Django Unchained

I honestly didn't want to see Django Unchained. Much like Tarantino's film Inglourious Basterds, I wasn't in the mood to be entertained by another of history's tragedies. However, Django Unchained is directed with such style, it's exceedingly difficult to not be entertained. The screenplay is wordy, the soundtrack is effectively narrative, the supporting cast is surprising, and the cinematography is stunning. Flashbacks are shot in as an homage to seventies exploitation films. And it's hard not to see well-placed symbolism in the blood-spray on white cotton, spatter on the flanks of a speeding white stallion, or gore on the white columns of a Colonial plantation home. The villains in Django Unchained are either vicious, pretentious, inhuman dandies, or toothless, bumbling, ignorant rednecks; and they are justifiably mowed down by the dozen. And Django is a stoic hero played with reserve by Jamie Foxx, who becomes an uneven partner with bounty hunter Dr. Schultz, played with a flourish by Christoph Waltz, in a time period when such partnerships largely did not exist. The whole affair is very watchable, which I found unsettling, but then again, Tarantino already set a president with his last film.