Given that two of this month’s most highly anticipated movies – Les Miserables and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey – didn’t quite resonate with the critics as much audiences might’ve hoped, the attention has turned to Quentin Tarantino‘s spaghetti western homage Django Unchained to pick up the pieces. And given that Tarantino movies aren’t for everyone, it was expected that this particularly bloody tale of violent revenge – one that deals with America’s past dealings with slavery by taking a hammer to it – would undoubtably divide the critics.
Well, not so far. The first wave of reviews (16 in total at the time of writing) have been universally positive, with even less-impressed critics recommending that audiences go out and see the movie anyway. Yes, Django Unchained currently resides on Rotten Tomatoes with an extremely impressive 100% rating, a score which denotes not a single negative review. This is surely soon to change, of course, given that there are likely to be up to 200 more reviews on their way – and somebody is bound to hate it. This does, however, look good for the movie’s critical future, as well as its box office standing.
Our own critic Jonathan R. Lack named Django Unchained his choice for movie of the year, and said that Tarantino “rewrites the iconography that fuels the Western genre, using film as a method to account for the horrors of the past and the past as a method to account for gaps in cinematic representations of history.” Peter Bradshaw over at the Guardian – usually a luke-warm advocate of Tarantino’s work – has claimed that he “can’t wait to see [it] again”, granting it a perfect 5 out of 5 stars, whilst Cole Smithy graded it A and called it “Tarantino’s finest film to date.”
Even more pumped to see Jamie Foxx and Christoph Waltz in action, given all the positive reactions thus far?
Django Unchained shoots into theatres on Christmas Day. As Calvin Candie would say: “Adult supervision is required.”
UPDATE: 2 new reviews have been added to Rotten Tomatoes, both of which are highly positive. This brings the total up to 18 positive reviews and 0 negative.
Source: E!