violent and entertaining

Rating: 8/10 (22 December 2018)

I saw this a few months ago and didn't get around to writing a review at the time, so now it's only a vague memory. But here are my impressions:
Christoph Waltz is absolutely terrific. Best thing in the movie.
I'm not a big Tarantino fan, so it took me a long time to get around to seeing this one. But this is one of the few of his film's I've liked.
It's crazy, over-the-top violent. At times that seems excessive, but overall I was okay with it.
The movie is very much in the vein of big westerns, only it's not in the west and it is centered on slavery. The movie has a gut-punch approach and aims for a Peckinpah nastiness. I like it better than Peckinpah, who I never liked.
The movie is not trying to be realistic. You can see this in the language; black characters speak in the same basic dialect as white actors, even though as uneducated people only a generation or two from Africa that couldn't possibly be the case. But it's a useful way to establish the humanity of slaves; we tend to relate more to people who speak as we do.
I read some interesting analysis of this movie regarding whether the language is appropriate or racism porn. I can see both sides.
The only other western I've seen that directly dealt with racism was the 70s comedy Skin Game, starring James Garner and Louis Gossett. Of the two, I prefer Skin Game which is very pointed without the excesses of Django. Very funny movie I highly recommend.