Unknown (5 Stars)

This is one of the most exciting films I've ever seen. It's a perfect mix of action, suspense and mystery. I can't believe that I've waited 13 years before watching it again. How could I forget a film like this?

Dr. Martin Harris, an American biotechnology professor played by Liam Neeson, travels to Berlin with his wife for a scientific conference. On arriving at the hotel he realises that he forgot to pick up one of his suitcases from the airport, so he leaves his wife behind to take a taxi back to the airport. On the way he's involved in a traffic accident and is in a coma for four days. He returns to the hotel as quickly as possible. His wife doesn't recognise him. She's in the company of another man who claims to be her husband. He can't prove who he is because he lost all his papers in the accident. The stranger doesn't just have papers to prove who he is, he also knows all about his scientific work.

Eventually Martin begins to think he's crazy and returns to the hospital for treatment, but while he's there someone tries to kill him, and even kills the nurse who tries to protect him. This makes him sure that something is happening, so he hires a private detective to prove that he really is who he thinks he is.

Although the film is in English, most of the cast are top German actors such as Bruno Ganz, Sebastian Koch and Diane Kruger. This is a brilliant film, and the final explanation will come as a a total surprise. The viewers will also feel the terror of being lost in a foreign country with no identification and being denied by your wife and friends.

Success Rate:  + 2.5

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Inglourious Basterds (5 Stars)

Netflix Thursday #14

I warned you that I'd be watching Netflix more often while I'm on holiday. That includes films like "Inglourious Basterds", which I have on Blu-ray at home.

In a recent interview Quentin Tarantino named six films which he considers to be perfect. The films, in the order he named them, are:

• "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (1974)
• "Jaws" (1975)
• "The Exorcist" (1973)
• "Annie Hall" (1977)
• "Young Frankenstein" (1974)
• "Back to the Future" (1985)

That's an interesting list. I've seen all the films except for "Annie Hall", but I've only reviewed "Jaws" and "Young Frankenstein" in my blog. I ought to watch all of the films in a row to see what he means. He claims the films are technically perfect, regardless of a person's personal tastes. That's difficult for me. My reviews are subjective, and I don't think I'm able to make an objective decision whether a film is perfect. I'll do my best.

Quentin should have added one more film to the list: "Inglourious Basterds". Maybe he was too modest to name one of his own films. The film's chapters are a series of vignettes, each of which can be judged on its own merits. Each vignette is perfect. If anything is imperfect, I'd like to hear Quentin himself tell me what's wrong with it.

Success Rate:  + 2.6

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Inglourious Basterds (5 Stars)

Dancer's Top Films #24

This film should be called "How the War should have been won". It's the first film in which Quentin Tarantino rewrote history. It's a fictional film, but it features authentic historical characters, such as Adolf Hitler. The film shows Hitler dying in France in 1944, a year before his real world death. Tarantino's most recent film, "Once upon a time in Hollywood", also rewrites history by showing Sharon Tate survive the attack by the Manson Family.

So who kills Hitler? It's a joint effort. There are two plots running in parallel. One is the fighting group called the Bastards, eight Jewish soldiers led by Aldo the Apache (Brad Pitt). It's Aldo's right hand man Donny Donowitz (Eli Roth) who fires the bullets that kill Hitler. When you look at his face it seems like he isn't just acting, he's really enjoying killing Hitler. But Hitler wouldn't have survived anyway. He's locked in a cinema that's being burnt down by Emmanuelle Mimieux, the cinema's owner who's secretly Jewish. Aldo's Bastards and Emmanuelle don't meet, and they aren't even aware of one another's existence.

As I've mentioned many times before, I consider the opening scene in a French farmhouse to be the best scene ever filmed. It's perfect. It's slow and intense with seemingly harmless conversation between the French dairy farmer and the SS officer Hans Landa. In fact, the whole film moves slowly, and there are only occasional short bursts of action.

This is a film I can watch again and again and never get bored. The same is true of all of Quentin Tarantino's films. If you haven't watched it yet, what are you waiting for? Please don't shy away from it with excuses like "I don't like war films". This isn't a normal war film, which should be obvious as soon as the background music begins. The music sounds like it comes directly from a spaghetti western.

Success Rate:  + 2.6

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Inglourious Basterds (5 Stars)

The world according to Quentin Tarantino is better than the real world. In Tarantino's world the last thing Hitler saw was the face of a laughing Jewish woman. In the real world he died in or just outside a cold bunker. Tarantino gave him a sexier death. I'd like the last thing I see to be a laughing woman, Jewish or not.

It's a fairy tale, not meant to represent the truth. It opens with the words "Once upon a time in Nazi-occupied France". Fairy tales have happy endings. The big bad monster dies, and they don't come bigger or badder than Adolf Hitler.

The film shows two unconnected plots to kill Hitler. The one is a big operation ordered by Winston Churchill, carried out by the Jewish American squadron called the Basterds. The other is a solo effort by a Jewess who wants revenge for the death of her family. I know that Hitler killed six million Jews, but that's just a number. A number on a piece of paper is abstract, it means nothing. What makes it personal is if Hitler and his followers kill just one person that you know, a family member or a friend. That's what spurs revenge. That's what makes Shosanna Dreyfus aka Emanuelle Mimieux laugh.

Hitler's death takes place in a cinema. This is no coincidence. For Quentin Tarantino films are important, and cinemas are important as the place where films are shown. He loves films, and he openly displays his nostalgia for old films.

This was the film that helped Daniel Brühl make his breakthrough into Hollywood. He'd already been a successful German actor for ten years, but this is the film that made him well known internationally.

Martin Wuttke was primarily a stage actor in Germany, but since appearing as Adolf Hitler in "Inglourious Basterds" he's been cast in a string of American films.

Brad Pitt is the film's anti-hero. He's one of the good guys, but he's so mean in carrying out justice that he makes the audience shudder. His aim isn't primarily to win the war, it's to kill Nazis. For him, anybody wearing a German uniform isn't a human being, he's a Nazi, and he has to die. Obviously, this attitude is completely wrong. The vast majority of the German soldiers didn't put on uniforms because they were Nazis, they put on uniforms because they were conscripted. But it's just a film. The characters aren't meant to be perfect.

Christoph Waltz won an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor, but anyone who's seen the film knows that he was really the Leading Actor. Despite having less screen time, Brad Pitt was named as the Leading Actor for two reasons:

1. He's more famous than Christoph Waltz.

2. Bad guys aren't usually the Leading Actor.

But look... isn't that a foot rising up Christoph Waltz's jacket towards his medals?

Yes, it's Diane Kruger's foot. I promised you that I would point out the bare feet in Quentin Tarantino's films.

Christoph Waltz gets to put a shoe on Diane Kruger's foot. Most actors work for 50 years and never get a chance like that.

Here are both of her feet, one of them in a plaster cast.

Before anyone accuses me of having a foot fetish, no, it isn't true. All I'm doing is acknowledging Quentin Tarantino's foot fetish. I have many fetishes, too many to list, but a foot fetish isn't one of them. I would rather look at Diane Kruger's face than her feet. She's beautiful, isn't she?

I definitely have a Sitting-In-The-Cinema-Watching-A-Laughing-Woman-Telling-Me-I'm-Going-To-Die fetish. That's a good idea for my blog. I should have a Fetish Of The Day feature. All year long!

This is probably Quentin Tarantino's best film. It's difficult to say. Every time I watch it I'm stunned, like I'm watching it for the first time. My definition of a good film is that I want to watch it at least three times. Today I watched "Inglourious Basterds" for the seventh time, and I still want to watch it again. That makes it better than good.

Success Rate:  + 2.6

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Inglourious Basterds (5 Stars)

Yesterday I went to see "Loving Vincent" in the cinema with the Stuttgart Cinema Meetup. I asked one of the other members what his favourite film was, and he answered "Inglourious Basterds" without hesitation. I'm always glad when someone has an answer ready for that question. It shows that they've sat down and seriously thought about films. I know it's not an easy question to answer. I've changed my mind a few times in the last 20 years, but however often I might change my mind I can always tell you with certainty what my favourite film is today.

This was the reason why I decided to watch "Inglourious Basterds" again this evening. I sat watching it while asking myself "Is this the world's best film?" After the film came to an end I didn't think it was quite good enough to knock my current favourite off the number one spot, but I do have to say that it's technically one of the best films ever made. I already consider the film's first scene, the farmhouse scene, to be the best scene ever filmed. These 20 minutes are perfection. I can't think of any other scene that comes close. However, several other scenes in the film are also of incredibly high merit. They're all scenes in which Christoph Waltz appears. That's probably not a coincidence.

Today I watched the film with my son Benjamin. It was his first time seeing the film. He was shocked to see that Adolf Hitler was killed. That was also my reaction the first time I saw the film in the cinema in 2009. It's something I didn't expect to happen. What I mean is, there have been dozens, maybe even hundreds of films about Hitler, and he never dies, unless it's in his bunker in 1945. After the initial shock I laughed about it and said "Why not?" If a film is a piece of fiction there's no need for it to agree with historical facts. Quentin Tarantino, who both wrote and directed the film, decided to rewrite history. For that I thank him. Tarantino's version of history is better than what really happened.

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Aus dem Nichts (5 Stars)

Family. Justice. The Sea.

This is Germany's selection for the Best Foreign Language film in the 2018 Academy Awards. Diane Kruger won the award for Best Actress at the 2017 Cannes Film festival. The title means "Out of nowhere", but for some inconceivable reason it's called "In the Fade" in English. What's that supposed to mean? It's an emotionally intense film. In the cinema this evening the audience was so silent that you could have heard a pin drop.

Diane Kruger plays Katja, a young German woman who has married Nuri Sekerci, a Kurdish man in Hamburg who owns an office that works supporting immigrants, giving tax and legal advice, translation work and even selling discounted plane tickets to Turkey. One evening a Neo-Nazi couple plants a nail bomb outside the office, killing Nuri and his son.

If I stopped my review there you would think you know what the film's about: Nazis, immigration, racism, politics, etc. You would be wrong. Those subjects, however important they are, are just the background for a psychological drama about the fight for survival of a woman whose whole life has been ripped from under her feet. The film isn't about the victims of the attack, and it only indirectly concerns the perpetrators of the attack. It's all about Katja.

After a shaky beginning, Katja had a perfect life. She met Nuri when he was a drug dealer selling hashish. They fell in love, but before things could progress he was arrested and spent four years in prison. That was the kick that Nuri needed to turn his life around. While in prison he did a degree in Economics, and after being released he went straight. His father gave him the start capital for his business, and he was able to provide a good life for Katja and their six-year-old son Rocco.

Then Nuri and Rocco are killed. Katja survives, but she's the real victim.

A woman in a position like that needs help. But what happens?

Katja's parents blame her for marrying a bad man, a foreigner and an ex-convict.

Nuri's parents blame Katja for their son's death.

The police investigations concentrate on Nuri's criminal past. They don't believe that he could have bought such a large house as a legal adviser for immigrants, so they assume he was selling drugs on the side.

Katja's life spirals out of control. She turns to hard drugs, which she had never used before. She attempts suicide. The only thing that gives her hope is the arrest of the couple who planted the bomb.

But after a long trial there's not enough evidence to convict them.

I enjoy films that portray strong women. I like films that don't show women as weak creatures who have to rely on men to do everything that they need. However, I understand that this can be alienating for women viewers. "That woman on the screen is so confident. She can do everything she wants, but I'm nothing like her". That's the downside of films about strong women. But that's not what we have in this film. Katja is a weak woman. She's someone that the average woman on the street can relate to. A catastrophe comes, and she's knocked flat on her back. That's no shame. What woman wouldn't be emotionally wrecked if her husband and son were murdered? Katja looks to others for help and doesn't get it. She wants to give up. That's still fully understandable. But then, when all seems lost, she pulls herself together and finds strength in herself that she didn't think she had.

I recommend this film to every woman everywhere. Men might like it as well.

Disorder (3 Stars)

This is an exciting thriller about an ex-soldier who takes a job as a security guard, protecting the wife and child of a Lebanese arms dealer. But can someone please explain to me what happened at the end?

Inglourious Basterds (5 Stars)

I'm beginning to think I picked the wrong Quentin Tarantino film to include in my 30 films to watch before you die. "Inglourious Basterds" is a masterpiece that only gets better with repeated viewing. What amazes me most is the first scene in the French farmhouse. This gets my vote for the best filmed scene ever. Watch it carefully to see what I mean. The quiet and the calm barely conceals the slowly developing threat. This scene is Quentin Tarantino at his best, the crowning pinnacle of his achievements as a director. It also underlines Christoph Waltz's skill as an actor. He deserved his Oscar.

As everyone who has seen the film already knows, Christoph Waltz is the film's real star, not Brad Pitt. He's a veteran actor who had been making films in Germany and Austria for 30 years, but "Inglourious Basterds" was his Hollywood breakthrough. It was long overdue.

Here's an example of Christoph Waltz's charm with the ladies. Nobody can resist him, not even Diane Kruger.

This is a newspaper shown in the film with a report about Hugo Stiglitz betraying the fatherland by murdering 13 German officers. It might not be obvious to people who don't understand German, but the text in the left column is repeated in the right column. Click on the photo to enlarge it and compare the first line of the new paragraph to see what I mean. Sloppy.

Inglourious Basterds (5 Stars)

After watching this film again it seems like Quentin Tarantino's best film. But then again, whenever I watch one of his films it seems like his best. They always leave a deep impression on me, during and after watching them.

Quentin is often praised or criticised for his over-the-top violence. But that isn't what he's about. If you watch "Inglourious Basterds" carefully, you'll see that there are very few scenes with violence. There might seem to be more because these few scenes are all exaggerated. Quentin's films are all about dialogue and atmosphere. The interrogation scene at the beginning between Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) and the farmer at the beginning is incredibly intense. It's more oppressive than any scene with overt violence.

Which reminds me of something that I've said before, but I have to repeat it. Christoph Waltz won an Oscar as the best supporting actor for his performance in this film. While he undoubtedly deserved it, it was a mistake. He wasn't a supporting actor, he was the main actor. Brad Pitt played the film's hero, Aldo the Apache, but if you count the minutes of screen time we see less of him than of Christoph Waltz. Maybe the good guy has to be the main actor. Or maybe it's just because Brad Pitt is the biggest star and the highest paid actor in the film. Either way, it's a mistake.

The film gives an appreciative nod to German cinema. Quentin Tarantino, forever a film geek, points out through the lips of Lt. Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender) that even during the Third Reich German films were very good. It's easily forgotten that Hitler didn't just impose racism and nationalism on his country, he also brought about a renaissance in the arts.

The Hunting Party (4½ Stars)

This is a film I discovered by accident. I saw the trailer for it on the DVD of another film I was about to watch. Although it didn't look like my sort of film I thought I would give it a try. And I loved it, it's a real gem. Let that be a lesson to any of my readers who avoid a certain genre. Even if you don't like (for example) westerns, you might come across films that will amaze you. That wasn't a random example. I personally hate westerns. And yet there are a few westerns that I enjoy, and not only the ones directed by Quentin Tarantino. I've always liked "Jeremiah Johnson", and a few years ago I discovered "The Wild Bunch".

"The Hunting Party" is loosely based on a true story. The true story is that after the war ended in Bosnia NATO and the USA accused Radovan Karadzic of war crimes inclding genocide. They sent troops to Bosnia to find him. Five years later he was still in hiding. A group of journalists wanted to interview him, so they travelled to Bosnia and found him in two days. America should have learnt from this debacle when they were hunting for Osama Bin Laden; instead of troops they should have sent journalists. Or better still, they should have sent a salesman selling porn DVDs into the mountains, because I'm sure Osama must have got bored jerking off to the same pornos in his bunker over and over again.

In the film a television crew are looking for a fictional Serbian leader called the Fox. Apart from renaming Karadzic, the characters shown are genuine and the story keeps close to real events. There's one significant difference. The real life journalists were true professionals, whereas the journalist Simon Hunt, played by Richard Gere in the film, has crossed the line. What I mean is, a good journalist is impartial; he withholds judgement and simply tries to report the facts as he sees them. Simon Hunt, on the other hand, is so shocked by the acts of genocide he sees in Bosnia that he decides to take revenge on the Fox.

Richard Gere is a truly great actor. I've never really noticed him before, apart from "Pretty Woman". The same is true of Terrence Howard, who has been in many films, but I've only ever seen him in "Iron Man". These two stars carry the film with their charisma. Jesse Eisenberg doesn't contribute much to the film, he seems like he's just along for the ride.

Farewell, my Queen (3 Stars)

This is a French film about the chaos in the Castle of Versailles during the French revolution in July 1789, as seen through the eyes of one of Marie Antoinette's servants. It's similar to "Downfall", though a lot more civilised. The chaos is more regal.

I was asked to watch this film by a close friend. I didn't really enjoy it. I find films that take place in royal palaces somehow unpleasant. The clothing, the mannerisms, everything. I'm not saying this is a bad film, it's just not for me.

Inglourious Basterds (5 Stars)

Normally I would deduct half a star for the ugly misspelling. Yes, I know it's deliberate, but I still hate it. I'll let Quentin Tarantino off just this once because I want to include this film in my Five Star Month. It's a five star film, even if it has a one star name. I'm not even sure why the name is misspelt. Is it because there was already a 1978 film with the same name, just spelt correctly? That can't be the reason, there must be a dozen other names Quentin could have chosen.

But let's get to the film itself. It's a war film, but in so many ways it's not a war film. It breaks all the conventions, starting with the opening music that sounds more like the introduction to a spaghetti western. The ringleader of the American hit squad, Aldo the Apache (Brad Pitt) is a really disgusting character. I can't think of any other war film in which the Americans are portrayed as being so evil and bigoted. He says in his first speech that Nazis have no humanity and every son of a bitch found wearing a Nazi uniform has to die. But as everyone knows, Germans had no choice about fighting in the war. Any German who refused to join the army after being called up was shot.

The film is slow, not a typical action film, although it does explode into violence at key parts. What makes the film a masterpiece is its atmosphere. As in all of Tarantino's films the conversations between the characters are just as fascinating as what they actually do. Interestingly, there are two plots that run in parallel. The viewer expects them to meet one another, but although they converge they never quite touch. On the one hand we have Shoshanna, a French Jewess who owns a cinema and plans to assassinate the Nazi leadership when they meet in her cinema for a film premiere. On the other hand we have Aldo and his Nazi hunters, also planning to assassinate the Nazis at the same film premiere. Even though they have the same goal and unknowingly assist one another, Shoshanna and Aldo never meet. And then there's the final twist that reminds me of Friedrich Dürrenmatt's "Romulus the Great".

Click here to view the trailer.

Unknown (5 Stars)

*** Review deleted ***