Who Missed Me?

I am back. Sigh.

I have already slipped back into my mundane life and am completely bored. I guess that is what happens when you spend a month enjoying the hot sun in the Caribbean. I spent time with family, going to lots of fetes, and just hanging out the whole time I was there. It was heaven. I suppose I wouldn’t know the difference between vacation and work if I didn’t have to go back to work at the end of it. Right? Well I guess I am just going to have to live with it.

So I didn’t see any new movies while I was away. I did watch Night Watch which was different, interesting, and pretty good. I also watched Sunshine Cleaning on the plane which was good but not at the level I was expecting. But I am not going to get into those. I missed going to the movies; the noise, the people, and the big screen. I couldn’t wait to get back into the theatres. It was a good thing cuz a highly anticipated film came out on Friday. I had great expectations for Inglorious Basterds.

Even though the next statement may be too direct and will mean you (the reader) will skip the rest of this post, I am going to say it anyways. Inglorious Basterds was good. But definitely not Quentin Tarantino’s best.

There is a lot to like about the movie. The dialogue in the movie is superb. It is what Tarantino is known for. It is sharp, witty, and sly. It can be offensive and entertaining at the same time. But because he is a purist, Tarantino is not satisfied with people speaking English with a German or French accent. No they actually speak French or German, and at one point Italian, so there are a lot of subtitles to be read. Usually subtitles are no problem for me but with this movie I found it exhausting. Tarantino is known for rapid, lengthy exchanges between characters and having to read all of that while keeping up with the movie was a feat in itself. I think I may have missed some of it.

Casting. I thought the casting was fantastic. Christoph Waltz as Col. Hans Landa was particularly awesome. His character is evil, vile, suave, and somehow charming. He embodies everything wicked but he is sickeningly likeable. Everyone else in the movie does a great job, Brad Pitt, Eli Roth, Diane Kruger, and more. Col Hans Landa seemed to be the main character and every one around him played bit parts that held the story together.

The violence in this movie was particularly graphic throughout the whole thing. You felt the brutality of being beaten with a bat, the malice of being shot, the pain of your flesh being cut. The violence was sudden, abrupt and brutal. It was hard to watch at times. My friend and I and the whole audience cringed and squirmed in unison at some points.

The pacing of the movie was a big problem with me. I found it slow and somewhat frustrating. Mind you at no point did I find myself bored with the movie but I found myself getting annoyed that something wasn’t happening. I think the lack of music in the movie had a great deal to do with that. Tarantino has a knack for picking songs that really amplify what is going on onscreen but I found that it was noticeably missing throughout. Yes there is music, obvious blatant music that I found was ill-selected for the most part, that is played at very select moments but other than that there is very little. I found the quietness distracting.

You can’t go into this movie expecting a history lesson. There is very little that is accurate about this movie. Yes there are Nazi’s, Hitler, it takes place in 1944, and the Brits and Americans are trying to stop them but that is about as accurate as the film gets. But the movie itself is hard to explain without giving the good stuff away.

I recommend Inglorious Basterds. As I said it is good. Not great, or amazing, or a masterpiece, just good. You will be entertained and shocked and walk out having viewed something that did not waste your time.

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