Mad Max: Fury Road review

             George Miller’s “Mad Max: Fury Road” is a carnival of choreographed chaos, a celebration of blackly humorous ultra-violence, and an unbridled release of frenzied fetishism. It’s a movie that isn’t holding anything back or practicing any form of restraint, yet somehow manages to fit in a story that flows effortlessly from one freak-show set-piece to another. Even more astounding is the tonal balance displayed between the film’s cartoonish, hard-R viciousness and an operatic whimsy that almost seems childlike and gleeful in all its bright-eyed mania.

           Writer/Director Miller returns to the mythology that launched his career from being an ozploitation cult curiosity to a reliable Hollywood mainstay. After introducing the world to the desolate wastelands of the post-apocalypse in 1979’s “Mad Max,” 1981’s “Mad Max 2: Road Warrior,” and 1985’s “Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome” Miller went on to defy his cinematic first impressions with mid-level dramas like “Lorenzo’s Oil” and family movies like “Happy Feet.”  Now, after 30 years away from the franchise that propelled him and actor Mel Gibson, he has comes back to the Mad Max world as an accomplished technical filmmaker with new vigor for visual storytelling.

           The ruggedly handsome Max, played previously by a much-younger Gibson, has now been replaced by a gruffer, more wild-eyed version of the lone wanderer, played by English actor Tom Hardy. Here Max rambles into the wrong situation again, as he finds himself amongst a devious cult-leader/dictatorial sultan named Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Burn). The disfigured king rules an army of bald, suicidal soldiers who are begging for the chance to give their lives in glorious destruction, as they race their rusted, modified death machines across the desert landscape.  Max is then taken hostage and chained to front of a car manned by an eager try-hard named Nux (Nicholas Hoult. They’re connected by chains threaded with a long intravenous tube allowing the two to share blood as Nux eventually loses control of his vehicle amidst all of the destruction and ends up tagging along even as our hero manages to escape the relentless death-ride.

           Max’s hapless journey leads him to Furiosa (Charlize Theron), a selfless warrior-woman transporting a truck full of abused sex slaves who were forced to breed with the evil ruler. The hero begrudgingly decide to join their cause if it means using their vehicle to find a sliver of earth unfazed by the blight of nuclear devastation. Not unlike “Road Warrior,” this act of defiance causes a horde of pursuers to charge the truck in hopes to stop the rescue mission before the desperate party can reach their destination.

          The movie is dominated by a series of extended chase scenes involving the complicated blocking of several stunt vehicles, racing along at unknown speeds. There are only a few moments where the movie slows down to explain things and in between those moments we are treated to a three-ring circus of high-octane shoot-outs, people pole-vaulting from one moving vehicle to the next, and a hostile environment that seems to glisten everyone in visible, sun-scorched agony. 

  

         Interestingly enough, this installment seems to be less influenced by the tone and style of the previous films within the franchise and more inspired by the many movies that shamelessly aped the genre tropes they established. The brutality of Neil Marshall’s 2008 end of the world pastiche “Doomsday” echoes in the background. Likewise, in his Post-Modern western “The Good, The Bad, The Weird,” Kim Jee-Woon’s restaging of the climactic vehicle pursuit sequence from Miller’s own “Road Warrior” informs the amped up, hyper-edited language of the chase scenes in “Fury Road.” The snake is eating its own tail maybe, but done with surprising effect.

          Even well-meaning pulpy schlock such as Kevin Costner’s “Waterworld” and the Vin Diesel’s Riddick movies seem present in the mythological make-up of this long-awaited sequel. Yet unlike Disney’s tedious “John Carter” film, which suffered from too many better movies having the privilege ripping-off its original source material first, “Fury Road” took the relevant notes from its cinematic offspring to reinforce its sturdy framework. 

         It’s easy to speak of “Fury Road” in hyperbole because it’s made with the kind of bravura that baits a loud response.  It’s also made really, really well, despite being filled with the type of non-stop action pornography that normally disengages the critical mind—ala the headache inducing “Transformers” saga or Gore Verbinski’s messy and over-long “The Lone Ranger.” Instead of padding a lazy screenplay with a joyless gauze of carelessly edited cacophony, Miller adds a musicality and lyricism to his destruction that feels inspired and joyful at the visual possibilities of kinetic action. What’s more, the detail and attention paid to the film’s production design and world-building is so specific that your eye is always given something to focus in on and dissect.

         Fans should enjoy the bizarre inventiveness exemplified in the movie’s grotesque makeup and the junk-punk aesthetic of the weaponized cars and motorcycles. There are other, stranger inclusions such as a character’s spraying their mouths with silver paint, and a ghoulish slave known only as The Doof Warrior, who, while chained to the back of a truck lined with a wall of amplifiers, plays the movie’s score with a double-necked electric guitar/flame thrower. Even as the movie barrels along there is also something briefly exhibited and never explained that implies a rich science-fiction tapestry and history. The world of “Fury Road” is one that is lived in and tangible. Unlike most modern actioners that are swooned too easily by the convenience of computer generated spectacle, and whose worlds feel so produced and overdesigned that they exhaust the audience’s capacity for imagination, Miller integrates his graphics with weighty, practical effects. Even a massive sand-storm—the film’s one CGI money-shot—only takes over the frame after a long build-up that sufficiently earns its inclusion.

          Much of the movie’s overwhelming look comes from the stunning cinematography by John Seale. The desert wasteland becomes a full-fledged character and perhaps the film’s most severe antagonist. Like “Dune” and “Star Wars” and the Technicolor westerns they drew their inspiration from, Seal’s wastelands are bathed in brilliant lighting, sometimes shimmering like a vast ocean and other times shot with an air of desolation, where even a tumbleweed couldn’t survive. The landscape’s effecting mood is only enhanced by artful color-correction that fills the frame with lavish splashes of red and orange. The film’s small batch of night scenes also contrast nicely with the warmer tones of the action sequences that dominate the run-time.

          Like all good science fiction, audiences will project whatever political point of view feels most evident to them at the time.  Some of that comes from intentionality by the filmmakers and some of that will come from the context a viewer brings with them into the theater. “Fury Road” is a pure, and relatively simple action movie that has enough political suggestions to pull at that a person extrapolate something deeper than what is plainly stated in the text. Some might see a gang of suicide driven murderers who recklessly end their own lives in collateral destruction so that they might realize a warrior afterlife and see a middle-east allegory in all of this. Others might see this as a post-occupy movie, as Immortan Joe hordes his kingdom’s  precious water supply from the peasants who are grateful for whatever generosity he might feel willing to exhibit.

         A lot has been written about the feminist subtext of the film and I’m not going deny that gender sociology plays a big part in the narrative, but I’m also reluctant to call this an overtly political movie, as the plot really only serves to function its technicality as a thrill-ride. There’s been a long tradition in pulp literature regarding strong Amazonian tribal women, and wild matriarchies, and I think Miller’s story, while perhaps subverting some of those tropes within a neo-liberal context, is more interested in exploring those fictional avenues. That said, this film helps to remind us that there’s nothing wrong with a mindless ride, so long as it’s as fun and creative as this.

         While “Mad Max: Fury Road” may have more in common with the extreme, post-911 cinema of the last decade than it does the comparatively quieter, Akira Kurosawa inflected “Road Warrior” of the 1980s, the spirit of the franchise has been fully revived with a blast of uncompromised adrenaline. This, without a doubt, is an excessive and indulgent film, but it’s also just weird and deranged enough to suggest that Miller wasn’t worried about alienating the uninitiated. And it’s that kind of audacity that saves the film from blockbuster cynicism

Grade: B+

Originally Published (in part) in the Idaho State Journal/May-2015

Avengers: Age of Ultron review

              Joss Whedon returns with Disney/Marvel’s much-anticipated “Avengers: Age of Ultron”; a bigger, longer, louder sequel to 2012’s successful superhero team-up, “The Avengers.” In what was once seen as the impossible task to bring together five separate movie franchises and support each protagonist under one umbrella universe, this idea is quickly becoming the new normal. With “Terminator,” “Star Wars” and Warner Brothers’ DC Comics properties setting up multiple films and side stories, the term ‘cinematic universe’ has become the new Hollywood buzz-phrase. Rather than waiting every two years for a single sequel to rake in the dough, now studios can expand the universe of an intellectual property and have many characters and plot ideas producing multiple movies at once.

            Of course this has been happening in the world of comic books forever, but the cost to mass produce and sell a 20 page superhero magazine is nothing compared to fortune it takes to pull off something as massive as their cinematic counterparts. Strangely enough, though the risk is higher and the economic stakes are raised to create these movies, their stories sometimes reward less than those provided by pulp they were modeled after.

           Iron Man (Robert Downy Jr.), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Captain America (Chris Evans), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Hawk Eye (Jeremy Renner) and The Incredible Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) return to save the world yet again, and this time the threat is of their own creation—an impossibly smart robot intelligence named Ultron, voiced by James Spader.  After breaking into a soviet compound looking for…something or other, Tony Stark/Iron Man finds a robot technology that would allow him to update his computer A.I. with the ability to make his Iron-Dones smart enough and powerful enough to allow the team to retire. Quickly it grows too smart and develops its own reasons to kill the heroes. Newcomers Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) join the evil robot to avenge their parents and their childhood home, destroyed years ago by Stark’s military weapons.

           The set-up is simple enough, yet somehow the movie fractures into many whirling plot points and set-pieces that never quite harmonize, creating an out-of-breath, jumble of action-spectacle. Whedon is a smart writer and his knack for dialogue and characterization is still intact, but his work as a storyteller seems stifled by Marvel’s bottom-line to set up even more potential properties within their ever-expanding multi-verse. Midway through the film, the threat of Ulron, who’s marvelously introduced with a genuine sense of menace, is diluted by competing plots regarding mystical prophecies about magic gems and otherworldly cosmic dangers. By the end, the movie’s climax is strained to decide which story element needs to pay off. Allegiances change, more new characters are introduced, romances are fulfilled and further franchises are hinted at, at which point Stark’s self-destructive hubris is the thing we’re thinking the least about.

          Joss Whedon’s work as a television show-runner (“Buffy: The Vampire Slayer”, “Firefly”) has earned him a lot of goodwill over the years, but with “Avengers: Age of Ultron” it seems like his talent for telling extended, episodic stories is forcibly compressed into a confused and frustrating mess of a narrative. Some of the action is well-staged and entertaining—the fight between “Iron Man” and “The Hulk” is pretty neat—but most of it, while expensively produced, is ineffectual and weightless.

        The dialogue is quick and funny and these actors are now so comfortable in there theme-park personalities that even the most mindless scenes float along well- enough, but they’re supported by a plot that’s so over-stuffed with things to do, placed to be, and sequels to sell that it tears itself apart before it can naturally develop. 

Grade: C-

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/May-2015

Ex Machina review

              Alex Garland began as a novelist as whose jacked-up, modernized brand of genre pulp caught the eye of British director Danny Boyle. After Boyle had screenwriter and long-time collaborator John Hodge adapt Garland’s book “The Beach” into a script, he began to work with Garland exclusively.   This would define the director’s pivotal second wind of his career—elevating and reinventing geeky filmic traditions such as the zombie horror “28 Days Later” and the space-travel thriller “Sunshine.” In his new sci-fi psychodrama “Ex Machina,” Garland is set on his own for the first time as both writer and director.  It’s evident that his obsession with subverting tired genres while reveling in fan-bait fetishism is very much still intact, but what’s surprising is his comfort and confidence behind the camera.

             Somewhere in the not-too-distant future internet coder Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) wins a lottery to spend a week with the creator of the world’s most widely used search engine; a deceptively casual, hard-drinking engineer named Nathan (Oscar Isaac). Upon arrival Nathan informs Caleb that as a temporary guest he will only be given access to a limited number of rooms in his remotely located superlab/stylishly modern stainless steel bachelor pad. To his surprise he finds out that his purpose isn’t to analyze things as a computer engineer or as a code theorist, but to rationalize data as a living, breathing, emotional human being. Turns out, Nathan has created a form of sentient artificial intelligence in the form of Eva (Alicia Vikander), and needs the shy programmer to test the believability of her independent thought with a series of personalized interviews.

            Garland sets up the story by winding the key on the back of the jack in the box and letting it play out in slow, simmering anticipation. By having only three principal characters, in which they rarely share a scene together, there’s a stripped-down minimalism expressed that recalls the icy chill of Kubrickian isolation. Cinematographer Rob Hardy shoots much of the film in long, centered wide shots and the movie’s sparse sound design and set decoration brings to mind the tense atmosphere’s of films like “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “The Shining.” That said, given the movie’s sterile visual approach, Garland’s screenplay allows for a number of cleverly-written passages where the two male leads converse in long dialogues that inform their characters, delivers necessary exposition, while simultaneously complimenting the atmospheric tension with naturalistic humor.

            Oscar Isaac’s matter-of-fact line-delivery effectively conveys a tragic King Midas who uses a false sense of charisma to conceal his character’s profound loneliness and antisocial perversities.  But even with his flaws transparent, Isaac infuses the performance with unpredictable electricity. As the softly feminine android Eva Vikander has the most difficult and most thankless job in the movie. Here she has to subtly play a curious but intense intelligence that’s learning every day, computing her bourgeoning emotional truth, without revealing too much about her knowledge and still remaining vulnerable and submissive to her creator.

            Much of the film deals in complicated gender dynamics. In one of the movie’s best scenes, Caleb and Nathan discuss the purpose of installing a gender and sexuality within Eva, and how those same binaries are either installed or indoctrinated into naturally bred humans. Therefore, as a test-model Eva’s ability to pass Caleb’s Turing tests reflects not only on her success at humanity but also her femininity. The fact that two men are deciding what it is to be a convincing woman raises a lot of interesting philosophic and sociological points about systemic patriarchy, especially as the film concludes.

           If I knock “Ex Machina” for anything it’s that the impact of the film’s many reveals is softened if you have any familiarity with this style of Phillip K. Dick influenced science fiction. “Blade Runner” looms large over this story and the questions of what makes a person human isn’t much further developed past Riddley Scott’s take on the subject in 1982. This, however, does not take away from the sheer filmmaking competence and the moody brilliance on display, and even if I had a good idea where things were headed I still had great time getting there.

Grade: A

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/May-2015