Movies about movies

Rating: 10/10 (12 September 2018)

Like all of Tarrantino's films, he's really making a movie about movies, or about a type of movie. Inglourious Basterds is by far my favorite, and it's about war propaganda films.
I realized a long while ago that there were two important, yet distinct, types of ways to enjoy this movie. There are those who get excited at the prospect of seeing "our boys" kick Nazi @$$, and there are those who realize that is exactly how a propaganda film wants you to feel. It's more harmless today, since the actual Nazi party is a thing of the past, but it is important to realize that this film is trying to make get us to realize that we have selected a category of person and we generally tend to glorify subjecting them to horrific levels of violence.
Much like with fairy tales, it is important to ask when watching a movie "Why does the movie think violence against this person is justified?" Why is it okay for Rumplestiltskin to be ripped in half, or the witch in Hansel and Gretle to be burned alive? Why is it okay for Omar to fill the collaborating French interpreter with as many bullets as they do to the higher ranking members of the Nazi party?
To counter the inevitable person who thinks I'm reading too much into it, recall that the film premiere at the end is a fictional Nazi war propaganda film, where Zoller slaughters close to 250 people in front of a laughing, cheering, and energized audience. Hitler laughs at dying Americans in much the same mood that we might have earlier laughed when Donowitz bashed in a soldier's head with a bat.
Again I am impressed with Tarrantino's ability to write lengthy dialogue scenes about topics as mundane as glasses if milk and King Kong which are nerve-wrackingly suspenseful due to their context.