About time

Rating: 9/10 (25 July 2010)

It's taken me a while to get around to watching this movie - even though I have owned to on DVD for many months. Partly because a lot of bad reviews left me thinking it would be a so-so movie (I try not to get influenced by reviews - usually looking at them after I've seen the thing)despite liking his earlier films.
I'm glad I did. It was the most entertaining film I have seen for years and certainly his best since Pulp Fiction - and possible his best. A lot of reviews criticise this for being derivative. Well, have you been watching cinema lately - there's hardly a scrap of originality anywhere. I cannot understand how anyone who loves cinema cannot be entertained by QT's clearly self-conscious but hugely affectionate plundering. All directors do it - but few with such transparent pleasure.
The tension in some of the conversational scenes was masterful and every word counted - those that think every single word in film should be a 'plot mover' should keep their crappy expositional dialogue firmly in the knuckle-headed one-dimensional blockbusters. Even the enjoyable but forgettable Dark Knight was just a kids films masquerading as an adult film - whereas this is entirely and refreshingly adult.
Yes - the film is full of absurd conceits - but again brilliantly interwoven ones, drenched with pathos and irony, as well as sheer for-the-hell-of-it fun. Those who say the Nazi's come out well in this movie are barking mad. They come across - as they should - as generally dull but psychopathic administrators. The banality and horror of their occupation comes across well - and the ending is the most gratuitously uplifting ending I have seen for some time (like Deathproof was - which I also enjoyed). You can't find more deserving bad guys in movies - and rightly so.
Love life. Love the brutal absurdity of it all. A great, brilliantly constructed, written, acted, filmed movie.