Tag Archives: Academy Award

Inglourious Basterds

Inglourious Basterds –  A film by Tarantino released in 2009 revolves around two plots that ultimately converge with each other. The story is set in 1944 when there is a group of Jewish soldiers known as Basterds are feared by the Nazis. A jewish girl in her late teens is running a cinema in Paris and has grudge against the Nazis. There is a German film planned to be premiered in the theater and Hitler is planning to attend it. Both the girl and the Basterds in parallel come up with plan to assassinate Hitler.  Will they succeed in their plan is the rest of the movie.

This is one of my all time favorite Tarantino movie. It has been executed brilliantly and there is never a dull moment in the movie. The bar scene where the ensemble are playing games although seem to be an uninteresting narration but the tension in the plot and the anticipation of what is going to happen next makes it a brilliant scene. Typical Tarantino style of having very insignificant foreground to a tension packed background plot (remember the conversation of Samuel Jackson and Travolta about McDonalds in the movie Pulp fiction). None other than Tarantino can make such interesting sequences. Brad Pitt has acted very well. The performance that stands out is that of Christopher Waltz… the performance was simply superb and no surprise that he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 2010. For brilliant performances and narration style Inglourious Basterds is a Must Watch!

Must Watch

The Departed

The Departed – This is 2006  movie directed by Martin Scorsese.  It is a crime thriller where a police superintendent makes one of the new recruit to infiltrate the  drug trafficking gang. While the boss of the gang simultaneously makes one of the gangster infiltrate the police department. With moles in each group the plot gets interesting when both the boss and the police superintendent figure out the existence of moles in each of their groups. The rest of the movie is a race between them to uncover the moles faster than the other so that their own person in the other group is protected. What happens in the end is the rest of the plot. This movie is a remake of the 2002 Hong Kong movie Infernal Affairs.

The movie has a very close resemblance to the original, including many of the camera angles. For a director like Martin Scorsese to do this, you know how well the original has been made. Like the original this also follows the 3 Act Play to the book as mentioned in my recent Friday Fact section. The movie has some brilliant casting with Matt Damon, Leornado DiCaprio, Jack Nicholson, Martin Sheen and Mark Wahlberg. The movie just gets much bigger due to its cast ensemble. Kudos to Martin Scorsese to bring such a movie again back to the screen with strong casting a true tribute to the original. The Departed went on to win the Academy Award for the best picture. For the brilliant casting and narration this is a must watch.

Must Watch