TOP GUN

MOVIE
Django Unchained
Jamie Foxx, Christophe Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Don Johnson 
Director Quentin Tarantino
Review Ray Chan

Tarantino may have his critics, but this movie probably typifies exactly how brilliant this filmmaker is.
   Bold, brave, blithe and bloody, Django Unchained is an incendiary masterpiece featuring a kick-ass tale of revenge with some awesome performances from its star-studded cast, smart chunks of dialogue punctuated by action, ensanguined altercations and stereotypical Western ballads, and for some unfathomable but highly entertaining reason, Tarantino himself with a ridiculous Australian accent.
    Jamie Foxx is Django (“the D is silent”), a slave being dragged by his masters in chains, when he runs into Dr King Schultz (Christoph Waltz, portraying a good guy for a change).
    Schultz needs Django to identify his former employers so that he can kill them and collect the bounty on their heads, and promises to set Django free once the mission is accomplished.
    They find the odious brothers on the sprawling cotton plantation of Big Daddy (hammed up impeccably by Don Johnson), and it doesn’t take long for Django to dish out some retribution for his past treatment at their hands. Schultz doesn’t care because he gets the reward anyway.
    Then the twists and turns keep coming. After Django relays the story of his missing wife, the wonderfully-named Broomhilda, to Schultz, the pair partner up to hunt bounties all winter with a plan to track her down in the spring and buy her back from her current owner—a vile, mustachioed gentlemen named Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio) who runs a plantation called Candieland.
    Suffice to say that efforts to rescue Broomhilda don’t go exactly to plan, with the plot meandering through a series of shocks, suspense and surprises, as Candie’s devoted slave Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson) figures out the real reason for Django’s visit.
    Indeed, Jackson’s performance is a highlight. Usually depicted as the rough, no-nonsense law enforcer or a vicious criminal, here he plays an exaggerated and extremely funny character calculated to make the audience laugh and then feel uneasy about how willingly they respond to his over-the-top delivery.
    Overall, the blend of classic film homages, violent spectacle and clever verbal exchanges ensures that Tarantino remains one of the most interesting and innovative movie maestros of his generation.
    On a more serious note, he makes a potent and powerful statement about racial stereotype and racist language, and even includes a post-credit gag to suggest the potential for such language to then be successfully appropriated.
    The end result is what I believe to be Tarantino’s best and most thoughtful film to date.

#djangounchained

GODLY SLICE OF PI

MOVIE
Life Of Pi
Suraj Sharmam, Irrfan Khan
Director Ang Lee
Review Ray Chan


It takes the pedigree of an Academy Award-winning director like Ang Lee to have the audacity to tackle what looked like a seemingly impossible literary adaption of Yann Martel's novel.
    Martel's story outlines the life-defining journey of a young man named Pi, whose zookeeping business family decide to travel to Canada from their Indian homeland — lock, stock and menagerie — to escape political problems there.    
    On the way, their cargo ship gets battered by a fierce storm and capsizes.
    Pi manages to find a life boat, which bit by bit takes on various animals from the sinking vessel — a wounded zebra, a noble orangutan, a cackling, self-serving hyena, a regal Bengal tiger — who in the ensuing days turn on each other in the quest to survive.
    Eventually it’s just Pi and the tiger left stuck on the small vessel in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, a predicament that would test anyone’s sanity.
    To help him endure, Pi digs deep into the recesses of his eclectic convictions that a god exists to keep him alive, and this journey is rendered impeccably by Lee's vision. The colour is electric, with iconic and stunningly sublime shots littered throughout.
    Whether it's magnificent underwater shots of the ship plunging to the watery depths, a grand whale breaching to the skies, or the infinite glacial look of an ocean, Lee's stunning composition is omnipresent, as is the technical wizardry used for the animal stars of the film, which make them wonderfully realistic.
    Veteran Irrfan Khan plays the older Pi, who narrates the tale, while the younger version is represented by Suraj Sharma, who does an impressive job of absorbing the harrowing physical torture without extinguishing his optimism, belief and hope, successfully emoting without any real creatures to play off of.
    If you haven’t read the book, you are in for a treat as you gradually realise the movie is all about symbolism and metaphors.
    As the film nears its end, a rescued Pi tells two versions of his adventures: the animal story and a human interpretation. It’s then that the realisation dawns, if it hasn’t already, that the ragtag group of animals were likely anecdotal manifestations of crew members who clambered on board with Pi.
    After recounting his experiences, Pi asks his rescuers, and indirectly the viewers, which rendition they prefer.
    Pi maintains it was his faith that got him through, and here he provokes a person to believe in the presence of a higher being.
    He is challenging the viewer to consider which version of the world they prefer — the one where we make our own way and suffer through the darkness via self-determination, or the one where we are aided by something greater than ourselves (regardless of which diety we may follow).
    Is the tiger in fact how Pi sees God, who helped him get through adversity when all seemed lost? Is the tiger Pi himself?
    Ultimately, Life of Pi is a beautiful allegory about living with acceptance in the face of the most formidable of adversities.
    The consensus from the hardened investigators interrogating Pi as he recovers is that the animal version is too fanciful to believe, but a much happier one to accept.
    “And so it goes with God,” Pi says as the movie ends.

#lifeofpi