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What I found interesting about Basterds is how much it played around with my own preconceived notions. Its narrative structure superficially resembles a wartime propaganda film, but at the same time it deliberately mocks the simplistic conventions of the genre. The supposed heroes are the biggest sadists while two of the most sympathetic characters are enemy soldiers, Shosanna's revenge plot turns out to be completely pointless, the main villain survives, and the war ultimately isn't won through righteous violence, but by making a back door deal. It creates this weird atmosphere where every scene feels familiar, but there's something just slightly off about it, almost like a bizarre version of deją vu. I loved that. Some parts definitely could have benefited from being shorter, but then that's the way I feel about most of Tarantino's films. 
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Jun 11, 2015 22:56
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The main villain, Hitler, does not survive.
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Jun 12, 2015 00:59
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Raxivace posted:You have seen an astoundingly low number of films if Inglourious Basterds is one of the worst you've ever watched. I say "worst" Alfred P. Pseudonym posted:The only part of Basterds that stands out as indulgent is the scene where Fassbender's character is introduced. I thought I was going to see a cross between The Dirty Dozen and The Good, The Bad and the Ugly set in 1940s Occupied France. Instead I got some trashy overlong movie with a meandering script (half the things that happen seem ultimately pointless to the conclusion of the movie, or only work due to massive and convenient coincidences) and what was, for me at least, a totally unnecessary and bloated meditation on the power of cinema. And even in the "good" scenes I remember them all relying on the same gimmick: one character (or characters) knows something that the other character may or may not know, there's a cat and mouse game as the tension builds, and then there's a violent climax. Perhaps I'm mis-remembering but I think that almost every dramatic scene fits that same mold. Even the dialogue, which is usually a Tarantino highlight, just felt out of place and stupid. That German guy that Tarantino discovered was really good and the other actors had solid performances but as far as I'm concerned nothing could redeem this movies awful script.
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Jun 12, 2015 01:01
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Seeing as you can't tell the difference between Italian cinema, which Basterds was riffing on, and German cinema, I don't think you are smart enough to actually form an opinion on anything other than those Roger Corman movies you mentioned.
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Jun 12, 2015 03:19
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The movie references both German and Italian cinema, but it hardly matter because the movie is a bloated, boring and stupid mess regardless of what it does or does not reference.
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Jun 12, 2015 18:18
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Actually it's none of those things and is actually a really good, interesting movie.
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Jun 13, 2015 06:23
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This is scintillating, guys.
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Jun 13, 2015 20:06
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SlipUp posted:All I took from the cheerleader scene is that she was left behind with a creep. It's going to be super weird and awkward for her. The redneck has shown no inclination towards violence. I thought it was more of a statement about leaving behind traditional gender roles but nope it's gotta be rape. That's some Tipper Gore levels of reaching to find something offensive.
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Jun 13, 2015 20:17
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My name is Buck and I'm here to squeeze some orange juice for you.
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Jun 13, 2015 20:21
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Kill Bill is the bloated Tarantino movie and Deathproof is the boring one (I really dig Deathproof but I suppose it's the slowest). I'm really not sure which film you could call stupid, I'd have to include From Dusk Til' Dawn and even that one is way smarter than it appears. It seems like even his harshest critics tend to admit that he is an intelligent filmmaker, they just dislike his choices.
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Jun 13, 2015 20:51
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Yeah I always really loved Death Proof (especially the first half - the second half is the part I find to be self-indulgent a bit silly but fun). But the first half - basically, the whole long sequence at the bar culminating in the murder that night - is just fantastic. I dunno why, but I have always loved movies like that with tons of dialogue where nothing really happens but it's well-directed and well-executed enough to be fun and engaging and intriguing or something. It's like how when I think of Basterds, I just think of the two fantastic setpieces primarily consisting of dialogue - the opening scene with Waltz and the Farmer, and the basement tavern scene. The rest of the movie melts away (because it was frankly wasn't that great or memorable in my opinion) but those two sections are better than most films ever get. And part of it is that Tarantino is really taking chances and seriously going all out in parts of films like Basterds and Django - he really isn't half-assing it, he is fully committing, and I respect that. So when it fails, it fails spectacularly (like the whole movie theater climax in Basterds which I think is sort of bewilderingly awful and tone-deaf at times) but when he succeeds, he also succeeds pretty spectacularly. But then my taste in film is a bit weird and I'll always choose the slow, barely-moving dialogue-laden stuff. Jim Jarmusch is probably my all-time favorite director (in terms of being like a fan) for reference.
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Jun 14, 2015 01:52
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The baseball bat scene in Basterds is about as good a deconstruction of war films as you can get without just being a lecture or textbook. Looking at it, it's all the disturbing moral leaps war films have to make in order to make violence palatable. It's amazing.
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Jun 14, 2015 08:17
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Snowman_McK posted:The baseball bat scene in Basterds is about as good a deconstruction of war films as you can get without just being a lecture or textbook. Looking at it, it's all the disturbing moral leaps war films have to make in order to make violence palatable. It's amazing.
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Jun 14, 2015 15:56
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Vegetable posted:How does it deconstruct war films? Nation's Pride
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Jun 14, 2015 16:37
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Vegetable posted:How does it deconstruct war films? One side celebrating "heroism" through brutality of another. The baseball scene sets up the "A Nation's Pride" bit at the end, where we see a film where a German war hero is slaughtering Americans to applause.
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Jun 14, 2015 16:38
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American Sniper and the reaction to it makes Inglorious Basterds an even better film.
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Jun 14, 2015 16:56
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Vegetable posted:How does it deconstruct war films? Its plays around with the language of the camera in the build up. The German, the villain, gets all the heroic close ups. After all Aldo's cartoonish talk of Nazis, we get one who's brave, and refuses to bow, knowing his fate. The camera gives him all his close ups, because what he's doing is heroic, even if he's on the wrong side. Then, when he's killed, he lies on the ground, twitching horrifyingly. It juxtaposes the heroic, symbolic language of war films with the savage reality of someone actually getting killed.
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Jun 15, 2015 00:38
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Inglorious Basterds is one of the stranger movie going experiences I've had. The entire theater lost their minds and were hooting and hollering when the nazi got beat with a bat and during the ending massacre, and I just remember sitting their thinking, "I don't think we're supposed be applauding this." Maybe I'm wrong, I'm not really up on film analysis or anything like that, I just like movies.
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Jun 15, 2015 00:44
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girth brooks part 2 posted:Inglorious Basterds is one of the stranger movie going experiences I've had. The entire theater lost their minds and were hooting and hollering when the nazi got beat with a bat and during the ending massacre, and I just remember sitting their thinking, "I don't think we're supposed be applauding this." No, you're absolutely not supposed to be cheering. Or at least, if you are, the film is expecting you to wonder why you're cheering. All the film making artifice in the buildup to the first swing suddenly being stripped away should work as a reminder that a man is being beaten to death on screen. The man closing his eyes, accepting his fate, is immediately followed up by him mewling on the ground as his nervous system is destroyed. It's a loving brilliant scene that should make people uncomfortable (it sure as poo poo made me uncomfortable, still does) that people cheered it is kind of reinforcing the point of the movie. Tarantino and Verhoven should have a drink sometime and commiserate about people not getting their war movies.
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Jun 15, 2015 01:04
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I cheered a bit during some of the Nazi killing scenes. Then the scene where the Nazi high command is watching Nation's Pride and cheering on the deaths of hundreds of soldiers and I realized that Tarantino was comparing me to Nazis. It was great.
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Jun 15, 2015 02:06
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FreudianSlippers posted:I cheered a bit during some of the Nazi killing scenes. Then the scene where the Nazi high command is watching Nation's Pride and cheering on the deaths of hundreds of soldiers and I realized that Tarantino was comparing me to Nazis. I completely get this, but on the other hand gently caress nazis.
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Jun 15, 2015 04:22
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The scariest thing about Nazis is that they were just regular dudes. They had families and pets and hobbies and were probably on the whole likable and decent guys that when duty called put on uniforms and committed some of the worst atrocities in human history. The sheer horror the Nazis released upon the world is so unfathomable that it's easier to just imagine the people responsible were just horrible monsters. Which is a double edged sword because on the other hand it makes it easy to point at fascist or crypto-fascist parties and say "hey those guys are loving Nazis" but it can also lead to us losing sight of what made the Nazis possible and what lured people to Nazism which can make it harder to spot similar movements popping up. You know if a political party that is fascist in everything but name gets called out they will usually defend themselves by pointing out that they are nothing like those horrible Nazi monsters from Dimension X and are just regular hard working people and some people will actually buy it. Tarantino makes his Nazis more sympathetic and human* than his American war heroes without getting into "Clean Wermacht" bullshit. The comic version of V for Vendetta did essentially the same thing by having all the Norsefire people lead complicated inner lives while the 'hero' of the story is a psychopathic murderer who seems to think purely about ideology. You know "the banality of evil" and all that. I haven't slept in a while so I'm probably rambling incoherently but you get my gist. I hope. *With the exception of Hitler of course whose basically a cartoon caricature. FreudianSlippers fucked around with this message at 05:08 on Jun 15, 2015 |
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Jun 15, 2015 04:59
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Now I kind of want to double feature Basterds with The Act of Killing.
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Jun 15, 2015 05:14
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FreudianSlippers posted:The scariest thing about Nazis is that they were just regular dudes. They had families and pets and hobbies and were probably on the whole likable and decent guys that when duty called put on uniforms and committed some of the worst atrocities in human history. The sheer horror the Nazis released upon the world is so unfathomable that it's easier to just imagine the people responsible were just horrible monsters. You can see the same thing done with terrorists. I was in a discussion at uni where someone thought that we shouldn't use torture because the terrorists are too tough for it.
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Jun 15, 2015 05:59
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FreudianSlippers posted:Tarantino makes his Nazis more sympathetic and human* than his American war heroes without getting into "Clean Wermacht" bullshit. Did you skip the part where the sniper tries to rape Shosanna and Landa strangles Hammersmark?
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Jun 15, 2015 15:23
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So here's a Rodriguez movie I haven't seen mentioned here, perhaps because people are like me and completely forgot he directed it: The Faculty. For such a great cast alone you'd think it would be remembered more, but I guess part of it is that I feel like it's such a perfect 1990s encapsulation movie that some of the resonance is lost. Plus it helped contribute to Jon Stewart getting made Daily Show host.
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Jun 15, 2015 17:01
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What's the story there?
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Jun 15, 2015 17:05
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Chairman Capone posted:So here's a Rodriguez movie I haven't seen mentioned here, perhaps because people are like me and completely forgot he directed it: The Faculty. For such a great cast alone you'd think it would be remembered more, but I guess part of it is that I feel like it's such a perfect 1990s encapsulation movie that some of the resonance is lost. Plus it helped contribute to Jon Stewart getting made Daily Show host. Yea from memory I think the Faculty comes across as a very 90's movie, and there aren't a whole lot of typical Rodriquez touches in it. I consider that a good thing because I'm not a huge Rodriguez fan, and overall I remember The Faculty as a very solid creature feature. Also it has Robert Patrick in a very T-1000 type role.
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Jun 15, 2015 17:09
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:What's the story there? For it helping Stewart get The Daily Show? From what I remember this was at the end of a contract he had with Miramax which he signed with the intention of him getting into movies, but he kept getting only bit parts. Only getting a small role in The Faculty was what finally convinced him to try to go back to trying his luck with TV, and at the same time his Faculty role was prominent enough to help raise awareness of him to help him benefit from Craig Kilborn getting fired (along with some behind the scenes stuff from David Letterman, who had been a support of Stewart but was also worried that Stewart getting a hosting job at CBS would put him in line to replace Letterman himself).
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Jun 15, 2015 17:18
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Huh. Interesting.
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Jun 15, 2015 17:21
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I always imagine Craig Killborn as being exactly like his rear end in a top hat character from Old School, which I guess isn't fair. I have a feeling its not all that far off though, he's got smug oozing out of his pores.
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Jun 15, 2015 17:24
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The Faculty is a tie for the third best Body Snatchers movie with the early 90s one, and is much better than The Invasion.
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Jun 15, 2015 18:07
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Darko posted:The Faculty is a tie for the third best Body Snatchers movie with the early 90s one, and is much better than The Invasion. I only got around to seeing the 70's Body Snatchers with Donald Sutherland this year, and WOW, it really makes The Invasion look like poo poo. Its legitimately scary at certain points, while also being a hell of a lot of fun all the way through. Now that I've seen both I'd have to rank The Invasion as one of the absolute worst remakes ever.
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Jun 15, 2015 19:12
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Alhazred posted:Did you skip the part where the sniper tries to rape Shosanna and Landa strangles Hammersmark? The Sniper was a very sympathetic character up to that point. He's a bit insistent but seems like a pretty nice guy you can see that he feels guilt over killing 250+ men and is scarred by the experience. Then he tries to do something horrible and the nice guy turns out to be capable of horrible things. But Landa is still one of the most charismatic, memorable and likable characters in the film, at least up to that point, he even has a speech explaining that he has nothing against Jews personally it's just his job and he's really good at it. Which is very reminiscent of the whole "I was just following orders" thing the Nazis had going post-war.
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Jun 15, 2015 22:36
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FreudianSlippers posted:The Sniper was a very sympathetic character up to that point. He's a bit insistent but seems like a pretty nice guy you can see that he feels guilt over killing 250+ men and is scarred by the experience. Then he tries to do something horrible and the nice guy turns out to be capable of horrible things. I read him as a parody/satire of the traditional hero's journey's use of women as a reward. He's killed heaps of the enemy, he's a war hero, he's getting a movie made about him, now he gets the quirky girl who couldn't stand him at first. Except Shoshanna rejects him, and that drives him nuts. He's literally a movie character in the context of the film and Shoshanna is breaking the "rules" of the movie.
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Jun 15, 2015 23:35
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Darko posted:American Sniper and the reaction to it makes Inglorious Basterds an even better film. I was just going to post this. Basterds is a great movie, though only "good" in the Tarantino library, but it really got elevated for basically predicting American Sniper before that film was made. It's a genius take on war propaganda films and really makes you think about the genre.
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Jun 15, 2015 23:39
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Basterds never worked for me on the whole, I find the movie wildly inconsistent in terms of quality, but it does have one of my all time favorite scenes, the bar scene where they are trying to pass as Germans. Around the time the movie came out, Tarantino did an interview on NPR about he could never stand similar scenes because they always have the actors speaking english, even when we know they are speaking german in the movie world, but, for him at least, that removed all the tension. He wanted to create a scene that had that genuine tension in it, I think it is amazingly successful. The other half of the interview is that he talks about how he wanted a movie to literally kill Hitler, and have the actual film and movie house be the weapon of destruction, which is one of the weaker elements of the movie and part of my problem with the film. I don't think you can have something that specific and contrived be the foundation of your story and have the progression leading up to it feel natural. The story always felt to me like a number of pre existing scenes and ideas that he tried to loosely tie together and don't create a cohesive, good movie, even if individual parts or scenes can be incredible.
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Jun 16, 2015 00:05
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Marketing New Brain posted:Basterds never worked for me on the whole, I find the movie wildly inconsistent in terms of quality, but it does have one of my all time favorite scenes, the bar scene where they are trying to pass as Germans. Around the time the movie came out, Tarantino did an interview on NPR about he could never stand similar scenes because they always have the actors speaking english, even when we know they are speaking german in the movie world, but, for him at least, that removed all the tension. He wanted to create a scene that had that genuine tension in it, I think it is amazingly successful. I don't think it's supposed to feel natural. It's a bunch of anthropomorphic representations of various national cinemas (specifically war films) coming into conflict. The way that the Basterds, for instance, dramatically change the tone and style of every scene and violently redirect the plot is representative of American war films replacing everyone else with Americans, whether it fits or not.
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Jun 16, 2015 00:25
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FreudianSlippers posted:
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Jun 16, 2015 15:57
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Alhazred posted:I don't really see how that makes him more sympathetic, in fact it might make even less sympathetic because he knows that what he does is wrong but keeps doing it. It reminds me of 12 Years a Slave where Norhup is saying how nice Ford is and another slave says "yeah, but he's still a slaver". It doesn't matter how charismatic Landa is (and I definitely agree that he is that), he still kill jews, he's is still more monstrous than any of the basterds. Landa and the Basterds are two sides of the same coin, that's the point. Landa hunts Jews without regard for who they are as individuals, simply because it is his job. The Basterds, while they individually may have their own personal reasons for hating Nazis, have made it their business to travel around and kill any random Nazi they come across. The only reason we root for the Basterds and against Landa is because we know that certain Nazis committed horrible atrocities during that war, but we don't really see any of that in this movie. Tarantino was counting on the fact that people would inevitably bring all that baggage into the theatre, which is why he's able to make Landa such a compelling, charismatic character without alienating the audience. The character Waltz plays in Django is very, very similar to Landa, but the audience loves him and roots for him. Basebf555 fucked around with this message at 16:25 on Jun 16, 2015 |
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Jun 16, 2015 16:22
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