No living film director trumpets his sheer love of movies more loudly than does Quentin Tarantino. Whether or not you like his latest work, you have to admit that it’s one of the most cinematic movies to come along this year. It drips with homage in a spirit of tribute so genuine as to be irresistible. Whether or not you surrender to it will have much to do with whether Tarantino’s heroes from film history are your heroes as well.

Tarantino here rewrites the end of World War II. The basic plot is simple, concerning The Basterds, a squadron of American Jews led by Lt. Aldo Raine, played by Brad Pitt at his comedic best, sporting a Tennessee mountain accent so thick it sounds phony. Raine’s mission for his men is to kill and scalp Nazis, and he demands from them 100 scalps each. Raine is the hero, and we’re no doubt supposed to think of Aldo Ray, who starred in many war movies as exactly that.

Raine’s opposite is Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), an SS officer who’s suave, sure, cunning, and cruel. Landa is sure to go down as one of the great movie villains, and Waltz is virtually assured a nomination for an Academy Award (he’s already won a Best Actor award at Cannes for this role). The opening scene, in which Landa questions a French farmer suspected of harboring Jews, is one of the most magnificent pieces of acting and directing that has come along in some time. Suspense doesn’t get better than this.

If there’s a Hero and a Villain, then there must be a Girl, and this one is Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent), a Jew who escapes in the film’s first scene, early in the war, and appears later as the owner of a movie theater, a location she sets up as the potential final resting place of Hitler and his top command. The rest of the cast is A+, down to the smallest role.

But it’s a Tarantino movie, so it’s not enough to have one plot to bump all the bad guys off.

Some scenes deserve a 5 rating, others 4.5, but my overall rating of Inglourious Basterds is dragged down to 4 by some scenes that just tread water, particularly one set in a pub in which the dialogue and film in-jokes just go on and on. Tarantino’s dialogue is usually one of the best things about his movies, but this time he goes over the line between intriguing titillation and boredom. There’s also the matter of the movie’s overall tone. A tribute to the spaghetti western complete with music by Ennio Morricone, at times it seems more like a serio-comic graphic novel, at others just a comic book. Once in a while it seems as if Tarantino threw something in just because he liked it; sometimes that works, sometimes not. Let’s just say that you’ll laugh, sometimes nervously, sometimes not.

The movie looks like a million bucks. The director has chosen rich, vibrant colors that make it look, well, like a movie. Not just a movie but a Movie. The special effects are first-rate. The wartime explosions will give you a thrill, if you’re into that sort of thing. Inglourious Basterds is gory, but in a way that’s like "play-acting." The scalping isn’t realistic, but still you go "Yuck!," thinking what it might be like in real life. The period costumes and unscalped hair are ideal. There’s no mistaking the era or the geographical location.

I don’t want to say much more, as it might spoil your thrill of discovery. But whether or not you like Inglourious Basterds, it’s an important movie. It celebrates cinema and manages to be damned entertaining along the way, at least 80% percent of the time, and 80% of Tarantino is worth 100% of many others.

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