User blog:Porterfield/Django Unchained - Review Roundup



Quentin Tarantino's newest film, Django Unchained, comes out on Christmas Day. It stars Jamie Foxx, Leonardo DiCaprio, Christoph Waltz, Samuel L. Jackson, Kerry Washington, and more. If you're a Tarantino fan, you're obviously going to love it. If you don't like Tarantino films and/or lots of violence, you're going to hate it. That is what I love about his films, you know what you are getting into.

The reviews for the movie are overwhelmingly positive, with even a little bit of Oscar buzz. Check them out and share your opinion below!

Joel Neumaier - New York Daily News
Score: 4 out of 5 stars

Excerpt: It’s a tough movie to admit to liking, but also impossible to forget. For as much as “Lincoln” watched the wheels of government try to solve the grotesque issue of slavery, “Django” plants its boots in the mud to confront horror with a wagon full of guts in an artful, genre-specific landscape. Tarantino, like his lead character, somehow comes out stronger.

Richard Roeper
Score: 4 out of 5 stars

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Peter Travers - Rolling Stone
Score: 3.5 out of 4 stars

Excerpt: Django Unchained is literally all over the place. It twists and turns over an unbridled two hours and 45 minutes, giving history (and your stamina) a serious pounding. It limps, sputters and repeats itself. It explodes with violence and talk, talk, talk. Tarantino's characters would be lost in the Twitterverse – there's no end to his tasty dialogue. Not that you'll care. You'll be having too much fun.

Jordan Hoffman - Film.com
Score: B+

Excerpt: Okay, forgive me if I seem flippant about America’s original sin, the institution of slavery. But if “Django Unchained,” a violent, whirling fantasia into our dark past, does nothing else it ought to rattle some complacent audience members a bit and get them to reflect on history. That it does so with, by and large, an entertaining and energetic bit of shoot ‘em up vengeance is hardly a bad thing, either.

Owen Gleiberman - Entertainment Weekly
Score: B-

Excerpt: DiCaprio, having a blast, makes Candie the equivalent of Waltz's Nazi in Inglourious Basterds: a racist villain who mesmerizes us by elevating his ideology into a puckishly thought-out vision of the world. Yet Django isn't nearly the film that Inglourious was. It's less clever, and it doesn't have enough major characters — or enough of Tarantino's trademark structural ingenuity — to earn its two-hour-and-45-minute running time.

Shaun Monro - What Culture
Score: 4 out of 5 stars

Excerpt: For better and for worse, this is every bit the Tarantino flick that fans will expect; it is in no hurry to tell its story, at once setting a methodical pace and inviting the director’s typical excesses, but also resulting in plenty of great tall-tales and verbose dialogues between characters, even if many of them don’t pop as loudly as what we’re used to from the director.

Stella Papamichael - Digital Spy
Score: 4 out of 5 stars

Excerpt: If Tarantino is riling the audience, it means the climactic showdown offers a bigger release. Naturally, it gets messy, with spurting fountains of blood that remind you this isn't real life, much less a historical document, and a thumping hip-hop bassline (in a wildly eclectic soundtrack) to boost the adrenaline rush.

James Rocchi - Box Office Magazine
Score: 5 out of 5 stars

Excerpt: Django Unchained is a sharp shock of a film in an Awards season very full of movies so noble they become immobile. It's wildly unlikely to get much love from the Academy, and that's fine-bluntly, it's too good for them. With its bloody stew of history and hysteria, action taken from movies and atrocities taken from fact, Django isn't just a movie only America could make—it's also a movie only America needs to.

Scott Weinberg - Geek Nation
Score: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Excerpt: At its best moments, and there are several, Django Unchained feels like a righteous punch in the mouth to every trope, cliche, stereotype, and stock convention you’ve ever seen in a film about plantation slavery. Tarantino doesn’t just employ the force-of-nature presence of Jaime Foxx as a super-cool black hero; he’s the movie character who could single-handedly destroy slavery before his wrath is sated. But he’s also kind of charming and sweet, too.

Thought It Was Okay
Not many critics found the film to be average. If you find such a review, post it in the comments section below.

Cameron Meier - Orlando Weekly
Score: 2 out of 5 stars

Excerpt: Admittedly, calling Tarantino unrealistic is not a valid criticism. He rightfully subscribes to the notion that a film is not a photo, but rather a painting, with a variety of styles to choose from. The director obviously prefers expressionism to naturalism, and few do it with more critical and popular acclaim. It's just a shame that his brushstrokes had to be so broad this time.

Wikian Reviews
What did you think of Django Unchained? OSCARS! Loved It! Thought It Was Okay! Hated It!