INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS * * * *
Cert 18, 152 mins
If anyone is to change history and invent a new ending for the Second World War, it’s going to be Quentin Tarantino.

The maverick writer and director is known for putting a quirky stamp on his projects and his latest movie is no different, even down to the title’s misspelling which he refuses to explain.

But while he meddles with the facts, Tarantino also makes all of his characters talk in their own language, which adds to the realism – and occasional frustration with all the subtitles during drawn-out ‘talky’ scenes.

Inglourious Basterds is not your typical war film, beginning ‘once upon a time in Nazi-occupied France’.

Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt with a sometimes impenetrable southern accent) leads the Basterds, an assortment of Jewish American soldiers, plus German deserter Hugo Stiglitz (Til Schweiger).

Raine spells out their mission: “We’re in the killing Nazi business, and business is booming.”

Demanding 100 Nazi scalps from each of his men, they cut a violent swathe through France, disembowelling as they go. No wonder Hitler is so infuriated.

It has an 18 certificate for a reason as we see brains bashed in with a baseball bat, throat cutting, strangulation and people cut down in a hail of bullets.

Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) is the urbane yet ruthless Jew Hunter determined to catch Raine.

Pitt is pretty good, but it’s mesmerising Waltz who steals the film. You won’t have heard his name before, but it will be popping up on most awards shortlists in the coming months, and don’t be surprised if he walks off with an Oscar.

The Austrian doesn’t just act superbly, he manages to act in four different languages, effortlessly switching between fluent German, English, French and Italian.

Other story strands include British agent Michael Fassbender meeting up with German actress and spy Diane Kruger (on the orders of a heavily disguised Mike Myers), to execute a plot to assassinate the German high command while they’re watching a propaganda film in Paris.

Unbeknown to them, cinema owner Shosanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent), a Jew whose family were massacred by Landa, has a similar plan to dispatch the Nazis.

The tension builds pretty well, helped by a quirky soundtrack including David Bowie and Ennio Morricone tunes from Spaghetti Westerns. There are some good lines and darkly humorous moments.

However, while Tarantino has cut out pages of dialogue in the ten or so years he’s been working on this project, it’s still too long.

We are engrossed for most of the two-and-a-half hours it takes to tell the story’s five chapters, but there are moments during long and winding conversations when the film begins to go astray. Especially when Tarantino indulges himself with a discussion about European cinema.

A good 20 minutes could have been cut to make it a tighter and more entertaining script.

But for all its faults, Basterds is a major improvement on Tarantino’s last few productions and deserves a look.   RL

SHORTS * * *
Cert PG, 88 mins
Directed by Robert Rodriguez, whose Spy Kids movies illustrated how being a parent himself has helped him to understand what children want, Shorts is about a boy who finds a coloured rock which can grant wishes in the town of Black Falls.

Naturally, rival children and adults alike want to use it for themselves.

There’s clearly nothing original in the central concept and the film opens strongly in conventional fashion.

But, this being a Robert Rodriguez production – and he’s big buddies with Quentin Tarantino, remember – the whole movie seems to set off on a life of its own.

It’s soon whizzing about in all directions at once with a mixture of colourful escapades and children who are actually quite likeable in various film ‘shorts’.

Youngsters getting too used to be being fed a diet of homogenised, formulaic pap will find this a refreshing change to anything they’ve seen before.  GY

SIN NOMBRE * * * *
Cert 15, 95mins
Set to celebrate its centenary on December 27, Britain’s oldest working cinema says on its website: “We look forward to playing you the best in independent and intelligent mainstream films.”

Regular visitors to the Electric Cinema on Station Street might have questioned this policy during recent screenings of Terminator Salvation and Harry Potter VI, but not with this fabulous Mexican film produced by Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna.

Directed by cinematographer Cary Joji Fukunaga, who won the directing awards at Sundance and Edinburgh this year, it’s a subtitled drama about a young woman and her father and uncle who travel from Honduras through Mexico.

Meanwhile, local gang members are robbing people who are travelling north on the tops of railway freight cars.

A film of dreams for some and the downward spiral of initiation ceremonies for some, this is like a Third World cross between Slumdog Millionaire and City Of God.

It’s full of extraordinary images, human dilemmas and, inevitably, some unpleasant violence.

The simple scene were the travellers cover their heads on top of the train when it starts raining is evidence enough that this is filmmaking of an extraordinarily high standard in difficult terrain. Don’t miss it.   GY