In theaters
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, 152 minutes, rated R.
Quentin Tarantino’s best movie to date turns out to be his latest movie, “Inglourious Basterds,” which clashes together history and fantasy, intentionally echoes back to many of the World War II movies that came before it, and uses them to inform it.
This is history boldly re-envisioned, with Tarantino, who also wrote the script, crafting a story based on Enzo Castellari’s 1978 movie, “The Inglorious Bastards.” How close are the two movies? Let’s just say they share the same title — though even there, the spellings are different. Other than that, we’re dealing with two different films, with Tarantino’s being the superior movie.
The film opens in 1941. We’re in Nazi-occupied France and the smoothly evil Nazi Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz, superb), otherwise known as the “Jew Hunter,” has stopped by to question a farmer about whether he’s hiding Jews in his house. Turns out the man is, which leads to a tense game of cat-and-mouse (beautifully realized by Tarantino in an homage to the spaghetti Western) that results in a horrific blast of bloodshed.
One girl escapes from the well of her family’s slaughter — Shosanna (Melanie Laurent) — who several years later comes to run a movie theater in Paris. It’s her ownership of the theater that proves critical to the film’s ending in ways that allow Shosanna the possibility for revenge. The moment she’s struck by the idea of it, she’s overcome by the rush of it and sets a plan into motion that will enact it.
Running alongside this story is the story of the Basterds themselves, a group of American Jews led by Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), whose goal it is to “kill Nazis.” And they mean business, too, going so far as to scalp their victims alive and, in some cases, carve swastikas into their foreheads just so no one forgets who these people really are at their core. The director Eli Roth also is a Basterd, and as anyone who has seen the movie can attest, no one would want to be on the business end of his baseball bat.
Watching the Basterds do their grisly work, some will question whether Tarantino has made his Jewish heroes any better than his Nazis foes. They are ruthless killing machines stripped of humanity who have made their own monstrous laws. Has he gone too far by doing this? One could view it two ways. Tarantino’s flaw is that he didn’t consider any of this — he’s just in it for the sheer blunt violence his inner 12-year-old always has favored. Or maybe he did consider it and the insight he offers is that when pressed, humans are capable of anything.
It’s up for debate.
Meanwhile, another thread tightens its noose around another genre — noir. Joseph Goebbels (Sylvester Groth) has made a movie about a Nazi war hero (Daniel Bruhl) that will have its premiere at Shosanna’s theater. Hitler will attend, as will many other undesirables, which means in one night, a bounty of Nazis will collect under one roof to celebrate their own war crimes. Thanks to a gorgeous German movie star (Diane Kruger) working the sidelines as a spy, the Allies are aware of this. So are the Basterds. And then there’s Shosanna, who has ideas of her own. Burn down the house with everyone caught inside, and the war would end.
But how to get there? Tarantino maneuvers and shifts, swinging the plot between the characters as the tension mounts, mostly thanks to the careful eye of Hans Landa, who also is attending the event and senses that something is going down. Not that he’s about to allow that to happen. And not that you’re about to be bored in the process.
Grade: A-
On DVD and Blu-ray Disc
Several titles are new to DVD and Blu-ray disc, including the eighth season of “Scrubs,” which remains a highlight. It’s smart, well-balanced lunacy with an undercurrent of romantic and dramatic tension that cuts through the laughs.
In the halls of Sacred Heart Hospital, where the series takes place, the joke is that nothing is as sacred as it should be. Everything here is free to be lampooned — hypochondriacs, love, cancer, you name it — but the writers know that there are consequences to such behavior, and they deliver the fallout. What’s admirable about the show is that it consistently tries for something new, and while it doesn’t always succeed in its leaps of faith, it does make an effort, which on television is becoming something of a rarity.
Two additional television shows are recommended, including “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: The Ninth Season,” which is amplified beyond reason. And it had to be, particularly since it needed to compensate for the loss of Warrick (Gary Dourdon). The show comes through, with Warrick’s death actually giving the series a shot of new life. Fairing equally well is “Sons of Anarchy: Season One” (DVD, Blu-ray), which follows a band of outlaw bikers through all sorts of dramatic hell. Ron Perlman, Charlie Hunnam and Katey Segal star.
The sixth season of “One Tree Hill” is available, not that anyone should cheer its arrival. Soap drives the series into rooms bursting with flurries of tiny melodramas, though no substance. Add to this a clutter of storylines that choke the momentum — the chief focus is the marriage of Peyton and Lucas, who define annoying — and you have a show seriously lacking the tension and interest featured in the first few seasons.
Things look up for the third season of “Brothers & Sisters,” in which the Walkers successfully heave and sigh through their own familial dramas with the help of a super cast that includes Rachel Griffiths, Tom Skerritt, Sally Field, Rob Lowe and Balthazar Getty. And then there’s the third season of “Heroes” (DVD, Blu-ray), which is an improvement over the rotten second season, but which doesn’t exactly recapture the greatness of the first season. This season is a mixed bag of confusing storylines, a few genuinely thrilling episodes that lend themselves to the promise of improvement, and then an ending that gives itself over to a groundswell of disappointment. Abilities, Villains and Fugitives abound here — and they all come into question in a show that still hasn’t figured out what to do with them.
WeekinRewind.com is the site for Bangor Daily News film critic Christopher Smith’s blog, DVD giveaways and movie reviews. Smith’s reviews appear Fridays and weekends in Lifestyle, as well as on bangordailynews.com. He may be reached at Christopher@weekinrewind.com.