I'm beginning to think that I might need to re-watch all of Quentin Tarantino's films. Until now, I had never seen one of his films on the big screen. But after seeing Django Unchained in a theater, I have come to the realization that I have never truly seen any of his other films before. Here is an artist with a painter's eye for shot composition and blocking. Even when bullets and innards begin to fly across the screen with gleeful abandon, Tarantino never loses his knack for flawlessly conceived and perfectly balanced mise en scène. But Django Unchained also sees the further development of Tarantino as a writer. Much like his previous film, Inglourious Basterds (2009), Django Unchained doesn't telegraph Tarantino's influences as explicitly as his earlier work. A well-versed film buff can certainly pick out elements from other movies that Tarantino "borrowed" from: the visual and thematic quotations from Sergio Corbucci's Django (1966), Sergio Leone's characterization of the quiet anti-hero, the snowy landscapes of The Great Silence (1968), and even the impossible, pocket-sized gizmos of the Sartana franchise. But instead of making these references the heart and soul of the film, Tarantino merely uses them to enhance and flavor his original story and ideas. After being freed from his owners by the eccentric dentist/bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), ex-slave Django Freeman (Jamie Foxx) teams up with him to hunt down evil slavers, bandits, and the bastards who sold off his wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington). The film is both a visual and visceral delight that revels in Tarantino's passion and love for a genre that has influenced him from the very beginning. Now to see if I can find a theater showing Pulp Fiction (1994)....
9/10 (Side-note: I didn't plan this, but it seems oddly appropriate that this is my 666th Mini Review)
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