As you would expect from a film that is also an espionage picture and a detective movie, it's shot through with identity games, interrogations, role-playing and people or situations that are not what they appear to be.
#THE BAY 2012 123 MOVBIE MOVIE#
The movie comes down firmly on the side of the Jews, and of revenge, of an early end to the war and the saving of thousands of lives, with barely a quibble.īut while "Inglourious Basterds" is indisputably a WW II revenge fantasy (and, of course, a typically Tarantinian "love letter to cinema"), a theme that is central to nearly every moment, every image, every line of dialog, is that of performance - of existence as a form of acting, and human identity as both projection and perception. I also don't see it as an act of Holocaust denial or an anti-vengeance fable in which we are supposed to first applaud the Face of Jewish Revenge, and then feel uncomfortable sympathy for the Nazis. The war is indeed the setting, but that's not so much what the movie is about. Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds" is about World War II in roughly the same way that, I suppose, Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" is about a haunted hotel. The genre's blood is frequently tainted by fast-buck pretenders and greedy opportunists who care more about profit than the genre's history, which is the worthy subject of some of the finest film scholarship that's ever been written. It's the favorite plaything for copy-cats and money-grubbers. Of course, there's always a downside: The record-setting $50 million opening weekend of "Paranormal Activity 3" (which earned a one-star review from Roger Ebert) - and Paramount's immediate strategy to keep that franchise booming - provided a stark reminder that, more often than not, horror is where commerce almost always trumps art. It's a realm of expression that challenges masters and amateurs alike. It's the most purely cinematic of genres, playing to the strengths of an artistic medium that has shock, surprise, dread, fear, and bloodletting built into every molecule of its DNA. It has consistently been the most viable proving ground for new talent and a focal point for the most obsessive movie fans on the planet.
Historically and statistically, the most abundant, profitable, and creatively expressive movie genre has always been horror. On DVD, all of the foreign-language films reviewed here include an optional English-dub dialogue track for viewers with an aversion to subtitles. Check your VoD provider listings, or go to for more information about the films and where to find them. With the exception of "The Woman" (which is still in limited theatrical release), all of the films from "Bloody Disgusting Selects" are currently available on multiple platforms including Netflix (DVD only), and most VOD providers including Comcast, DirecTV, Amazon, iTunes, CinemaNow, VuDu and Verizon FiOS. One was Manohla Dargis's NY Times dispatch from Cannes. I guess fame - or importance - depends on your perspective.Ī few things got me to thinking about this. That's about what "Marvel's The Avengers" took in while you were reading the last sentence). Its impact on the American box office is negligible (although Kiarostami's Palme-winner "Taste of Cherry" grossed a pretty impressive $312 thousand in the US in 1998. I suppose it's true that, to most people outside our own little coterie, the Cannes Film Festival means just about nothing. That guy became the international flavor-of-the-film-fest-cicruit in the 1980s, achieved his biggest commercial success in 2010, and has a new film in competition at Cannes right now. And don't even get me started on Kiarostami. (I'll be honest: I don't know what a Kardashian is, but I keep hearing the term.) I mean, good god, the Dardennes have been all in your face throughout the 21st century, making movie after movie and picking up awards everywhere you look. In fact, some of us, whether we like them or not, feel they are overexposed, on the verge of becoming more than famous: ubiquitous. In mine - loosely categorized as international film-festival cinephiliacs - big-name contemporary filmmakers such as Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Abbas Kiarostami, Michael Haneke and the Dardennes brothers (yes, they've all won the Palme d'Or at Cannes) are huge, huge stars. We all live in our own little subcultures.