Let's start with the good:

- it's Tarantino's most straightforward comedy to date. There's not much moral complexity here, just a lot of bumbling hick-ass white folks getting killed while one-liners are spouted. Now, some people will absolutely view this as a hardcore negative, as is their right. However...

- the comedic tone for the most part kept the pace quicker than most QT films, with the exception of Candie Land sequence (more below). The pre-Candie Land bit plays like Leone doing Blazing Saddles. Again, some people will definitely take the lighter tone as a bad thing, but the pace was quick and the storytelling unusually economic for QT. The finale is also funny, fast, and satisfying. Really, if you take out the Candie Land segment, a lot of it is among my favorite QT work to date.

- Cinematography and music are great, and while I normally just accept that as a given in a Tarantino film, it's worth noting after the ungreat cinematography and music of Les Mis last night.

- Jamie Foxx gives his best performance to date. I'm not a big fan of Foxx, and I recoiled when I saw he'd been cast as the cowboy lead. But he nails it. Probably gives the best performance in the film in my opinion.

- THIS IS THE LEAST IRONIC A TARANTINO FILM HAS MAYBE EVER FELT. At least going back to Jackie Brown. I didn't feel winking at the camera the way I felt during Inglourious Basterds, Kill Bill, etc. It's simply straight forward and earnest. There's even an emotional undercurrent, which I loved, as I've felt in the past few QT outings that the attempts at emotion were merely perfunctory.

- Samuel L. Jackson: best use of his natural menace in a long time.

The bad:

- the whole Candie Land segment dragged for me. This is where the Tarantino that makes me roll my eyes came into action, the one who's a little too pleased with his speechifying and a little too eager to extend a scene's dialogue. Although I won't blame QT's script entirely...

-... as I didn't really buy DiCaprio. I'm glad he was having fun being hammy again after a number of serious melancholy roles in a row, but I needed somebody with less boyish eyes. I see *why* they cast him, aside from the obvious marketplace value-- he is, after all, a petulant child, and his performance is never better than when he has the conversation with Samuel Jackson in the library. We see the fear, the anger boil up. Most of the rest of the time, I wanted an actor more inherently scary, who felt less like he was having a good time and more like he was a child teetering on insanity.

You know who I really wanted for Candie? The kid who plays Joffrey on Game of Thrones.

- although there's not much opportunity for Kerry Washington to do anything other than scream and writhe, I would've liked her character more developed. QT's normally good at that, so this isn't a Mamet thing, but it would've added to the film.

- by favoring the comedy, he does undercut some of the emotional content, and certainly the uglier slavery stuff in Candie Land feels odd next to jokes. Example: the reunion of Hildy and Django swells for a moment, and then...gag. Womp womp. One wonders what he could have done if he played the film straighter (though that may have resulted in a slower pace, so it's a give and take).

- Jonah Hill didn't need to be in that scene, lol. It was the funniest scene in the film, maybe QT's funniest scene since Pulp Fiction, but Jonah Hill being there was distracting. I kept waiting for him to come back.

- speaking of not needing to be there, can we keep Tarantino out of his own movies forever? Holy fuck, what a distracting and awfully performed cameo.

- as people have noted above, some "convenient" storytelling moments. The obvious deus ex machina before the finale in particular. However, I thought Jackson killed that speech and it set the finale in motion, so I was happy it came about.

Not sure what I felt overall. It ended on a high note, so that's a very good thing. A healthy hour of it dragged for me, but the rest of it was strong, funny, well-acted, and generally among QT's best work. I was not bothered nearly as much by the N-word usage as I was expecting to, except when it was being used as an obvious source of Tarantino humor (Don Johnson early on, and some of the stuff at Candie's dinner table).

It was definitely better than Les Mis by a good amount. So I'll leave it at that.