Movie Monday at the Troc Presents: Inglourious Basterds
As part of their great Movie Monday night at the Trocadero, they will be showing Inglourious Basterds tonight on the big screen! There will also be a raffle for special prizes during the showing including some limited edition silkscreened posters created just for tonight’s screening. The price is still $3 and that gets you in and goes toward a drink. Get there early, before 7:00 and get a free beer and a bag of popcorn! As always the event is 21+.
Inglourious Basterds was Quentin Tarantino’s latest film starring Brad Pitt, and hits DVD and Blu-Ray this Tuesday. Quite honestly even though I am a die-hard Tarantino fan I am really torn on this picture, for the simple reason the film seemed like a bait and switch to me. See I went in there expecting a man on a mission film, an hour and a half of Brad Pitt and Eli Roth killing “Nahtzees” in horrible and inventive ways while spitting Tarantino’s brand of pop culture obsessed bubblegum dialog to his usual mixtape soundtrack of songs; which are a love letter to the genre he is portraying. But no such luck. The Basterds are there but only take up about 20 mins of the 153 min runtime, the rest is almost a WW2 version of Kill Bill with another blonde gone bad on a mission. This time to kill as many Nazis as humanly possible.
Don’t get me wrong, the film is by no stretch of the imagination bad by any means, its just not what the commercials, posters and media campaign would lead you to believe the film is. With that in mind going in you might enjoy the film a bit more, and I have to give Tarantino serious credit for the ending I really didn’t see that coming and really dug it. So I will probably pick it up, and give it another look because it’s a good film, but it’s just not the film in the trailer.
I have to say, the Inglorius Basterds was awesome exactly because it sticks to Tarantino’s intensely dialogue driven style. Look at all the movies (besides Kill Bill), and the dialogue and acting is the key. The tension in the scenes, and the interplay between characters.
Resevoir Dogs? Almost entirely dialogue.
Pulp Fiction? Dialogue, and dialogue.
Think about Pulp Fiction, most of the goriest parts are alluded to, not shown directly. The killing of the boxer, what happens to the dudes in the basement, etc.
Sure, they both mixed in a few outrageous scenes of blood and guts, but it was always about the characters and their situations. That’s what made them great, and what makes Inglorius Basterds so great. Only Inglorius Basterds takes the level of acting to completely new heights. Simply one of the best movies in my recent memory.