You are Going to Burn After Reading This!

Rating: A-
I know. I’m a genius at coming up with titles for these things, no need to compliment me, unless you want to… This 2008 film by the Coen Brothers is brilliant, which probably doesn’t need to be said because just about anything that Joel and Ethan put their hands on turns to gilded platinum awesomeness. I hadn’t seen this film until a few days ago when my fiancé said that we really needed to put it at the top of the queue on Netflix. Like almost every other human being in the world I had heard of it upon its initial release but for some reason at that point in my life I wasn’t really feeling like the Coen Brothers were exactly my thing, it may have been the Tarantino binge I was on.

One thing that I was excited for was to see Brad Pitt, Tilda Swinton, George Clooney, Frances McDormand, and John Malkovich all in the same film. One thing I noticed while watching this movie was that if Pitt’s character, Chad Feldheimer, were to meet with Pitt’s character from Fight Club, Tyler Durden, he would knocked out within the first two spoken words. The good news is; he would be smiling the entire time. I could not believe just how funny Pitt could be until I saw this film. He truly does amazingly well at playing such an insanely inane person. He’s even got that glazed-over look that tells you that there is absolutely nothing going on in that head of his. I have to add that when Brad Pitt is dancing while running on the tread mill I had to pause the movie I was laughing so hard. I’m laughing just thinking about it. Each actor does such an amazing job in this film it’s almost worth watching just to get an idea about what good acting is; whether it’s about how to show anger like Malkovich or how to be a giant bitch like Swinton. (Disclaimer: I am not saying that Tilda Swinton is a bitch, but her character certainly is). I cannot say enough about the acting in this movie, although it does make you see Clooney as a bit of a douche, but McDormand, who seems to be in almost every Coen Brothers film is hilarious as well. There are other actors who I should give praise to but if I were to mention anyone else I wouldn’t get to what I really want to talk about with this film.

The basic plot of the film is extremely confusing and would be nearly impossible for me to explain here in simple terms like I always try to do. Let’s just say that there is a lot of sleeping around (Clooney and Swinton, which is both hilarious to hear and mostly involves Clooney), a CIA agent (Malkovich) gets kicked out of the Agency and his house, and a moron (McDormand) needs plastic surgery. Trust me, it may be confusing to explain but it is hysterical and completely makes sense if you watch everything in its intended order.

The film is really about levels and what happens when someone tries to move between those levels and even gets kicked completely out of those levels. Now, you may be wondering why I’m not saying “social classes” or “hierarchy”, this is because of the importance of the house in which a lot of the film takes place. I’m not going to give away what happens in this film but I will tell you that there are four levels that we know of; the basement, the ground floor, the second floor, and a mysterious third floor that we never get a glimpse of. Because this is a review and not an analysis of the film, I won’t go any farther than that, but when you watch this film you will certainly understand what I’m getting at with this.

Now there are some other things that I feel need to be mentioned. In many ways, the Coen Brothers always have a way of making their films feel like they are taking real life and just slightly altering it. The Coens are really like scientists of the film industry and love to experiment with everyday people; which is why Frances McDormand is such an asset to this team of filmmakers. There are as with many films some things that just aren’t quite right or slightly annoying like the way John Malkovich pronounces French words or the way he says “memoirs”. (I’m not sure if that’s a French word or not…) I find this funny because if you see early films of his, he sounds a lot like Christopher Walken which is always hilarious, especially in films like The Glass Menagerie.

This is an extremely smart and hilarious film and I definitely recommend seeing it and if you’ve already seen it once, go watch it again. I have spoken.

Tarantino Rewrites History with Inglourious Basterds

Rating: A
Now before we get into this, I must admit that I am a freak for Tarantino movies. My favorite of his is Pulp Fiction. I love the style in which he directs and the sense of a universe that he creates within all of his movies. It is like he turns his films into an individual member of a family. So if we were to go along with that idea in mind then this film, the latest of Quentin Tarantino's works, would be the old grandfather sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch telling war stories to his children. And the children would be wide-eyed and silent.

Quentin Tarantino rewrites the events of World War II by taking the 1978 film of the same name, directed by Enzo G. Castellari, and places the action in a theater, instead of a train, in Nazi-occupied France, instead of Italy. The film focuses on a rag-tag group of Jewish-American soldiers led by Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), a Lieutenant in the army that has vowed to kill every Nazi that he comes across. At the same time that the Basterds are working their way closer and closer to France from where they were dropped in Italy, Shoshanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent) has just had her entire family slaughtered by SS Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) who has the appropriate title of Jew Hunter, a Nazi Sherlock Holmes with pipe to boot. Shoshanna is allowed to escape to Paris where she assumes a new identity as an owner of a movie theater. She becomes the desired object of the young Nazi Fredrick Zoller's (Daniel Brühl) affection. This desire leads to Fredrick convincing Joseph Goebbels (Sylvester Groth) to show his new film, Nation's Pride, which is about Zoller's actions in battle that has made him a hero to his people. Shoshanna takes advantage of the opportunity to kill a bunch of high ranking officers with great pleasure.

Meanwhile the Basterds have made themselves feared among the Germans with a certain soldier that they affectionately refer to as Sgt. Donny "The Bear Jew" Donowitz (Eli Roth) who kills Nazis by bludgeoning them to death with a baseball bat. Even Hitler himself, played by Martin Wuttke, has come to fear the power that this group has gained. The unit makes its way to a village in France called Nadine where they meet up with the British Lt. Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender) who has a connection with a double agent film actress named Bridget von Hammersmark played by Diane Kruger. Together this group is going to get into the premier of the movie at Shoshanna’s theater but not before plenty of action ensues.

The entire movie is full of the thing that Tarantino loves most, violence. He is even quoted as saying that “violence is one of the most fun things to watch.” When you see this movie that becomes very clear with scenes like The Bear Jew beating the hell out of a Nazi officer’s head or Aldo Raine carving a swastika into the forehead of Hans Landa. This movie is very violent but appropriately so, echoing the horrors of World War II. Obviously, this is not a movie for children both for the fact that it uses the word “fuck” quite often and that it discusses one of the worst events in history.

From a technical standpoint, the movie is very clean in terms of editing and cinematography, which has always been a strong point in Tarantino’s movies. Many shots that are used in this film have been used in his other movies like overheads and shots similar to the trunk shot which is a must have in Tarantino movies. Also, we get a shot of feet. Yes, a shot of feet. For those of you who don’t know, there are two things that you will find in almost every movie by Quentin Tarantino, a shot of a woman’s feet and Samuel L. Jackson, who in this film serves the role of narrator.

Quentin Tarantino is continually growing as a director with every film that he makes and so far, as the last line of the movie states, “this just might be his masterpiece.”