Ray

Ray is a biopic about the life of legendary American musician Ray Charles. It portrays the ups and downs of the incredible career of a man who went blind as a child and still retained the ability to play the piano. From the rise of his career to the spiralling of his life as a result of drugs, the film is an emotional ride through the life of a man whose legacy should be more widely known.

Jamie Foxx plays Ray Charles, who starts his life as a blind man trying to play piano in a couple of bars. His abilities attract customers and soon he is quite successful, but is trapped by the owner of the bar. This causes him to leave and sign a record deal, and then enjoy great success across America. His success results in more and more women being interested in him, and the films presents Ray living two different lives: one with his wife and children, and one ‘on the road’ where anything goes. He is introduced to heroine at some point during his success and this begins to take more and more of a toll on his life. As his success increases, so too does his drug use, and he eventually is arrested. This causes him to enter rehab and sort himself out. The film ends with a touching tribute to Ray Charles, which fills in from the end of the film to the end of his life. The film seems to be relatively true to life, embellishing certain aspects for cinematic effect, but on the whole staying true to the more important aspects of Ray’s life.

Jamie Foxx is absolutely incredible in this film. I can’t really put into words just how astounding he is unless you have seen the film. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 2005 for this role, and in my opinion he stands alongside Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, and Robert de Niro in Awakenings in terms of the attention and dedication he has for this role. It’s not particularly hard to play a successful black musician, but it is quite hard to act with your eyes closed while you are doing it. It is harder still to completely reflect the mannerisms of another individual, particularly one who has such unique characteristics. Jamie Foxx does this perfectly. After I had watched the film I watched some videos of Ray Charles, and Jamie Foxx conveys the mannerisms nearly perfectly. When you consider that he only had limited exposure to Ray Charles, because he decided that an older man could not help him play a younger man. The emotion that he conveys when he talks to his mother and brother again is one of my favourite bits of the entire film, and I love watching him on screen.

There are a number of other characters in the film who fade into the background compared to Jamie Foxx. The most prominent is Ray’s wife played by Kerry Washington. Her love for Ray is such that she puts up with his life on the road. She is a very good actress and seems to have good on screen chemistry with Jamie Foxx, which can also be seen in Django Unchained. The most impressive supporting performance comes from Regina King who plays Ray’s mistress. The difficulty she has at being second to Ray’s wife is evident throughout, and she does a very good job of showing how difficult this can be. She also marvellously demonstrates how life ‘on the road’ can go sour very quickly. The ensemble that make up Ray’s band are fairly anonymous, but I particularly life Curtis Armstrong, who plays Ahmet Ertegun. He has a very significant role in Ray’s life, and is also very understanding of Ray’s position as a musician. When it comes to him leaving the record label he understands that Ray needs to get the best deal for himself. The supporting cast pale in comparison to Jamie Foxx, but with a biopic of this nature, that is to be expected.

Ray Charles himself was undoubtedly a brilliant man. His influence on music alone was phenomenal, and the music of this film was taken directly from recordings from the man himself. However, Jamie Foxx does a more than impressive job of miming and acting the songs as they are being sung. Personally, and to my shame, I had never even heard of Ray Charles before I was coerced into watching Ray. I was so glad that I did watch it and it opened my eyes (poor choice of words) to the life and career of an incredible man. His influence on the civil rights movement alone stands as an impressive testament to his work. While the film embellishes the fact that he was banned from playing in Georgia, the adoption of his version of ‘Georgia on my Mind’ as the state song is another moving moment in his career.

I would advise everyone who hasn’t seen Ray to get their skates on and watch it. If you know about Ray Charles then it’s a touching tale of his life, and if you haven’t heard of him before then it is a revelation about the existence of a man who changed so much musically and socially, with an uplifting element right at the end.

Django Unchained

There was quite a lot of anticipation for the latest film from Quentin Tarantino. With some already excellent films behind him, Django Unchained was always going to be successful. However, its released was surrounded by a number of articles damning Tarantino for his comic use of violence and how he doesn't take serious issues such as slavery or the Holocaust seriously. I find that the best solution to this is as follows. If you don’t like the look of a film, don’t go and watch it. If you think it’s too violent, don’t go and watch it. If you think you might get offended because the film has slaves or Nazis in it, don’t go and watch it. It’s simple really.

The plot of Django Unchained is very enjoyable, and there’s no doubt that it’s an edge of your seat thriller, if you like Tarantino’s movies. However, there are some very similar plot lines to in his other movies, such as Kill Bill or Inglorious Basterds, where there’s a main character who has a grudge to settle and kills a lot of people in settling that grudge. A man is freed from slavery, joins with a bounty hunter, kills people, and then tries to free his wife from slavery. The difference with Django is that it happens in a completely different setting. Imagine a Western which Tarantino would walk into and stamp his mark all over. Despite parallels to other films, Django Unchained is a different film, and it is a very good way to spend a couple of hours.

Having seen Jamie Foxx in ‘Ray’ and absolutely loving him, I was very interested to see how he would do in a Tarantino movie. He is very good, and has a very sinister air to his character. When the audience can almost ‘feel’ the character getting angry, and is anxiously waiting to see what happens, you can tell that the actor is doing something right. He delivers some of Tarantino’s one-liners perfectly. However, I did find the development of his character a little bit unrealistic. However, I then realised that it was Tarantino, the guy who can have a girl shot from one direction and have her fly off in a completely different direction. I found myself (unsurprisingly) rooting for Foxx, and overall liked the character he played.

I loved Christoph Waltz in Inglorious Basterds, and in Django Unchained he was every little bit as wonderful. His character, the bounty hunter, was quick-tongue, witty, sly, and determined. The scene where Django finally sees his wife again and she faints in shock is absolutely made by Waltz’s delivery of his punchline. I thought his character was very interesting too. The scene where he is making the deal with Candie just shows how principled his character is. I’m not sure he deserves his Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor though. Either way I don’t think he’ll win it, and I’m not trying to deny that he was fantastic in this film. It’s almost worth going to see just for him, which is saying something.

Leonardo di Caprio is one of my all-time favourites. Not because I think he’s an amazing actor, but because I just enjoy his films and his characters. He shows incredible versatility, and Django Unchained is no exception. As the wealthy Francophile owner of a vast number of slaves, he is very confident and arrogant. He hates to be made a fool of and seems to be very different to the historical view of slave owners, treating many of his slaves as his friends. However, there are some scenes which are just grim. He doesn’t bat an eyelid at one man being torn apart by dogs, and is more than happy to let two men fight to the death to see who is the better fighter. His acting is fantastic, but his character is better, and once again I found myself enjoying the time he spent on screen. He’s definitely one of Tarantino’s more interesting characters, and parallels can be drawn to Hans Landa in the way that he doesn’t show the typical historical attitude to the people Tarantino poses his character against.

Can anyone say a bad word about Samuel L Jackson? He is once again, absolutely incredible in Django Unchained, and the audience is left a little bit unsure as to what his role is in Candie’s life. He raised him, and also runs his house, but Candie seems to respect his opinion over and above many of the white men he employs. Jackson is as funny as Waltz in this film, and his sheer shock at seeing Django on a horse (and the following exchange between him and Candie) had me in stitches. However, his character is much more serious than that, and represents a major influence in the life of a white man, which at the time would have been largely unthinkable.  I largely agree with this article (http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/01/08/samuel_l_jackson_in_django_unchained_deserves_an_oscar_as_stephen_quentin.html) which promotes Jackson for the Supporting Actor nomination over Waltz, purely because he shows off his acting skills to the fullest in Django.

In terms of other Tarantino films, Django will never be considered as one of the best. That title will always, in my eyes, go to Pulp Fiction, with Reservoir Dogs a close second. I also don’t think it is as good as Inglorious Basterds, but I think it could give Kill Bill a decent run for its money. Having not yet seen Jackie Brown, I can’t comment on this, but Django Unchained will definitely be considered a classic Tarantino movie, and it’s definitely worth a watch. If you liked his other movies you will like Django, but if you don’t like violence, comic or otherwise, I’d steer clear.