Django Unchained (2012)
Country: US
Technical: col/2.35:1 165m
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Cast: Christoph Waltz, Jamie Foxx, Leonardo DiCaprio
Synopsis:
1858: a German dentist-turned bounty hunter teams up with a freed slave and they cut a swathe through the pre-Civil War southern states before setting out to liberate the negro's still enslaved wife from a vicious plantation owner.
Review:
The Weinstein brothers again bankroll the quixotic director so that he can indulge in a wildly extended binge of abject cinephilia. Story structure is absent, in spite of the occasional presence of establishing titles, as we move from one episode to another, culminating in one of those horribly protracted sequences (at Candieland) where you just know it is all going to end in violence. That said, there is much to enjoy here, provided your stomach can take the excesses - not so much the absurdly capacious squibs that explode on bullet impact, as a sickeningly bone-crunching mandingo fight. Waltz provides further proof that he is one of the best things to have happened in American screen acting recently; DiCaprio delivers a note-perfect portrait of dandified villainy; and there are a number of pleasing cameos by such as Franco Nero and Don Johnson. The whole thing is of course an homage to the Django Westerns (hence Nero) and the Hurry Sundown/Mandingo subgenre of Southern decadence, themselves designed, no doubt, as an antidote to the Gone with the Wind myth of the great romantic South and its happy, well-fed slaves. At the same time one senses a certain relish in the director's heart that he can use the word 'nigger' so frequently with impunity, and Jackson is wheeled on as a cantankerous, reactionary old slave to provide an iconic link with Pulp Fiction's controversial sprinklings of the word from his own vindicating black lips. And what exactly has Jerry Goldsmith's score for Under Fire got to do with anything? Never mind, it provides another glorious moment of self-indulgence for Tarantino's slow-mo mise-en-scène.
Country: US
Technical: col/2.35:1 165m
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Cast: Christoph Waltz, Jamie Foxx, Leonardo DiCaprio
Synopsis:
1858: a German dentist-turned bounty hunter teams up with a freed slave and they cut a swathe through the pre-Civil War southern states before setting out to liberate the negro's still enslaved wife from a vicious plantation owner.
Review:
The Weinstein brothers again bankroll the quixotic director so that he can indulge in a wildly extended binge of abject cinephilia. Story structure is absent, in spite of the occasional presence of establishing titles, as we move from one episode to another, culminating in one of those horribly protracted sequences (at Candieland) where you just know it is all going to end in violence. That said, there is much to enjoy here, provided your stomach can take the excesses - not so much the absurdly capacious squibs that explode on bullet impact, as a sickeningly bone-crunching mandingo fight. Waltz provides further proof that he is one of the best things to have happened in American screen acting recently; DiCaprio delivers a note-perfect portrait of dandified villainy; and there are a number of pleasing cameos by such as Franco Nero and Don Johnson. The whole thing is of course an homage to the Django Westerns (hence Nero) and the Hurry Sundown/Mandingo subgenre of Southern decadence, themselves designed, no doubt, as an antidote to the Gone with the Wind myth of the great romantic South and its happy, well-fed slaves. At the same time one senses a certain relish in the director's heart that he can use the word 'nigger' so frequently with impunity, and Jackson is wheeled on as a cantankerous, reactionary old slave to provide an iconic link with Pulp Fiction's controversial sprinklings of the word from his own vindicating black lips. And what exactly has Jerry Goldsmith's score for Under Fire got to do with anything? Never mind, it provides another glorious moment of self-indulgence for Tarantino's slow-mo mise-en-scène.
Country: US
Technical: col/2.35:1 165m
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Cast: Christoph Waltz, Jamie Foxx, Leonardo DiCaprio
Synopsis:
1858: a German dentist-turned bounty hunter teams up with a freed slave and they cut a swathe through the pre-Civil War southern states before setting out to liberate the negro's still enslaved wife from a vicious plantation owner.
Review:
The Weinstein brothers again bankroll the quixotic director so that he can indulge in a wildly extended binge of abject cinephilia. Story structure is absent, in spite of the occasional presence of establishing titles, as we move from one episode to another, culminating in one of those horribly protracted sequences (at Candieland) where you just know it is all going to end in violence. That said, there is much to enjoy here, provided your stomach can take the excesses - not so much the absurdly capacious squibs that explode on bullet impact, as a sickeningly bone-crunching mandingo fight. Waltz provides further proof that he is one of the best things to have happened in American screen acting recently; DiCaprio delivers a note-perfect portrait of dandified villainy; and there are a number of pleasing cameos by such as Franco Nero and Don Johnson. The whole thing is of course an homage to the Django Westerns (hence Nero) and the Hurry Sundown/Mandingo subgenre of Southern decadence, themselves designed, no doubt, as an antidote to the Gone with the Wind myth of the great romantic South and its happy, well-fed slaves. At the same time one senses a certain relish in the director's heart that he can use the word 'nigger' so frequently with impunity, and Jackson is wheeled on as a cantankerous, reactionary old slave to provide an iconic link with Pulp Fiction's controversial sprinklings of the word from his own vindicating black lips. And what exactly has Jerry Goldsmith's score for Under Fire got to do with anything? Never mind, it provides another glorious moment of self-indulgence for Tarantino's slow-mo mise-en-scène.