Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” screened this morning and all day today.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t make the crazy-ass early screening this morning. To some this is heresy, but we’re trying not to kill ourselves any more than we already have. Plus we’re learning to be patient, which you have to be at Cannes sometimes whether you like it or not. We’ll see it tomorrow, if we don’t make it today. Regardless, opinions are in.
Empire says, the film is “every bit as idiosyncratic as the spelling of its title, it’s a wonderfully-acted movie that subverts expectation at every turn. And it may represent the most confident, audacious writing and directing of QT’s career.” They also call it an “action movie, that barely has any action in it,” and note that the Basterds are off screen for sometime (which jives with the script).
The Hollywood Reporter says the Palme d’Or is not in reach for the film and they also note that it’s a bad year for films at Cannes in ’09 (which is what we’ve been saying so far). ” ‘Inglourious Basterds’ merely continues the string of disappointments in this year’s Competition. The film is by no means terrible — its running time of two hours and 32 minutes races by — but those things we think of as being Tarantino-esque, the long stretches of wickedly funny dialogue, the humor in the violence and outsized characters strutting across the screen, are largely missing. ”
This is basically what one of our French critic pals just told us, “boring, no fun, and not even any fun musical moments.” He said he was largely disappointed.
Anne Thompson suggests the press response of reporters assembled afterwards was tentative and tepid. “The press did not boo ‘Inglourious Basterds.’ Nor, judging from my sampling of critics afterwards, are they anointing it his best. Several wanted to think about it, to figure out what if anything, is missing.” Not a huge thumbs up. She herself says the films “isn’t entirely engaging. And it is defiantly an art film.”
Indiewire has a cool response as well. “No matter how much extreme contextualization and heavily stylized techniques Quentin Tarantino [uses] in Inglorious Basterds, it feels like a bubblegum sidedish to the heavy dinner plate of his career,” Eric Kohn, writes via Jeff Wells.
The BBC has a fairly positive review, but says, “It becomes positively camp-operatic in parts – particularly in its portrayal of a shrill, semi-hysterical Adolf Hitler and British generals who could have been lifted from ‘Allo, ‘Allo. It can’t touch Pulp Fiction, which won the Palme d’Or in 1994 before going on to win an Oscar for its screenplay. Still, the consensus here at Cannes is Tarantino has made a glorious, silly, blood-spattered return to form.”
The Guardian give it one star and calls it an, “armor-plated turkey,” ouch.
Variety has no report in yet; more thoughts will be trickling in all day, we’re sure. And hopefully one of us will have more for you. We just got out of Almodovar’s “Broken Embraces,” and its pretty much what you’ve heard so far: minor Almodovar unfortunately, but it has its moments. More later.
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- Rodrigo Perez
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