Director : Pete Docter, Bob Peterson (co-director)

Writer(s) : Pete Docter, Bob Peterson

Genre : Animation, Adventure, Comedy, Drama, Family

Cast : Edward Asner, Christopher Plummer, Jordan Nagai, Bob Peterson, Delroy Lindo, Jerome Ranft, John Ratzenberger, David Kaye, Elie Docter, Jeremy Leary, Mickie McGowan, Danny Mann, Donald Fullilove, Jess Harnell, Josh Cooley

Summary : A feisty septuagenarian teams with a fearless wilderness ranger to do battle with a vicious band of beasts and villains in this computer-animated adventure scripted by Pixar veteran Bob Peterson and co-directed by Peterson and Monsters, Inc. director Peter Docter. Carl Fredricksen is a 78-year-old balloon salesman. His entire life, Carl has longed to wander the wilds of South Africa. Then, one day, the irascible senior citizen shocked his neighbors by tying thousands of balloons to his home and finally taking flight. But Carl isn’t alone on his once-in-a-lifetime journey, because stowed away on his front porch is an excitable eight-year-old Wilderness Explorer named Russell. Later, as the house touches down on the world’s second largest continent, Carl and his unlikely traveling companion step outside to discover that not only is their new front lawn considerably larger, but that the predators therein are much more ferocious than anything they ever faced back home. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Runtime : 96 min

Awards : Won 2 Oscars. Another 40 wins & 29 nominations

Director : Quentin Tarantino

Writer(s) : Quentin Tarantino

Genre : Drama, Thriller, War

Cast : Brad Pitt, Mélanie Laurent, Christoph Waltz, Eli Roth, Michael Fassbender, Diane Kruger, Daniel Brühl, Til Schweiger, Gedeon Burkhard, Jacky Ido, B.J. Novak, Omar Doom, August Diehl, Denis Menochet, Sylvester Groth

Summary :

“Quentin Tarantino’s Masterpiece”

“Inglorious Basterds” just might be Quentin Tarantino’s masterpiece. It’s a delirious re-imagining of World War II. A hypothetical “what if” story. Where last year’s “Valkyrie” was based in fact, Tarantino’s film is based in fantasy. It’s a visualization of a conversation most kids have when they first learn about Hitler and the Holocaust. If we were there and given the opportunity to kill Hitler ourselves, how would we do it? I’ve never heard anybody answer that question with as much detail and rich characterizations as Tarantino has done here.

In Tarantino’s version, all his characters are cinema-obsessed fans (like him) who contsantly discuss movies. There’s even a scene where a French cinema owner is polishing the letters on the theatre’s marquee. Tarantino’s mad love of cinema is evident in every frame. So it’s no surprise that Tarantino’s “kill Hitler” scenario involves having Hitler attend the premiere of a new German movie called “Nation’s Pride” in which the theatre is booby-trapped to explode and burn, killing all the highest-ranking officials of the Nazi party at once, effectively ending the war.

Among the conspirators trying to make this happen are a team of Nazi-killing Jews know as The Basterds headed by Brad Pitt in a weird but brilliant performance in which Pitt seems to be channeling Warren Oates. Also part of this team is a character known as “the bear Jew” who kills Nazis with a baseball bat! He is played by Eli Roth, the director of the torture-porn movie “Hostel”, and apparently the director of the movie within this movie, “Nation’s Pride,” the one having the premiere.

Diane Kruger turns in one of her best performances as a German movie star who is acting as a double-agent and is in on the theatre explosion plot. But in the film’s greatest performance is little-known Austrian actor Christoph Waltz as Nazi colonel Hans Landa, a detective for the SS known as “the Jew hunter” with a cold-as-ice interrogation technique. I can’t imagine Waltz not getting an Oscar for this performance. For that matter, the time may finally have arrived for Brad Pitt to win his Oscar. Pitt’s performance here is more than deserving.

Tarantino’s film is like “revenge therapy” for anyone who has ever fantasized about seeing the Nazi party brought to vigilante justice. It’s also a loving homage to cinema and some of the legendary filmmakers of its past. After previous Tarantino brilliance such as “Pulp Fiction” and “Kill Bill”, “Inglourious Basterds” is his crowning achievment.

With the August release of “Inglourious Basterds” we finally have a movie that 2009 can be remembered for.

DVD Double-Feature: To see the movie that influences the cinematic style of ‘Basterds’, check out Sergio Leone’s uncut 165-minute spaghetti-western epic “Once Upon A Time In The West.” Henry Fonda, as a cold-blooded killer, heads an all-star cast that includes Jason Robards, Charles Bronson and Claudia Cardinale. The film also contains a now-classic score by Ennio Morricone who also contributes music to ‘Basterds’.

Runtime : 153 min

Awards : Won Oscar. Another 56 wins & 54 nominations

Director : Fred Zinnemann

Writer(s) : Robert Bolt

Genre : Biography, Drama

Cast : Paul Scofield, Wendy Hiller, Leo McKern, Robert Shaw, Orson Welles, Susannah York, Nigel Davenport, John Hurt, Corin Redgrave, Colin Blakely, Cyril Luckham, Jack Gwillim, Thomas Heathcote, Yootha Joyce, Anthony Nicholls

Summary : Adapted by Robert Bolt and Constance Willis from Bolt’s hit stage play, A Man for All Seasons stars Paul Scofield, triumphantly repeating his stage role as Sir Thomas More. The crux of the film is the staunchly Catholic More’s refusal to acknowledge King Henry VIII (Robert Shaw)’s break from the church to divorce his first wife and marry Anne Boleyn (an unbilled Vanessa Redgrave). Sir Thomas willingly goes to the chopping block rather than sacrifice his ideals. Director Fred Zinnemann retains the play’s verbosity without sacrificing the film’s strong sense of visuals. The impeccably chosen cast includes Wendy Hiller as Sir Thomas’ likably contentious wife Alice, John Hurt as the deceitful Richard Rich (More’s put-downs of this despicable character provide some of the film’s biggest laughs), Orson Welles as a dour Cardinal Woolsey, Leo McKern as the ambitious Thomas Cromwell, and Susannah York as More’s daughter Margaret. The “Common Man,” an important bridging-the-scenes character in the original play, is removed from the film version, which does just fine without him. A Man for All Seasons won six Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor, as well as seven British Film Academy awards.

Director : Federico Fellini

Writer(s) : Federico Fellini, Ennio Flaiano

Genre : Drama, Fantasy

Cast : Marcello Mastroianni, Anita Ekberg, Anouk Aimée, Yvonne Furneaux, Magali Noël, Alain Cuny, Annibale Ninchi, Walter Santesso, Valeria Ciangottini, Riccardo Garrone, Ida Galli, Audrey McDonald, Polidor, Alain Dijon, Enzo Cerusico

Summary : Seven days (and nights) in the life of a Marcello, a Roman journalist torn between making something serious of his life or drifting along on a pleasant if empty stream of casual affairs and profitable, but meaningless, newspaper and magazine work. In the course of the week, he flirts with a visiting movie star has a couple of encounters with a bored socialite, one of them in a prostitute’s bedroom, is shocked when Steiner, a “serious” writer and deep thinker kills himself and his children, and generally ignores his adoring girlfriend. In the end, he seems to have cut himself adrift on a sea of frivolity and self-disgust, with no real idea of how to find his way “home” again.

Director : David Lean

Writer(s) : Charles Dickens, Anthony Havelock-Allan

Genre : Drama

Cast : John Mills, Tony Wager, Valerie Hobson, Jean Simmons, Bernard Miles, Francis L. Sullivan, Finlay Currie, Martita Hunt, Alec Guinness, Ivor Barnard, Freda Jackson, Eileen Erskine, George Hayes, Hay Petrie, John Forrest

Summary : Immediately grabbing the audience’s attention with a heart-stopping opening scene in a dark graveyard, acclaimed British director David Lean realizes the cinematic potential of Charles Dickens’ classic 1861 novel, and the result is considered by many to be one of the finest literary adaptations ever made as well as one of the greatest British films of all time. Crystallized into a tight 118-minute running time by Lean, Ronald Neame, and a corps of uncredited contributors, this is the story of young Pip, a lad of humble means whose training as a gentleman is bankrolled by a mysterious benefactor. Along the way, Pip falls in love with the fickle Estella, befriends the cheerfully insouciant Herbert Pocket, has memorable encounters with the escaped convict Magwitch and the lunatic dowager Miss Havisham, and almost (but not quite) forgets his modest origins as the foster son of kindhearted blacksmith Joe Gargery. The role of Pip is evenly divided between Anthony Wager as a child and John Mills as an adult; Alec Guinness makes his starring film debut as the jaunty Pocket; Jean Simmons and Valerie Hobson are costarred as the younger and older Estella; and Martita Hunt is unforgettable as the mad Miss Havisham (“It’s a fine cake! A wedding cake! MINE!”) Remade several times, Great Expectations resurfaced in 1989 as a TV miniseries, with Jean Simmons, originally the young Estella, tearing a passion to tatters as Miss Havisham; and in 1998 it was remade again, in a contemporary version, with Ethan Hawke, Gwyneth Paltrow, Robert DeNiro, and Anne Bancroft in the Miss Havisham role.