"Inglorious Basterds"

Not an hour out of the theater and I'm already writing my review for Quentin Tarantino's latest movie, "Inglorious Basterds." One of my favorite movies of all time is "Pulp Fiction" and this movie had all the makings (and hype) of duplicating, if not exceeding, the greatness that is Fiction.

Let me start by saying that this was, in fact, a very good movie. Brad Pitt is without a doubt my favorite actor. Besides "The Mexican" (which I think he did after losing a bet), Pitt has not made a bad movie. In "Basterds", Pitt is THE star. Every scene he's in, he owns. And every one of his scenes is better than the ones in which he's not in. Aside from him, the rest of the movie succeeds in what it's trying to do. The story was great, the actors phenomenal, and the direction made it all work together.

I"m going to do my best to not sound pretentious here, but I feel like Tarantino is the best director at getting what he sees in his head transferred onto the screen. Every shot seems incredibly thought out and artistic. You can spot a Tarantino film a mile away and this one is no exception. HOWEVER...what I didn't get from this movie was the "cool" factor that "Pulp Fiction" and "Reservoir Dogs" had. Pitt was cool...no doubt. Every scene without him did not have that same feel, though. I missed that in this movie. This is not a knock on this movie b/c I don't think Tarantino was trying to make it "cool" throughout. It's simply to say that the "cool" is what I love most about his movies, and this one didn't have enough (as far as I'm concerned).

Overall: I'd give this movie and A. Stay away if you don't like graphic violence...which leads me to my next point...

What, in movies, has happened to the classic "camera turn-away," when there's a graphic scene (whether sexual or violent or what have you) where everyone in the theater knows what's about to happen and right before it does, the camera conveniently turns away, saving our eyes from things we need not see. With the level of violence shown in "Inglorious Basterds" and most other R movies these days, where do movies go from here? Some might call this artistic expression, but it seems more to me like an "anything you can do, I can do better" or "whatever you show, I'll show more" and I don't see an end in sight. Has anyone ever left a movie saying, "Wow, that would've been great if only the violence was more graphic?" To me, it just seems unnecessary and actually takes AWAY from what the film is trying to do. B/c instead of talking about the movie itself, people are left discussing the graphic nature of the film. To me, if you focus so much on being gruesome, then it proves that you really don't have much to say.
("Inglorious Basterds" is a good movie despite the graphic violence, not b/c of it)