SPECTRE Is Double-0 Disappointment

SPECTRE Review:

- I've gone on record as not being the world's biggest 007 fan. To me, the endless cycle of new Bond flicks is emblematic of studio filmmaking at its worst - a never-ending, self-perpetuating franchise that doesn't so much tell a story as it does create product for consumption. Worse, the Daniel Craig iteration of Bond has largely taken away a lot of what made Bond distinctive in the first place - gone (mostly) were the high-tech gadgets, campy villains, and over-the-top escapism of the classic 60's films. In their place: grittier, harder-nosed, more self-serious action that made Bond into a warmed-over Bourne wannabe. With that said, a couple of things had me excited about SPECTRE going in. One was the last Bond film, Skyfall. Skyfall was a surprise - director Sam Mendes brought visual style and flair back to the Bond franchise, turning in by far the most artful and aesthetically-pleasing, narratively-satisfying film since Craig took over the mantle. Secondly, this summer's superlative Mission: Impossible movie had me re-thinking my stance on these sorts of spy franchises. If MI:5 could give us such a fantastically-done, rip-roaring actionfest, then who's to say that the next Bond couldn't one-up it? The weird thing though is that SPECTRE invites direct comparisons to MI:5 in more ways than one. Unfortunately, the latest Bond doesn't really come out the winner in that head-to-head comparison. Playing out more like a series of barely-connected sequences than a cohesive narrative, SPECTRE starts off on a high note, but ends by eliciting eye-rolls.

But that opening sequence ... SPECTRE kicks off with an incredible action set piece in which Bond pursues his airborne prey through a crowded Day of the Dead celebration in Mexico City. Amidst a city center filled with costume-clad performers and spectators, Bond crashes a fancy party, seduces a mysterious paramour, hijacks a hostile helicopter, dukes it out mid-air, and takes out enemy shooters in a dazzling display of cinematic firepower. The single-take shooting style employed by Mendes is breathtaking, and it's a reminder that yes, this guy is good. But it's almost as if the bulk of the director's energy was expended in that sequence. The film quickly deflates, and momentum stalls.

After a somewhat baffling opening credits / musical sequence (it involves a lot of sexy Octopus imagery - fans of weird Japanese tentacle anime should be pleased), the movie dives into a very convoluted, very haphazardly-constructed plot that mirrors that of the most recent Mission: Impossible film. As it turns out, a shady organization called Spectre is the shadow-Big Bad that's had its hands in the devious acts of many of the menaces that have previously plagued Craig's Bond. Don't try to piece together how that actually works in relation to the previous Bond films' plotlines. And don't think too hard on how Spectre's psycho-evil leader - played with sinister aplomb by Christoph Waltz - is doing all of his evil deeds as part of some revenge plot against Bond. In fact, don't think too hard on Waltz's character at all. In a move that will give some flashbacks to the big reveal in Star Trek: Into Darkness, Waltz's "true" identity is revealed to the audience as if it were some major plot point, when in fact the revelation has absolutely zero bearing on the movie's plot. I was willing to somewhat forgive this narrative laziness in Into Darkness, if only because I dug so much of the rest of the film. But here, Waltz's identity and motives land with such a thud that it derails the entire movie - because none of it has any weight. It's treated with a proverbial shrug by Craig's ambivalent Bond and the rest of his comrades-in-arms. As is the very idea that Spectre has been the secret perpetrator of all of the previous film's inciting incidents. And Waltz goes from shadowy, imposing figure to raving lunatic with the flip of a switch - you almost feel bad for the actor, because as good as he typically is, he really gets the short end of the stick with the laughably silly and nonsensical material that the film hands to him.

At least the movie's got the animal that is Dave Bautista as its ace-in-the-hole. The former WWE champion was a standout in Guardians of the Galaxy, and he's excellent here as a brutal bruiser who - in one of the film's best action scenes - engages in a bone-crunching, up-close-and-personal train-car brawl with Bond.  Bautista works well as the movie's villainous heavy hitter because his character isn't bogged down with needless baggage. He's an evil mo-fo who likes to hurt people - 'nuff said.

But man, Waltz's character is really at the root of what ails this movie. Spectre - the shadowy organization that he leads - is weak, and unbelievably uninteresting given that they're supposed to be a massive conspiracy of villainy. And Bond's lack of real reaction to Spectre or to Waltz's various revelations makes us equally hesitant to care. Similarly, the movie's requisite romance feels incredibly rushed and unearned. Léa Seydoux has the makings of a solid Bond Girl (even if her youth vs the increasingly craggy Craig makes for a bit of creepiness). But instead of making her an object of mere lust, the movie insists on making her an object of love. And the result is one of the most unintentionally funny utterances of "I love you" ever seen in a movie. The problem is that the two meet (Lea's Madeleine Swann is a target of Spectre because her late father ditched them ... or something), have an antagonistic thing going, survive an attempt on their lives, get busy, and then - it's love?! Especially given Bond's history of going through gorgeous women like M&M's, it's laughable that Swann so quickly becomes "the one" that he'll drop everything for. The movie's ending only reinforces this idea, in an eye-rolling denouement that calls to mind the all-too-tidy conclusion of The Dark Knight Rises. It's a double shame too because an early encounter between Bond and the Monica Bellucci's black-widow character Lucia Sciarra has more intrigue in a few minutes than the entire rushed relationship with Swann. But Belucci is quickly ditched for a newer-model Bond girl.

The movie's second half wants to be an extended homage to the campier Bond of the classic films. But something went seriously wrong in the execution of it all. Early on, there's a decent amount of intrigue as Bond infiltrates a secret meeting of Spectre, and Ralph Fiennes' M contends with the threat of Andrew Scott's C - a young upstart looking to dismantle the double-o program and replace James Bond with drones and automated weapons. At first, there's hope that all of this will add up to something. Scott is great at playing a nefarious wildcard (see also: his excellent turn as Moriarty on the Sherlock BBC series). And the prospect of Spectre is exciting. But the way it all unravels is pretty unsatisfying, with a weird, nonsensical progression from Point A to Point B. Case in point is when Bond arrives at Waltz's hidden-away desert lair in the movie's final act. Bond strides into this fortified base without any sort of plan, essentially begging to be captured and tortured. At the same time, Waltz seems all too happy to let Bond penetrate his inner sanctum and risk having all his decades-long plans go up in flames. I won't get into all the sorta-stupid stuff that happens from there - suffice it to say, the entire final third of the movie goes very much off the rails. One other casualty of all the jumpiness in the story progression is that the supporting cast feels very cardboard-ish in this one. This is another instance where SPECTRE draws unfavorable comparisons to the recent Mission: Impossible - but M, Q, and Ms. Moneypenny are mostly just props to be called upon by Bond as needed, with very little personality of their own (contrast that to MI:5, which really got a lot out of mileage out of Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, etc.).

For the first fifteen minutes or so of SPECTRE, I was convinced we might get a Bond to rival Skyfall. But as I sat through the head-scratcher of a climax - where Waltz becomes a 60's Batman villain, Bond seems to barely register the scope of the conspiracy he's uncovered, and Sam Mendes seems to throw his hands up in the air and basically give up trying to make sense of it all - I was back to my not-so-keen-on-Bond skepticism. Newer takes on the genre - from Fast & Furious to Bourne to Mission: Impossible to this year's exceptional spy satire, Kingsmen - have made Bond all but obsolete. Especially when the films so awkwardly try to juggle modern sensibilities with 60's-era nostalgia, as SPECTRE does. A movie can't just be a greatest-hits mix-tape. Craig is a good Bond, and Mendes a talented director. But how much do we need to wring this franchise dry until it becomes utterly and completely creatively bankrupt? Perhaps Bond will die another day, but I say it's time that pop-culture moves on.

My Grade: C

BIG EYES Is Burton at His Best

BIG EYES Review:

- You could say that BIG EYES is a bit of a departure for director Tim Burton. It's a live-action film that takes place squarely in the real-world - in fact, it's the true story of Margaret Keane - an artist whose best-known work was credited to her husband and not to her. There hasn't really been a Burton film like this one since Ed Wood, and in some ways, BIG EYES is its spiritual successor. Both celebrate artists who Burton clearly views as inspirations - cultural outcasts who were panned by critics yet celebrated by their devoted fans - iconoclasts who paved their own way and whose work was defiantly, willfully weird. It's not hard to see how Burton's own trademark animated art style was likely influenced by Keane. And it's also not hard to see how the director - so often (and often unfairly) panned for peddling mass-marketed weirdness might feel empathy for Margaret Keane and her popular series of "big eyes" paintings. Both Keane and Burton peddle pop-art weirdness. But Keane's story has another dimension that Burton's own does not: the fact that her work, for years, was falsely attributed to her publicity-hungry husband. So yes, BIG EYES is in some ways a change from the type of Burton movie we've seen in recent years, but it's also brimming with the sorts of themes that have long captivated him. At its core is the premise that beneath a picture-perfect facade of domestic tranquility and the American dream lies a more disturbing truth. Getting back to that central, personal theme - and not having to deal with the demands of a big-budget blockbuster - seem to have reinvigorated the director. It's his best film in years.

Amy Adams kills it as Margaret Keane. Her journey is that of a woman realizing her strength as an individual. At first, Margaret is somewhat shy, lacking confidence in her work. Only once meeting the flamboyant huckster Walter does she start to see her work's potential. The sad irony is that Walter is all too eager to co-opt her success once her "big eyes" paintings take off. What starts as a small lie from Walter - that he was the artist who had signed "Keane" on a big eyes painting - soon expands to become a full-on Big Lie. Walter gains fame and fortune from his wife's paintings, and Margaret is left to paint in secret, locked up in a hidden room of their home like a medieval prisoner locked away in a tower. But it's a joy to watch the always-great Adams find the courage to challenge her husband, and to increasingly open her eyes to the fact that he's a first-class con-artist.

As Walter, Christoph Waltz goes big. He's animated and over-the-top, and totally entertaining. He perhaps goes a little too big at times, giving Walter an almost cartoon-villain aspect. But the performance works, because Burton paints Walter's journey as a slow descent into madness. The Big Lie is all he has, so when that begins to unravel, so too does he. And really, who better to watch descend into madness than Christoph by-god Waltz?

Burton isn't afraid to give BIG EYES a slightly surreal sheen. It takes place in a day-glo mid-century America, so bright and sun-bathed that it can only be a facade for darker things underneath. And as Margaret struggles with her secret, she is haunted by nightmarish visions of her own big-eyes paintings. The paintings themselves are the kind of pop-goth oddity that seem like early precursors to, well, the Tim Burtons of the world. The fact that they become so popular is the sort of unlikely success story that mirrors Burton's own strange works that went on to entrench themselves in the pop-cultural mainstream.

Burton at his worst can feel like he's simply on cruise control - going through the motions and delivering what's expected of him and not much more. But here, he seems motivated and personally connected to the story being told. BIG EYES is a film about empowerment, but it's also a film about owning eccentricity and creativity. Walter can't generate art by himself, and so he doesn't truly understand the direct, personal relationship between the artist and their artwork. He sees art only as commodity to be exploited. And it's when that happens that diverse voices are shut down or shut out, because too often diversity is viewed as being not what's best for business. In BIG EYES, we get a great story about a woman finding and laying claim to her artistic voice. The side benefit is seeing a truly one-of-a-kind cinematic voice in Tim Burton once again doing the same.

My Grade: A-

THE ZERO THEOREM Is Another Satirical Journey Into the Imagination from Terry Gilliam

THE ZERO THEOREM Review:

- First of all, let's just put this out there: Terry Gilliam is one of those great, great directors and creative minds who, honestly ... I'm just glad that he is still making movies. Even when those movies are flawed, they are fascinating, stunning to look at, and great conversation-starters. So to those who found flaw in Gilliam's latest, THE ZERO THEOREM, and who have decided to gleefully trash it, I say for shame. I'm not saying to just give it a pass. I am saying to talk about it in the proper context. For me, this is a film that yes, falls short of Gilliam's greatest sci-fi films like Brazil and 12 Monkeys. But man, there is still so much goodness here. Visually, thematically, performance-wise. THE ZERO THEOREM may ultimately end up as "advanced studies" in the Gilliam syllabus, but even so, I'm glad for the two hours to once again spend inside the genius director's brain.

THE ZERO THEOREM takes place in a cluttered, colorful, surreal version of the future that is one part Brazil, one part Idiocracy. In this skewed future-world, garish ads follow you wherever you walk, everyone dresses like they worship at the alter of Lady Gaga, and, to add to the sensory overload, it's rare to see anyone walking sans screen held at eye level and earphones blocking out external noise (no wonder the ads have to be so in-your-face - otherwise, no one would ever notice them). One unique denizen of this world is Qohen Leth (the great Christoph Waltz) - a worker-bee who, when he's not at his job working for a number-crunching conglomerate - keeps to himself in the renovated, cavernous cathedral he calls home. The cathedral used to be home to a monastic order, and Qohen himself is monk-ish, in a way. He is bald, he keeps to himself, and he lives his life based on a strange sort of faith. Years ago, Qohen received a phone call in which a celestial voice promised to tell him the meaning of life. So excited was Qohen that he dropped the phone and accidentally hung up. Ever since, he's been waiting for that voice to call him back and give him his answer. Obsessed with the call-that-may-never-come, Qohen asks his Big Brother-like bosses to let him work from home, so that he might not miss that call. Though they think him insane, Management (embodied with enigmatic, good ol' boy charm by Matt Damon) grants Qohen his request, as they have a project for him to work on solo. Qohen's usual workday involves a strange routine of him in a circle of similar worker-bees, peddling a bike and plugging away at a never-ending geometric puzzle with an XBOX-like controller, working on an endless equation that will never be solved. Now, Qohen is to work on an even more intense version of this sort of puzzle - solving the Zero Theorem - the equation that will prove that all life is meaningless and doomed to end and disappear forever into the void. Zero must equal 100%. Everything equals nothing.

Once his work on the Zero Theorem begins, Qohen becomes even more obsessive and hermetic than he already is. However, given the importance of his work, Management sees fit to continually send him help to deal with his mental stress. Regularly-scheduled online therapy sessions with a tightly-wound psychiatrist only aggravate Qohen. More effective is the introduction of Bainsley into his life. The stunning Bainsley (Mélanie Thierry) meets Qohen at a party (that he's forced to go to by his boss), and takes a liking to him. But Bainsley is - as is seemingly everything in this world - just a tool of Management, sent into Qohen's life tokeep him calm and focused. Even as Qohen's feelings for Bainsley begin to feel more real, it becomes increasingly apparent that she, like so much else, is not what she seems. Everything equals nothing. The same goes for Bob, the teenage son of Management - a whipcrack-smart programmer sent to help Qohen with the Zero Theorem. In return for Qohen's help, he promises to get him his phone call. But is that claim legitimate, or just a way to keep an insane man on a leash?

As you can probably gather, there's a lot of stuff in THE ZERO THEOREM about life, the universe, and everything. But where the movie perhaps falls a bit flat is that it never quite connects all of the dots in order to say something that seems sufficiently urgent and cohesive. There are a ton of fascinating ideas in the film about what it all means, but you also never feel like there's a singular thesis statement underlying it all. Maybe that's part of the point (everything equals nothing), but still ... Case in point, pretty sizable scenes are dedicated to showing Qohen and Bob bobbing and weaving as they solve their videogame-like puzzle in search of the elusive Zero Theorem. But what are they doing, exactly? What constitutes failure vs. success in the game? It's all sort of abstract and vague, but then why show us so much of it? Certainly, Gilliam intends to convey the tedium and pointlessness of the puzzle, but there isn't enough definition. The reasons why Management is so hellbent on solving the Zero Theorem aren't 100% convincing, and neither is Qohen's singular need to get that phone call. Unlike, say, Brazil, where Jonathan Pryce's character drives everything, here, the characters feel a bit more like props to inhabit this strange future. Bainsley is another example - she is a "hooker with a heart of gold" archetype, but there is a certain dimension to her character that seems to be missing. Like Qohen and others, she feels not-quite-fully-realized.

What does feel more fully realized is the world of the movie. Here is where Gilliam's artistic eye really shines. The movie looks amazing, and every scene, every location, is brimming with incredible detail, imagination, and eye-popping color. I don't know how Gilliam does it. But I do know that in a world where CGI and f/x so often look bland and cookie-cutter, seeing a master like Gilliam do sci-fi world-building of this order and magnitude is truly thrilling. I assume that Gilliam is working with a fraction of the budget of your typical sci-fi blockbuster. But how many other directors so painstakingly hand-craft every detail of their films to achieve this sort of artistry?

Gilliam's vision is also complimented by the talented actors in the film. Christoph Waltz is fantastic as Qohen. He crafts this unique character who is everything-phobic, reclusive, and on the brink of madness. Qohen refers to himself in the plural, "we" instead of "I," putting even more emphasis on his status as a drone, one small cog in a vast collective. Like I said, I do wish there was just a little more to Qohen's character and driving purpose, but man, Waltz makes him memorable nonetheless. Same goes for Mélanie Thierry as Bainsley. I wanted more from the character, but Thierry makes her incredibly memorable. Not just with her pin-up girl beauty, but with the way she - in conjunction with Gilliam's direction, evokes Old Hollywood glamor while still coming off as thoroughly post-modern. Lucas Hedges as Bob is perhaps the one weak spot - he's good, but he's a little too 2014-seeming, and not quite able to fully adapt his acting to Gilliam's surreal sci-fi tone.

The world of ZERO THEOREM is one that any film fan worth his or her salt needs to check out. Gilliam goes big here, and tries to weave together a profound satire about the ways in which non-reality passes for reality in our lives, thus rendering everything as pointless. Between the lines, there is some real food for thought about how, in an increasingly synthetic and virtual world, we doom ourselves to a void of our own making. That's the irony of Management's search for the Zero Theorem - what they seek to quantify is already apparent all around them. I suppose the fault here is that the film's profundity is mostly all in the little details - the great bits of satire and humor and world-building - but a lot less so in the driving narrative arc. Qohen's story is less interesting than that of the wonderfully weird world that surrounds him. But hey, like I said, give Gilliam credit for unleashing his imagination and giving us something so unique. I'll still take THE ZERO THEOREM over most movies any day of the week.

My Grade: B+

DJANGO UNCHAINED Delivers a Fistful of Awesome

DJANGO UNCHAINED Review:

- Thank you, Quentin Tarantino. Seriously. Thank you for creating original films based on original ideas - movies that both pay tribute to cinematic history and also boldly forge something new and never-before-seen. There's a reason why film geeks scramble to get a hold of new Tarantino scripts when they're completed - they're awesome, inspired pieces of original writing. And there's a reason why a new Tarantino film is always a true event for film fans - it's because we know we're getting something special, unique, genre-bending and boundary-pushing. DJANGO UNCHAINED is the latest from QT, and oh man, it is certifiably badass. In many ways, the movie is the perfect companion piece to his last film, Inglorious Basterds. That film was Jewish revenge-fantasy, juxtaposing World War II era catastrophe with fearless glam-rock rebirth. Django forges a similar path, juxtaposing the atrocities of American slavery in the pre-Civil War South with the rebirth and empowerment and new-found sense of swagger and self that came with hip-hop music over a century later. DJANGO is over-the-top, often very funny, and full of spaghetti western-meets-grindhouse style violence. It's got a pulpy style and QT's usual knack for dialogue-driven snap. The film didn't quite floor me in the same way that some of my favorite QT films have in the past, but I still sort of loved it all the same. DJANGO is one last injection of cinematic awesome in what has been, I think, a fine year for film.

At its core, DJANGO is Tarantino's take on the Spaghetti Western genre, popularized by the great Sergio Leone films like A Fistful of Dollars and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Tarantino has littered his films with Leone references and call-backs, but here, the entire film pays heavy tribute to Leone, even including a a few new pieces composed by the legendary Ennio Marricone (who did all of the iconic themes for Leone's films). The film also pays tribute to Sergio Corbucci, who's B-grade "Django" Westerns are the inspiration for and spiritual successors of this one. But of course, DJANGO also blends the conventions of the Spaghetti Western (including a lot of the iconic sorts of shots that Leone made famous) with the themes and tropes of Blaxploitation. This is a genre that Tarantino has certainly dabbled in a bit before, especially given that Blaxploitation films could often also be labeled what you might call "grindhouse." But DJANGO UNCHAINED places us in the Antebellum South, where we meet Django (the D is silent), played by Jamie Foxx, being led by chains through the woods alongside a group of fellow slaves. But Django's life of dehumanizing servitude takes a sudden turn when the slaves and their masters have a run in with German dentist-turned-bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz). King has taken up a bounty on the law-breaking Brittle Brothers, who have taken refuge - under assumed names - on a plantation, and is looking for a slave who can identify them. As it turns out, Django is Schultz's man. Schultz, however, detests slavery - he enters into a mutual agreement with Django in which the now-freed slave can share in the profits of he and Schultz's bounty-hunting. Django agrees to partner up with Schultz on one condition - that eventually, the Doctor will help him to find and free his wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), who was long ago forcefully separated from her husband, and made a slave at the plantation owned by the vile and violent Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio).

The film is anchored by four incredible performances. One - Jamie Foxx as Django. Foxx faced an enormous challenge in this film - starting out as a slave who had been beaten and humiliated into submission and servitude, and slowly but surely becoming a full man - and not just a man, but a badass gunslinger not to be $&%#'ed with. Foxx does a masterful job here. Oftentimes, Django must act one way in the service of he and King's schemes, while his eyes ever so slightly betray the fact that it's all an act. For example, when King and Django go to meet Candie, Django poses as a black slave trader - the lowest of the low. Django must grapple with how far to "get into character," and the way Foxx plays it is just right. Two - Christoph Waltz is phenomenal as Dr. King Schultz. King is a fascinating character - a man who's as sharp a talker as he is a shooter. He's also a true outsider in the American South - a German who is at once repulsed by the slavery, violence, and moral bankruptcy of America but one who also has thrived and profited from that environment. Waltz makes King's character arc fascinating in its own right - perhaps even more so than Django's. But mostly, Waltz is just awesome as hell. His theatricality and flair matched with Tarantino's stylized dialogue is, again, a match made in movie heaven. Three - Leonardo DiCaprio as Calvin Candie. Candie doesn't enter into the picture until midway through the film, but he is, immediately, a scene-stealer. Suffice it to say, I've never seen DiCaprio play a role like this before - an over-the-top villain who mixes Southern Hospitality with sadistic bloodlust and an endless supply of racist hate. DiCaprio, surprisingly, makes Candie a ball of pent-up rage and madness, and that barely-suppressed craziness helps make the Candie-centric scenes spill over with tension. Four - Samuel L. Jackson as Stephen, Candie's top slave and head-of-household. Wow - this is one of Jackson's best-ever performances, and one where he's not coasting on playing Sam Jackson, but a really fascinating character that is far-removed from the actor's typical persona (one which has, in many ways, been shaped by his roles in Tarantino's films). Stephen is in many ways the biggest badguy in the film - representing a slave who has a false sense of power due to his high position in the plantation, and who has been brainwashed into having ultimate loyalty to Candie and his family. Even as Django fights to be "unchained," Stephen fights for the status quo. He is the slave just strong-willed and independent-minded enough to be a useful lieutenant for Candie, but never so strong-willed as to ever question the will of his master. Of course, Stephen is a dark character, but Sam Jackson also makes him fun as hell - his verbal exchanges with Django are brilliantly funny.

The great casting doesn't end there. So many brilliant actors turn up in smaller roles that it's hard to keep track. A few that I'll mention are Don Johnson as plantation owner Big Daddy, Walton Goggins as Candie's muscle Billy Crash, M.C. Gainey - who I love from Lost and Justified - as Big John Brittle, and even Jonah Hill, who has a cameo in a hilarious scene involving a proto version of the KKK. Tarantino himself actually cameos as well, in an explosively oddball scene towards the end of the movie. I'll also give special mention to Kerry Washington, who does a fantastic job as Broomhilda Von Shaft (purportedly, an ancestor of John Shaft (!!!), according to QT). It would have been interesting had Washington played a larger role, but this is, ultimately, Django's story, and she is his princess that needs saving from horrible circumstances. But Washington infuses Broomhilda with unspoken emotion and trepidation, and it makes her eventual reunion with her husband that much sweeter.

DJANGO has a lot of the slow-build, dialogue-heavy scenes that we've come to expect from Tarantino. But as in Inglorious Basterds, they prove so well-done that it's hard to find much fault in them. Some sequences feel ever-so-slightly overlong though, and you wonder about the effect that not having the late Sally Menke on editing duties may have had. Menke, who edited all of QT's previous films, sadly passed away before DJANGO was filmed, and I do think there's a slight lack of tightness in some of the scenes as compared to films like Kill Bill and Basterds. Overall, it felt to me like parts of the film looked a little drab - lacking some of the visual richness of the Leone movies that QT was referencing. I usually leave a Tarantino film with several iconic images emblazoned in my memory - I'd say that happened less so than usual with this one. However, the movie jolts to electrifying life in a couple of key instances. One is when Tarantino utilizes flashbacks to Django and Broomhilda's past, presented in a rough, 70's grindhouse-esque style that emphasized the exploitative nature of the scenes. These, to me, were some of the most powerful scenes in the film. The other scenes that truly pop are the action scenes, which are just vintage Tarantino. The director has always had a knack for chaotic action scenes filled with one "holy $#@%!" moment after another in rapid-fire succession. And, damn, when business picks up in DJANGO UNCHAINED, it really picks up. Some of the big shoot-out scenes are just balls-to-the-wall insane.

I think the thematic point that a lot of people will want to discuss about the film is its sense of morality. For better or for worse, it's hard at this point to watch the movie completely in a vacuum, and not think, at least a little, about some of the recent shootings that have occurred across the country. What's interesting is that, despite all of the movie's over-the-top violence and pulpy nature, it actually does meditate a bit on the morality of violence. In fact, Dr. King's entire arc is sort of an exploration of this in its own, slightly-twisted way. As a bounty hunter, King kills only for money, never really making moral judgements about what he does except to justify it: killing these men is okay, because they are criminals, and he's within his legal boundaries. But at some point, King stops doing only what is profitable, and starts thinking more about what is right. Granted, even doing what is right involves gunning down bad guys - but that's another theme of the film. Django also paints a picture of an Antebellum South so brainwashed by slave culture that only a storm of bullets and hellfire could wake it up. In reality, that wake-up call was the bloodshed of the Civil War. But in Tarantino's pulp-fiction movieverse, Django was the precursor - the first shot of the Civil War came when he picked up a gun and began to turn the tables on the men who'd long abused and persecuted him and his people. This is, in many ways, a parallel to the revenge-scheme in Inglorious Basterds - over-the-top and uber-violent, but righteous in the way that it shows these characters not just fighting for themselves, but literally pushing against history. All of the violence, well, it begets violence. And Tarantino is a master at juxtaposing the empowerment of the modern minority with the delusional entitlement of the historical oppressor. Basically, the movie is a satisfying, cathartic, retroactive "#%$& you!" to the slave-owners, oppressors, and racists of the pre-Civil War South.

So like I said, thank you Quentin Tarantino. Although DJANGO UNCHAINED didn't quite register for me as the pure cinematic dynamite of your very best work, it had some of the year's most memorable performances and moments, and it was a true original. Funny, bloody, and badass to the core, this is vintage QT, and we as film fans are all better for having his movies, a defiant alternative to so much of the blandness that is out there. My main question now is ... what's next?

My Grade: A-