Bon Jorno.

Yes, I know that is not how you spell the Italian, but bear with me.

We all love to love and hate Quentin Tarantino. Few major directors manage to maintain the profile and acclaim he has whilst pissing off so many people. Reading reviews of his films, I never really seem able to determine if the writer felt it was good or bad. There is a grudging respect for this enfant terrible of the Hollywood system even as many people decide they don’t like his films.

I have to admit that I’m not entirely sure what I feel about him either. On the one hand, I do believe I love Pulp Fiction and the Kill Bill duo, but on the other hand, there are so many things about them that truly just shit me to tears. I think it is his incredible knowledge of film history and styles, and his unnerving penchant for referencing so much that has come before him. It is uber-conscious filmmaking, and that is something that is generally so distancing for an audience.

What sets Tarantino apart, however, from other directors who attempt this level of derivation is that his films are so damned fun. They’re generally very entertaining, well constructed, with great casts and stunning visuals. Inglourious Basterds (it is SO hard to type that title out without misspelling it - that is, without correcting the spelling to make it correct) fits neatly into his oeuvre, though I feel that his own neurotic referencing tendencies are subdued, to probably make this one of his most generally palatable films, even if it isn’t the best. 

The Inglourious Basterds of the title are a ragtag mix of Jewish American soldiers fighting Nazis during the second world war, led by Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt.) The mission apparent in this film is to destroy a premiere screening of the new Joseph Goebbels (Sylvester Groth) propaganda film in Paris, where much of the glitterati of the Nazi party will be present, including our dear friend Adolf himself. The employ the help of Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger), a German superstar actress working as a secret agent for the Nazis, though they don’t realise that the owner of the cinema Shosanna Dreyfuss (Melanie Laurent), a Jew who escaped the murder of her family earlier in the war and has now assumed a new identity, has hatched a similar plan, unknowingly helped by a German soldier, Pvt. Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Brühl) who has developed quite an infatuation for her.

That is the dominant plot-line here, which interestingly doesn’t really feature any description of the standout performer Christoph Waltz, who plays SS agent Col. Hans Landa with an uncanny ability to sniff out and kill Jews and traitors - his performance is netting him every supporting actor award going at the moment. 

Needless to say there is a hell of a lot more going on in this film (it does go for two and a half hours, after all, which says nothing for the fact that our darling Tarantino loves convoluted and interlocking multi-narrative stories), but that is the primary crux. Along the way there are graphic scalpings, beating deaths with baseball bats (courtesy of Eli Roth), incredible gunfights in very small spaces (involving the amazing Michael Fassbender playing a British soldier joining the Basterds undercover), and just general terrific fighting sequences - Tarantino has proven himself more than proficient with this element before, though it is much less stylised and much more dramatically effective than the almost comic scenes in this regard in, for example, his Kill Bill films.

But more than this, the storyline is cohesive and coherent, the performances are all solid (Pitt does well, though he never seems to really put his back into it - though, it looks like he’s not putting his back into it, and that suits the character, so maybe he put his back into it much more than one might initially suspect.) Bruehl and Fassbender and long term loves of mine, and they are terrific, and Melanie Laurent and Diane Kruger and both exceptional in their very different roles. The film looks superb courtesy of Robert Richardson (who also shot the Kill Bills), and the production and costume designs are absolutely exquisite. The blood-work is very realisitic, and props to the film for pulling that off on such a mammoth scale.

Inglourious Basterds is an exceptional film, worth the slog, and worth checking out if you have derived even the slightest inkling of enjoyment from Tarantino films in the past - you could find yourself pleasantly surprised. 4.5 stars.

Unusual Circumstances.

The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button was polarising. I was really, really looking forward to it, and then I kept hearing fairly mediocre things about it, which dropped it down a little on my 'to see' list to the point where I never actually got around to it. For shame.


Button is a terrific film. Director David Fincher (who is responsible for many films I love, including Fight Club and Seven)(hold on - they're all Brad Pitt movies. I swear, that's not the only reason I like these films) pulls out a long (yes, another long one - 166 mins) adaptation of an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story, and makes it work very, very well. Brad Pitt as the eponymous Benjamin and Cate Blanchett as his long-term love interest Daisy lead a terrific cast, notably Taraji P. Henson in her Oscar-nominated role as Benjamin's adopted mother.

The premise is that Benjamin Button is born old and ages backwards - as his years progress, his body goes in the opposite direction. The effects and make up are phenomenal. He is always obviously Brad Pitt, but he looks like a short old man, or like a teenager again, and it all looks real. His performance is very solid, though it is not at all flashy. Benjamin seems to always be slightly bemused by the world around him and the lot that he has drawn, and his innocence and naivety serve the story well. By contrast, Blanchett's Daisy is very high strung, very high maintenance, very full on, and it is a great contrast. She lives a wild life as an internationally acclaimed ballet dancer, and enjoys the trappings that entails her: travel, men, parties, whatever she wants. When her career ends, however, the ability for her and Benjamin to be together arises, and perfectly as they both draw towards the middle of their lives, to a point where they, for once, are of roughly the same age.

I'll leave the story description there, but it is beautiful and moving. Spanning the entire life of the key characters, it is epic in scope, but it never drags. Benjamin's life is eventful, yes, but never unbelievably. Never inconceivably. It is entirely feasible that everything that happens to him (outside of the medical angle) could happen to him, but it is just enough to keep the film going. Pitt and Blanchett are perfect as the two leads, and the supports, while generally minor, are strong. The film looks amazing, design and effects-wise, and Fincher blends everything together to give us a stunning piece of cinema.

I don't know which I think should have won, this film or Slumdog Millionaire, at last year's Oscar ceremony. I thoroughly enjoyed them both, in very different ways. I do think the actors lost out to more deserving performances (though why Blanchett didn't feature in the nominations is a mystery, but I think everytime she steps on screen she should be gifted awards), but I don't really understand why the film was so divisive. It was a remarkable film in every way. 5 stars.

Together We Will Live Forever.

Darren Aronofsky had a bit of a bad time with his third film, The Fountain. Initially, he had a US$75mil budget and Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett in the lead roles, but when Pitt left the project shortly before principal photography was due to begin, the project was scrapped for a couple of years. US$20mil or so had already been spent creating sets and props in Queensland, and many of these were auctioned off. The film was then reimagined with less than half the budget and with Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz taking on the leads.

The films takes place over a thousand years, ultimately about the search for eternal life, specifically the Tree of Life from the bible, hidden away after Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden. Tom Creo (Jackman) occurs in three different eras - back in the days of the Spanish Inquisition, sent on a search for the tree at the behest of the Queen (chronogically, Weisz's first character also); in 2005, part of a research team to try and slow the development of brain tumours (with Weisz as his wife); and far in the future, as the protector of the tree of life, drifting through space to a dying star in order to save it.

Weisz as Issi, Tom's wife in the 2005 time period, has a brain tumour also, which is untreatable. This storyline is the primary narrative force, with Tom ignoring other progresses in his work (such as neurological regression, effectively reversing the aging process) in a desperate attempt to find a cure for his wife. It is a race against time, intercut with segments from the initial quest for the tree and the subsequent attempt to take it to the stars. However, the search for eternal life, as offered by the tree, is shown to be somewhat fruitless. Not in the sense that the tree doesn't hold those powers, but that in struggling so hard to discover these secrets, Tom actually misses so much of the life that he is meant to be living - pointed out abstractly by his superior at the research facility Dr Lillian Guzetti (Ellen Burstyn - how I love her.) He misses the opportunity to spend time with his dying wife (who is, incidentally, writing the story of the search for the tree and its raising to the heavens) because he is so focused on trying to cure her, and to make her live forever. Indeed, the Mayan/Spanish section of the story has a similar ending - the quest for eternal life in fact brings quite the opposite for so many.

It is a very, very bold undertaking from Aronofsky. Coming off Pi and Requiem for a Dream, he did away with so many elements that had hitherto defined him (though not quite managing to do away with the repeated short cuts and closeups! Not quite!) as he attempted to reimagine the sci-fi genre. It only succeeded to a limited degree, though definite props for the scope, vision and idea behind it.

Jackman... I just think he looks too young for a film where he has to carry emotion through centuries. His face doesn't have the ability to look wizened or craggy. At the end, he still looks young and innocent, and I felt like he should have been so, so much more tired. He does put in a valiant effort, though I think Pitt would have suited it better. Weisz (who I honestly think looks alternately like Kate Winslet and Keira Knightley in everything I see her in) does a very good job as the wife battling cancer who is resigned and content with her fate to die, and channels Natalie Portman in the Star Wars prequels (vomit) as the Spanish queen. The supporting cast is solid (did I mention that Ellen Burstyn is in it? And how I love her? I did? Well, you can't bring her up too often), the film does look a treat (though some of the Mayan sets seem a little false...) and Clint Mansell does another astonishing job with the score. It just didn't quite gel the way I think it was aiming. It's not a write-off, not by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm going to give it 3 stars.

Further...

... to this, via here and thanks for it, comes this:



It's gratuitous posting of pretty people, but I'm not ashamed.

I'm also back from Iceland, so I'm going to hit the ground running tomorrow with a few films over a few days, so we can ease off of random pictures of Brad Pitt half naked. Sad in some ways, happy in others.

Also, watch out for my word on A Not So Silent Night, which I'm seeing tomorrow here in ol' London. I have high hopes. Please don't disappoint me, Rufus.

Be Still...

Charlie Hunnam and Brad Pitt involving themselves in the same project? It's like a wet dream in 35mm.