Get Out

Vampire Owl: This reminds me of the first two words Dracula uncle told me. It is nice of them to make a movie titled the same.

Vampire Bat: You are talking about what happened when you applied for apprenticeship with the wrong biodata.

Vampire Owl: Yes, I wasn’t trained in vampiric language at that time, and messed it up.

Vampire Bat: You could have just used the universal blood language at that time. It was an official language too.

Vampire Owl: I was just glad that I could get these two words from him without thinking that much about the same.

Vampire Bat: It was all that you were looking for?

Vampire Owl: Well, we are all satisfied with what we have, aren’t we?

Vampire Bat: Yes, we are happy with what we are, and what all exist for us.

Vampire Owl: It is something that we need to to teach the humans.

Vampire Bat: Unfortunately, even after being just mortals, they learn nothing about what could face them in the afterlife. The Lego movie characters know better.

[Gets three cups of evening tea with a piece of mango cake].

What is the movie about? :: A photographer named Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) and his girlfriend Rose Armitage (Allison Williams) have been in love for a few months, and they decide to visit her parents at a far away place, in the countryside, where they own a huge area of land of and property by the side of a lake. Chris is a little bit concerned about meeting her conservative parents because he is black, and her parents seem to be having a white legacy going with her grandfather having lost to Jesse Owens in front of Hitler during the Berlin Olympics of 1936. But the parents seem to be happy with their relationship, Dean Armitage (Bradley Whitford) and Missy Armitage (Catherine Keener) welcomes him to their home as part of their family, even though his brother Jeremy Armitage (Caleb Landry Jones) does come up with some strange remarks which they don’t mind that much.

So, what happens next in the movie? :: The servants at the house who are black, act rather too strange towards him, with Walter (Marcus Henderson) and Georgina (Betty Gabrietl), both doing strange things and also talking as if there is some hostility in the air. Chris has a strange feeling about the happenings at the place, and has a walk at night, during which he is hypnotised by Missy who is a psychiatrist, after which he feels no desire to smoke. He also seems Walter and Georgina doing some strange things, and Jeremy even tries to put a headlock on him, making him really uncomfortable. There is an annual gathering supposed to happen at the place too, during which a lot of guests seem to have special interest in him, except for the only black man in the group, Logan King (LaKeith Stanfield) who also acts strange. He talks about the same to his best friend, Rod Williams (Lil Rel Howery) who asks him to get out of there.

And what is to follow with a twist of events? :: Chris also meets a man called Jim Hudson (Stephen Root), who is blind, but appreciates his work with photography, as he has his assistant who describes them to him. With all focus on him only, Chris asked about how it feels to be an African-American, but he passes the question to Logan who seems to have a certain problem answering the question, and when Christ tries to take his photo, gets angry, asking him to get out of there. Logan, bleeding from his nose, seems to feel better after a session with Missy, and Chris keeps narrating the happenings to Rod, who tells him that those people there might be brainwashing the black people with Missy’s hypnotizing ability, and keeping them as slaves, or even sex slaves, which at first seems funny, but Chris realizes that there is more to this strange behaviour of the people than what meets the eye.

The defence of Get Out :: The movie has its viewers feeling that there is something coming, right from the first sequence itself, and it keeps throwing something again and again on the way, to make sure that the audience is kept excited about what is to come. There is a big mystery ready to be revealed, and throughout the movie, there is the feeling of weirdness and danger which is nicely reflected through more than one character. The early feeling of waiting for the suspense to reveal itself has its replacement in the form of thrills and a certain amount of horror that get stronger by the end. We know that there is something eerie about it, but then we realize that there is even more to come as the movie progresses towards the end. There is tension that is shown between the characters here, and there is something like a rising intensity about it – we feel that this movie is getting better and better towards the end, as we know that something unexpected is to happen, and things are going to go bad for the protagonist, and then towards terrible.

The claws of flaw :: The humour doesn’t work much, and it also gets pretty much violent in the end, something which we weren’t expecting that much considering the first half. We do look at the huge amount of critical appreciation, and expect something even bigger, like a masterpiece, but we will only get this movie – on Rotten Tomatoes, the movie manages to have an approval rating of 99% based on 269 reviews; it is something that we don’t see that often, for things tend to come down a few days after a movie’s release. Metacritic has adjusted with an 84, but something like 99 is what keeps the expectations at a top level. People who have no understanding of the movie’s basic premise will find some trouble too. There is the certainty of some missing logic, with the way the movie becomes something not that natural by the end, which will raise some eyebrows here and there. If you are expecting the twist to be like The Skeleton Key, you are in for a surprise, with doctors and medical science being attached here, even without that much of a deep explanation.

How it finishes :: With Daniel Kaluuya and Allison Williams staying strong as the leading actors, we have a movie to look out for, right here. It is a flick which is not that well-known around here with a rather unknown cast for our audience, and not much of a title that grabs attention, but there will be a lot of fans for this one from here later, that is for sure. The opinions on this one are going to be divided here though, as the racial stuff is not going into the roots with our audience – maybe the caste would do if we make a similar movie here. The movie seems to reflect how things are, when we see another person as “the other“, as someone who really doesn’t belong to our group, and there are some people who pretend to accept them, even though they really don’t. People are such good actors in real life these days, aren’t they? We see so many of such people in this flick, and then there are others who just hate those who are different – the world still needs change for sure, and you see the need stored right within, with a smart horror thriller here. At the same time, lets hope that the viewers take something out of this movie and be better towards the others, the different, those who are not like everyone else.

PS: Check out the review of the latest release, Sunday Holiday.

Release date: 24th February 2017
Running time: 103 minutes
Directed by: Jordan Peele
Starring: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Lil Rel Howery, Bradley Whitford, Caleb Landry Jones, Stephen Root, Catherine Keener, Betty Gabriel, Marcus Henderson, Erika Alexander, LaKeith Stanfield, Stephen Root, Geraldine Singer

@ Cemetery Watch
✠ The Vampire Bat.

Storks

Vampire Owl: Have you ever met the Vampire Stork?

Vampire Bat: What? There is no such thing as a Vampire Stork. It is not natural.

Vampire Owl: Well, a Vampire Panda is not natural, but we have one.

Vampire Bat: But we know that it is Kung Fu Panda in disguise.

Vampire Owl: Still, the Vampire Stork became a strange reality near Bermuda Triangle.

Vampire Bat: In that case, it could possibly be a Zombie Stork.

Vampire Owl: Well, the investigation teams are on their way.

Vampire Bat: What if the stork is to deliver a baby instead?

Vampire Owl: Storks don’t deliver babies!

Vampire Bat: Just watch the movie and find out!

[Gets three cups of lemon tea with 50-50 biscuits].

What is the movie about? :: It was quite natural for the storks of Stork Mountain to deliver babies to the families all around the world, and each one of them found extreme happiness in doing the same. They had delivered millions of babies to people until one stork named Jasper (Danny Trejo) attempted to keep a little baby girl for himself one day, which changed it all. The tracker which provided the location of the family to which the baby was to be delivered is lost, and Jasper goes away from there in shame and disgust. With no option left, the storks adopt the baby, and name the new orphan as Tulip (Katie Crown) who grows up within the company. The CEO of the company, Hunter (Kelsey Grammer) discontinued all baby delivery after that and replaced the same with package delivery going by the name Cornerstore.com. After doing the same, he has been focusing on the stocks only, and by being mean to everyone, made the firm a succesful company based on exploitation of its work force.

So, what happens next in the movie? :: Eighteen years after she was adopted, Tulip who is an adult now, is working with Cornerstore, and regularly messes up things. Hunter is not happy that Tulip keeps bringing the stocks down with whatever she s doing at the factory. As Hunter is the typical boss who doesn’t want to deal with the emotional side looking only for profits, he just wants to fire Tulip, and he assigns the task to Junior (Andy Samberg) who is to take his place after he becomes the chairman. Junior can’t get himself to fire the girl, and so he transfers her to the mail room which doesn’t really get any mail these days. While she spends all her time there alone, Junior hopes that he can finally get the promotion and be the boss to be in control of the operations.

And, what is to follow next in the animated adventure? :: At the same time, Nate Gardner (Anton Starkman) is a lone boy who is in need of some attention as his parents Henry Gardner (Ty Burrell) and Sarah Gardner (Jennifer Aniston) are always working, not even trying to spare five or ten minutes with their child. He sends a letter to the storks, hoping that he could get a baby brother to play with. This letter which reaches Cornerstone, has Tulip’s attention as she has the first letter in a long time. She immediately enters the baby factory and use the letter to make the baby-making machine work. The result is a pink-haired baby girl. Junior arrives at the machine to try and shut down the machine, and injures his wings. With him unable to fly after the injury to his wings, the two uses Tulip’s flying machine which she had invented to work while delivering for Cornerstone, and plans to get the baby home before anyone else finds out. But can they successfully do that?

The defence of Storks :: This movie might be the cutest that any animated flick can get, with babies as the centre of attraction. The kids are going to love this movie like no other, as the cuteness factor is at its best beginning from the birth of the first baby itself – then there are a lot of babies coming together in the end, and it is the explosion of cuteness on the screen, like happiness was for Trolls. Then the movie gets to another sweet level, and with its short run-time, never get go of that quality. Along with the same, there is a lot of fun in store here, along with the emotional side which tells us how important family is – spending time with children is that significant. The movie also talks about that cruel mindset of the corporate world, which is clearly against anything human or close to life. The profit-oriented society is killing so many families with all the focus on money-making, right? Well, loving humans is not that easy as loving money, isn’t it?

The claws of flaw :: One has to feel that Storks did rush through the proceedings, and everything happens rather too fast. We could have slowly and smoothly moved through all those sweet, cute moments, but this one was surely in a hurry – we also wanted to see more of the wolves and penguins in this flick; maybe there can be spin-offs. The basic idea about the storks might also be a little outdated, and the myth might also go over the head of more than one person or two. There is also the chance the main characters might feel irritating at times. One also wonders how cute the babies can remain, as the teenage fury seems to come and affect everyone a little too early these days; the age out of cuteness beginning too early too be exact, as we see in that Carnival Cinemas advertisement. We are also tend to wonder if this could have been even better on the lines of Moana, Zootopia, Frozen, Inside Out, Big Hero 6, Epic, Kung Fu Panda, How to Train Your Dragon, or such kind, with an even better story.

How it finishes :: Nicholas Stoller had directed a movie which is often considered among the worst movies which were appreciated by the US critics, The Neighbors, but Storks is that kind of a movie from him and Doug Sweetland that everybody will love to keep falling in love with, again and again. Well, have you seen this kind of cuteness for a long time? The animated movies usually take themselves as cute, and don’t include any extra cuteness, but not with Storks, which adds the cuteness as the secret, special ingredient. When this cuteness is guaranteed with entertainment, it is nothing less than a crime not to get your little ones here. A colourful movie is what is needed to get some colour into your life, and Storks might be the perfect flick to do that – you will love babies more for sure, after watching Storks. I have myself found myself more cuteness and love after this one.

Release date: 23rd September 2016
Running time: 87 minutes
Directed by: Nicholas Stoller, Doug Sweetland
Starring: Andy Samberg, Katie Crown, Kelsey Grammer, Jennifer Aniston, Ty Burrell, Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele, Danny Trejo, Chris Smith, Awkwafina, Ike Barinholtz, Amanda Lund, Jorma Taccone

@ Cemetery Watch
✠ The Vampire Bat.