Inglourious Basterds

The greatest strength of Quentin Tarantino has always been his pure and unadulterated love and worship of all cinema, the good, the bad and especially the ugly. He cares about both the film and the audience because he is both. His latest film, Inglourious Basterds is certainly his finest work since Pulp Fiction and surpasses that film in sheer intensity by a longshot. Genuinely intriguing as a period piece, a genre film and an homage all at once, Basterds finds Tarantino pushing his writing further and pulling his direction back (although thankfully only a bit) and succeeding brilliantly with a lesser known (though no less talented and well-selected) cast. Brad Pitt as Lt. Aldo Raines and Christoph Waltz as Hans Landa each deliver stunning performances that blur the lines between character and caricature as the film delivers its own twists and turns to history. It's like "Valkyrie" on acid. Tarantino may have just single-handedly created his own future cult subgenre: Jewish Revenge Porn. And even though I felt he was a bit miscast, I did not hate Eli Roth for two hours and thirty two minutes. Quentin Tarantino is a true magician.