Quentin Tarantino really freaks me out. Not his films (necessarily), the guy himself just unnerves me whenever I see him in interviews. I can't really explain it, but this slightly negative association meant that the first Tarantino film I saw - Kill Bill - I thought was utterly shite. Sorry, many many internet people who love it, but I thought it was just boring and much more style over substance. So I was only really watching Inglourious Basterds to say I had, but in the end I actually did enjoy it.
IMDb and
TV Tropes, for you.
That said, it was still obnoxiously self-indulgent - every single scene was a goodly five or ten minutes longer than it needed to be, and tension-building became a sort of watch-tapping, get-on-with-it. I also am no massive fan of the inevitable Tarantino violence-orgy, though was quite pleased that he'd restrained himself a bit more - there was a surprising amount of quiet, dramatic scenes in comparison to scalping/clubbing-to-death/shoot-'em-up scenes. I also couldn't help a bit of an eye-roll (SPOILER) at the fact the only significant character out of a huge ensemble left standing at the end of the movie is the takes-no-shit American.
That said, I was surprised to find that I liked plenty of other things about the film and its story. I found it inexplicably brilliant that historical accuracy was entirely abandoned for a magnificent moment of canon subversion - I well and truly Did Not See That Coming. There were a lot of pretty decent one-liners, and I'm not sure if it was the writing of Colonel Landa or Christoph Waltz's portrayal of him that made that character so evilly brilliant, but he was. I was also surprised that at no point during the film was I entirely sure whether the whole thing was being played for laughs, or if it was serious - there's a cleverness in confusing people like that.
***
In short, Inglourious Basterds has made up for the damage done by Kill Bill. (Though I still think Tarantino is creepy).
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