Geoffrey Rush – Movies of the Soul

Vampire Owl: I have some problems with these dead men.

Vampire Bat: I am pretty sure that you don’t even know them.

Vampire Owl: Maybe, but I don’t understand why they come to the conclusion that dead men tell no tales.

Vampire Bat: It is quite a common saying in the human world, as I have heard.

Vampire Owl: But we are dead, and we tell stories.

Vampire Bat: We are the undead. It is a different case. Even in the movie, the undead exist.

Vampire Owl: I am sure that they can tell a few tales too.

Vampire Bat: Do you prefer the subtitle to be Salazar’s Revenge?

Vampire Owl: Revenge is so common, so dull. It is not that sweet as it used to be. I would prefer to wait and achieve greatness, which would be my revenge, which is not really the direct revenge.

Vampire Bat: Let them keep the dead men and their tales then.

[Gets the tickets with cardamom tea and french fries].

What is the movie about? :: Henry Turner (Brenton Thwaites), the son of Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) works on a warship belonging to the Royal British Navy which has been after the pirates who have been plaguing the ocean around the Americas. It is an eventful journey, with pirates being around now and then. During one of such journeys, when they are chasing a pirate ship, they go right into the Devil’s Triangle, known more to the modern world as the Bermuda Triangle. Henry tries to prevent the same, but rising against the captain’s order makes his talks and action something resembling mutiny, and he is imprisoned in a cage. But it is not the pirate ship that they found inside, but something resembling a wrecked ship, and the undead in the form of sailors led by a man known as Captain Salazar (Javier Bardem) attacks them, and kills everyone except Henry who is asked to deliver a message to Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), about death coming after him.

So, what happens next? :: Meanwhile, Jack is trying to rob a newly opened bank with his pirate gang, but in the end, they lose all the money, and he is left behind in the process. Henry who survives the attack of the undead pirates after being left behind by Salazar, is captured by the British, and branding him as a coward and a traitor, they plan to execute him. It is during that time that he comes across a young woman named Carina Smyth (Kaya Scodelario) who was sentenced to death for witchcraft, but had escaped at the same time when Jack was going through his robbery. She is also captured while trying to contact Henry, but he escapes when the attention is on her. The curious Carina also intends to go to find the Trident of Poseidon which Henry has been looking for, as it is supposed to have the power to free his father from the curse. Jack, who is left with nothing in the sea, also gets caught after drinking too much. The British decides to execute the witch and the pirate at the same location, at the same time, by hanging and by the guillotine.

And, what is to follow next in the seas? :: With the help of Jack’s former crew, Henry manages to help both Jack and Carina escape, and they get back to the sea in search of the trident on Jack’s small ship, Dying Gull. Carina has the map that would lead them to the same, which only she can read with her skills. With Salazar and his undead crew managing to escape from their dark captivity, and the undead captain assigning the grand pirate Captain Hector Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) with the duty of finding Jack after some threatening, Jack and his new friends have more than one trident to look out for. Salazar’s main objective is to kill Jack, but he wouldn’t hesitate to kill or destroy anyone or anything that he finds on his way, and with the Royal Navy as well as Barbossa being no match to him and his army of undead, how would Jack, Carina and Henry manage to escape from the clutches of the evil which is ready to be unleashed all around the waters?

The defence of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales :: There is entertainment in store in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, that is for sure, and we have the same with the support of some nice visuals, and the 3D is pretty much okay. The undead sailors and sharks are all nice, and the locations contribute to the same so well. The comic side is at its best with the scenes of execution of two protagonists, a big bank robbery scene and the jokes regarding the job description of the heroine – other than that, there are a few working here and there, fine enough to keep the ship floating. Johnny Depp still has a lot of the sparrow in him with nothing much changing about the character we have loved for so long, and Kaya Scodelario is a lot welcome addition to the same, coming right out of The Maze Runner and its sequel, The Scorch Trials. Javier Bardem and Brenton Thwaites also becomes fine additions to this adventure, and they all contribute to making this movie good, even though it is still the least interesting movie among all the five flicks that make this franchise.

The claws of flaw :: The fans of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise might have surely expected something bigger with Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, and it would leave them thinking why this one hasn’t evolved even after such a long gap with no pirates in the seas. There could have been more magnificence with the horror here, and something even bigger to end the movie with. The forced cameos bring no surprise and it can be said all the time. We wanted more of everything considering how long it took to come up with this sequel. Here is even Jack Sparrow not becoming the one whom we had waited for so long – the comic side is good, but we end up thinking if the character itself was needed, or some other pirate could have been enough. A stronger tale could have also helped, because this one seems to be a story written just to bring this movie to light, and get more money at the box-office in the name of the brand – the effect of having the pirates is coming down, and the makers have to be careful, for this is not even an animated movie like the Ice Age movie series.

How it finishes :: Even with some fun in store, one has to think that Disney is using the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise too much in the same way, trying to make more and more money out of the same. It has been fourteen long years since Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl released, and it has been six years since the last movie of the franchise, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides released – there are two sides to the same, for most people should have forgotten how things have been going on in this movie, and there is also a lot of people who have wished to see something or anything related to the pirates on the big screen. If more of the same thing is needed to be repeated, this is the movie that you should go for, as nothing new or special makes its way into this movie. You can watch this one to have more of pirates, but you can’t expect it to bring anything new – for experimentation seems to have left this franchise with ease, and being more creative is no longer the visible option for the makers.

Release date: 26th May 2017
Running time: 128 minutes
Directed by: Joachim Ronning, Espen Sandberg
Starring: Johnny Depp, Kaya Scodelario, Javier Bardem, Brenton Thwaites, Kevin McNally, Geoffrey Rush, Martin Klebba, Orlando Bloom (cameo), Keira Knightley (cameo)

@ Cemetery Watch
✠ The Vampire Bat.

Vampire Owl :: It is such a gloomy Diwali this year. Nothing to be done. I expect this Halloween to be bad too.

Vampire Bat :: I had my own celebrations though.

Vampire Owl :: Really? And you didn’t call me? After all, I am your only officially undead friend.

Vampire Bat :: It was not arranged by me. There was lightning and almost everything in the living room seemed to be enjoying fireworks. Only the stabilizer is working now.

Vampire Owl :: I would need that stabilizer. I can connect it to my owlifier and hope that it works without loss of energy.

Vampire Bat :: Do you know that you often seem to talk like Victor Frankenstein?

Vampire Owl :: Absolutely not. See, you are giving a wrong idea about owlification to the society. This is for their own good, so that they don’t have to face a third world war and a possible extinction.

Vampire Bat :: Have you even read about a world war?

Vampire Owl :: No. Why should I? I read no evil, hear no evil, see no evil. I just create evil – I am an evil mastermind.

Vampire Bat :: I have a movie for you then.

[Grabs of a cup of tea].

What is it about? :: The Best Offer is set in a world of art, where an old expert in art Virgil Oldman (Geoffrey Rush) runs an auction house. He is not a loved person around, as he has very few people around him who likes his way of behaviour and most of his life is spent with the desire to illegally gain the possession of very rare and highly valuable pieces of art, unmarried. He is appointed by a young heiress, Claire Ibbetson (Sylvia Hoeks), who asks for his help to auction off a huge collection of antiques and grand pieces of art which has been passed onto her by the family lines. But as Claire suffer from “a strange disease” as the people she knows tell him, or a certain amount of agoraphobia as she keeps herself confined to a room inside the huge mansion. As curiosity keeps getting into him, he hides himself inside the mansion one day to find that she is young and beautiful and sees her in a compromising position. He is immediately attracted to her beauty, and as they come close to each other, there will be the course of something else that will be set in motion.

The defence of The Best Offer :: Here is a movie which never ceases to enchant you with its visual splendour provided by art rather than anything else. There is a lot of beauty in the way in which the whole thing is narrated. Here is a quote which you can take home — “Emotions are like work of art. They can be forged; they seem just like the original but they are forgery. Everything can be fake: joy, pain, hate, illness, recovery… even love” – it tells a lot about the movie and how it connects art and man. Then there is question of truth and happiness, the things that are not found even in the real thing. The performances are splendid too, especially from the two leading characters. It is indeed a fresh take on the mystery genre, and a different entry to the world of romantic thrillers. There is also the abstinence from the usual formula that can be seen on a number of occasions. One can’t also deny the existence of so many angles from which this movie can be viewed from. I see the hollowness of humanity which can create huge artistic forgeries of the mind.

Positives and negatives :: The movie is slow, and it has lots of art associated with it, not really appealing to everyone. It is easy to find such people who don’t care about antiquity in this part of the world as we see our own centuries old monuments being vandalized by people or even those who claim to be lovers to write their names. There is almost no love for art in our lands, not even to the courses related to the same. So, this movie not releasing her was never a surprise, and people are going to find fault with its setting anyway. There will also be people wondering how such a thing in the movie is even possible with the two – but human mind is indeed strange, and emotions are pretty much ridiculous even for the most skilled ones – that much one has to be aware of. Yes, there are some characters who should have developed further and are lost in this seductive battle between the two main characters. It does give a little bit of too much clue to the viewer’s liking too early, but not everyone will pick them.

Performers of the soul :: Geoffrey Rush steals the show right from the beginning, and even by a bigger margin by the end. We don’t have a character here whom we can easily sympathize with, but here the man has completely made us feel for the character and the emotions that he has, even as he is not that much of a positive character, or someone we can cheer for. He is not a hero here, but we are given a chance to admire him as a tragic hero with this performance, and here he is elevated to the status of someone like Doctor Faustus who has the power of knowledge and yet not the wisdom to make things work in the right way. There is a certain beauty about it. Sylvia Hoeks is stunning here, not just by looks, but with a performance which seems to make her a modern day Rapunzel, caught in the hopelessness of the never-ending loneliness in the middle of nowhere, with no escape and less hair, but still extremely beautiful and having all the traits of her gorgeous and mysterious character.

Soul exploration :: Even as the movie’s focus as well as its background are on art and valuable antiques, its soul is on the gorgeous enigma who is at the centre of everything. She is the one to determine the fate of more than one character in the movie, and the universe which was rather static until then, revolves around her and turns it into a romantic mystery and then into a kind of thriller with the world no longer following a pattern. The life based on art becomes the life based on one lady who is like living art in beauty, and the protagonist soon finds his Helen of Troy and seems to wonder like Faustus if it “Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?” – there comes the radical change in the world, and it sets things in motion, as the centre is clearly the mystery that the mysterious beauty provides, and the protagonist comes directly under the influence of this centre, the soul which changes things.

How it finishes :: The Best Offer is lost to most of our people, and it is not even known to most of our viewers. Another fact is that it might not appeal to everyone with a universe of art and a mystery that is built around the same which is hard to connect for a lot of people belonging to the modern world. As it tells the story of two people who are separated from the usual known world in different ways, the focus is on the search of love and the vanity in the hope that there will be the appearance of such a feeling which is so hard to achieve in this world of materialism. The movie talks about the world of love just as the illusion of art, and forgery is possible with ease, even as the best of forgeries might require skills, and it will take more than just the expertise to look through the fake emotions of love and desire, and that should be an objective vision which should be completely absent when the illusion begins to spread through one’s eyes.

Release date: 1st January 2013
Running time: 124 minutes
Directed by: Giuseppe Tornatore
Starring: Geoffrey Rush, Sylvia Hoeks, Jim Sturgess, Liya Kebede, Donald Sutherland, Philip Jackson, Dermot Crowley, Kiruna Stamell