Movie Review: Ingloruious Basterds

Every once in a while a movie comes along which achieves something that few films today or in the past have ever been able to. The reason we attend films in the first place is obviously to be entertained, but this is an easy feat to achieve. Even during films like Terminator: Salvation or X-Men Origins: Wolverine, two of this year's summer flops, I can honestly say that I was more interested in the screen than the gum on the floor. As long as there's some decent action or even a few unintentional laughs, we'll walk out of the theater without regrets at having spent $6-10 for all of this. Inglorious Basterds, however, exists on a different level of entertainment. I cannot remember one single moment in this entire film when my eyes were not locked on the screen ahead of me and my ears tuned into every word coming out of the actors' mouths. Regardless of what critics with fancy-pants degrees in cinema studies may think, this is my favorite in recent memory.

Let's start with the actors. Brad Pitt plays Aldo Raine, the drawling but dangerous Tennessee man with gallows scars (never explained in the film) who leads a team of Jews into Nazi occupied France to fight a guerrilla war. Tarantino may have made a daring move by making the film's (arguably) main character its greatest source of comic relief, but it works nonetheless. While I won't spoil its context, he speaks Italian at one point in the film and the results are uproarious. His number two is Donny Donowitz (Eli Roth) is a man as blunt and violent as the films which Roth himself has directed in the past. He, along with the remainder of the American cast, represents the desire for retribution which has circulated among many among the Jewish people since the beginning of the Holocaust. The results of their actions in this film, in an ambitious alternate history, were truly cathartic to me on a personal level, as it may well be for anyone whose relatives or friends were murdered by the evils of Nazi Germany.

These are some basterds you don't want to mess with

The leading ladies in the film are brilliant as well. Diane Kruger is stunning as a defecting German actress, both in her beauty and her skill in playing the role of a spy and a spoiled actress interchangeably and concurrently. Despite that, however, I must say that she was overshadowed by Melanie Laurent. She plays the role of Shoshanna Dreyfus, a young Jewish woman who seeks revenge on the Nazis following the slaughter of her family. Though she disappears for the third and fourth acts of the film, her desire for vengeance echoes through the finale. Her performance is more real than I could imagine anyone else achieving, and I have to give extra Kudos to Tarantino to using a real French Jew to play this crucial role. It also helps that this woman is incredibly gorgeous.

Just...wow

I have, however, been dancing around naming the true driving star of this film, who in the end ties Raine's Basterds with Shoshanna's revenge story. This is the man who killed that young woman's family, an SS agent named Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz). Landa is a man who tiptoes on the edge of parody while maintaining a deep and penetrating menace. He never speaks without a smile, but through that smile is a mind which is calculating the best way to expose and destroy the enemies of his state. Playing a mindless and destructive Nazi is easy, but portraying the darkest side of the SS through such a pleasant facade is truly marvelous. I will be shocked if Waltz is not at least nominated for the Academy's best actor award.

A man with a pipe this ridiculous is always hiding something that is truly disturbing

In regard the direction, this is Tarantino's best work since Pulp Fiction. As expected, he stretches the normal boundaries of a 1940's time-piece through its homages to spaghetti-westerns, 1970's war films, and even Blaxploitation flicks. The soundtrack includes pieces which vary from orchestral movements to a David Bowie song, but none of it feels out of place within the context of this film. He also maintains a good pace all throughout the movie, though it is a pace that varies from the chillingly protracted conversation between Landa and a Frenchman who is harboring Jewish refugees to a shootout between a dozen people that is over within seconds. Finally, I should mention that for those who are curious he DID find a way to include Samuel L. Jackson, and the results are (in)glorious.

Go watch this film while its still in theaters, the experience won't quite be the same when its released on DVD, but I can guarantee that I'll still be at Wal-mart on that morning to pick up my copy.

Entourage: The Complete Fifth Season

Entourage is a show that likely captures the essence of Hollywood better than any other on television. Naturally I have no clue what it is really like, but the mixture of glamour and hedonism which is most often completely overshadowed by vitriol, loss, and heartbreak is what I assume to be the case for most who become as involved with its culture as these characters. The fifth season features far more of the negative aspects of Hollywood life than previous seasons, and that probably makes it the best one to date.

Vincent Chase's Medeliin from the previous season has been a complete failure, and he wishes to resurrect his career with a saving hit. The journey toward achieving this goal (through a tertiary role in a movie about firemen) is bumpy, leading to a conclusion that yields new hope for the next season. Eric's stories involve working to achieve a higher level of management while Turtle has a cute romance with Jamie-Lynn Sigler. Drama doesn't really have a lot to do which is unfortunate, but he's still involved in some pretty hilarious hijinks. Ari has a fantastic episode where he has a bad drug trip which brings him closer to his his assistant Lloyd in a brilliant way.

The reason for this show's success is that its main characters are all flawed but all extremely likable. I never used to be a fan of Turtle until this season, which has showed that he is more mature and independent than previously suggested. This season in particular does a great job of mixing dramatic tension with comic relief, the latter of which is usually accomplished through Johnny Drama committing some sort of faux pas. I have a feeling that the next season will in fact be the last since we are getting to the point where Chase (and therefore Wahlberg) will become a staple A-list movie star for the foreseeable future. This is likely a good thing, since non-animated shows tend to get stale after their sixth season (see the "X-Files"). I'd heartily recommend that both hardcore and casual fans of this great series pick up the DVD.

Entourage: The Complete Fifth Season is available now on DVD.

Terminator: Salvation

Imagine, if you will, that you're walking along the street, and suddenly you see a single apple hanging off a tree. It is plump, a gorgeous red, and glistening in the sunlight; quite frankly you are overwhelmed by its beauty. Unable to resist, you grab it, and take a moment to admire its vibrance. It seems to promise you a novel and delicious flavor, and so you decide to take a bite. Only once you get past the skin, you realize that the apple has rotted from the inside out, its pulp turned to a putrid black. If you can imagine this, then you have already experienced what it is like to watch Terminator: Salvation.

Believe me, I did not walk into this movie hoping for something great. Indeed, all I expected was a two hour distraction with some explosions and hopefully some screen time for the original bad boy robot, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yes, I did get all that (only sort of on the last part), but five minutes into the movie I began to see a glimmer of sunshine. The film simply looks spectacular, with an immersive post-apocalyptic landscape the likes of which make Mad Max's world look like a simple Wyoming truck stop. The sound of helicopters, guns, robots, and the firepower of A-10 Warthogs were overwhelmingly visceral, and a true testament to the skills possessed by the crew of this film. But then it happens. People start talking.

I'm sure that director Joseph Nicol (known to most by his silly nickname "McG") wanted us to appreciate that John Connor (Bale) has a certain foreboding depth to him, what with already knowing about all the crap he has to do to save himself in the past from an enemy that doesn't really exist yet. I'm also inclined to believe Bale when he said he was too wrapped up in his gloomy character to treat the film crew as human beings during his famous rant. Oh, and here's the techno version. Anyway, I'm sure everyone has the best intentions, but the script is just awful.

Bale repeats these radio messages across the world saying stuff like "this is John Connor" and "if you're listening to this, you are the resistance," with a sort of dirty, and entirely false, sense of grandeur. It seems that people all over the planet are listening to him, but he says nothing of real value. Tips on scrounging for bits of radioactive lizards probably would have been helpful, or maybe a strategy to fight the big robots that are sort of causing all the problems around there. He's also a dick to everyone around him. At one point he mouths off to a soldier who has brought a valuable robot specimen for him, then goes to brood in his room with his mommy tapes for a while. Is this truly the behavior of humanity's savior?

Unknown to most, John Connor's battle cry is "GET OFF THE FUCKING SET!"

It's not just Bale. Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) is an American with a PECULIAR Australian accent, who was executed in the beginning of the film and yet SOMEHOW is alive after Judgment Day. How could this be? Well, if you've seen the trailer you already know he's a *SPOILERS* robot, and there goes the film's one chance at a twist. He comes across Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin) early in the movie and asks what the deal is with all these robots killing everybody. Without batting an eye, Reese explains to him the events which have occurred over the last thirty years. This would be equivalent to a man walking up to you or I and asking what the Soviets are up to these days, or commenting on the handsome new black spokesperson the White House seems to have hired. But Reese accepts this, similarly to how we are supposed to accept this movie as being any more meaningful than an episode of Two and a Half Men. Without going into too much more detail, Connor's pregnant wife gets no screen time, the leading lady acts like an idiot, the ending makes no sense, and Michael Ironsides' playing a scruffy general has gotten REEEEEALLY old.

The best part of the movie is when a CG Arnold shows up, who looks very good for a not-real person. He brings back the sense of the first film, that this is a truly indestructible force that cares about nothing except taking human life. If we could get Robert Patrick to show up as well, THEN we'd have the makings of a good movie. I need to reiterate that the film looks and sounds fantastic, largely due in part to the cinematographer Bale had yelled at. But a movie, even a dumb action movie, can always be tarnished by a poor script. If only we could get a high-budget movie about robots that wasn't as self-destructive as this one...maybe one produced by Judaism's favorite son?

BOO YA

Soon on DVD and Blu Ray: Gran Torino

This is a film that I saw alone when I was waiting for my car to be repaired, and strangely enough its a film centered around a car. Well, in reality its centered around the friction, and eventual friendship between Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood) and Thao Vang Lor (Bee Vang). Kowalski is a Korean War veteran, whose family views him as a nuisance, and who has recently lost his wife. In essence, he is a man who is perfectly willing to spend the final days of his life completely alone. When a local gang attempts to steal his car, a beautiful green 1972 Gran Torino Sport, he only manages to catch one of them. This one was in fact, a boy named Thao, Kowalski's newest neighbor.

Thao's family demands that he compensates Kowalski in some way, and so begins the interaction between the two. Thao does housework and chores, all the while disgusting his new employer, who has prejudices against the boy as he does all Asians, having been traumatized during his war experience. The two people are of differing age, race, national origin, culture, and worldview, but a crisis in the films central a demands that these differences be re-examined by both.

Performances are impressive across the board, including Christopher Carley as a young Catholic priest who will stop at nothing until Kowalski bring his own hardships and his dwindling faith to terms with each other. Ahney Her plays Thao's sister, Sue, whose friendly and boisterous nature serves as the bridge which eventually unites her brother with Kowalski. Most of all, however, Eastwood delivers the performance of a lifetime. His character is as complex and gritty as any other he has ever brought to the silver screen, and it is an absolute embarrassment to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts that he was not even nominated for his acting or directing here. Just one more casualty for 2008's awards, having been snubbed along with other major releases for independent films for the sake of pretension alone.

"Get off my lawn..." one of the film's more memorable lines

This fantastic film serves as a lesson which spans the generations. Prejudice may serve as a barrier to prevent uncomfortable confrontation between those of different backgrounds, but that barrier also serves to obstruct the unity which is sometimes necessary during hard times. It is the responsibility of older generations to teach this lesson to their children and grandchildren, so that their descendants do not repeat the same mistakes which plagued their own lives.

The film will be released on both DVD and Blu-Ray on June 9, 2009.

Star Trek

I will be the first one to tell you that I would viciously argue the merits of Star Wars over Star Trek when I was a child. "The Millennium Falcon could fly circles around the Enterprise, never mind a Star Destroyer," I would argue with a friend of mine named Campbell, who was on the opposite side of the debate. I never really watched the original show that much even with its reruns but I had seen the movies, some of which I grew to appreciate as I got older. I especially enjoyed the last of the films starring the old crew, The Undiscovered Country. This was mostly because of the fact that it starred a Klingon who felt as comfortable with Shakespeare as his peers were with aggressively grunting at each other. I had watched the newer films too with Stewart and crew, and besides from the excellent First Contact, none of them were very impressive.

When I first heard whispers that they would reinvent the original characters I took little notice, but I began paying attention when I saw the first shots of the film's cast in costume. I was amazed to see not aging or pudgy veterans of television but a mostly unrecognizable crew of young, attractive people! This of course takes a page from the book of Battlestar Galactica, which I did not watch, but which I know had huge success by using the combination of a mostly hip cast and a gritty storyline. Trek isn't gritty, but it's definitely hip, and I think they hit a home run with this new film.

I recognized exactly five people among the cast. Zachary Quinto (Spock) is of course Sylar from Heroes, and its good to see him in a role where he's not murdering people for giggles. Karl Urban (Dr. McCoy) was in Lord of the Rings and the awesomely awful Doom movie, and he does a fantastic job here as a disgruntled, paranoid physician who is Kirk's first friend in the Federation. Finally, Eric Bana (Nero, the bad guy) was of course the Hulk in the first movie rendition and, more awesomely in my opinion, Hector of Troy in Troy. Leonard Nimoy (old Spock) of course needs no introduction. Finally, Simon Pegg (Scotty) was the creator and star of my favorite parody film of all time apart from Blazing Saddles, Sean of the Dead.

McCoy (left) = AWESOME MOVIE DOCTOR

Everyone else is relatively new to the scene. I should of course mention Chris Pine (Kirk) who plays a version of Kirk who is understandably unstable thanks to an alcoholic stepfather who raised him after his more heroic biological father died to save his family. His evolution from a pugilistic bar-crawler to inspiring leader which takes place over the course of the film is both well done and believable in the context of the story. John Cho (Sulu) is a strange choice because he's Korean and the character is Japanese, but I read that George Takei approved it since the character is supposed to represent all of Asia. Zoe Saldana (Uhura) is beautiful and I got used to the idea of her being with Spock even though it was awkward at first. Lastly I should mention Anton Yelchin (Chekov) who essentially plays a whiz kid who feels slightly out of place in such a major position on the ship.

The plot is fine but its relatively inconsequential to the movie, which is driven by the characters. Nero comes from the future and he's pissed at old Spock for (in his eyes anyway) allowing his home planet to be destroyed by a super nova. To get everyone back he uses the combination of a giant drill and a black hole creator to threaten Earth. You can probably guess how things go form there.

As I wrote earlier its all very character driven. Kirk and Spock both start out as jerks in their own, opposite ways, and of course they clash when it comes to making decisions about saving Earth. Kirk runs into old Spock before young Spock does, and you can see how the future friendship begins right there, with superb acting from Nimoy in the way that he conveys the mixed emotions of seeing an old, and long dead, comrade at the beginning of his life in the stars. Even better than that (and I am obviously biased in this) is the ship's physician, Dr. McCoy. He has the sarcastic outlook on life that any good sci-fi doctor has and there is a hilarious scene where he is constantly injecting things into Kirk's neck, treating one symptom while at the same time causing another, all while the ship is in a state of crisis. I get the feeling that this film will both be nostalgic to old fans and acquaint the kiddies to these characters, and it is likely to be followed by many sequels. With any luck, they can match the quality of this movie.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

NEEEEEERD RAAAAAAAAAGE!

Comic book movies have come a long way since the Adam West Batman movie, which I am guessing was among the very first, gave the world a glimpse of a chubbier, more inept caped crusader than they had grown to love in the comic books. Reeve's Superman was the true breakthrough into the mainstream, which would be followed years later by the successful Tim Burton Batman duology. Marvel's first step into the industry came with 2000's X-Men, and its success paved the way two sequels and, now, a prequel.

It probably seemed like a good idea at the time. Hugh Jackman's Wolverine was undoubtedly the most popular aspect of those films, so making an entire movie based on how he got to be so snippy with everybody was sure money. Judging from early box-office returns, it was, but does that mean the movie was any good? More importantly, are you as the reader insulted that I would rhetorically ask you such a ridiculous question when I have obviously set this up to be a negative review? If you answered yes to either question I'm going to have to ask you to go to somewhere else. I heard that Michelle Malkin is in the process of cleansing her blog (ethnically) so that could be fun to read about.

I'll start by saying that Wolverine isn't a bad movie, it's just stupid. A bad movie implies to me that I walked out of the theater red-faced with anger out of wasting 2-3 hours of my life, only to be soothed when I come home to a six-pack of Guiness and a handful of rainbow-colored goldfish crackers (how can you be angry after a meal like that!). No, I walked out of the movie with a smile, but not the kind of smile the director had intended me to have.

The film begins by showing a pre-adolescent Logan sick in his bed in the Northwest Territories of Canada circa 1845. I honestly always thought this region was filled large bearded men wearing flannel shirts boasting incomprehensible accents who merely exist to cut down, then burn timber as they are surreptitiously filmed by Canada's desperate Ministry of Tourism. Not so in the world of X-Men, as Logan's father not only has a proper London accent, but lives in a well-carpeted mansion! Anyway, tragedy occurs and Logan is cast out along with his brother Victor (Liev Schreiber). Then we see a montage of them fighting in several American conflicts from the Civil War to Vietnam, puzzling none of their comrades as to why they are jumping twenty feet in the air like a bunch of loonies.

Later on, Logan and Victor are recruited by the bad guy, who tries to mimic the bad guy in X-Men 2 who was played by the guy who played Hannibal Lecter in Manhunter, the character of which was later featured in Silence of the Lambs in which Pat McNamara played a sheriff WHO ALSO STARRED IN SLEEPERS WITH KEVIN BACON. So this bad guy, Stryker, leads a bunch of mutants into Africa to collect a meteorite and kill some civilians along the way. Logan suddenly discovers that killing is bad and runs away. The majority of the rest of the movie involves Victor and Logan yelling at each other, and fighting each other over and over again with no result. At the end, SPOILERS, Wolverine loses his memory making the whole movie pointless anyway

Sure, there are other guys. Will.I.am plays a dude who can teleport around who dies because he is dumb. Too bad for him, "My Humps" exists and therefore he will never be taken seriously. The dreamy (he totally is) Ryan Reynolds plays a fast-talking sword-meister, who is the best character in the movie. Naturally he is given a total of five lines before, tragically, his mouth is literally sewn shut. Lynn Collins exists to be pretty and pretend to have feelings for Logan, which I never bought for a second. Gambit is there, but minus the accent that makes him awesome, and mainstays like Cyclops and Professor X appear too.

What you gonna do wit dat mutant junk all up in yo mutant trunk?

This movie could have been good, if the cast was trimmed and if it was given a plot. Instead, there are scenes where Logan literally cuts a fire escape down piece by piece, flailing his arms like a deranged cartoon character merely to get to the guy who sits atop it. With the exception of the finale, fight scenes are filmed using quick cuts that show nothing but a face getting punched or an abdomen getting slashed, which avoids the need for complicated choreography routines ala the Star Wars prequels.

Similarly, character development is done in a way which assumes that we as the viewer are to automatically insert emotional attachment into emotionless people. I was supposed to feel some sort of remorse for Wolverine's troubled life when he lets out his primal scream for the fifth time in as many minutes, but all that I really felt was hunger for more of that delicious Mexican food I ate two hours earlier. In the end, I did walk out of the theater smiling. Charades are supposed to be funny aren't they?