Review: Django Unchained (2012) entertains but is oddly generic and surprisingly conventional.

Django Unchained

2012
165 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

Quentin Tarantino arguably made Django Unchained (teaser/trailer) because he wanted to try his hand at a Spaghetti Western, and that's basically what he has done.  Alas, the film is little more than a genre exercise, with little more than the obvious role reversals to justify its artistic existence.  That is is mostly entertaining and well-acted across the board goes without saying, but after the slyly subversive Inglorious Basterds, I frankly expect more from the filmmaker.  For a filmmaker known for narrative surprises and challenging the expectations of his audience, his newest entry is oddly conventional and almost timid in terms of how it approaches its subject matter.  Oh, it surely qualifies as another film focusing on revisionist revenge-fantasy history, as well as how we often use the cinematic lens to comprehend the least savory parts of our history, but as a stand-alone film it is lacking in substance.  It is a good movie, for sure, but it is quite frankly not a very good film.

Fox takes its shot at the animation crown with an Epic trailer.

Putting aside the unfortunate "comic relief" of Aziz Ansari's wisecracking slug, this looks quite promising.  The film looks gorgeous and there does seem to be an attempt to tell a mostly serious adventure story.  I missed the earlier, nearly wordless teaser from awhile back, but both previews use Snow Patrol's "What If the Storm Ends?" to rather powerful effect, similar to how well 20th Century Fox used Creed's "Higher" for their Titan A.E. campaign thirteen years ago.  I could do with a little less celebrity casting (Christoph Waltz is distracting as the heavy), but a female protagonist in a film like this is always a plus. Also a plus: Danny Elfman is doing the score.  What's curious is how much this feels like a Dreamworks film, in a good way of course.  For years every wise-cracking animal cartoon was accused of ripping off Dreamworks even as DWA made but a single such movie, Over the Hedge (arguably the best such film in that sub-genre), which came out right at the same time as the likes of Open Season, Barnyard: The Original Party Animals, and The Ant Bully.  This feels more like an attempt to capture the, well, epic adventure found in the Rise of the Guardians, How to Train Your Dragon, the Kung Fu Panda series, and Puss In Boots.  Still, say what you will about the diminishing creative returns for the Ice Age series, Rio was a genuinely entertaining and arguably original animated feature.  As I said a few weeks ago, the holes in Pixar's armor has allowed its competitors to come out in full force.  This seems to be Fox taking its best shot.  Epic opens May 24th, 2013.  As always, we'll see.

Scott Mendelson        

Tarantino's Django Unchained gets a full trailer, keeps its awful Christmas Day release date.

As usual with most recent Tarantino films, if you look closely at the trailer you'll find bits of action surrounded by lots of people talking and talking.  The effectiveness of a Tarantino film generally rests with the quality of the conversations.  In this case, why not spend Christmas day listening to Leonardo DiCaprio, Jamie Foxx, and Christoph Waltz chit-chat for a couple hours (or more)?  DiCaprio looks like he's having the time of his life and if the film earns Oscar love he seems the most likely recipient.  As I've said before, Tarantino makes *movies* and this gorgeous and richly-colorful bit of revisionist history looks like no exception.  Will it be high art, a subversive look at another very dark historical chapter through the wish-fulfillment lens of cinema? One hopes so, as Inglorious Bastards pulled off that trick three years ago.  But even if it's just a trashy good time, it looks like a fun time with good company.  I'm not sure how smart a Christmas day release is. If you have a bunch of family members in the house after Christmas, what are the chances everyone in the family is old enough for this hard-R action comedy?  Truth be told, the big family is going to probably see The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey again as a consensus choice.  If I were Weinstein Company, I'd move this one to the December 14th slot vacated by Les Miserables, which is now opening alongside Django Unchained.  Oh heck, December 7th now has nothing but the Gerald Butler romcom Playing For Keeps.  Point being, being perceived as a box office flop won't help the film's Oscar chances, especially with voting occurring even earlier this season.   So I'd get the hell out of Christmas if I were them.  Anyway, what do you think of the trailer or the release date?

Scott Mendelson

Watch/Discuss: Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained gets a perfectly appropriate QT-style trailer.

Well this looks like a pulpy blast, as I suppose it should be.  There isn't much to comment on.  Jamie Fox suits the role just fine, Leonardo DiCaprio looks to be having a blast, and the soundtrack is vintage Tarantino.  Now, of course as we all know, the final film will probably be less action-packed than dialogue-drenched, but let's hope that it's a cocktail closer to Inglorious Basterds than Death Proof.  This is actually the 20th anniversary of Reservoir Dogs, which means that Tarantino has been making movies for two full decades.  He had a bit of a rut after Jackie Brown, as Kill Bill and Death Proof are basically straight genre homages without a lot of substance underneath.  But Inglorious Basterds arguably turned a corner, and seeing Tarantino explicitly tackle the uglier parts of history twice in a row is encouraging to say the least.  Could it be that act two of QT's career will plunge head-first into wish-fulfillment historical revisionism, with a side-eye turned towards the darker components of said vengeance-fueled fantasy?  I don't know how history will judge his filmography decades from now.  But I will say that Mr. Tarantino arguably has made some of the movie movie-ish movies of any major auteur in recent history.  Anyway, Django Unchained opens on Christmas day 2012.  As always, we'll see.  Thanks to The Film Stage for the embed.

Scott Mendelson   

Review: Carnage (2011) is amusing, but predictable and uninspired.

Carnage
2011
80 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

There is nothing terribly wrong with Carnage, Roman Polanski's adaption of the play God of Carnage.  But it's story, which involves two couples who meet to discuss the playground injury that one child inflicted on another, plays out exactly as you'd expect it to.  It's fun while it lasts (and it's an awfully short picture), but the picture contains little insight and an unfortunate predictability, both in the actual narrative and in the casting, that it renders the final product very-nearly pointless.  Thanks to an unfortunate need to cast exactly-to-type, the film even loses much of its appeal as an acting treat.  It's not a bad picture, and it's entertaining while it's being watched, but it's almost obscenely inconsequential.