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Friday, April 30, 2010

Inglorious Basterds (2009)

Quentin Tarnatino’s love of movies infuses every frame of his revisionist WWII fantasy. Who hasn’t wanted to rewrite history the way he wanted to see it happen? Thankfully, Tarantino uses the title and not much else of the ghastly 1978 Italian WWII adventure that he inexplicably admired. Brad Pitt heads a renegade brigade of scalping Nazi hunters, Melanie Laurent is the Jewess who escaped death by the Nazis only to find herself a tool in the middle of a Nazi propaganda event, Christoph Waltz is the coolly sadistic Nazi Colonel and even Mike Myers and Rod Taylor (as Winston Churchill) show up. I’m not enamored of Waltz’s obvious and hammy performance as the critics who are throwing every conceivable acting award at him. Even in Tarantino’s heightened reality, Waltz’s performance comes across as more grotesque and cartoonish than the already larger than life performances of everyone else. Again, Tarantino shows what a great ear he has for film music in the chosen pieces of music he uses in the film (everything from Ennio Morricone to Giorgio Moroder). With Daniel Bruhl.

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