i'd rank it somewhere near inglourious on QT's filmography, which is to say pretty close to the top. the 3 hours flies, partly 'cause it's broken up in chapters, partly 'cause it's just wildly entertaining. feels like it was written as a stage play, and i could easily see this going on a theater run with almost no changes to the script, but it works beautifully on film thanks to some crazy good/crazy fun performances and masterful direction. jennifer jason leigh steals the show, and she's gonna get a ton of hardware off this, but sam jackson does all the heavy lifting. time for america to stop taking this man for granted and give him his due as one of the greats.

the crowd i saw it with was mostly white, and hearing them react to the racist dialogue was almost a show in itself. dude next to me was like "jesus!" or "oh, god" at nearly every instance of the N-word, and i couldn't tell if it was 'cause he was sitting next to me and felt obligated to express some sort of disapproval. though he did laugh a little too hard at one of the racist jokes, so i was like stop acting like this ain't what your thanksgiving sounded like.

really though, QT's obsession with the N-word doesn't bother me 'cause, to be fair, it is probably the most charged word in the english language, carrying the most history, importance, nuance, etc., at least to americans. and the way he weaves it through his dialogue-- finding the subtle meaning in it even among the frivolity-- is fairly genius. the way characters use it, the context they use it in, immediately gives you a full page of backstory on them without even getting into it. the way daisy uses it in the very beginning, i immediately have a pretty good idea who she is and why she's chained to ruth. the way goggins and dern's characters use it when conversing, you know where they're from and what they're about. a ton of subtext in the frivolity.

anyway, you're gonna see this anyway (see it in 70mm if you can), so i'm not saying this to sell you. but it's gonna be a national tragedy the day QT stops making movies. the filmography he's building is putting him into some really rarefied air, not just among filmmakers but also among writers, period.