Django Unchained

The new extravaganza from Quentin Tarantino is one of his best, and—even allowing for the habitual sideswipes of rambunctious crudity—that makes it one of the liveliest and most pungent entertainments of the past year. It’s ostensibly a western about a bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz) and a freed slave (Jamie Foxx) who track down miscreants from the slave trade while also seeking to liberate the latter’s still-enslaved wife. Here, as in Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino has concocted another of his rambunctiously dynamic mashups, mixing disparate genres (the spaghetti western and the blaxploitation melodrama, in this case) and putting them at the service of a convulsive revenge fantasy set in historical circumstances of a particularly grievous and volatile sort. Cinemark 14, Feather River Cinemas and Paradise Cinema 7. Rated R.