Editor’s Note: Freeline Media’s movie critic, Mike Fried, takes a second look at some of the acclaimed films of director Quentin Tarantino. Are they aging like fine wine … or causing a stink like rotten eggs? Read on!
By MIKE FRIED
INGLORIOUS BASTERDS
*****
Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France, there’s a lot of shit going on. An SS Colonel, Hans Landa, arrives at the LaPadite farm to question the man of the house about some Jews he may or may not be hiding. It turns out that Monsieur LaPadite has been harboring the Dreyfuss family and Landa orders the family killed.
But Shoshana Dreyfuss escapes and four years later she is running a cinema in Paris. At the same time, Goebbels has a new film about the exploits of the German Sergeant York, one Private Fredrick Zoller who killed more than 250 American soldiers over a three day period. And Zoller wants to premiere it at Shoshana Dreyfuss’ (now Emmanuelle Mimieux) cinema because he is smitten. At the same time, a bunch of American soldiers known as the Basterds are flitting around Nazi-occupied France killing Nazi scum and taking their scalps under the command of Aldo “the Apache” Raine.
And it all comes together.
Quentin Tarantino’s best film (sorry, Pulp Fiction fans) is his most extraordinary — not only for its revisionist screenplay but for the absolutely incredible performances he gets out of every single actor.
And it does it without it being a pop culture reference guide deluxe. From some of the most incredible film music from other films as well as songs — I mean Bowie? In 1944?? — Tarantino has delivered a smorgasbord of delights.
Despite his Oscar for Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, I think that Brad Pitt’s performance as Lt. Aldo Raine is his most finely nuanced, despite the over the top Tennessee accent. He is a practical man. He knows that the shortest distance between two points is from A to B; but he also knows he wants to kill Nazis and when a Nazi won’t give him the information he needs, he revels in the inhumanity that his Basterds must employ on the most inhumane of creatures. There’s no black and white. He enjoys it. But on the rare occasions that he leaves a survivor, he also knows he has to leave his mark.
Diane Kruger is absolutely wonderful as Bridget Von Hammersmarck, a star of German cinema, based on Marlene Dietrich, both of whom worked in secret with the OSS. She is a doyenne of the German film profession and that gives her the cover she needs to help with the Allies’ Operation Kino, the plan to destabilize the Nazi High Command. She radiates presence on the screen.
Daniel Brühl is tremendous as Zoller, whose military exploits may only be outweighed by his absolute tendency to annoy Ms. Mimieux.
The supporting players in the cast, including Til Schweiger, Michael Fassbender, Eli Roth, BJ Novak, Omar Doom, August Diehl and Denis Menochet, are all outstanding; it’s a nice nod by Tarantino to get Rod Taylor out of retirement to play Winston Churchill in a cameo performance.
But, let’s be honest, this film does not work without the performances of Mélanie Laurent and Christoph Waltz. They are the yin and yang, the good and evil in the film.
Laurent’s turn as Shoshana is an incredible one. She escapes death and hides in plain sight but always has thoughts of revenge on her mind. When she is called by Joseph Goebbels to talk about her cinema, she meets the head of security who is none other than Hans Landa. Her discomfiture is palpable and she takes all of her energy to maintain her facade and when he leaves, she emits an audible gut wrenching gasp and from that point forward, she knows what she has to do.
But, wow, man — Christoph Waltz! I can’t think of a performance in the past twenty years that was such a lock going into awards season. He captivates every scene he is in, even upstaging Brad Pitt and Diane Kruger. Even though he has been acting in film since 1977, it was primarily in German cinema and he was not well known. In fact, Tarantino was afraid he wrote the role too well so that he would not find a German actor to play the part of Landa. But thankfully Waltz auditioned and nailed it. His Landa is a charming man. He smiles and speaks jovially with those he questions — until he doesn’t. And when he doesn’t, his smile quickly disappears and those laser beam eyes bore a hole in those he interrogates. And, quite frankly, it’s unnerving to the audience as well. Fucking laser beams!
And Tarantino excels with his homage-laden script and direction. The screenplay is an absolute delight. It is structured in such a way with flashbacks and that makes perfect sense and it is written with such wit that one can’t even believe what is unfolding and Tarantino’s revisionism is so finely honed that when it hits, it makes perfect sense.
What sets this film apart from his previous work is that it’s not filled with a lot of pop culture references (although it does utilize Samuel L. Jackson as a narrator who provides useful information) but is a rather straightforward, albeit twisty, World War II story where good and evil are clearly delineated. Sure, it’s an homage to 70s war pictures — especially its forebear The Inglorious Basterds, which was directed by Enzo G Castellari — and it works on that level. But it’s also one of the best World War 2 films ever made.
This is — like I said I — QT’s best film.
WATCH IT!
ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD
*****
I’m a child of the Sixties. I grew up watching the crappy westerns that permeated television — but to me they were not crappy. Have Gun Will Travel and Branded were among my favorites. So, when Quentin Tarantino set his latest movie, Once Upon A Time … In Hollywood in these halcyon days, I was quite excited. I was more excited when I heard the bare minimum of the plot which involved television westerns and the Manson Family. I said, “Okay, let’s see how Tarantino wraps these together.” And boy, oh boy, does he ever.
Up front I will say this movie is not only one of Quentin Tarantino’s best movies. It is certainly one of his most audacious movies, if not one of his most personal movies — a love letter to the age of Hollywood he adores and evidently misses. Wickedly funny yet tense owing to the movie’s time setting and my self-imposed expectations, the first hour and a half moseyed along like the TV westerns it so amiably recreates until it explodes in true Tarantino fashion. I sat in my seat saying “Where the hell is this movie going? Is it about filmmaking? Is it about Manson?” I calmed myself down and let Tarantino take me on his ride, along with his customary foot fetishes and references to his prior movies (Can you say Antonio Margheriti?).
However, as good as the writing and directing is, this movie truly works because of its stars, Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt — and a dog named Brandy that nearly steals the show. It’s been a long time since I’ve enjoyed the buddy aspect of a movie as much as I did here; with these two megastars seemingly going with the flow as equals and delivering their best performances in years (I kept thinking both would be nominated for Oscars and that Pitt will win) the movie just had the easy-breezy feel of the Swinging 1960s.
DiCaprio plays Rick Dalton, a soon to be over-the-hill television actor who had a lead on a TV western that was long since cancelled, but who has been relegated to weekly guest spots on TV shows as the bad guy. He is the dozens of actors I watched as a kid on TV, including Jack Cassidy, Stuart Whitman and Patrick O’Neal, who showed up as “special guest stars,” but I digress. Rick exhibits all of the insecurities you would think that a has-been might exhibit. He may or may not have been up for the lead role in The Great Escape, but didn’t get it.
Brad Pitt plays Cliff Booth, Rick’s best friend and stunt double. Brad Pitt is channeling his inner Aldo Raine. Cool as a cucumber, Cliff exhibits the machismo of the sixties — Cliff IS the Marlboro man. And while Cliff is Rick’s best friend, sometimes it appears that Rick doesn’t know it. To him, Cliff is a confidante but he is also a driver, a handyman and a housesitter. It’s not until the end of the movie when Rick realizes what a good friend Cliff has been. Cliff’s constant pep talks to Rick to boost the latter’s confidence (“Hey! You’re Rick fucking Dalton, don’t you forget it”) show that Cliff thinks they are best buds even if Rick may look at him as a friendly employee. And it’s the relationship between the two of these guys that is the singular focus of the picture. Everything else in the movie drives the plot, but this is a movie about friendship in a town where true friendships are hard to come by.
This movie belongs to Pitt and DiCaprio in a couple of star making performances (ha-ha) but they are surrounded by a supporting cast that helps propel the story along.
Margot Robbie has a great, but smaller role, as Sharon Tate, fresh off the success of her role in Valley of the Dolls and now in a larger, funnier role in Dean Martin’s The Wrecking Crew, which she goes into a theater to see, loving the adulation the audience shows when her character is on the screen. More importantly she is Rick Dalton’s next door neighbor along with her husband Roman Polanski (insert history lesson here).
Kurt Russell, who looks like he stepped out of “Death Proof,” pulls double duty as a stunt coordinator and narrator. Based on articles that I’ve read, he helped give the movie its real 60s feel. There are smaller cameos by Bruce Dern as the old creepy George Spahn who owned a ranch where they used to film westerns but which has become a hangout for the Manson Family; Dakota Fanning, who plays Squeaky Fromme — wow!; Timothy Olyphant and the late great Luke Perry as a fellow actor; and, lastly but not least, Mike Moh as Bruce Lee in one of the funniest scenes in the movie. And let’s not forget the appearance of smaller character actor by the name of Al Pacino. Anyone remember him?
But besides the writing, the direction and the acting, the real star of this movie (besides Brandy the Dog) is the production design. I felt like I was watching a movie from the sixties. I felt like when Brad Pitt was driving down the Hollywood Boulevard of 50 years ago, I was there with him.. And as to the cinematography, in a thoroughly Tarantino-esque move, DiCaprio is actually inserted into The Great Escape speaking with the Commandant of the prison camp and speaking McQueen’s lines as well as being inserted into an episode of TV’s The FBI. These insertions were done seamlessly, matching the originals, giving a great air of authenticity.
I personally liked Inglorious Basterds better because well, you know, killing Nazis is good stuff. But this movie is right at the top of the Tarantino oeuvre.
I need to see this movie again — I know there are a lot of visual and pop references I missed while focusing on the plot. But I also need to see it again because it was Cinema, with a capital “C”. It is pure Tarantino — unrestrained, unhinged, brutal and funny.
5/5 because why the hell not! Hey! He’s Quentin fucking Tarantino, don’t you forget it.
Michael Fried has no formal training in movies, except having watched over 26,000+ movies — if not more — in his 60-plus years on this planet, starting with Goldfinger as his first cinema experience. He knows what he likes and he knows what he doesn’t like, and it’s quite often different from the conventional wisdom. He knows that the best franchise is Godzilla and he loves action movies and comedies. He has not been nominated for any awards except some boring insurance awards which has no applicability to movies (with the possible exceptions of Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity and John Cassavettes’ Big Trouble). He is part of a team that won the 1980 SUNY Albany Trivia content by correctly guessing the question, “Who played the president of Klopstockia in Million Dollar Legs?” So he has that going for him, which is nice.
Contact Mike at moviemike3@yahoo.com and mike.fried@yahoo.com.
