“Inglourious Basterds”
The first entry in Tarantino’s unofficial revisionist-history trilogy, “Inglourious Basterds” is a full meal of a movie and then some. A brazen riff on guys-on-a-mission classics in the vein of “The Dirty Dozen” and “Where Eagles Dare,” “Basterds” is arguably the great director’s most elaborate narrative experiment, even if it ultimately falls just a bit short of his commendable ambitions. It opens with one of the most gripping sequences in the entirety of Tarantino’s filmography, as sinister Nazi Colonel Hans Landa (played by the great Christoph Waltz, who handles the director’s daunting dialect better than anyone who isn’t named Samuel L. Jackson) interrogates a terrified French dairy farmer about the possible presence of Jews hiding in his basement. Like the “Kill Bill” films and “The Hateful Eight,” “Basterds” is divided into chapters, lending the proceedings a kind of literary grandiosity. The subsequent intervals follow the exploits of the Basterds themselves – seasoned Nazi-killers, led by Brad Pitt’s magnificently hardened Aldo “The Apache” Raine – as well as Shosanna Dreyfuss (Melanie Laurent), a runaway Jew who ends up in Paris and becomes simultaneously entrenched in the world of international cinema and wartime intrigue. Every technical aspect of “Inglourious Basterds” is unassailable: the period detail, costumes, production design, and mise en scène are nothing short of sublime. Not every lunatic detour works, though. Eli Roth is too broad as the murderous “Bear Jew” (one only imagines what Adam Sandler, who was originally considered for the part, may have done with this role), and a mid-movie diversion detailing the origin story of Til Schweiger’s Hugo Stiglitz feels like a stylish case of cinemus interruptus. Still, even if “Basterds’” final words feel somewhat self-aggrandizing rather than prophetic (“I think this might just be my masterpiece”), there’s no doubting that this is yet another pristine slice of historical pulp from one of America’s premier storytellers. [B+]
“Django Unchained”
It’s hard to blame those who were incensed at the idea of a movie like “Django Unchained” seeing a release of in 2012. Considering this is a director whose use of certain racial epithets has remained, shall we say, liberal, the idea of a Spaghetti Western tribute about a runaway slave who joins forces with a dandyish bounty hunter to track down and murder heartless plantation owners in the Antebellum South was nothing if not questionable. There’s no doubt that “Django Unchained” is one of Tarantino’s most shocking movies: rude, reckless, and often cringingly brutal. All that said, it’s also one of his finest, funniest, and most liberated films: the kind of movie that is downright exciting to watch even when it swings for the fences and fails or lapses into poor taste. Jamie Foxx brings true cool and unmistakable movie star energy to the titular part, playing stoic and cool-headed against the garrulous witticisms of Christoph Waltz’s erudite killer Dr. King Schultz. The movie arguably belongs to Leonardo Dicaprio (who is teaming up with Q.T. once more in “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood”), playing the movie’s sniveling, hot-blooded racist villain, Calvin J. Candie (a scene where Candie smashes a human skull to bits in front of Django and Dr. Schultz is simultaneously nervy, audacious, and terrifying). The last act of “Django” is, frankly, kind of a mess. This is a movie that contains a seriously miscalculated performance from the normally reliable Samuel L. Jackson, Tarantino himself playing a miner with an atrocious Australian accent, and anachronistic, borderline-inappropriate use of a Rick Ross song called “100 Black Coffins.” However, “Django’s” screwy inclination towards taking heedless narrative gambles is what makes it such a treat to watch and rewatch – and also part of what makes it undeniably problematic. [B+]
“The Hateful Eight”
Few movies of 2015 were greeted with as much fanfare as “The Hateful Eight,” which was screened in select theaters in a “roadshow release” presentation, and in the director’s preferred format of 70mm (apparently, Netflix thought it would be a good idea to release the movie in separate chapters, but I digress). Tarantino was coming off a winning streak with the unofficial one-two punch of well-received period revenge epics “Inglourious Basterds” and “Django Unchained,” and “The Hateful Eight” seemed to boast his most illustrious, varied cast to date. Returning Q.T. vets like Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Tim Roth, and Walton Goggins rubbing shoulders with newcomers like Demián Bichir, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and a cameo’ing Channing Tatum … there was no way this wasn’t going to be great, right? Well, there are certainly great things about “The Hateful Eight.” The film looks fantastic, with Q.T. regular collaborator Robert Richardson beautifully capturing the film’s lurid, wintry images, and the legendary Ennio Morricone providing the score. Occasionally, the film resembles an exploitation movie riff on an Agatha Christie mystery, only with a lot more invective, slaughter, and sexual violence (most of it unfortunately directed at Leigh’s Daisy Domergue). The reason that “The Hateful Eight” feels slightly empty and a little… well, hateful compared to Tarantino’s earlier work is that it focuses monomaniacally on sadism at the cost of its larger historical context. “Basterds” and “Django” were both arguably irresponsible in how fast and loose they played with the established historical record. And yet both films also indirectly address the anxieties of the times they depicted, and they both gave audiences reason to whoop and cheer as the oppressed were allowed to violently take action against their oppressors. “The Hateful Eight,” for all its sophisticated technical accomplishments, is an uglier, more pessimistic, less cathartic film that ultimately says very little – even if it says what it says loudly, and with panache. [B-]
