It’s the most wonderful time of the year, except, that it isn’t. It’s not Christmas any more, but that hasn’t stopped the snow which came in full force on Friday. I’m glad I came up from Altnagelvin on Thursday night, because the Glenshane Pass was closed on Friday after the heavy snowfall.

Django Unchained Review

Tarantino has fast become one of my favourite directors. Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill (even vol. 2) are some of my favourite films, and after seeing it last night, Django Unchained is up there as well. It was the first time I have seen one of his films on the big screen, which is always a very different experience from watching it at home on DVD, but this was really worth going to see.

Django Unchained follows the story of a slave Django, played by Jamie Foxx, who is freed by a German bounty hunter (Christopg Waltz). This was no coincidence- the bounty hunter was looking specifically for Django, as he knew some of the wanted men Dr King Schultz (fantastic name, and his horse Fritz) was looking for. The two became an unlikely duo, and worked together as bounty hunters throughout the Winter. Django was a torn man though – he had been separated from his wife after they tried to escape slavery, and to teach them a lesson, they had been sold separately. The arrangement between the good doctor and Django then, was that after the Winter spent working, they would go to the slave auctions and track down his wife, who had been long sold to an eccentric Southern plantation owner, Monsieur Calvin Candie, played rather marvellously by Leonardo Di Caprio.

It isn’t groundbreaking in most senses, and is a fairly standard moral tale about good triumphing over evil, slaves triumphing over slavers and their masters, with a lot of violence in between. The story, though simple, is told well and there is plenty of action as you would expect from Tarantino. Guns don’t just kill people, they kill them spectacularly, with people being blown into the air and rivers of blood flying in every direction. The scenery throughout the film was rather spectacular, with vast mountain ranges and plains, and even the plantation mansions.

Though it is good, it doesn’t feel as intelligently written as his earlier films, notably Pulp Fiction. There were a few of the typical Tarantino conversations in Django (think the hamburger speech in Pulp Fiction, for example) but a lot of the film tilted towards the comedy end of the spectrum, and garnered a lot of laughs from the audience. It is definitely worth seeing, particularly for fans of the director, though there is something for everyone in there. Perhaps it’s not for the faint of heart thoug