In theaters, the movies might look the same. But perhaps now we see them differently.
After the gun massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, in December, the ground shifted for good. Assault weapons, high-capacity magazines and background checks became a permanent part of the conversation, as did movies and video games. Everyone — even movie fans — seemed willing to re-examine our national obsession with violence and a popular culture addicted to aggression, senseless gunplay and reckless notions of rough justice.
Then the blood-spattered spaghetti western "Django Unchained" opened — on Christmas Day, of all times, not even a week after "Jack Reacher" arrived in theaters, its first-person perspective of a sniper recalling the events of mid-December with a repellent shudder.