Movie- Inglourious Basterds

Inglourious Basterds had multiple nominations in this year's Oscars--- Best Picture, Best Director and Best Supporting Actor. Christoph Waltz won for Best Supporting Actor.

Let me just say...I did not expect to like Inglourious Basterds. I am not one of those Quentin Tarantino lovers, who think anything he does is gold...in fact, there are many of his films that I am not really that fond of. Also, I could take or leave Brad Pitt. So this movie did not have a ton of appeal for me.

Ooooops. I was wrong! OK, I admitted it.

Inglorious Basterds (2009) was an excellent film. Yes, it had the trademark Tarantino gore...but it is set in the time of war, and the gore that it fictionalizes is nothing compared to the gore that really happened, especially that set in motion by the Nazis and Hitler.

Basterds is set in a fictional world, where a group of American soldiers went into Germany spreading terror among the Nazis by their cruelty and disregard for any conventions. They ravaged Nazis, because to them, as Jews, all Nazis deserved it. Now you have to remember, this is a Tarantino reflected world. It is not true life, and does not pretend to be. It is more if a comic book version of The Dirty Dozen. Good guys and bad are CLEARLY delineated, and there is no question about who is the hero and who is evil.

And the amazing thing is that this works...a world where Hitler is killed by a team of bloodthirsty, but ultimately heroic Americans? Who isn't into that? The movie is really beyond description, but involves a movie theater, Hitler dying at the hands of the team, underground fighters, scalps, a bat (baseball) and the amazing, menacing Christoph Waltz, who brings the term "urbane terror" to life as the Nazi officer who hunts Jews.

Waltz brings a jittery-ness to every scene he is in. He is menace personified, but surrounded by a charm of a man of the world. He really, more than Pitt, brings this movie to another level.

Pitt is fine in his lead role, but nothing to write home about, and the other actors in the team are mostly interchangeable. But the cast is only a sidebar for Tarantino...it is about this story that keeps lunging forward, a story that is so not real, and yet somehow makes us want it to be real. It is a movie that really does defy most real description, but engages at basic, visceral level. I don't think it is one of those movies that makes you ponder overmuch, but it gives one hell of a ride while watching.