Mad Max: Fury Road

Mad Max: Fury Road is an unqualified masterpiece.  It’s the kind of movie that makes you laugh, not in scorn or even amusement, but in wonder at the filmmakers’ audacity and vision.  It’s the best new release I’ve seen this year.

Here’s the setup: Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy, and you owe it to yourself to see Locke), our supposed protagonist, is mad.  Not angry, but nuts.  Loopy.  Maintaining a tenuous grasp on reality.  He starts the movie by getting captured by post-apocalyptic tribesmen and-

Well, at this point, we cut away from him entirely.  We transfer our attention to Imperator Furiosa, played by Charlize Theron.  A war chieftan of the tribe, she leads a crack team from behind the wheel of her big-rig battle truck.  When first we meet her, we see her face.  Then, she turns and walks away from the (static) camera and into the story. 

I’ve been to the movies before.  I know what comes next.  As she walks away from the camera, her entire figure will come into view.  They camera's gaze will linger, and those who are so inclined will admire her tukkas.

But here comes the first of many of this film’s subversions of my expectations.  The camera watches her for only (maybe) three seconds, cutting at just the moment the lower edge of the screen hits her waistband.  And here’s the genius of the cut: until that moment, I hadn’t even realized that I was expecting to stare at this particular character’s backside.  I hadn’t realized that the language of film that I’ve come to “speak” has made me think of this particular kind of objectification as normal.

In that moment, Charlize Theron’s body becomes the least interesting thing about her very interesting character.  Mad Max: Fury Road humanizes her not by telling me that she's more than the sum of her parts, but by showing me through its refusal to dwell upon said parts.

Maybe twenty minutes later, after Furiosa has rescued a group of the villain’s childbearing slaves, it pulls a similar trick with one of the actresses playing an escapee.  It caught me again.  It’s the first time I’ve ever sat in a major motion picture and thought, “I’m complicit in the villain’s objectification of his captives.”

Holy smokes.  I was not expecting this in a Mad Max picture.  I just came to watch stuff blow up real good.

Don’t get me wrong: lots of stuff blows up real good.  In fact, this movie has some of the best set pieces I’ve ever seen.  But Mad Max: Fury Road has something more, something that takes it to an entirely different level of excellence.  It has an agenda, and not a B.S. “hero gives a speech, earns a slow clap, and goes home and nails the love interest” agenda.  It’s crafty, and thoughtful, and genuinely thought provoking in a way to which most “message” movies can only aspire.

All this, plus a set, prop, costume, and makeup design that’s not only a joy to behold, but surprises the audience time and again with new ideas, new angles, and new visions.  This film introduces at least five different cultures among the wastelanders, each with their own look, their own vision, their own unique identities.  From loving riffs on Star Wars' Sand People to an entire culture of stilt-walkers, this film delights time and again.

But wait – there’s more.  Mad Max: Fury Road is fun!  It has a simple, effective story; interesting and engaging characters; an excellent mix of serious and humorous beats; and a grasp of its geography and politics that never waivers and ensures the viewer never scratches his or her head in confusion.

In short, I loved Mad Max: Fury Road.  I loved everything about it.  It’s exciting, it’s dazzling, it’s complex, and it’s thought provoking.  In short, it is absolutely wonderful in every way.

I thought I was getting too old for this kind of thing, but writer/director George Miller has shown me that I was wrong.  I’m simply getting too old for mediocrity.  Mad Max: Fury Road is anything but.  What a lovely film.

Locke

Wait, what?  Tom Hardy is an actor?  I mean, sure, he was terrific in Bronson, but his character was so over the top that he seemed kind of easy to play.  Locke, however, is a movie about a concrete engineer driving to London in a car.  That’s it.  We never leave the car.  We never see any other actors.  Hardy barely even moves – he just has one cell phone conversation after another as his life crumbles around his ears.

But oh man, does Hardy sell it.  We come to admire his character’s professionalism, feel aghast at his mistakes, and completely engage in his problems.  No voice over, no scenery, just a guy and a phone and a crisis.  It’s brilliant, masterful stuff (written and directed by Steven Knight), and it puts Hardy in an entirely different league.  This is the kind of movie that lands an action star in prestige pictures.
And that screenplay – wow.  It fills in the story like a painter adding layers, each layer expanding and deepening the picture.  I want to read it.

This is a brilliant film.  I’m so glad I saw it.

The Dark Knight Rises

I saw The Dark Knight Rises while staying home with a sick child.  Consequently, I saw it in two sessions while my little one slept.  I spent the film’s entire 2.5-hour running time with my finger on the volume control.

The problem, at least with the film’s BluRay release, lies in the sound mixing.  The gunfire and explosions are so loud in comparison with the dialogue that I felt it was giving me a choice between waking my son during the action sequences or understanding the dialogue during the rest.  If you live in an apartment or share space with people who don’t wish their living room to sound like Armageddon, be warned.

On to the movie.  The Dark Knight Rises asks the filmic question: what if the Occupy people get their wish?  Its answer: French Revolution 2.  Despotism.  Kangaroo Courts.  Chaos.  Only the rich, working anonymously and unfettered from the rule of law, can protect the cringing middle class from the depredations of the fickle mob.

I’m not even a hippie, and I could see that message as if it were carefully painted in Sterno on an icy bridge in the middle of the night and set afire because some rich guy thought it would look cool.

Ok, but is the film any good?  Well, it does move along at a speedy clip, the freakishly beautiful Anne Hathaway actually made me forget about Michelle Pfeiffer for a good two hours, the rest of the cast turns in respectable performances in none-too-demanding roles, and lots of stuff blows up real good.  In other words, you get what you paid for.

Just keep your finger on that volume button.

Warrior

The poster for Warrior tells you most of what you need to know about the movie.  Two guys who appear to know their way around a hypodermic needle are going to fight.  One of them’s probably the bad guy, and one of them’s probably the good guy.  There’s gonna be a training montage, and someone’s going to look to a woman in the audience for inspiration.

For the most part, you’d be right.  Nevertheless, Warrior steps enough outside that mold to keep itself interesting, and it delivers a fine montage, great fights, and enough of an emotional wallop to choke me up at the end.  See, the fighters are brothers.  With issues.  They bond.  I’m a sucker for that kind of thing.

Yes, yes, yes.  We’ve seen a number of the story elements a million times.  And really, how do you do anything new with a shot of supporters back home cheering at their television sets?  But hey, I liked these people all the same.  I cared about them and I cared who won the big fight, and why, and how.  Warrior is a perfectly respectable entry in the “fight movie” catalogue.