Cast: Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Melanie Laurent, Michael Fassbender, Eli Roth, Diane Kruger, Daniel Bruhl.

NOT only has Tarantino made one of the best films of the year with this deliciously over-the-top war film, but he's made the best film of his career.

This sprawling and segmented black comedy has many of Tarantino's key elements - particularly the dark humour, interweaving stories and cinematic in-jokes - but it's even bolder and innovative than his previous works.

The first of the two "kill Hitler" plots follows Shosanna (Laurent), a French Jew who escapes a death squad led by the efficient "Jew Hunter" Hans Landa (Waltz) and starts a new life running a cinema in occupied France.

The second relates to The Basterds, a group of Jewish American soldiers led by Lieutenant Aldo Raine set on killing and scalping as many Nazis as they can.

Aside from the bleakly comedic nature, Inglourious Basterds sets itself apart from modern war films by going for entertainment over veracity. Tarantino plays hard and fast with his WWII facts but the setting and characters feels real.

Chief among the impressive array of characters is the fascinating Landa, played with casual menace by Waltz, who proves fluent in English, German, French and Italian and steals the show in all four languages.

The rest of the cast is also incredible, not just for their multi-lingual abilities but for their subtle performances, particularly Laurent, Fassbender, Bruhl and Kruger.

The only disappointment is Pitt. He's adequate in a role that should have been underplayed more or more over the top, but instead he lands in a kind of apathetic middle-ground.

Tarantino hasn't dispensed with his usual bag of tricks - there are some excellent for-the-hell-of-it cinematic flourishes, hints of spaghetti western, and his usual foot fetish shots - but his ability to generate supreme tension out of a casual calm conversation is second to none.

Having tackled the martial arts genre, B-movies and heist films, Tarantino can now tick "war" of his 'to do' list, leaving us wondering if his talents know any bounds.