It looks as though there is some kind of disconnect between how the reception of Inglorious Basterds is going so far, at least according to Goldstein, who looks at the internet and concludes that those who like Harvey Weinstein are showing favorable reviews. Those who don’t are showing non-favorable reviews. Goldstein seems sure the movie is bad:
The reviews keep coming in from all media outposts, with Variety mixed, the Hollywood Reporter largely negative and Time magazine’s Richard and Mary Corliss declaring the movie “a misfire.” My colleague Kenneth Turan, who was also at the screening, calls the film a “self-indulgent piece of violent alternate history.”
However, my favorite assessment of the film comes from director Eli Roth, who plays Sgt. Donnie Donowitz in “Basterds.” He defends the film’s narrative conceit about tough Jews getting revenge against Hitler, describing it as “kosher porn. It’s something I dreamed since I was a kid.”
Turan’s comment makes the film seem too alluring to pass up. The trajectory of a film out of Cannes has changed in the past decade. When there were more critics than bloggers films would open there, a few reviews would pop up, but it wouldn’t really matter because once the film opened here in the US the rules were changed. Now, it feels like the film has been seen by so many already, thus how can it overcome the reviews and reinvent itself when it opens here?
Meanwhile, the Weinsteins brought out the big guns when Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt made yet another appearance at Cannes — it’s becoming some kind of tradition.