Step 1: Revel in the Glourious-ness that is Inglourious Basterds, writer/director Quentin Tarantino’s marvelously skewed take on WWII.
Step 2: Rewrite history. Ah, if only Tarantino’s little fable about killing Nazis were the way it actually happened. In QT’s head, there’s a group of Jewish-American soldiers – lead by one Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), aka Aldo the Apache – who are dropped into occupied France and begin systematically wiping out every known Nazi in the territory. They are dubbed the Inglourious Basterds – and they scare the crap out of Hitler. Meanwhile, Shosanna (Mélanie Laurent), a Jew who had to watch the execution of her entire family, lives undercover as a Parisian theater owner. She hatches her own plan for revenge when Hitler’s second-in-command, Joseph Goebbels (Sylvester Groth), decides he wants to premiere his latest propaganda film at her theater – with all high-ranking officers of the Third Reich in attendance, including the Fuhrer himself. Shosanna’s plan soon coincides with the Basterds’ next terrorist act – and it’s spectacular.
Step 3: Always admire Tarantino’s casting choices. The auteur loves to either discover new talent (Reservoir Dog‘s Steve Buscemi), reacquaint audiences with character actors he has always loved (Jackie Brown‘s Pam Grier or Kill Bill‘s David Carradine) or boost a big-name actor’s career that has stalled (Pulp Fiction‘s John Travolta and Bruce Willis or Kill Bill‘s Uma Thurman). But with 
Basterds, he goes one step further and introduces American audiences to an array of wonderful European actors, including French actress Laurent, as the wounded Shosanna, and Austrian actor Christoph Waltz [pictured], as the sadistic yet highly intellectual SS Col. Hans Landa. But of course, everyone is going to associate Basterds with Brad Pitt, who turns in yet another quirky and hilarious performance as the Nazi hunter with a thick Tennessee accent. “We’re in the Nat-zi killing business and business is booming!” Gotta love him for continually stepping outside the box.
Step 4: Also gotta love a Tarantino set piece. He has really perfected combining stark violence with mood-building music, stylized camera shots – and most importantly, thought-provoking dialogue. Boy, does Quentin like it when his characters make speeches. Some have criticized him for his overindulgence, but I’ve always found it fascinating – from Samuel L. Jackson’s soliloquy in Pulp Fiction to David Carradine’s diatribe in Kill Bill, Vol. 2 to the girls in Death Proof talking about taking a test drive in a 1970 Dodge Challenger, the same car from Vanishing Point. I mean, Tarantino has got a whole MESS of crap — film related and otherwise – trapped in that fervent brain of his that he feels ultimately compelled to pay homage to. In Basterds, it’s WWII stuff (especially the 1978 Italian film Inglorious Bastards), German cinema, big Jews with bats and much more.
Level of difficulty in watching Inglourious Basterds: Easy as bashing in a Nazi’s head. OK, maybe that’s not as easy for some, but Tarantino sure makes it look that way.