Django Unchained (2012 Nominee)

With the help of a German bounty hunter, Christoph Waltz, a freed slave, Django, sets out to rescue his wife from a brutal Mississippi plantation owner.

Nobody turns heads, stirs the pot and explodes heads quite like Quentin Tarantino. Pulp Fiction was easily among the most influential and important films of the ‘90’s and his body of work, while an acquired taste (some find his dialogue long-winded and self-indulgent and his movies can be, um, sort of violent), is incredibly impressive. Django Unchained continues his streak of excellence marked by his unique way of being unabashedly derivative and incredibly original at the same time. While this film is undeniably the work of a master, it seems to fall just short of a true masterpiece. Despite the fact that racial slurs fly faster than the bullets that make red water balloons of their targets, Django does not have quite the same boldness and freshness that Inglourious Basterds did. It’s an excellent film to be sure with frequent flashes of brilliance (the Ku Klux Klan scene is hysterical) but one that falls in the bottom half of Tarantino’s resume. 

I liked this movie.  It was a little on the long side for me but it was good.  The performances by Waltz and Foxx were amazing.  Jamie Foxx was so wonderful that I cannot imagine anyone else ever playing this role but him.  You even see all of Jamie Foxx, but hang on ladies... don't rush out this instant.  It is possibly in the worst context ever that you see him in ALL his glory.  Anyways, Leonardo DiCaprio was great but he wasn't the bad guy I was expecting him to be.  It was almost like Samuel L. Jackson was the bad guy.  There were some great power struggles between Jackson, the head house slave, and DiCaprio, plantation owner Calvin Candie of Candie land.  The part of the movie I loved the most was Django's search for his wife and fellow slave, Broomhilda.  She is a black slave who speaks fluent German.  Waltz's character reveals an interesting piece of German folklore where Broomhilda is in need of a knight in shining armor and this becomes Django's inspiration. 

Russ Tamblyn, whose character in this movie is named "Son of a Gunfighter," starred in the 1965 movie Son of a Gunfighter. Tamblyn's real-life daughter, actress Amber Tamblyn plays a character in Django Unchained named "Daughter of a Son of a Gunfighter". 

Calvin Candie: Gentlemen, you had my curiosity. But now, you have my attention.