Kerry Washington – Movies of the Soul

Vampire Owl: An animated movie in a multiplex is always cool, you know.

Vampire Bat: And what makes it cooler than the rest?

Vampire Owl: Well, they have the best 3D for animated movies – its works the best for this genre.

Vampire Bat: Actually, the animated movies will need them these days, as a lot of them are not working as well as they used to be.

Vampire Owl: You mean mostly about the sequels.

Vampire Bat: This movie is a sequel too. They all maintain a certain level from which they don’t go down, but we actually expect more.

Vampire Owl: Disappointment due to high expectations – I have been there before.

Vampire Bat: But Despicable Me 3 will have the audience divided on deciding which one to watch.

Vampire Owl: Still, Cars 3 got more shows, which is rather surprising.

Vampire Bat: Well, this one surely seems less childish with its posters. But I am sure that this is not going to be Moana, Zootopia, Frozen or Inside Out.

[Gets the tickets with cardamom tea and cheese popcorn].

What is the movie about? :: Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) is having some serious fun time racing with the veteran racers, competing well, and still being the fastest of them all. As he is so close to winning another race by a small margin, a stylish looking black car Jackson Storm (Armie Hammer) just goes past him and finishes first, much to the surprise of everyone that an unknown rookie managed to sneak in. It is only the beginning, as more of the new generation cars keep coming in, and with the use of better technology and training, manages to do better than the veterans who just focus on running fast. Soon, all the other veterans have retired, leaving McQueen as the last of the old generation racers. Even with his best effort, McQueen can only become second to Jackson, and by trying too hard, blows one of his tyres and meets with an accident, leaving the younger generation of high-tech cars to rule the racing arena.

So, what happens next? :: McQueen has recovered, four months later, and he is staying back at his hometown. His well-wishers including his girlfriend Sally Carrera (Bonnie Hunt) and best friend Mater (Larry the Cable Guy) motivates him enough to get back to racing, even though everyone is not without doubts regarding his ability to even come close to beating a younger opponent who is certainly faster and is following high-tech methods. He also decides to change his approach towards racing so that the result could be different. Dusty (Ray Magliozzi) and Rusty (Tom Magliozzi), the owners of Rust-Eze, and the main sponsors, inform him of having sold the company to Sterling (Nathan Fillion), who currently runs the elite racing car training facility called Rust-eze Racing Center – McQueen gets to train with the new technology and facilities there.

And, what is to follow next in the adventure? :: Cruz Ramirez (Cristela Alonzo), who is also a fan of McQueen is appointed as his trainer. But it doesn’t go as planned, as McQueen is unable to use the modern technology to his advantage, and even ends up crashing into the race simulator which was supposed to help him against Jackson. Sterling tells him that it is time that they build on the legacy of McQueen, as there is not much scope with him racing now, with younger cars with a better use of technology on the track. But McQueen asks him for one final chance to race, which Sterling agrees to provide him on the promise that he will retire if he losses, as the company can’t afford to keep losing the races. But it turns that no matter where and when he tries, he is unable to get anywhere near Jackson’s top speed, while Cruz has her own problems to deal with. Can Jackson be beaten by anyone, and can McQueen reclaim some of his lost glory on track?

The defence of Cars 3 :: There are some nice animated characters on the big screen in the form of cars, and as we expect, the emotional side is strong, and so is the colourful world inside the screen. There is also the inspirational message about the main character as well as the supporting cast that strives towards their objective, and our hero is someone who doesn’t give up – motivation is served by cars better than the usual human being does. His success is that we feel for the cars as if they are humans, even more than what animals in the animated movies sometimes fail to achieve. There is a fine world which is built here, and the cars look effective for sure. This is also an improvement from the second movie, even though, not better than the first movie – it would be even more difficult to repeat this with another movie, and we have a lot of its resources being already used. The three Cars movies releasing in 2006, 2011 and 2017 – well, we are made to wait so long for the sequels, and it is good to have them in the end.

The claws of flaw :: The safe route is taken once again by this franchise, and the humour content is surprisingly so less for a movie like this – Despicable Me 3 is certain to overtake this flick with that. There is also some struggle during the middle part, where we wonder what the movie is going to accomplish as we progress towards the end – that is a kind of drag there. There is that confusion that we feel in the middle, which can only be solved by having more popcorn or french fries with extra masala tea. It has also been a little too much time since Cars 2 had come and left, and that gap is really felt. The 3D could have also been better, as we look for more excitement with the racing stuff happening on the big screen. The twist in the end might not be that effective for everyone, as it brings down the possibility of having a good sequel, where the same could have tried more effectively, focusing on the same from the beginning itself.

How it finishes :: After a certain deviation which had happened with the previous movie, Cars 2, the movie has come back to bring the focus at the right side. After that unnecessary attention on a secondary character, we are back to the one who matters the most than any other – Lightning McQueen, and all things get back to track and everything is now related to racing. This weekend, Cars 3 actually go one on one against Despicable Me 3, a battle which seemed to be heading towards a draw, with the opinions from both the critics as well as the general audience. Compared to its current opponent, Cars 3 should appeal more to the youth, while Despicable Me 3 should be inclined towards the children, even though both should be basically for all ages, and a joy to watch in 3D. These two movies going against each other, will make this weekend a perfect day of animated 3D adventure, as we can choose to watch them both.

Release date: 16th June 2017
Running time: 109 minutes
Directed by: Brian Fee
Starring: Owen Wilson, Cristela Alonzo, Chris Cooper, Armie Hammer, Larry the Cable Guy, Nathan Fillion, Kerry Washington, Lea DeLaria, Lloyd Sherr, Paul Dooley, Jenifer Lewis, Katherine Helmond, Chris Cooper, Lewis Hamilton, Bob Costas, Bob Peterson, Cheech Marin, Michael Wallis, John Ratzenberger, Ray Magliozzi, Tom Magliozzi, Isiah Whitlock Jr, Junior Johnson, Margo Martindale

@ Cemetery Watch
✠ The Vampire Bat.

The Vampire Bat knew only one Django and was planning to give him knighthood for being such a wonderful coffin-dragger. It would have been an awesome feeling to have one’s own coffin. What about the awesome graves where he could have worked with the Ghost Rider with a stylish motor-bike or a horse-on-fire burning bright? This bat has always dreamt about those coffins, graves and wastelands along with ghost towns. But he could get none of them in this one. Still, there were those strange horses which were not really on fire. May be this new breed of horses could go to school and end up as smart toothless people. Well, they would still be highly vulnerable to being shot by the new Django who can shoot like a gun’s ghost in a human-spirit form who has come back to seek revenge. The number of vengeful spirits never seem to throw the Vampire Bat into that bloody abyss of nonstop boredom, as he had so much of those intolerant revenge stories that he could see only one side of this world which is full of evil and supposed-to-be-evil followed by glorified revenge full of blood and scattered body parts which might have brought the most evil vampire and the most stupid zombie into that Ring girl’s well of eternal shame.

What the Vampire Bat had was a Mango Icecream so that it could rhym with the movie, and that was indeed a success and would later prove to be an even better experience than the movie itself. The movie starts with the shots of several male slaves being chained and transported to work in a possible plantation which run on slave labour. Among the slaves is Django (Jamie Foxx), who has been sold away from his wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) – a name which the Vampire Bat heard as many things other than this certain one. They encounter Doctor King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), a German dentist and a bounty hunter in the shades of an abandoned area on the way. After getting rid of the trouble from the slave owners, Schultz offers Django his freedom and a reasonably good payment in exchange for helping him track a number of people whom he has been tracing as part of his hunt. After they find and hunt down the targets, Schultz continues with Django as they do the same work. During this period of time, Schultz trains Django in the art of bounty hunting and on using a gun with efficiency.

After collecting a number of bounties and surviving with ease, they go on to free Django’s wife Broomhilda, whose current owner is Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), the charming and stylish, but cruel owner of a plantation in Mississippi. They come up with a certain plan to make a big offer for one of the slave fighters of Candie, who fights till death, a offer which he can’t refuse. This catches both the curiousity and attention of the slave owner and he immediately agrees. But the seemingly flawless plan which was so close to success is shattered as the expressions of the two lovers raise the suspicions of Candie’s loyal and senior slave, Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson) who finds out that Django and Broomhilda know each other very well and that the sale of the slave fighter is just a trick meant to hide another big plan which lies beneath. This is where all the fun ends, and the death of Schultz would leave the Vampire Bat with nobody to root for. From this, the age of boredom begins. There are stupid shootouts and ridiculous explosions, with the presence of “the people of the night cooling glasses” and “the strangest of the strange horses”. The nonsense would reach a new level and ends with a ridiculous smile.

Well, Django’s “D” is silent, as he himself mentions, but the movie is anything but that. There is lot of violence and I am pretty much confident that there is the presence of even more violence around as the Censor Board has surely tried hard to make this PG-13 and give it an 18+ Adult rating in India. Django Freeman is evil, not by choice but by circumstances. He has so much body count that would make Count Dracula and Lestat de Lioncourt retire and beg for mercy from a dead wood elf with no teeth. Meanwhile, Doctor King Schultz is of lesser evil, as he works with his white man’s guilt to save one man, and to save the man’s wife, he loses his life. Now, that should balance his life and make it rather neutral or a little aligned to the side of good. But Django is away from redemption. He chooses the path of revenge without remorse, and thus the path to hell and may be even compete for a hell-hot cup of tea from the hands of the devil. He is highly hostile to anyone of another race, the only exception being the man who saved and trained him; he is also hostile to one person of his race, the man who is loyal to the people of the other race. That brings such a huge equation of race into the situation – bombarded to be exact.

Jamie Foxx’s Django is a very good potrayal, even as the character is at no point likeable – he has done well to make it so. There lies his success of showing the forced evil. Christoph Waltz winning the Academy Award for the Best Supporting Actor would be no surprise to anybody who has watched the movie. His character rules the movie, with the witty dialogues, action and lots of fun. He provides some of the best lighter moments, and also does the serious side with an incredible amount of mastery. Leonardo DiCaprio comes up with the power of extreme evil which seems inherent in the character. He should still be remembered for his Inception and Shutter Island, but this one also comes up with a memory leaf. Samuel L. Jackson hasn’t really fallen behind, as his character makes a powerful impression. Kerry Washington also contributes in the expected way, making this a movie of performances rather than anything else. It is here, in the acting department where the movie scores the most, followed by the one-liners which creates a great first half only to be made powerless by the second part of the second half and the climax scenes.

As far as Quentin Tarantino is concerned, this is still inferior to Kill Bill and Inglourious Basterds. Those stand a few Petronas Towers higher than this one. But there is no shortage of blood and violence here too. One has to wonder if these movies should belong to a new bloody genre. There are too many killings and in many sequences, blood and gore has the upper hand and humanity becomes mere spectator in chaos and brutality. There is no sympathy or empathy throughout the movie, especially when the guns take over and spits hell like fire-breathing dragons. Still, its treatment of the racism and slavery could have been better if it was done in a more realistic fashion. Well, not all movies can be “the art”, and this is that moment when the grand wish was to focus more on creating that entertainer which could gross a lot rather than something which could have made humanity aware of the truth. But this shall make the waves, even as not in the way it should have, if thought about from a righteous side – a sad movie for humanity indeed, as even movies like Hostel and Saw knew what was good and evil. Well, one can say that Django Unchained is a true torture porn of the worst level.

The more important of the questions might be about which kind of audience this movie targets. They are surely not for the intellectuals nor for the faint-hearted. The next doubt would be if this is a story of the revenge of a certain race or the story of a pure hearted man of one race helping the man of another race and even facing death in that process. This is surely no respectful treatment of anything, but for the mindless fans with its weird style, glorified violence, senseless admiration and huge historical twists, this might be a treat. There might be disrespect (to which side – or to both?), and there might be too much easiness, but as far as I know, this is a little too much to take as a movie treating such a subject. Satire? May be a little bit, not that much – can we really separate the reality of tragedy to have that feeling? In simple words, one race shedding the blood of others and vice versa – colouring the walls with shades of red is not what I wished for; I would have agreed to the same on some other occasions, but not on this. The movie came to India kind of late, and I am not really unhappy about it, as watching this one late has had its advantages – to hear about it and disagree on many occasions. There is the first half which gave hope, and what follows is not of expectations, and therefore clear thumbs down for the second. Another thing – beware of a drag and length.

PS: My rating for this movie has come down a lot since writing this, but I am not bothering to bring it down just because I don’t want to think about this again. I wish that I had asked only to the right people before watching this movie!

Release date: 22nd March 2013 (India); 25th December 2012 (United States)
Running time: 165 minutes
Directed by: Quentin Tarantino
Starring: Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kerry Washington, Samuel L. Jackson, Walton Goggins, Dennis Christopher, James Remar, Michael Parks, Don Johnson