Django Unchained Review + A Retrospective of Tarantino's Entire Directorial Backcatalogue

Django Unchained (2012)

My recent post on Tarantino highlighted a rather dodgy interview where he refused to talk about violence. It's an odd point for Tarantino to get squeamish about since he's been talking about violence for years and he's never really surpassed the level of violence in his debut movie "Reservoir Dogs". After the opening credits "Reservoir Dogs" gets straight into the violence with a hysterical man panicking in the back seat of the car and bleeding profusely over his white shirt and the carseat leather from his recent bullet wound to the gut.



There's no such lingering on violence and its effects in "Django Unchained". Certainly there are violent scenes, but the camera generally either cuts away from violence or uses quick cuts to avoid us seeing the violent acts too clearly. That's not to say that the movie contains no violence, but that it's certainly not as intense and visceral as that found in his debut film.

My theory is that Tarantino has realised that he has a shot at the Oscars and that talking about violence might adversely affect his chances. With "Zero Dark Thirty" already suffering from bad publicity in relation to torture, the last thing Tarantino wants is for his past reputation to allow similar dents to be made in his chances for Oscar recognition.




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Best to worst Tarantino movies...




1. Pulp Fiction (1994)

Initially I would have put Reservoir Dogs before Pulp Fiction, but as the years went on and I re-watched Pulp Fiction a number of times I came to realise that Pulp Fiction changes almost every time you watch it. It's a film that allows you to take what you want from it, allowing it to have a different character depending on what state you are in at the time.

Pulp Fiction is essentially a set of inter-linking stories. With that in mind it's clearly one of the best films to adopt this format, easily inter-linking the storylines without feeling forced or desperately trying to overlay an all-important linking theme. Pulp Fiction also happens to be pretty hilarious in places and every scene is driven by its characters. This film has a unique way of capturing the audiences imagination.

A+


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"A Royal Affair" - Visual Effects Extravaganza?

(video link)

A Royal Affair was my favourite film of last year. I said in my "movies of 2012" list that it was the best costume drama I have ever seen. What I didn't realise, however, was that the film was chock full of CG and I didn't even know that it was there. All I knew was that the film was utterly beautiful. It seems that the film features a palace created out of thin air. Wow....

My Moral Outrage Against The Film "Monsieur Lazhar"

Monsieur Lazhar (2011)



This film was nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar last year, there are people on the IMDB boards praising it for being an inspiring story and huge numbers of critics seem to love the film on Rotten Tomatoes too. I am absolutely gobsmacked. I don't normally criticise a film on moral grounds. I most often judge a film based on entertainment value and anything else is beyond my interest (though for the record, this isn't that entertaining anyway). But I guess there's always an exception, right?


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"Monsieur Lazhar" is a disgusting film and I resent its very existence.

U-