By Tarantino Standards, Basterds Indeed Inglourious

Festival fave Quentin Tarantino opened his comic-fantasy take on World War II, Inglourious Basterds, at Cannes today. The film traces Jewish-American soldiers, led by Brad Pitt, as they annihilate as many Nazis in France as three grisly hours can fit. Some early sentiment:

• "It's western meets war movie, with David Bowie on the soundtrack," writes Emma Jones for the BBC, adding that she regrets only that it's too long and there isn't enough Pitt.

• “Tarantino is a brilliant showman, the smartest, most erudite guy in the movie clubhouse, a master at re-creating old and/or exotic styles,” Lisa Schwarzbaum writes for Entertainment Weekly, “but how deep can a movie that repurposes recycled material go? Not very.”
• “There’s a certain excitement about the reverent glee Tarantino has for movies and, in this wishful case, for their power to exterminate evil,” Wesley Morris writes for the Boston Globe. “What the movie doesn’t have is Tarantino’s usual joyful transcendence.”

(More Quentin Tarantino stories.)