BY MICHAEL GOODPASTER
Quentin Tarantino makes great movies. He’s not my favorite writer, director, or filmmaker, but the dude has his own vision and sticks to it. The results of this insanity has given us some of the best films of the past twenty five or so years. Who can argue with the impact of a “Pulp Fiction”, the crude glory of “Inglourious Basterds”, or the bad-assness of “Kill Bill”. Of course there are the other projects in between and they too are at least on the level of “well, that was better than just about everything.” Even a bad Quentin Tarantino movie is better than most. Say what you want about his “controversial” content and attitude, but you’re at least saying something. His movies make people react and that’s all you can ask for as an artist like Tarantino. I’m not here to kiss ass though. Like I said, he’s not my favorite or anything. I’d love to see him do something more in the lines of a “True Romance” again or even make a movie with no guns or violence at all just to see if he could. I don’t think he could, but at this point I don’t care. His latest movie has all of the “buzz worthy” ingredients. It’s a throwback, it’s about a controversial time, there is backlash over the content and language, it’s got great actors, and it’s being eaten up by the award giving suits. This is the big façade of it all. All of that stuff is true, but Django Unchained is more than that. This movie has a heart and soul. You’re not given the task to decide who to cheer for. Logic and good taste makes it clear that you want to see the good guys succeed and the bad guys get theirs. It’s set in the slavery days. Jamie Foxx, Django, is a slave who is freed by a traveling bounty hunter played amazingly by Christoph Waltz. The German bounty hunter takes Django all around the west to kill bad people, make money, and form a really cool team. The end game is always to free Django’s wife and get revenge on the shitty slave owning southern pukes. Does it work out in the end? I won’t say. I’ll let you sit down with this two plus hour movie and take the journey yourself. All I can do is highly recommend that journey. I’m not a Jamie Foxx fan, but he won me over with a very strong showing as Django. The real stand out of the movie is Christoph Waltz. He was a great bad guy in “Inglourious Basterds”, but here he gets to play a great good guy. His reaction to the vile treatment of the slaves and his outlook on justice is pretty much how I assume all of us modern 2013 people would react as well. Things DO get uncomfortable, but what should anyone expect? It’s not supposed to make light of slavery. It shows its darkest side while providing an uplifting narrative. Samuel L. Jackson’s performance as an old and overly loyal slave is both amazing and disgusting at the same time. He should have gotten more award love for it. Others show up too. Don Johnson, Michael Parks, James Remar, Walton Goggins, Jonah Hill, Bruce Dern, and plenty more. They show up, do their thing, and then they’re gone. I understand there is too much going on to feature all of these people, but it felt like some people were just there so we can say “Look! It’s them!” Then you want to see something of substance, but we just got a lot of empty cameos. The main bad guy is the wife’s slave owner played by Leonardo DiCaprio. He does great with it, but it doesn’t feel like he’s present enough. He’s just there, going through the evil motions. I just wasn’t feeling his character much. The unevenness of DiCaprio’s slave owner and the empty cameos didn’t hurt this movie too much. It’s still clearly one of the best movies of the year and deserves all the praise it gets. I’ve only seen “Inglourious Basterds” once and haven’t done anything to see it again. I will for sure watch “Django Unchained” again… soon. If you haven’t seen it, you only have yourself to blame for missing out. See it! See it now! A-
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