Movie Review: Django Unchained

The D is silent.

The movie is not.

Here's how much I liked it, Spike Lee's protests notwithstanding: When my sweetheart and I finally managed to purchase our tickets for Saturday's 7 o'clock show, there were six seats left in the theatre. ("Saturday night when the skiing is crappy in Collingwood - how busy can it be?" We asked ourselves...) None of those seats were together, so I put hubby in the last remaining aisle seat and perched next to him on the stairs. Someone kindly directed me to a seat a few rows back, but I saved a stranger from my obnoxious asides and stayed where I was. (Before you think him unchivalrous, Sweetie offered several times to switch spots with me.) Three hours later, I was still on the edge of the stair, never having noticed I wasn't in a chair. No numb-bum, no sore back, no nothing. I was mesmerised: totally engrossed in the story, the action, the dialogue, all of it superb.

Favourite bits: the sendup of the KKK, the exploding blood and every scene in which Christoph Waltz appears.

Yes it's brutal. Yes, it's funny, yes, it's snappy and witty and everything you would expect from Quentin Tarantino, and yet it's more, too.

At one point, I found myself nearly praying, "Please don't let this be the one where he goes for an unhappy ending - I couldn't stand it!" I was not disappointed. The ending has more than enough revenge to be satisfying, and the whole thing does something Tarantino has not attempted before - he's made us think.

I have no problem at all with the word so many people are upset is whipped out a hundred times. It's the word people used plenty in the antebellum south, and which plenty still use in the privacy of their homes and minds. I actually wish people would use that word a bit more often. Five years worth of ridiculous 'birther' arguments might have been avoided if the racists were just free to say they don't want one in the White House.