Tag Archives: Inglourious Basterds

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Django Unchained – Review

4/5 – Django Unchained is Tarantino’s best movie in years!

Five minutes into Django Unchained, I said, “I already like this more than Iron Man 3.” That feeling stayed throughout the entire movie. That’s a long time to feel that way, as Django Unchained clocks in at close to 2 hours and 45 minutes.

But Quentin Tarantino pulled off an excellent take on the spaghetti western. Looking back the 10 feature films that Tarantino directed, I would call Django Unchained his third best film, behind Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs (Note: I haven’t seen Death Proof). In other words, this is Quentin Tarantino’s best movie in 18 years. That said, the gap between Reservoir Dogs and Django Unchained is much larger than the gap between Django and next movie I’d put on that list.

The cast in Django is superb. Christoph Waltz definitely deserved his Oscar for playing Dr. King Schulz. He was easily my favorite character in the movie. Dr. Schulz is like an old west Danny Ocean. He has all the angles figured out, and is both the smartest and most charming man in the room.

I want Django’s jacket.
Jamie Foxx is wonderful as Django. He plays him as a soft-spoken force of nature who won’t stop until he’s reunited with his wife, Broomhilda, played by the stunning Kerry Washington. I haven’t seen many of Foxx’s movies, and this has me excited to see his take on the villain Electro in Amazing Spider-Man 2.
The object of Django’s quest. His wife, and fellow runaway slave, Broomhilda.

In my review of The Help, I noted that southern racists and Nazis were very easy go-to Hollywood villains. It’s interesting that Quentin Tarantino’s last two movies have featured those two groups as their main antagonists. It’s also interesting how much I loved both of them. I found Django killing slave owners to be as cathartic as Lt. Aldo Raine hunting Nazis in Inglourious Basterds.  Inglourious Basterds, by the way, is my 4th favorite movie directed by Tarantino.

Definitely worth seeing.

There are funny scenes scattered throughout the bounty hunting and payback in Django Unchained. It’s the kind of humor that you would expect from a Tarantino movie. A group of white men in white hoods spend a few minutes complaining about the quality of the eye holes in their hoods before attempting to lynch Django and Dr. Schultz. Like the diner scene in Reservoir Dogs, it focuses on the day-to-day minutiae of these men. It’s not a scene you’d expect, and plays like a very good deleted scene. It was very funny, but you would understand if the director dropped it on account of time.

I thought Django Unchained was great from beginning to end. I only wish I had taken the opportunity to see it on the big screen when it was in theaters this past winter. I highly recommend watching it. One caution though, like me, you might find yourself humming the main theme for a few days.

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On the Couch #3: Inglourious Basterds

Inglourious Basterds is Tarantino’s takes on the World War Two adventure film. It’s like Indiana Jones by way of Reservoir Dogs. If you’re a fan of Quentin Tarantino, you’ll find more to like here. If you’re not a fan of the violence that characterizes Tarantino’s movies, this is one to be avoided. It’s not as over-the-top violent as the Kill Bill movies, but it’s easily as bloody as either Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction.
Looking at the poster, you really have no excuse for not thinking it’s going to get bloody.

What sets this film apart from most World War 2 movies, the characters here speak their native languages. Unlike Valkyrie’s Germans who all spoke English with American or British accents, in Inglourious Basterds, the Germans speak German, the French speak French and the Americans speak very butchered Italian. It’s worth watching this movie just to hear Brad Pitt’s character, Lt. Aldo Raine, say “buongiorno” with a heavy southern twang.

The movie tells two stories, both of revenge. The Basterds are a group of Jewish American soldiers who go to Europe with one mission, killin’ Nazis. The second story revolves around Shoshana, an orphan of the war, who hatches a plan to avenge the murder of her family by the Nazis. Both sets of protagonists are instantly relatable. This is due to who they are fighting. It’s impossible to root for the Nazis in any movie, they represent the worst in man, especially here. The opening scene, showing Shoshana’s origin, is one of the most tense movie scenes I’ve seen in a long time.  Christoph Waltz is despicable as main bad guy Col. Hans Landa. If Sherlock Holmes were a Nazi with a mean streak, he’d be Col. Hans Landa. The pure evil of the Nazis gives a very visceral pleasure to watching the Basterds collect their scalps.

Like I said before, if you’ve liked any of Tarantino’s films in the past, you’ll find more to like here.

I downloaded a cool iPhone app at the start of the movie. It’s called Pocket BLU. If you have an iPhone or iTouch and a wi-fi enabled blu-ray player, download this app! It turns your iPhone into a remote control for your blu-ray player.

Pocket BLU also tells you how much time is left in the movie on your phone’s screen. It also has unlockable content for each disc that supports it, letting you watch a lot of the disc’s bonus features right on your phone. Best part? It’s free.