Pedromonkey's DVD Review Corner.....PART 2 OF 4 DEC 09

And now it's time for Part 2 of this weeks Dvd review corner, Today im gonna look at Quentin Tarantino's follow up to last years lackluster DEATHPROOF.....

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS

The first time i heard the name Quentin Tarantino, i was 11 years old, that was when his second film appeared in theaters amid a hail of controversy due to it outbursts of graphic Violence, that film was Pulp Fiction. It was 1994, 1 year before i was due to go to high school, now i know like pretty much everyone else that Dogs came out in 1991, but i was only 8 and still obssessed with my G.I Joe figures. I remember this because my mother took me to town to do some christmas shopping and we walked into Virgin Megastores and right infront of me was vhs box with a picture of a group of men silouhetted agains the white case with blood splattered across the cover and the words Reservoir Dogs empblazend over the blood.
I looked at my mum and i asked her if i could have it and being only 11 years old i was told no. cut to three years later, im now 14 and the previous night, C4 were showing From Dusk Till Dawn, now i knew my parents had recorded it so i decied to fake being ill to get the day of school, so at 10am when the house was empty i went down stairs, found the tape popped it into the VCR and my entire world changed, i had never seen anything like it before, You could say that Dawn introduced me to the Horror genre. The closest i'd ever gotten to watching a horror film was when my dad decided it would be a good idea to show me Aliens at the age of 9. That was a bad idea, i had nightmares for days. Back to 1997 and i discover True romance, that film introduced me to crime cinema, the next year was Reservoir Dogs, Pulp fiction and Jackie Brown, three films that i believe made me into the movie mad maniac that i am to day, after Jackie Brown Tarantino made nothing for 7 years then in 2004, at the age of 21 i hear that Tarantino as announced that he would be making his first film since 1997, an epic martial arts bloodbath called KILL BILL, i had no idea who the shaw brothers were, what lady snow blood was and knew of David Carridine only as Cane from the T.V series Kung fu and knew Daryl Hannah as the mermaid that Tom Hanks fancied in Splash.

Now i will go on record as saying that Quentin Tarantino, unintentionally got me hooked on genre movies which inturn has led me to this site, the wonderful Cult-labs.com, and this brings me to the reason for todays blog because his 8th film, entitled INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, gets it's dvd release on monday 7th of december 2009, and what can i say about this long awaited film.....WOW!!!

Now this film has been in the making since Jackie Brown, it's taken him 13 years to finally bring his "masterpiece" to the screen and boy does he do it in style. The film starts with a Frence Farmer outside his house chopping wood, in the distance is a Nazi motorcade, the Germans pull up to the house and a German Officer steps out and introduces himself, The man is Lt, Hans Landa, played by german actor Christophe Waltz, a Performance that basically steals the movie, this actor is a revelation and i do beleive that because of this film he will definately gain more attention, anyway back to the film, what follows is a twenty minute conversation between Landa and the Farmer, 20 minutes of pure tension as he searchs for hidden Jews, yet he know the farmer is lying but wants to make him endure the pressure he's willing put upon this poor man, the scene ends with an eruption of gun fire and the escape of a young Jewish woman called Shoshanna, we cut to an open courtyard, a line of young jewish Americans are stood to attention as Brad Pitt enters, mustach and strong texan accent, he tells them that their mission is to drop into france as civilians and cause as much hurt and death to the Nazi's as possible, These men are the Basterds of the title.

Now i don't want to give the entire plot away so from here on i shall tell you of some really stand out scenes.

Firstly is a rendezvous in a french basement tavern that includes a game involving, a double agent, two of the basterds, a british spy and a suspicous SS officer, this scene starts of quite jolly, people drinking, laughing and having fun then BAM!! serious tense conversation, that ends in a hail of gun fire. A fantastic scene set in a restaurant between a Shoshanna, a german private called Fredrik Zolla and Goerbals, that ends with shoshanna sat alone with Hans Landa, the fear and tenstion on the young girls face is almost unbearable. This is a very difficult scene to watch becaise Landa is such and evil basterd. And the last scene is the finale set in the cinema. i won't say what happens but i will say that if this did happen in the second world war then Eli Roth's Character would be the most important person of the second world war.

Now onto the cast. The cast for this film is outstanding when western audiences have never really heard of many of the actors.

first off id Brad Pitt, ridiculed by movie geeks the internet over because of the teaser trailer, now Pitt is an exceptionally good actor, look at David Fincher's Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Pitt is Fantastic in the Role of Lt Aldo Raine, the leader of the basterds, a man with a thick Texan accent who is if truth be told a bit of an idiot, yet Pitt manages to pull of the seriousness and Deadpan comedy his role requires. He is very good. Next we have Christophe Waltz as Col. Hans Landa, a small man but very ruthless a bit like Ronald Lacey's Toht from Raiders of the Lost Ark, he brings a menacing evil to the role and as i stated earlier complete steals the movie, a role that won him the best actor award at this years Cannes Film Festival. Then we have the wonderfuly beautiful Diane Kruger as the double agent, German film star, Bridgette Von Hammersmark, She is very good in her role as a sort of demi femme fatale. Adding a bit of genre to the film is Hostel director Eli Roth in a role many people thought was a case of he's me mate and im sticking him in me movie, sort of agreement, but Roth is acctually pretty good as the Informous "Bear Jew" Donny Donowitz, the Basterd who like to club Nazi's to death with a baseball bat. Then there's rising British actor Michael Fassbender as Lt. Archie Hicox, the british agent sent in to the join the basters. He's very intelligent and speaks Germanic and lastly we have Shoshanna herself played by beautiful french actress Melanie Laurent, i am not familier with her work but after watching her in this i am intrigued to search out her previous movies, She brings an innocence to a role that would have been sorely missed if a big name hollywood actress had played the part.
There are also other actors in the film that are recognisable from Mike Myers, Rod Taylor, B.J Novak, Samm Levine, Julie Dreyfuss and a certain mr Samuel L Jackson as the narrator.

Okay we've covered a little history of Tarantino and the standout moments and cast now onto the writing and the direction....

Firstly the script, I like many people managed to read the script online before seeing the film and i managed to read the entire 162 page script in let than 2 1/2 hours, and at the time it was the best screenplay i'd ever read, the way QT writes is just so fluid and his dialog is very very well written, the only problem i had was that the narrative was a little over place, a problem that was corrected when he eventually started filming. There are alot of dialog heavy scenes that are expertly written that while you watch the film you'd think it was the actors speaking without a script. The direction is crisp, the cinematography is outstanding and you can definately see how far Tarantino has come since the days of Reservoir Dogs, is he a master of cinema? Not yet but he's almost there, is this his masterpiece? yes, it's his Goodfellas, his Schindler's list, His Godfather part 2, and to the people who say " i didn't know it was a remake", it's not, the only thing these films share is a title and a men on a mission plotline, the rest is pure Tarantino. I will leave you with a warning though, this film is 85% in different languages, so you will need to read subtitles, this was not an issue for me but that should not stop you from watching this film, infact please see this movie......

Pedromonkey's score...

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS - 6/5

The next review will be The hangover....stay tuned....