As great, deep, and varied a year as 2012 has been for cinema, it took Quentin Tarantino hardly any time at all to make me forget about everything else. With remarkable craftsmanship, a top-notch ensemble, and the year’s very best screenplay, Django Unchained immediately had me hooked in a way nothing else these past twelve months could compare to.
Over the course of two-and-a-half riveting and explosive hours, Tarantino subverts, explores, and ultimately 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. The result is a spectacularly powerful film, one more stylish, profound, and wildly, unequivocally satisfying than anything in Tarantino’s filmography, or, indeed, anything else released in 2012. In looking to the past, Tarantino has crafted a potent masterpiece for our times, one that towers ridiculously tall over what has been an all-around fantastic year for cinema.
Django Unchained will arrive in theatres nationwide on December 25th. Â
What did you think of the year in film? Would any of these movies make your top 10 list? What films did you love that were not included? Sound off in the comments and help us reminisce on a wonderful year at the movie theatre!Â
