Watching Inglourious Basterds with Jennifer.

Half the dialog is in French and/or German, and the closed-captioning – while in English – is generally rather small & hard to read. I’m too lazy to fetch my spectacles from the bedroom, so I’m not getting as much out of the film as Mr. Tarantino might have wished.

Later: after thinking on it for a while, I realized I dislike two things about Inglourious Basterds:

I was annoyed by the ending of Gladiator, in which the Roman Republic is inexplicably restored, and I was equally annoyed when Inglourious Basterds brings World War II to an early (not to mention explosive) finish. It’s one thing to insert a fictional guerrilla band into a well-known period of history, but it’s just lazy writing to monkey with history. (Unless that’s the whole point of the work, e.g., The Man in the High Castle.)

The (Tarantino trademark) ultraviolence directed at low-ranking German soldiers – torture, disfigurement – was not justice, nor even the simple waging of war. It was just evil.

I’m left wondering who – if anyone – I’m supposed to be cheering for in this movie. Perhaps no one.