Django Unchained (Jo****1/2)

Quentin Tarantino is on a roll. From the outlandish success of Inglourious Basterds comes Django Unchained, a spaghetti-western style film set in the deep South, where slavery was the economy of the time. While not a perfect film, Tarantino definitely employs all his cinematic tricks to create one of the more visceral and iconic films of the year.

Set a few years before the Civil War, Dr King Shultz (the ever-perfect Christoph Waltz), a bounty hunter, seeks the slave Django (Jamie Foxx in one of his better performances) to help identify a band of outlaws only he would recognize. The two quickly become a team, eventually working their way south to help buy Django's wife from a plantation owner, the eccentric and colorful Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio).

The film uses subtitles, music, and camera tricks to recreate the looks of spaghetti westerns and blaxsploitation films from the 1970's. This blending of genres, as well as an eclectic soundtrack mixing modern and classical scores, makes Django something we have never seen; a Tarantino-style film with a much more apparent directorial style (if that's even possible from Tarantino).

Technically, the film is a marvel, and the actors are all top notch. DiCaprio breaks away from his long stretch of criminally-burdened characters to play something completely new. While not the absolute best performance of his career (Gilbert Grape, The Aviator), this is something that should cause people to start talking about when he will finally win his first Oscar. Waltz, of course, carries the film in stride and reminds us why we love Tarantino so much for discovering him in the first place. Samuel L Jackson, though, is the true star of the film. Playing an elderly house slave and only appearing in perhaps 1/4th of the film, he undoubtedly steals every scene he shares and demonstrates some of the most manipulative and fiery acting of the year.

The film is brutally violent, and is in no way a film meant for a broad audience. Though nearly 3 hours long, there is never a dull moment in the plot, and the story keeps the audience entertained all the way to the end. Again, not perfect, but remains a gem in this truly remarkable Holiday lineup of great movies!

(Awards potential: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (DiCaprio, Waltz, Jackson), Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, Best Editing, Best Makeup, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing)