Q.T. has always been one of my top favorite directors. His work is so unique that I don’t need him to finish a film every year… although that would be heavenly. Unlike some directors, he’s a man who takes his time to perfect. Some people would argue that there is not much time between his first few films, but if he can deliver such as content as he did with Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Jackie Brown — each only separated by 2 or 3 years — then imagine what masterpiece he can wrap up with ten years.
Seeing Inglourious Basterds at its midnight premiere was the height of my movie-going experiences. Seeing it two days later at a Sunday morning showing was just as good. Tarantino has made a film so close to Pulp Fiction’s ingenuity that I will be able to watch it again and again and again for the rest of my life.
My original list of favorite movies started a little something like this:
#1. Pulp Fiction
#2. The Dark Knight
… and so on with films such as The Godfather and Jaws. As of sometime around 3 a.m. Friday the 21st, my favorites list has updated:
#1. Inglourious Basterds
#2. Pulp Fiction
… and so on. Every Tarantino movie is probably within my top 20 or 15 movies, but for him to write and direct a film that tops my number one favorite in my personal opinion is amazing. Pulp Fiction has been a favorite of mine since before I even saw the whole thing. I was probably between ten and twelve years old when I decided that it was my hands-down favorite. It remained the leading inspiration in my own movies for almost a decade. And now he’s done it again, topped himself, and rejuvenated my assurance that there are still people out there who can make a damn good movie.
Brad Pitt is one of my favorite actors. That’s all I have to say about that. Just watch the movie and you’ll see what I mean. Subtleness is everything and the scene at the cinema where he and Eli Roth and Omar Doom are posing as Italian filmmakers emphasizes this like nothing else. Amazing. Hilarious. Powerful. Convincing.
I’m not gonna review the movie or anything like that, but I’m just gonna say: WOW! The audience at the midnight premiere gave a roaring applause every half hour.
Thank you Quentin Tarantino, you have made my year.
I just watched the entirety of Elem Klimov’s Idi i smotri or Come and See and I must say that it definately desrves to go down in the classic’s in my book (I actually have a book). The film follows the journey of a boy during World War II after he is taken from his mother by troops fighting for the Russian resistence. At first he wants to be a soldier against his mother’s will, but he soon finds that the terrors of war are far from what he expected. As he trudges through Byelorussia, he witnesses what no boy should ever and slowly loses his innocence and eventually his mind. I thought it was an extremely powerful film and very moving in its telling of the atrocities that occured even before the Wannsee Conference and the creation of the camps. The Einsatzgruppen literally drive around burning houses down and killing innocent bystanders as this boy finds himself in the middle of it all, only accidentally surviving. It is an epic of sorts in a very different sense, but it is a great story and great work of historical fiction. The picture is beautiful from beginning to end and the cinematography could not be better for its time.
