Inglourious Basterds

Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds is an exceptional film. It's a tribute to film, a film fanatic's crowning achievement, a celluloidic lapis lazuli heuristically annihilating the Third Reich. Strong performances all around, Christoph Waltz (Col. Hans Landa) trying to steal the show ala Frank Booth unsuccessfully due to Brad Pitt's (Lt. Aldo Raine) non-Jeffrey Beaumontesque counterpoint. Aren't these names simply outstanding: Lt. Aldo Raine, Col. Hans Landa, Sgt. Donny Donowitz (Eli Roth), Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent), Marcel (Jacky Ido). Set up and executed like a post-modern fairy tale, Basterds unreels like a quaintly distinct incandescent extremity, bluntly interdicting fictional necessities in a multicultural absurdist panorama. Every introduced character is compelling; every scene an odd mixture of frank subtlety; the pipe, how about that pipe!; and I really don't know what else to say. Don't want to go into too much detail and ruin it (especially considering that I'm reviewing it six weeks later) and know that I won't have enough time to analyze it until at least mid-December. So I'll just say that, those things, and hope you like it, or don't.