INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (2009) - 13/11/2019

Rating: 8/10 (10 March 2020)

An fun, engrossing, beautifully crafted piece of nonsense, the likes of which we hadn't seen in a long long time. The silliness of the story is marvelously camouflaged with great dialogue and some superb performances. Christoph Waltz must be thinking already about his acceptance speech. What a performance! The civilised monster, polyglot, refined and deadly. He gets us going from the first, sensational scene. Brad Pitt is also wonderful. Was he putting a Mussolinni chin while impersonating an Italian? I thought so. His character's name sounds like Aldo Ray and I'm sure that's no accident. The film is full of movie references. Another character is named Fenek, as an homage to his 1970's Edwige Fenech. What is already one of Tarantino's trademarks is his sure step along the most immediately recognizable bits of pop culture. He's clearly not a cultured man but a pop expert, king in a world where people get their news from TV, don't read, other than magazines and comics, etc. That's how it happens, to be in the right place at the right time. For better or worse, these are Tarantino times. Masterpiece of modern cinema, highly recommend it.

Mitchell Bulfin