Django: Broken backs and broken spirits

Tarantino recreates a South that has been built upon the broken backs and spirits of African American salves in Django Unchained. This film captures all the anger and hostility that makes all white cringe in fear of the depths of depravity humans can bend to, in their own pursuits of prosperity and fortune. There is an amazing love story that parallels a German fairy tale, based on a princess that shares the name of Django's wife. This love story is the centerpiece of second act of the film. This love story is saturated in blood and keeps the audience screaming for more blood and more vengeance. This film is everything you would expect from Tarantino. It is gritty, well written and extremely violent. As you would demand, as a film lover and Tarantino fan, the film comes with detail driven characters that come with a large amount of wit and charisma showcased by artfully crafted dialogue. To this movie goer, the darkness of this period in history, two years prior to the civil war, is paralleled by Tarantino's own dark themes used throughout the film. Samuel L. Jackson plays an African American that has become so sensitized by the violence perpetrated upon other slaves that he has actually begun to take part in the cruelty for his own sense of sick amusement. This idea gives rise to a concept that illustrates the "if you can't beat them, join them" mentality. It reminded me of the discussion of assimilation found in the play "Raisin in the Sun". Tarantino's message about race inequity and inner race racism is heard and validated through out the final scenes of the film.

Skyfall: The rebuilding of Bond

Just because a film does not feel like its predecessors, does not make it bad necessarily. "Skyfall", on the outside does not look or feel like the Bond of different era. Yet after a day and a half, several things became apparent after methodical deliberation, Bond, played by Daniel Craig is damaged goods. He has a great deal of pain and suffering in his past and pathos and vigilant angst to go with it. Mendes, directs this film intentionally to break the Bond formula but does not stray too far from Bond mythos established in previous films. After 21 films without answers, Mendes begins to fill in some of the blanks and establishes a new type of protagonist in the world of Bond. What propels a man to do what is necessary and just when he has lost everything? "Skyfall" attempts to answer this question. This new Bond is pitted against his contrast. The villain could be Bond if he had no sense of duty, no code to live for or with. The villain, played masterfully by Javier Bardem, of "No Country for Old Men" shows us what James could become without queen and country. He too is damaged goods. Betrayed and left for dead he seeks revenge upon the institution that used him as a tool and discarded him: MI:6. Braden's character uses his pain to develop into a evil genius that wields technology as a weapon. Here lies another theme. The wits and human nature scarred and spurned is pitted against the tech driven, pain riddled villainy that is created out of the suffering of betrayal. It is man and mind versus the faceless machine. In the end, this movie moves the mythos of Bond forward with some nice cast additions and some pathos driven character development that allows the viewer to truly understand where the cold, unfeeling and unyielding behavior of Bond comes from.