Django Unchained

Hideous Fun. Blaxploitation never felt this good.
Django Unchained is Blaxploitation for good, instead of evil, and it allows the director, Quentin Tarantino, to get away with showing
attrocities on screen that even Roots could not muster.  This movie is serious in the same way that James Clavell writes, in Shogun, that the feudal Japanese attendees laughed after witnessing sepuku, laughing to relieve the social and emotional strain and acknowlege the horror, in a socially acceptable way.  The film is brilliant, funny, outrageous, over the top, post-modern, a blaxploitation spaghetti western complete with soundtrack, an excoriating expose of slavery in this country,  a deep philosophical dive into feeling and living in those awful moments, and an unbelievable riot of a pulp movie.  Tarantino has perfected his game.

--Laramie Crocker
  showdate: 2013-01-14,
  Westwood Village Theater, L.A.