They see you when you're sleeping. They KNOW when you're awake.

Inglourious Basterds is a wild ride of extraordinary invention, filled to the brim with rousing episodes of sheer loquaciousness and astonishing moments of unforeseen mayhem. That is to say, Inglourious Basterds is a film by Quentin Tarantino.

Having heard of the project years ago, I mistakenly pictured a gritty story of life as a foot soldier during World War II. Nothing could have been further from the truth. I have seen my share of war films, many of which deal with that very time period, but I daresay that I have never seen a war film that was as entertaining and as much utter fun as this one.

Inglourious Basterds is about a group of Allied soldiers, most of them Jewish-American, placed in occupied France in 1941 to conduct a campaign of terror against the Nazis. Along the way, the film deviates down a number of different paths, introducing the audience to characters large, small, brash, shy, self-reliant, needy, and above all, very entertaining.

A prominent reason for why the film works so well is the screenplay. It's wonderfully well-written. I'm not certain that it's, as Tarantino might believe, the penultimate story in his already venerable collection of narrative mastery, but it definitely deserves a tier all its own. There's a circular quality to the writing that's very rewarding for the viewer. Certain objects and phrases previously alluded to come back into focus and provide a sense of discovery as one realizes that what's about to happen is as plain as the mustache on Brad Pitt's lip.

Speaking of Brad Pitt, he's wonderful here. In the screening I attended, there came a point when anything he said would be greeted by laughter. With this film and last year's Burn After Reading, he's certainly recast himself as a viable comedic actor. In addition, Christoph Waltz is very strong as Col. Hans Landa. He shows a remarkable amount of range in his portrayal of a brilliant, charming, and often vicious SD officer. There's a moment early in the film when his features literally harden right in front of the viewer's eyes that's remarkable. He's almost certain to receive an Oscar nomination.

Quentin Tarantino has come a long way from the life of a cash-strapped video store clerk. It would be fairly simple to say that his films typically fall into a specific genre, and list Reservoir Dogs as his heist film, Pulp Fiction as his gangster film, Kill Bill as his kung-fu action film, and Inglourious Basterds as his WWII film. But discussing his films as mere exercises in genre isn't entirely accurate and does them a grave disservice. Do those films share certain conventions with other films that wear the same label? Certainly. Where Tarantino goes off into different territory is in how he executes those conventions. One could do a random test and compare a scene from any of those films to a scene from just about any other film within its genre and you'd be able to pick out the Tarantino film every single time. In a "regular" gangster film, we'd see the hitmen find their target and blow him/her to kingdom come. In a Tarantino film, we follow the hitmen around town as they drive to their target, listen to their conversation as it touches on a variety of subjects from the metric system to foot massages, watch them scare the living daylights out of their target by trying his Kahuna burger and Sprite, quote Ezekiel to thrilling effect, and then blow the guy away. In lesser hands, a scene with this level of sophistication would be a disaster.

As such, the pacing of Inglourious Basterds is signature Tarantino. What might be seen as slow in someone else's movie is more often than not justified in his work, because it's so specifically structured to build in a certain way. Other trademarks abound, such as the placement of captions to point out specific characters, unexpected asides that provide information, and his ever-present title cards to point out the start of a new "chapter." I've heard the film described by one critic as an art film that keeps the viewer at arm's length instead of providing a fully enveloping experience. This is a fair judgment of the film. He's fully aware that he's making a film, and he's intent on keeping that fact in your mind as a viewer. From a personal standpoint, I find it particularly exciting to have a chance to see a film from a genuine artist who uses film as a way to express a unique creative outlook, as opposed to a film made by the multitude of people working in Hollywood for whom making movies seems to be "just a job."

Some have expressed a sense of disappointment, even revilement, at the liberty Tarantino takes with history. There have been Jewish critics who have taken exception to the way that many Nazis in the film are abused by the Basterds, the tactics that the Basterds use, and the significant amount of charm exuded by Col. Landa, who, apparently, is too charming to be a real Nazi. Personally, my response to to these criticisms is "What exactly is the problem?" Yes, the Nazis in the film are abused horribly by the Basterds. Yes, the Basterds use tactics akin to modern terrorists. However, there's one particular point that needs to remain clearly visible. It's a movie. Tarantino is not trying to to make a political statement or present an historical document with his highly specialized vision of World War II. I think it probably boils down to something as simple as the thought running through his head of "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if . . ." Additionally, I fervently disagree that Col. Landa is so charming that the viewer forgets the terrible actions he's capable of.

I'm a bit confused, to be honest. Last year, The Reader got flak for being sympathetic to a Nazi character and trying to understand her reason for her crimes, and now Inglourious Basterds is getting flak for its presentation of Nazis receiving what, for many of them, they fully deserve. Is there some way of dealing with this time period that's supposed to be more correct than all others? I'm not suggesting in any way, shape, or form that the events that took place in Europe in the 1930's and 1940's are anything less than a terrifying indictment of what is possible when the worst aspects of men's and women's souls are allowed to guide their actions. What I am suggesting is that, as viable material for a narrative, there are a variety of ways to deal with it.

As I sat there in the movie theater as the film neared the end, I had a thought that I might just know where it was going to end, and this thought ticked me off a little bit. "Oh, come on," I thought, "if he does THAT, then this movie has officially lost it, jumped the shark, committed hara-kiri, etc. That's just too much." Then, you want to guess what happened? It ended exactly that way, but something strange happened. It didn't really bother me that much. What's more, as I thought about it later, I realized something. While it's certainly not the way that any story that really took place would have ended, for this wild ride, it worked, and, in its own way, is kind of brilliant.

Just like the film itself.

"We do it to understand . . ."

Taglines are supposed to be eye-catching, informative little blurbs that give you just enough information that ties in with the poster's image to hopefully incite some enthusiasm for the film being advertised. Yesterday, after seeing The Reader, my sister and I were looking at the poster outside the theater. The tagline sucked. It reads: "How far would you go to protect a secret? Unlock the mystery." From reading this, you'd think that the film is a suspense thriller or something like that. It gives no real sense about the poignant, thought-provoking story that unfolds in The Reader, Stephen Daldry's new film with Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes.

The Reader is about the lifelong effect of a summer relationship between Michael, a 15 year old boy, and Hanna, a woman over 20 years his senior. He goes to visit her because he, not surprisingly, becomes infatuated and falls in love with her. I'm guessing the sex had more than a little bit to do with that . . . Her reasons for initiating and maintaining the relationship are less clear. Like Daldry's last film, The Hours, the film takes place in more than one time frame. Later, Michael learns that Hanna was a member of the S.S. during World War II. I wouldn't dream of telling you any more than that, so I'll just leave it there.

The performances are uniformly strong. Kate Winslet does a fine job and will probably merit some consideration for an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Of particular note are the two actors who portray Michael, the main character. David Kross and Ralph Fiennes do an excellent job of maintaining continuity within the character as he ages. For example, the younger Michael has this odd habit of smiling at the strangest times. At first, this bothered me a bit, until I realized that the older Michael had the same weird habit. In addition, the resemblance between the two is strong, which helps with the believability factor.

In the movies, it's become commonplace to vilify certain groups of people or things without objection. For example, aliens are a convenient target. Need a massive evil force to invade the planet at a moment's notice? They're your man. (well, technically not your man, but I'm not sure what noun to insert there) How about the insane? It's incredibly easy make the villain out of a person (presumably one who used to be a friend/relative of the hero) who, usually through either a freak accident or a traumatic experience, has lost his/her mind. If you were to write a screenplay and use either of these two types of villain as your antagonist, no one would blink an eye.

There is, however, another archetypical villain that has been used countless times as perhaps the most convenient of targets: the Nazi. Maybe it's a sense of moral superiority that audiences derive from knowing that, almost no matter what, they are superior to this group of people who was responsible for the deaths of almost 6 million innocent men, women, and children. Maybe it's just because they're an exceptionally easy target to shoot at. Could be a little of both. While there have been films with sympathetic Nazi characters, like Oskar Schindler in Schindler's List, and Doctor Lessing in Life is Beautiful, I can't recall a film with a truly sympathetic character who was a member of the S.S.

That's one thing that really impressed me about The Reader. Instead of contenting itself with mere condemnation, the film makes a much-needed effort to do something much more vital. It tries to understand.

I'm not suggesting that The Reader lets people like Hanna Schmitz off the hook for their actions. That would be undeniably, unbelievably wrong. That's not the point. What it does instead is try to understand how a person like her might think and why she acted as she did, given her circumstances. This, I think, is infinitely more valuable than the standard angry finger-wagging that occurs in almost any other characterization of Nazis that I can think of.

So, what does this add up to? Simply put, The Reader is a film that I've been looking forward to for quite a while and is something I'll be thinking about for a long time to come. The questions are hard and the answers even harder, but I think that we are better for having made the effort. This is one of the year's best films.