Django Unchained

THE GIST: Django, a Black slave, has information Dr. Schultz, a German bounty hunter, needs. Once freed, the two pair up to work together and to track down Django's wife, who has been sold to a powerful and unscrupulous plantation owner.

Django Unchained is one of Quentin Tarantino most successful movies, both among critics and audiences. It was nominated for five Academy Awards (Best Picture, Supporting Actor -- for Christoph Waltz, Screenplay -- for Tarantino, Cinematography, and Sound Editing), of which it won two, Acting and Screenplay.

The movie is clearly an homage to the old westerns of yore, specifically the Italian Spaghetti Western genre. Tarantino hired famed Italian composer Ennio Morricone for the score, and there's even a cameo by Franco Nero, both huge names back when that style of western was all the rage.

Both Jamie Foxx and Leonardo DiCaprio do a good job, but it's Waltz, along with Samuel L. Jackson, who really shine.

I do have to say that I'm not a fan of Tarantino's penchant for peppering some his movies with over the top elements like unnaturally big bursts of blood from gunshot wounds or exaggerated recoiling motions of a victim when shot with a simple hand gun. Unless you're making a parody, à la Airplane, inserting such scenes feels out of place and, frankly, breaks the "spell" one is under when watching a movie, which in itself requires a certain amount of suspension of disbelief.

Whenever he does that, I feel sort of ejected from the flow of the story, which is a pity. I figure these were elements that strongly fascinated Tarantino when he was a kid, first discovering the power of motion pictures, and now that he can make his own, he can't stop himself from adding them to his movies, even though they don't really belong there. It's kind of like a childish impulse he just cannot resist, but in my opinion they lower the overall quality of his work. It might also be part of the reason he has yet to win an Oscar for directing, in spite of several nominations.

Those bombastic elements are certainly a big reason why I disliked his Kill Bill: Vol. I movie, and refuse, to this day, to watch the second chapter. I remember that movie being overloaded of scenes like that, making it all but unwatchable by yours truly.

Oh well, to each his own, I guess.

THE BOTTOM LINE: A good film for either Tarantino fans or for those of Spaghetti Westerns.

Grade: 7.5