Inglourious Basterds (2009)

..."Inglorious" as our local theater decided to display its title on their marquee, minus the second word. It is terrific cinema.

I don't hesitate to recommend this film to all but the over-squeamish. Let them never know what they're missing.

I did hesitate to give it ten stars because of my experience of Tarantino's previous films. In every case, save "Reservoir Dogs," they have improved with additional watching.

So although I gave it ten stars, I did so reluctantly. It leaves me no "up" to go to.

Yes Christoph Waltz is the Nazi we've all imagined the worst to be. He is cultured, sophisticated, suave and most sadistic, the kind of man who can make a glass of milk a threat and who puts out his cigarette abruptly in a strudel, grinding it into the whipped cream as if he were grinding his heel into a victim.

To understand Tarantino's films, you need only have a sense of dialogue, color and pacing. The colors are as bright as necessary and when necessary, brighter yet. In the French farmhouse of the opening scene, they are muted and dark, but excessively so. Outside a brilliant sun is shining, but in the one room of the house, everything is bathed in shadows and black.

It is a brilliant setting for an interrogation by Waltz, as the "Jew Hunter" of the SS, who dangles his host French farmer over the precipice of revealing what he cannot reveal numerous times, then pulls him back with obsequious lines of friendship and understanding.

A second sadistic German, well-played by August Diehl, later functions as important actor in the final plot twist. Diehl's Nazi Major, who has an ear for German accents, is almost as good as Waltz....almost.

Film classes will study much from this movie. They should look lovingly at the superb pacing. Tarantino knows just how long to draw out a scene, building suspense in the manner of Hitchcock, then at just the breaking point, suddenly coming to a resolution.

For color, look for a final shot at a French Theater, where its secretly Jewish proprietor is staging a surprise for the upper reaches of Nazi leadership.

We see her, played by Melanie Laurent, awaiting the hated German dignataries who will arrive for a film preview of the latest Deutsch film masterpiece, a propaganda piece about a German hero and his dubious accomplishments.

Laurent is framed on a balcony, reflected in the glass mirrors of the gorgeous theater, her red lips and low cut dress reflecting everywhere the intensity of her designs on her guests. It is a single shot that would be worth an entire film.

There are thankfully many more such images, many more paced scenes of exquisite dialog and suspense.

In short, see it. I'm sure you'll see it again and again.