Reviews for this film from our members:
- Beth Accomando @ KPBS Cinema Junkie
- Excerpt: I know Quentin Tarantino has his detractors and that movies with any kind of violence are currently under fire but that said I hope “Django Unchained” will be appreciated for being a complex film delivered under the guise of simple pop entertainment.
- Marco Albanese @ Stanze di Cinema [Italian]
- Excerpt: Inteso come secondo capitolo di una possibile trilogia di contro-storia, Django Unchained è un Tarantino d’annata, che piacerà ai suoi fans, perchè riesce a rinnovare ancora una volta i suoi punti di forza: violenza parossistica, lunghi dialoghi memorabili e feroce ironia.
- [New – 5/30] | Dragan Antulov @ Draxblog VI [Croatian]
- Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Cafe Texan
- Excerpt: Out of curiosity I kept a count of the number of times a certain word was used…my tally was 112 times spoken, once written on a sign.
- Jason Bailey @ Flavorwire
- Excerpt: What’s most remarkable about Django Unchained is how skillfully Tarantino navigates the shaky ground between muddy Western oater, blaxpoitation-style shoot-‘em-up, earnest love story, and honest-to-God socio-political commentary.
- Chris Barsanti @ Film Journal International
- Excerpt: Brilliant comic turns from Christoph Waltz and Samuel L. Jackson help string together this audience-pleasing, highly uneven Quentin Tarantino spaghetti western/slave vengeance mash-up.
- Jason Bellamy @ The Cooler
- Excerpt: It’s “lesser” Tarantino, and still one of the best of 2012.
- Matthew Blevins @ Nextprojection.com
- Luke Bonanno @ DVDizzy.com
- Excerpt: Django is arresting cinema for most of its nearly three-hour runtime, Tarantino having impressive command of everything technical to complement his confident use of writing and actors. If only the director could have ended the film twenty minutes earlier than he does.
- Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
- Excerpt: A lesser work by one of America’s most ebullient auteurs.
- Joshua Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
- Enrique Buchichio @ Cartelera.com.uy [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Aún una película imperfecta de Tarantino es mucho mejor que el 90 por ciento de lo que se verá en cine este año, y probablemente el año que viene también.
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: This Spaghetti Western via Blaxploitation Mandingo revenge film is told in three acts, the first of which is easily the best – the bounty hunters aka ‘That’s a Black man riding a horse!’.
- Philip Concannon @ Phil on Film
- Edwin Davies @ A Mighty Fine Blog
- Excerpt: It’s more John Shaft than John Wayne. It’s an angry, intelligent film about the great obscenity of American history dressed up as one of its most conservative genres, but which also happens to work as a great example of that genre.
- Tony Dayoub @ Cinema Viewfinder
- Excerpt: …another revisionist take on history by Tarantino, one that finds the director losing the thread of the conversation he himself instigates.
- Jim Dixon @ Examiner.com
- Excerpt: Quentin Tarantino is certainly our most exuberant current auteur, and certainly no other director takes such extravagant delight in the least respectable subgenres of exploitation films. His latest feature, “Django Unchained,” an over-the-top celebration of both the spaghetti western and the Blaxploitation flick, is a very R-rated epic peppered with equal parts brutal violence and raucous, adolescent humor.“Django Unchained” is a wildly entertaining, high velocity theme park ride of a movie, which doesn’t stop to trouble itself over minor matters of taste or decorum.
- Mark Dujsik @ Mark Reviews Movies
- Excerpt: [A] chronicle of a most reprehensible chapter in American history, seen through the amoral prism of the Spaghetti Western and drenched in blood and spit—but mostly blood.
- Candice Frederick @ Reel Talk
- Excerpt: Much like his previous film Inglourious Basterds, with Django Unchained Tarantino treads the very thin line between pseudo drama and comedy with a film that eagerly takes as many risks as it pushes the boundaries of telling a story like this.
- Dustin Freeley @ Movies About Gladiators.com
- Panagiotis Gkaris @ Movies Ltd
- Excerpt: Tarantino has come a long way since his only true classics, namely Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. He is a hipster god and a film persona to behold for he has always been fresh, juicy and creatively provocative. I feel these elements are pushed aside here in the name of a self -congratulating kill-‘em-all mannerism which will indoctrinate many new adherents but will lose some old true believers.
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: Indulgent and excessive, it’s Tarantino at his bloody best.
- Vadym Grygoriev @ kinoblog.com [Ukrainian]
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Quentin Tarantino spins a dark fantasia of the pre-Civil War South that is hilarious, ferocious, shocking, and wise, sometimes all at once.
- Oktay Ege Kozak @ Oregon Herald
- Benjamin Kramer @ The Voracious Filmgoer
- Josh Larsen @ LarsenOnFilm.com
- Excerpt: Despite the way it functions as flashy entertainment, the weight of slavery can still be felt in Django Unchained.
- Donald Levit @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Mathieu Li-Goyette @ Panorama-cinéma [French]
- Wesley Lovell @ Cinema Sight
- Excerpt: No one can glorify violence the way Tarantino can…and that’s a good thing.
- Marty Mapes @ Movie Habit
- Excerpt: Countless great scenes in the Tarantino universe
- Marty Mapes @ Movie Habit
- Excerpt: Countless great scenes in the Tarantino universe
- Piers Marchant @ Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
- Matthew McKernan @ FilmWhinge
- Excerpt: Django Unchained is too long, too flippant and too childish. Rated 18, it is way beyond the demographic that would appreciate it most.
- Jason McKiernan @ Next Projection
- Excerpt: Django Unchained is a masterpiece of awesomeness, birthed in that wacked-out brain of Quentin Tarantino’s and hurled at the screen with equal parts breathtaking beauty and unflinching severity, at once underscoring its repulsive origins and then its gleeful subversion of them.
- Brent McKnight @ Beyond Hollywood
- Ryan McNeil @ The Matinee
- Excerpt: Tarantino returns with another piece of revisionist history. Can lightning strike in the same place twice?
- Simon Miraudo @ Quickflix
- Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
- Excerpt: It’s not a Western, it’s a Southern. And it’s a good one.
- Jason Pirodsky @ Expats.cz
- Excerpt: This Django flick represents Tarantino Unchained: it’s the director’s longest, most indulgent, and gratuitously violent film yet.
- Tiago Ramos @ Split Screen [Portuguese]
- Jamie S. Rich @ DVD Talk
- Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: Bloody and sometimes profane, but always fearless and inventive.
- Marcio Sallem @ Cinema com Crítica [Portuguese]
- Amir Siregar @ Flick Magazine [Indonesian]
- Amir Siregar @ Flick Magazine [Indonesian]
- Cole Smithey @ ColeSmithey.com
- Excerpt: Campy, funny, shocking, and seeping with sardonic social commentary, “Django Unchained” is Quentin Tarantino’s finest film to date.
- Frank Swietek @ One Guy’s Opinion
- Excerpt: Though extremely long and ultra-violent, it leaves you neither exhausted nor repulsed, but exhilarated.
- Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: The first half of this movie boasts some of the most entertaining filmmaking of 2012 — or perhaps of any year.
- Phil Villarreal @ Becauseitoldyouso.com
- Excerpt: Django may be unchained, but his movie could have used some tighter shackles.
- Ron Wilkinson @ MonstersandCritics.com
- Excerpt: A fine example of unabashed bloodletting in the context of the two worst applications of capitalism in our history, bounty hunting and slavery.
- Andrew Wyatt @ Look / Listen (St. Louis Magazine)
- Excerpt: Tarantino signals quite explicitly that Django Unchained is not aiming to present a historically accurate depiction of chattel slavery in the American South, but a Hero’s Journey where Django assumes the role of a dragon-slaying, maiden-rescuing Siegfried. It’s not Roots, but Wagner through the lens of Sergio Leone with a splash of James Brown funk.
