Well made garbage

Rating: 2/10 (29 April 2010)

Inglourious Basterds is cinema of the immature, of the man-child, of the loser film geek, of the fan-boy.
It does not nourish the soul nor does it feed the mind. It's masturbatory and narcissistic... it might be the perfect reflection of what American culture has become. It's empty macabre fun, it's the cinematic equivalent of binge drinking.
Basterds is very well made bad film. Tarrantino's script is overly wordy and strains at being clever. Clichéd lines abound - see anything the Superstar Celebrity and terrible actor Brad Pitt spoke.
The film's biggest sin is that it is, yet again, a movie about movies. Tarrantino's last three films have been the same thing. When will he stop cribbing from the genres he loves and think up an original idea for a film? My guess is never. Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs were audacious flukes by a young video store clerk. The middle aged man who wants to re-imagine movies from his favorite film genres bores me.
Tarrantino chronologically- One Good movie, one great movie, one fair movie and the rest are garbage. His movies are overly examined and justified by sycophantic fans trying to find a touchstone to the "true cinema". A bit of advice to them- go watch the movies Tarrantino steals from for touchstones. His synthesis of regurgitated cinematic genres gives us nothing new... except for shining a light on the excesses of our pop culture -"oh dude! Did u see how that guys head came off with a samurai sword in Kill Bill 2?! AWESOME!" This is what happens when a video store clerk/film geek/pot head gets to live out his fantasy.
The night of the 2010 Golden Globes, as Scorsese is receiving the Cecil B. DeMille Award for a lifetime of achievement in film, the cutaway to Tarrantino after the film clips from Scorsese's career is jolting. Tarrantino is scowling. He looks as if something sour flashed across his palate. I then realized that Tarrantino barely belonged in the same room as Scorsese. Maybe he realized it too.