Film Name
Theme and director’s intention
"The Inglourious Basterds, as they are known, are a kind of Jewish Dirty Dozen, led by a Gentile, Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), a blunt, jawjutting tough guy from Tennessee (which is where Tarantino is from). In brief, Tarantino has gone past his usual practice of decorating his movies with homages to others. This time, he has pulled the film-archive door shut behind him—there’s hardly a flash of light indicating that the world exists outside the cinema except as the basis of a nutbrain fable." -David Denby, The New Yorker
"Quentin Tarantino is having what Martin Amis readers might call a "Yellow Dog" moment - something which happens when, following a worrying, mid-to-late period of creative uncertainty, a once dazzlingly exciting artist suddenly and catastrophically belly-flops, to the dismay of his admirers" -Peter Bradshaw, Guardian, UK
"The film is quintessential Quentin, with kick ass women, titles flashing across the screen, and multiple story lines that resolve into one." -Busch
"The Inglourious Basterds, as they are known, are a kind of Jewish Dirty Dozen, led by a Gentile, Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), a blunt, jawjutting tough guy from Tennessee (which is where Tarantino is from). In brief, Tarantino has gone past his usual practice of decorating his movies with homages to others. This time, he has pulled the film-archive door shut behind him—there’s hardly a flash of light indicating that the world exists outside the cinema except as the basis of a nutbrain fable." -David Denby, The New Yorker
"Quentin Tarantino is having what Martin Amis readers might call a "Yellow Dog" moment - something which happens when, following a worrying, mid-to-late period of creative uncertainty, a once dazzlingly exciting artist suddenly and catastrophically belly-flops, to the dismay of his admirers" -Peter Bradshaw, Guardian, UK
"The film is quintessential Quentin, with kick ass women, titles flashing across the screen, and multiple story lines that resolve into one." -Busch
Separate elements and their
relationship to the whole
"The director has also given prominence to a good actor new to American audiences: the Austrian-born Christoph Waltz, who, as Landa, exudes the kind of insinuating menace characteristic of Nazis in old Warner Bros. movies. The role may be a cliché, but Waltz is brilliant in it; he takes an intellectual pleasure in devilry." -David Denby
"There's no doubt that the 52-year-old Waltz - an Austrian-born actor who had been plying his trade on TV until Tarantino plucked him from the ranks - is a real find, and Mélanie Laurent also deserves this leg-up to stardom." -Peter Bradshaw
"Inglourious Basterds is presented in chapters. And each one takes you on a different emotional ride." -Busch
"The director has also given prominence to a good actor new to American audiences: the Austrian-born Christoph Waltz, who, as Landa, exudes the kind of insinuating menace characteristic of Nazis in old Warner Bros. movies. The role may be a cliché, but Waltz is brilliant in it; he takes an intellectual pleasure in devilry." -David Denby
"There's no doubt that the 52-year-old Waltz - an Austrian-born actor who had been plying his trade on TV until Tarantino plucked him from the ranks - is a real find, and Mélanie Laurent also deserves this leg-up to stardom." -Peter Bradshaw
"Inglourious Basterds is presented in chapters. And each one takes you on a different emotional ride." -Busch
Objective evaluation of the film
"Whether the Basterds are Tarantino’s ideal of an all-American killing team or his parody of one is hard to know. Very little in “Basterds” is meant to be taken straight, but the movie isn’t quite farce, either. It’s lodged in an uneasy nowheresville between counterfactual pop wish fulfillment and trashy exploitation, between exuberant nonsense and cinema scholasticism. In the middle of this crazy narrative, Tarantino pauses to pay his respects, like an unctuous film professor, to the immortals of German cinema. The great G. W. Pabst! Emil Jannings! (They are brought to Paris for the première.) The cinema, it seems, is both innocent and heroic; it creates great art, and it will end the war. The fire is started by the burning of old nitrate-based movies behind the screen." -David Denby
"...carry out a plan to take down the entire Third Reich in one fell swoop...in a cinema." -Busch
"Whether the Basterds are Tarantino’s ideal of an all-American killing team or his parody of one is hard to know. Very little in “Basterds” is meant to be taken straight, but the movie isn’t quite farce, either. It’s lodged in an uneasy nowheresville between counterfactual pop wish fulfillment and trashy exploitation, between exuberant nonsense and cinema scholasticism. In the middle of this crazy narrative, Tarantino pauses to pay his respects, like an unctuous film professor, to the immortals of German cinema. The great G. W. Pabst! Emil Jannings! (They are brought to Paris for the première.) The cinema, it seems, is both innocent and heroic; it creates great art, and it will end the war. The fire is started by the burning of old nitrate-based movies behind the screen." -David Denby
"...carry out a plan to take down the entire Third Reich in one fell swoop...in a cinema." -Busch
Subjective evaluation of the film
"The film is skillfully made, but it’s too silly to be enjoyed, even as a joke. Tarantino may think that he is doing Jews a favor by launching this revenge fantasy (in the burning theatre, working-class Jewish boys get to pump Hitler and Göring full of lead), but somehow I doubt that the gesture will be appreciated. Tarantino has become an embarrassment: his virtuosity as a maker of images has been overwhelmed by his inanity as an idiot de la cinémathèque." -David Denby
"When I saw Inglourious Basterds at Cannes, my traumatised complaint was that it fails as conventional war movie, as genre spoof, as trash and as pulp. Since then, its defenders have claimed that the point of the film is that it is "kosher porn": an over-the-top revenge fantasy for Jews." -Peter Bradshaw
"I found myself dragged into the story, wrapped up in the tragedy of it..." -Busch
"The film is skillfully made, but it’s too silly to be enjoyed, even as a joke. Tarantino may think that he is doing Jews a favor by launching this revenge fantasy (in the burning theatre, working-class Jewish boys get to pump Hitler and Göring full of lead), but somehow I doubt that the gesture will be appreciated. Tarantino has become an embarrassment: his virtuosity as a maker of images has been overwhelmed by his inanity as an idiot de la cinémathèque." -David Denby
"When I saw Inglourious Basterds at Cannes, my traumatised complaint was that it fails as conventional war movie, as genre spoof, as trash and as pulp. Since then, its defenders have claimed that the point of the film is that it is "kosher porn": an over-the-top revenge fantasy for Jews." -Peter Bradshaw
"I found myself dragged into the story, wrapped up in the tragedy of it..." -Busch
The film’s level of ambition
“Inglourious Basterds” is not boring, but it’s ridiculous and appallingly insensitive—a Louisville Slugger applied to the head of anyone who has ever taken the Nazis, the war, or the Resistance seriously. Not that Tarantino intends any malice toward such earnest people. The Nazis, for him, are merely available movie tropes—articulate monsters with a talent for sadism. By making the Americans cruel, too, he escapes the customary division of good and evil along national lines, but he escapes any sense of moral accountability as well." -David Denby
"I'm aware that Tarantino's style is not for everyone. And the violence is definitely intense. But I haven't been more entertained by an action flick this year. -Busch
“Inglourious Basterds” is not boring, but it’s ridiculous and appallingly insensitive—a Louisville Slugger applied to the head of anyone who has ever taken the Nazis, the war, or the Resistance seriously. Not that Tarantino intends any malice toward such earnest people. The Nazis, for him, are merely available movie tropes—articulate monsters with a talent for sadism. By making the Americans cruel, too, he escapes the customary division of good and evil along national lines, but he escapes any sense of moral accountability as well." -David Denby
"I'm aware that Tarantino's style is not for everyone. And the violence is definitely intense. But I haven't been more entertained by an action flick this year. -Busch
Words you found interesting.
"idiot de la cinémathèque" -David Denby
"kosher porn" -Bradshaw
Quintessential, unapologetic,
"idiot de la cinémathèque" -David Denby
"kosher porn" -Bradshaw
Quintessential, unapologetic,
Relationship to film
movements/genres/ relation to other filmmakers’ work.
"Moral callousness has been part of Tarantino’s style in the past. In “Pulp Fiction,” his merry roundelay set among Los Angeles lowlifes, the aggressive acts that the characters commit against one another are so abrupt and extreme that they become funny. The movie’s outrageous panache gave the audience license to enjoy the violence as lawless entertainment. But, in “Basterds,” Tarantino is mucking about with a tragic moment of history. Chaplin and Lubitsch played with Nazis, too, but they worked as farceurs, using comedy to warn of catastrophe; they didn’t carve up Nazis using horror-film flourishes." -David Denby
"it is notionally inspired by a 1970s B-movie called Quel Maledetto Treno Blindato, otherwise The Damned Armoured Train, renamed Inglorious Bastards for its American release." -Peter Bradshaw
"Tarantino takes you from a foreign film style to Kill Bill gallows humor, from film noir to slasher flick" -Busch
"Moral callousness has been part of Tarantino’s style in the past. In “Pulp Fiction,” his merry roundelay set among Los Angeles lowlifes, the aggressive acts that the characters commit against one another are so abrupt and extreme that they become funny. The movie’s outrageous panache gave the audience license to enjoy the violence as lawless entertainment. But, in “Basterds,” Tarantino is mucking about with a tragic moment of history. Chaplin and Lubitsch played with Nazis, too, but they worked as farceurs, using comedy to warn of catastrophe; they didn’t carve up Nazis using horror-film flourishes." -David Denby
"it is notionally inspired by a 1970s B-movie called Quel Maledetto Treno Blindato, otherwise The Damned Armoured Train, renamed Inglorious Bastards for its American release." -Peter Bradshaw
"Tarantino takes you from a foreign film style to Kill Bill gallows humor, from film noir to slasher flick" -Busch
