Incredibly precise.

Rating: 9/10 (26 December 2012)

Just came out of the theater about 30 minutes ago and I still feel like a snowglobe someone shook too hard. This is one hell of a long movie. There are no slow bits except the one useful talky bit where I desperately had to get up and pee about halfway through. Use that bit like an intermission, but hurry, because it doesn't last long.
First off, full disclosure, I like Quentin Tarentino flicks. I think they're energetic, crazy, turned up to 11, and entertaining without being idiotic. He's a guy who loves movies, loves theater, and makes what he loves. And in some ways, I think this is the movie he's been practicing for with all his other movies. This could be the best thing he's ever made. The best thing everyone involved has ever been in.
Second, some minor spoilers below. Don't read this unless you've seen it. Go in and get surprised.
So I knew before we were in that there would be blood, profanity, and bad guys. No surprises there. I've seen some other reviews where folks were surprised by the use of the word n****r. (I had to redact that, IMDb won't let me write it out. Contextually it was appropriate and accurate, but their filter is meant for the vast majority of submissions and it's good that they won't allow it, so.) I was neither particularly surprised nor particularly offended (Situationally, in the past I've been both amused and nauseated by it, depending on the intent behind the use.) In this instance, in this movie, it was used a lot. Maybe dozens of times, over and over, in every possible context, with every possible intonation behind it. It was not used gratuitously even once, though; every single use was intended and purposeful.
I think what people are freaked about is something that was done carefully, deliberately, with at least two goals in mind: to illustrate something to our modern minds about the time period, and to be historically accurate. That's important because there were two faces to this movie. One of them is brutally accurate, and the other is almost like a revenge dream. Those faces switch without warning in the space of a millisecond.
On the brutally accurate side are things that are sad or funny, like the outfit Django picks when he's free to pick his own clothing, and things that are very much not funny, like hauling a slave out of a hot box as though she were meat.
On the dream-like side are the giant splashes and gouts of blood and the ultra-violent fight scenes in which the enfranchised Django kicks ass.
One of the things that did my head in most was watching the two sides, the two faces combined. Specifically the very final scene, where everything is exactly right for a revenge epic, but Django's glasses are crooked. And I know it's on purpose. Nothing about this movie is unintentional, nothing is accidental, and the smallest things can, if you're paying attention to more than gunshots and explosions, knock your damn socks off.
I think the actors and actresses in this movie deliver some of the most amazing, nuanced performances I've ever seen anywhere. The scenes with Samuel L Jackson were like watching someone walk barefoot on a knife edge; my stomach was twisting. Even the bit parts - the housemaids, the silent slaves in chains - are works of art, with layers of meaning and thought that go much deeper than anyone expects from a bit of violent fluff.
My last thought: it's not a fair, ethical, moral movie, although it discusses fairness, ethics and morals in an interesting way (and by that I mean without once saying one word about any of those subjects. QT has absolutely mastered "show, don't tell" when it comes to his storytelling craft.) Django does some stuff for his own satisfaction and to further his goal that are pretty bad. His character is not pure, and you absolutely want to make excuses for those acts in your head, and that's amazing. (None of the characters are pure. None are simple. Not a single damn one of them.)
If I could, I'd make this movie required watching in high school history classes.
On re-reading this, when did I become a pretentious art-house movie critic? Watch the dang movie, it's kickass.