Ray (Widescreen Edition)
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Movie Reviews of Ray (Widescreen Edition)
Movie Review: Blind but shining bright
Summary: 5 Stars
If you saw the trailer for Ray you have watched Jamie Foxx in his role as the blind genius musician and said, `Wow, hand him The Oscar now'. If you said that, and I know I did, it is even more deserving when you watch the movie.
Jamie Foxx gives the performance of a lifetime. He may never get a role like this again, and if not, who cares? He will always have this. The story spans most of Ray Charles' life up to the point where the state of Georgia officially apologized to him for banning him from playing in their borders due to his cancellation of a huge concert because it was segregated.
Flashing back to scenes of his childhood, he grew up in a poor working community of blacks in the south. He took interest in piano as a small boy and was taught by a man in his neighborhood. Moving swiftly the plot and story shows how he traveled to Seattle and made a name for himself in the blues scene. As he moved up, he encountered racism as well as discrimination for being blind. Strangely more people seemed to shun him for his blindness rather than his race.
As he gained more popularity he struggled to find his `sound'. He also married and went on the road making a lot of money. As his wife kept his home and had his children, he toured the country as he slipped deeper into drug use, infidelity and increasingly haunting memories from his childhood where he witnessed his younger brother die and his sight slowly slip away at an early age.
The story climaxes with his own realization of what his life had become. Despite his fame and fortune, his drug use and torturing memories were taking their toll. Salvation comes the hard way. Despite it's two and half hour running time, Director Taylor Hackford makes sure the movie moves at a steady pace, never getting too slow or bogging itself down in intellectual over thinking of what the character is feeling. Emotions are displayed and expressed, giving real tangibility to the story.
Jamie Foxx made playing the part look so easy, and his talent has surfaced as he surely will be offered more substantial roles after this.
Movie Review: Congratulation's Jamie!
Summary: 5 Stars
I enjoyed this film immensely and was impressed by the entire production. I was also impressed with director Taylor Hackford's choice to balance Ray's personal tragedies and personal life with his music careers. Many musical biographies tend to focus more on the personal side, but 'Ray' lets us into business meetings, contract discussions, label changes and in this film makes Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler important characters in the film. I also liked how the film addressed the groundbreaking musical choices Ray made without being heavy handed.
Jamie Foxx truly deserved that Oscar, congratulation. Kerry Washington, Regina King, and Sharon Warren (who plays Ray's mother, Aretha) performances are just integral to the film because Ray was certainly not a perfect person as the film shows, and their characters each bring out a different side in Ray, and the actors each bring a different side out of Jamie Foxx. Kerry Washington is fabulous as Della Bea, Ray's long suffering and put-upon wife. The scene when she explains to Ray that their newborn son is not a gift from her to him and how his life on the road must not find its way in the home she is making for their family is powerful and the scene when Ray tells her of the death of Margie Hendrix is just as stunning. Washington is an incredible actress and "Ray" lets her shine!
Regina King was fantastic on this role. Her Margie Hendrix is a blistering hybrid of passion, weakness, love and compassion, and every emotion is firmly etched on King's face. The "Hit the Road Jack" scene is so raw and painful, and King matches Foxx's performance emotion for emotion, word for word, pain for pain, blues for blues. Regina King is a miracle worker, and it is high time she is acknowledged for the incredible work she is contributing to American film. Another scene that moved me was when Ray's character is a child and learns to cope with being blind, while his mother observes. It is one of the most striking scenes.
The story was very powerful and endearing. It has captured the essence of a true American Icon and legend. See the film and enjoy the music!
Movie Review: There is no limit to this music but the sky!
Summary: 5 Stars
Ray Charles is a myth and here he becomes a friend, a familiar, a human being. That's the first and best aspect of the film we have to emphasize. The music is marvellous and has been in our ears and heads for more than fifty years. The phenomenal mixing and blending of R&B, blues, gospel, country music and jazz turns Ray Charles into a unique prophet of our musical imagination and world, and that will remain true for at least fifty more years. But the film follows Ray Charles practically from his birth till his death. It shows how he got involved in many deep and fundamental social, cultural, musical and racial movements to change the world when necessary. It shows the personal problems he had to face and solve in order to last in his creativity and humanity, particularly his decision to drop heroin in one single weaning session. It shows how he was able to separate his family life from his professional life, and his wife was able to follow him along this line, so that these two lives never mixed, at least not entirely. But he had an admirable wife. It also shows the great changes that occurred in the USA over the last sixty years, the tremendous reduction of racism and segregation, even the important first steps on the road towards repentance and reparations. The road has not reached its destination yet, but it is coming closer. Finally this film shows the absolute blend of the whole life of a man, and every single moment will remain alive for him forever, and his creativity, here Ray's music. When a man creates something he has to invest every single fiber of his muscles and every single cell of his brain into it to make it his truest ever child. That is what Ray was able to do and he did it over and over again in his long professional life. His decision to refuse to perform in a segregated theater in Georgia and his subsequent ban from Georgia for life was a better thought and felt decision than many other decisions of his in his whole entire life, and yet it was taken on the spur of the moment. That is the sign of a great man and a great mind.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
Movie Review: Dough Ray Me Too
Summary: 5 Stars
It's said Hollywood is the one place where they truly believe "practice makes perfect". That's because, whenever somebody stumbles over a format that works, everyone else keeps doing it over and over, milking it down to the last cent.
The recent swell of bio-pics like Walk The Line and Capote can be traced in part to the immense and deserved popularity of Ray. The version I saw included extended "director's cut" scenes which could be viewed on demand. They are highly recommended. These scenes add depth and texture to personal demons that plagued Charles. Overall the movie is remarkably accurate and fair, and provides great insight into a larger than life genius and musical innovator.
Ray's portrayal of the early days is particularly interesting, tiny clubs, being paid in ones, the splendid independence and confidence, so much the product of his mother's insistence he be prepared for blindness when it arrived. That the movie stops before wretched musical excesses of the late career is an all-around blessing. But here is the problem.
Foxx did deserve the Oscar, especially for the way he recreated movement, mannerisms, and physical style. He made a newly dead Charles return to life in our minds. But was the Academy rewarding Foxx, or Charles? Ray Charles was a universally loved icon. All Foxx had to do was slip into his suit and immediately he became interesting, sympathetic, and talented - because he was Ray Charles. By achieving his re-creation goal so completely, Foxx drew attention away from the movie's failure, a complete lack of originality.
The creative process involves delivering something that wasn't there before you arrived. The triumph of Ray, as good as it is, is that it delivers something that was already there, the personal and musical legacy of Ray Charles, and doesn't injure it too badly in the process. That Hollywood today relies so heavily on breathing life into recently deceased celebrities for its financial grist succinctly demonstrates its creative bankruptcy and cannibalistic tendencies.
Movie Review: Ray Charles' courage and conflicts. A perfect film. Bravo!
Summary: 5 Stars
I think that Ray Charles would have been pleased with the quality of this film about his life. I understand he was involved in the project until shortly before his death. No wonder Jamie Foxx did such a good job of depicting him. He really did study the man and seemed to morph into him for the film. It's not surprising he won an academy award for his performance.
From the very beginning I was drawn into Ray's story which I had expected to be maudlin. It wasn't. Yes, he became blind as a child. And yes, he had a traumatic childhood experience before that in which his little brother drowned in a washtub. Through his child's eyes, he didn't realize the seriousness of the accident and didn't make any move to save him. This incident had to effect him for the rest of his life.
Ray's mother, however, wanted her little boy to be strong. As he was going blind she refused to let him feel pity for himself. Instead she taught him to cope with his blindness and even sent him off to a school for the blind in order to complete his education in becoming self sufficient. And he certainly did become self-sufficient, traveling across the country by bus to find work in a club playing piano. He was great. And he was also exploited, especially because he was blind. Eventually, he wised up and his career soared.
He married a sweet woman and started a family. But she never traveled on the road with him. And he soon became involved with a whole series of other women. He also became a heroin addict and fought these demons for most of his life.
This is just the basic story. How it was put together was what made this film glow. The director wisely focused on Ray's courage and conflicts. And, after a while, his being blind became only a part of this complex human being who we saw evolving on the screen. What an extraordinary life this man had. And what an extraordinary performance that Jamie Fox did. The film was perfect. I wouldn't change a word of it. Highly recommended.