1. Mandingo Fighting - Django Unchained (2012)
It's perhaps too soon to tell what kind of lasting impression 2012's Django Unchained will leave. It's definitely a solid film with the revenge-fantasy aspects we've learned to love from Tarantino. It's cinematically astounding (who would've thought blood-splattered flowers could look so lovely?) and Tarantino veterans Samuel L. Jackson and Christoph Waltz give fantastic performances. In Django Unchained, Leonardo DiCaprio plays Calvin Candie, a plantation owner with apparent charm and class despite being a hate-filled human piece of garbage. There's a haunting scene in which Candie sics his dogs on an escaped slave who wishes to opt out of participating in future mandingo fights. But the most disturbing scene in all of Tarantino's oeuvre, to me, is the mandingo fighting itself. Candie watches two men mercilessly beat each other not even for sport, but for his own amusement. The arena for the duel, the plantation version of a man-cave equipped with a bar and lounge chairs, makes the situation that much more harrowing: it isn't the wide-open and distancing setting of the Colosseum. Instead, the action is right in our faces; you can almost smell the blood and sweat as the victorious slave is forced to kill his opponent. A truly disturbing moment not just from Tarantino's film, but from American history.
Honorable Mention: Seeing Robert De Niro have sex in Jackie Brown.
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