Django Unchained

First Hit: Visually strong and arresting, crisp action, good story and great acting.

The story is about a slave named Django (played by Jamie Foxx) who is rescued from slavery by a dentist turned bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (played by Christoph Waltz). He saves him because Django knows the faces of Shultz’s next bounty.

Django is good as his partner and they work together as bounty hunters through the winter with a promise by Shultz to assist Django in finding his enslaved wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington). Broomhilda is enslaved by Calvin Candie (played by Leonard DiCaprio) who has a wizened and manipulative house slave Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson).

That’s the premise and along their journey there is enough of a story to set up backgrounds and motivations for each of the characters. The funny moments are truly funny. The violent bloody moments are true Tarantino blood baths.

The story and characters were wonderfully conceived and delivered.

Foxx is absolutely delivers a very strong performance as the enslaved and now free Django. Waltz is superior and excellent in his role and delivers some of the best lines in the film. Washington is sublime as the comfort slave with an unending spirit to live her life fully. DiCaprio is surprisingly and excellently nice, crude, and mean as the owner of the largest slave plantation. Jackson is beyond sublime as the wizened house slave. His ability to show both control (drinking a drink in the library room) and subservience was amazing. When he is on the screen you have to watch him. Quentin Tarantino wrote a tight, engaging and expressive script and his direction was flawless.

Overall:  This film is one of Quentin Tarantino’s best efforts as writer and director.

The Details

First Hit:  An odd sort of film about how easy it is to slide down a slippery slope. The film’s opening moments, with a voice over by Jeff Lang (played by Tobey Maguire), states the dilemma Jeff is going to go through for the next 91 minutes. He begins a string of decisions, which include installing sod, bypassing city ordinances, and lying to his wife resulting in his going down a slippery slope that includes a murder. Jeff is married to Nealy (played by Elizabeth Banks) and they have one young child. When Jeff decides, against Nealy’s wishes to install sod in their backyard the raccoons begin to dig it up. Although he’s successful pediatrician this new battle between him and the raccoons becomes obsessive. His odd neighbor Lila (played by Laura Linney) gets wind of his battles and becomes an unwilling and spiteful participant in this war in different ways. Jeff and Nealy and friends with Rebecca and Peter Mazzoni (played by Kerry Washington and Ray Liotta respectively) and Jeff’s indiscretion with Rebecca digs him farther into the hole he’s creating for himself. Lincoln (played by Dennis Haysbert) plays on a pick-up basketball team with Jeff and becomes, yet another unwilling/willing participant in Jeff’s demise. The story is in the details (hence the title).

Maguire is an interesting choice for this role and actually carries it off quite well. There is an air of intelligence and stupidity in this role that he transmits strongly. I ended up both rooting for and against him in different scenes. Banks is good as the wife who is in her own space, not very engaged with Jeff, but decides to support her husband as the truth begins to unfold. Linney is fabulous in this very quirky role as the neighbor. Washington is OK as Jeff’s friend and colleague. Liotta is very good at bringing danger and learned redemption to his character. Haysbert is a standout in his role as gracious and grateful friend of Jeff’s. Jacob Aaron Estes wrote and directed this quite, quirky and at times interesting film.

Overall: It doesn’t quite grab the audience totally although some of the performances are very good.

A Thousand Words

First Hit:  An uneven film but the point regarding forgiveness is spot on.

Jack McCall (played by Eddie Murphy) is a fast talking, truth stretching literary agent.

He prides himself in being able to talk anyone into anything. He bullshits people left and right and by doing so has become one of the top literary agents in LA. To land what he thinks will be the book of the century by guru and new age teacher Dr. Sinja (played by Cliff Curtis) he visits his ashram and slyly convinces him to handle his book.

While there he touches a Bodhi tree and cuts himself. The tree feels/senses him and decides to pop-up in his backyard. As soon as he speaks leaves start dropping off the tree. Congruently, as leaves fall he doesn't feel well. Dr. Sinja tells him that when the last leaf falls he may die.

There only about 1,000 leaves left. The set-up is OK because we all know Murphy can talk. But is at this point the film loses its way.

There are funny moments, like at Starbucks when he is trying to pantomime his coffee order, but I thought the blind man crossing the street bit was too made up, wasn’t funny nor did it add to the film.

This is how the film unfolded, up and down and not holding together. What did work for me, because it is one of my principles of freedom, is that he figures out that living is about forgiveness. When he does, his life turns around.

Murphy was very uneven in this film. When he shines, it is bright, but otherwise it wasn't that funny or interesting. I think this was more of an issue of writing and direction than Murphy’s acting. Curtis is mediocre as a new age guru. Kerry Washington (playing Murphy’s wife) was OK, but not very compassionate as a wife and her character came off as selfish. Clark Duke played Murphy’s assistant and again this performance was very uneven but I don’t know how much of it was poor writing. Jack McBrayer was very good as the Beatle loving Starbucks Barista. Steve Koren wrote a very uneven script. Brian Robbins directed this and it was all over the map. Some wonderful scenes and some dreadful scenes, like the blind man scene.

Overall: This is, at best, a video film to watch on a Sunday evening.

Mother and Child

First Hit: Some very strong acting especially in the first 2/3 of the film.

There is one prominent story and one side story. Either story would have made a really good film with additional background. In this film, one story is about a woman named Karen (played by Annette Bening) who is haunted by her decision to give up the baby she had at age 14.

This baby grows up with adoptive parents. At age 17 she goes out on her own, selects her own name, "Elizabeth" (played by Naomi Watts) and as we are introduced to her in the film she is a fully empowered bright lawyer who drifts from job to job. She is calculating, at times cold, always in charge of each situation and when feeling threatened by her own feelings or a situation she cannot control, she flies away.

She can be endearingly lovely and engaged yet turn right around and be spiteful just for the fun of it. Her biological mother, Karen, is caring for her aging mother Nora (played by Eileen Ryan), and is constantly wondering who and where her daughter is.

Every day she only thinks of the things she doesn’t have and the distance between herself and her mother. Her almost bedridden mother finds joy only in the cleaning lady Sofia (played by Elpidia Carrillo) and the cleaning lady’s daughter Cristi (played by Simone Lopez).

The level of acting, interaction of characters and story of Karen and her life slowly being awakened from the constant cloud of sadness by fellow physical therapist Paco (played Jimmy Smits) along with the story of Elizabeth and her interaction with her new boss Paul (played by Samuel L. Jackson) is more than enough to make a great film.

However, there is another good story which is about Lucy (played by Kerry Washington) and Joseph (played by David Ramsey) who cannot have a baby themselves because Lucy is infertile. They begin the quest to adopt a newborn by meeting a pregnant mother.

The young woman they meet is named Ray (played by Shareeka Epps) and she is very clear, wise in her young brash way and has very specific criteria about the kind of people she wants to adopt her unborn child. Although this story adds to and is integrated into the main story, both stories could have stood on their own, especially the first.

One of the themes running through both stories is that parenthood isn’t about blood as much as it is about the commitment of time one shows up to another. In this realm I can tell you from my own experience blood has little to do with being a parent.

Bening is nothing short of wonderful. She is pitch perfect in her movement from skittish, difficult, haunted, and sad to discovering she can trust love and the path of learning how to uncover the life residing within herself. Watts gives a powerful astonishing performance as a woman finding her way from toughness, singularly oriented, and alone to finding some openness in her heart to love another. Washington was good as a woman who wants to be a mother but has little clue as to what it takes. Jackson was very good as law firm owner and lover. Epps was extraordinary in her role as the young mother. Smits is superb as a patient man willing to wait for a woman to trust and see him as the beautiful spirit his character portrays. Rodrigo Garcia could have made two wonderful pictures out of this one had he played his cards right. The sub-story about adopting would have had to been beefed up some but it was there. The main story with the strong acting performances was enough to carry this film. Outside of this overreaching, he got wonderful performances from his actors.

Overall: The strong performances based off of a great story are the order of the day for this film despite it being a little over crowded.

Lakeview Terrace

First Hit: Samuel Jackson gives an intense performance and left me thinking I wouldn't want him to be my adversary or neighbor.

There are different aspects which make this film a thriller. Primarily it is the performance of Samuel Jackson as Able. He can be creepy, sarcastic, and vengeful.

Being a 28 year veteran on the LA South Central police force who has recently lost his wife allows him to give us a brooding controlling man who is deeply troubled. His new neighbors are Lisa (Kerry Washington) and Chris (Patrick Wilson) are mixed race couple, and for some reason Able has an issue with them. He shines bright spotlights into their bedroom, makes racist comments, and, as only Jackson can, gives intense looks of intimidation and power when he speaks to (and at) his new neighbors.

The racist issues are highlighted when Able tells Chris how his wife died in a car crash with a white man when she was suppose to be at work. However, there are other issues as well including the intimidating attitude which policemen use.

During a housewarming party Lisa and Chris give, one of their guests brings this up to Able and he immediately proves her point through power and intimidation.

Jackson is very powerful and gives some of the best, intense looks seen on the screen this year. However, I didn’t sense a buildup in the film as it moved along because Jackson is so intense early on. I didn’t think Washington and Wilson were well matched and the response to her being pregnant didn’t unfold well, it seemed too mixed. What really didn’t work about this couple was, the way their fights started and in the next scene they seemed to be OK. What was their mechanism for resolving their disagreements?

Overall: Jackson is worth seeing but the film was mediocre as a thriller.