'Django Unchained' review:

Been a while, etc. Saw this a few weeks ago, when it was released in the UK, and even recorded a podcast about it - which subscribers to the old Splendor Cinema iTunes feed may well have already listened to - but a combination of work, holiday and illness kept me from posting a written appraisal. See below:

There is a good film buried somewhere within the three hours of Quentin Tarantino's typically self-satisfied western. Indeed, the first hour, which sees Jamie Foxx's slave Django pressed into the service of the ever-watchable Christoph Waltz's eccentric German bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz, moves along at a good clip and is every bit as stylish, cine-literate and entertainingly violent as the filmmaker's acolytes would have you believe. The duo have a pleasing on-screen chemistry and their various (slightly wacky) escapades - though episodic and mostly inconsequential - are fun. So much so that I would quite happily trade the subsequent two hours of film for four half-hour TV episodes, in which these unlikely partners round up a new bunch of low-lifes each week against a Spaghetti Western backdrop. That would be better than 'Django Unchained' - the bloated and scattershot film from an ego-maniacal director, seemingly operating without checks on his power. Case in point: his truly risible cameo as an Australian people trafficker. Though the less said about that the better.

One of the appealing things about the first third of 'Django' is that, much like the enjoyably disposable 'Inglourious Basterds' before it, there is an overriding edge of sillyness and even moments of satire - both best exemplified by an amusing (if disposable) KKK skit - that help to undercut the unrelenting nastiness of Tarantino's characters and apparent world-view. In other words, it's easier to sit back and laugh at people's skulls being staved in when the overall piece is irreverent and daft, as opposed to when these actions are supposed to be cool. That last word, "cool", is key in terms of my relationship with Tarantino. The more desperately and self-consciously he seems to be trying to sell cool, to create cool characters and write cool dialogue, the more tragic and ultimately disturbing I find his films to be. The ever-present themes of Old Testament justice and revenge are difficult for me to stomach when taken seriously. Being asked to see them as cool is, to my mind, unpalatable.

And so we come to the latter stages of the film, in which Django fights violence and intolerance with the same and [SPOILER] wins. Leonardo DiCaprio's energetic and typically intense performance as the villain goes some way to offsetting the tedium of the second half but po-faced revenge fantasy blood-lust and a politically dubious finale - in which black collaboration with slavery essentially becomes the main villain of the piece, via Samuel L. Jackson's Stephen - leave a sour taste well before the credits roll and the horses dance. Throw in some baffling musical choices and the director's aforementioned cameo and 'Django' stops being irreverent fun and becomes, at best, sloppy and boring and, at worst, pretty hateful. It certainly wants a good edit.

'Carnage' review:

A sharp and bitterly funny attack on middle class social mores and attitudes, Roman Polanski's 'Carnage' is the kind of movie I'm easily smitten by: a tight little film which primarily takes place on one location (in real-time, no less), peddles deft social satire and zips by in a welcome 79 minutes. It's to the veteran director's credit that it never feels paired down or non-cinematic, despite being based on a stage play: French playwright Yasmina Reza's God of Carnage. Tight close-ups develop a sense of claustrophobia and Polanski's camera seems to relish the few occasions where the characters nearly escape their setting, eagerly rushing out into the hall and returning to the apartment with an air of resignation.

The film hinges around an event briefly glimpsed (from a distance) during the opening credits as one young boy hits another with a stick in a New York park. Then, in one intense, unbroken scene that ultimately seems to find equivalence in the actions of adults and children, the rest of the film takes place in the apartment of the assaulted boy's parents - Penelope and Michael Longstreet (Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly) - who have invited the other boy's parents - Nancy and Alan Cowan (Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz) - over to discuss about what happened between their kids. It doesn't take long before the mood shifts from one of reconciliation to recrimination (and back again) as the couples turn on each other and feud amongst themselves.

Michael's overbearing attempts to play the good host and considerate husband conceal deep resentment and nihilism that are soon exposed (memorably with the bitter revelation that his wife dresses him as a liberal). Penelope is far less concerned with acting "civilised" and resolving differences than she is with asserting her moral and parenting supremacy over the Cowans. Alan is hyper-rational (or, depending on your point of view, cynical) to the point of seeming cold, aloof and more than a little rude - taking work calls throughout their meeting to the annoyance of everybody. Nancy seems to be the only one entering the situation in genuine good faith - something that's tested by extreme feelings of nausea as a result of the slightest confrontation and, later, by some potent Scotch.

The whole thing is as much about the futility of trying to bring order to chaos as it is about peering voyeuristically underneath the veneer of the characters sense of well-bred respectability. Whilst all of them interact in interesting and ever-shifting ways, the central confrontation is really between Alan, who believes in the inevitability of animalistic, amoral behaviour, and Penelope, who believes with absolute certainty that those in need should be saved and those who do wrong must be punished (according to her own uncompromising standards). Yet these extreme points of view are as easily compromised as anything else: when his phone is broken Alan is less indifferent about human cruelty and suffering, whilst Penelope is more concerned with cleaning up her coffee table books than Nancy's well-being after she suffers a fit of vomiting.

Each of the four actors are superb and wring the most from the script's faultlessly well-observed, caustic humour, though Waltz is again the stand-out performer. Several times in the last year the Academy Award-winning Austrian has been the bright spot in sub-standard films, but here he steals the show in more exalted company. His Alan is deliciously cruel and somehow intensely likable with it. You certainly want to see him get the better of Foster's shrill and conceited Penelope. Winslet gives a very subtle and believable performance, in spite of being given some of the more extreme stuff to do (throwing up and playing drunk). Reilly's innate likability and sensitivity - as the perennially put-upon schlub - are also well deployed and cleverly subverted, providing some of the funniest moments.

'Carnage' is out now in the UK, rated '15' by the BBFC.