My good friend Richard invited me to drop what I was doing and see Inglorious Basterds with him. I had no idea what to expect, other than that this was a Quentin Tarantino film and would therefore feature some incredible dialog and over-the-top graphic violence. Oh, and Brad Pitt with a big knife -- I remember that much from the one trailer I'd seen. This film is my new Number Four for the summer, which leaves the standings as follows: 1. Star Trek 2. Up 3. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince 4. Inglourious Basterds 5. District 9 6. Terminator: Salvation 7. Angels & Demons 8. G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra ----The Threshold of Disappointment... do not cross!---- 9. Transformers: ROTF 10. Land of the Lost 11. Night at The Museum 2 12. Wolverine I've never been so tense during movie dialog. In particular, I commend to you the opening scene in which an SS Colonel interviews a French farmer who is hiding Jews under his floorboards. We all know things are going to end badly, but we don't know exactly how, and while we sit and worry both the SS and the Frenchman are so incredibly polite. It was heartbreaking. And it nicely set the tone for a film which uses the glorification of man's inhumanity to man to horrify us. Or maybe to make us laugh. Or, remembering that this is Quentin Tarantino we're talking about, both. Just don't expect this film to fit in with what you think you know about World War II. It's not historical fiction, it's not revisionism... no, it's outright "alternate history," and that's on a good day.
