totally owned it in the first place. Mostly.. Michael Madsen.

[Trippy]

My opinion of Tarantino dropped when I realized that the ear-cutting scene in Reservoir Dogs, one of his most memorable, is ripped straight from another movie. (Forget which one, saw it rather recently)

Was it Django?

[Mattemeo]

Flying flopping limbs and road-graded chins are hardly playing down the violence. You can have a car crash that shows NO BLOOD WHATSOEVER and it still be effective, and cringeworthy. Fuck's sake, I'm not arguing against the use of gore and violence in movies, I'm just saying motherfucker at his best takes it up about 2 notches more than needed and at his worst (Kill Bill) just flat out goes full retard.

I have to agree with this.  Reservoir Dogs was famous for what you didn't see in the ear scene, and yet how coe-turlingly horrifying Tarantino made it for the audience.  In Inglourious Basterds, you're shown close-ups of scalpings and brandings that add nothing to the flim.  at first I sat there and thought "we're being shown this for a reason: this is exposition and Tarantino is going to have something go wrong, or make some jarring equivalence later on, or something like that."  But of course it was just scalping for the sake of it.

You're both missing the point entirely. The Inglourious Basterds are behind enemy lines to commit war attrocities. Not to make their enemies (or an audience) curl up their toes and go 'oh heavens to betsy, what horrors are happening beyond the ken of man or eye of camera?!' - but to reveal explicitly the manner with which the troup are going to dispatch any and every Nazi they come across. It is sending a message. They do it in front of the captured men, they do it in front of us, the audience. There is no ambiguity. There is only sheer physical revulsion. Implied violence is a trick that works magnificently well on many a cinematic occasion, but it would be simply churlish in this instance.

[Endie]

Flying flopping limbs and road-graded chins are hardly playing down the violence. You can have a car crash that shows NO BLOOD WHATSOEVER and it still be effective, and cringeworthy. Fuck's sake, I'm not arguing against the use of gore and violence in movies, I'm just saying motherfucker at his best takes it up about 2 notches more than needed and at his worst (Kill Bill) just flat out goes full retard.

I have to agree with this.  Reservoir Dogs was famous for what you didn't see in the ear scene, and yet how coe-turlingly horrifying Tarantino made it for the audience.  In Inglourious Basterds, you're shown close-ups of scalpings and brandings that add nothing to the flim.  at first I sat there and thought "we're being shown this for a reason: this is exposition and Tarantino is going to have something go wrong, or make some jarring equivalence later on, or something like that."  But of course it was just scalping for the sake of it.

You're both missing the point entirely. The Inglourious Basterds are behind enemy lines to commit war attrocities. Not to make their enemies (or an audience) curl up their toes and go 'oh heavens to betsy, what horrors are happening beyond the ken of man or eye of camera?!' - but to reveal explicitly the manner with which the troup are going to dispatch any and every Nazi they come across. It is sending a message. They do it in front of the captured men, they do it in front of us, the audience. There is no ambiguity. There is only sheer physical revulsion. Implied violence is a trick that works magnificently well on many a cinematic occasion, but it would be simply churlish in this instance.

No you're right.  If only Hitchcock had realised that suggestion of violence in the shower scene by showing the raised knife and the blood circling in the water was so much less effective than simply showing the cutting of the jugular in unflinching slow-motion and...  Wait, what?  I cannot find anything of critical merit in your explanation.  It is certainly made up of words and they seem to be arranged in sentences, but the most I can get is that you think that demonstrating that someone is doing something is only possible by showing it in unflinching detail.  God himself only knows how mainstream cinema directors ever approached this problem in the eighty-odd years when displaying such a scene wouldn't even have been allowed.  I cannot understand why Tarantino didn't make it quite clear that, while behind enemy lines, the (ahem) "troup" also sometimes had to go to the toilet, perhaps zooming in on the faecal matter as it emerges from Pitt's behind in a three-minute-long scene of grunting and heaving, just so that the matter is left in no doubt to "the captured men, to us, the audience".

Also, i suspect that "churlish" doesn't mean what you think it means.