Review: "Mad Max: Fury Road"

Director: George Miller
Runtime: 120 minutes

For a movie franchise that has lain dormant for 30 years, George Miller's Mad Max saga has never looked or sounded better. Both a sequel to and a reimagining of Miller's original trilogy, this long-in-the-works film is an exhilarating, exhausting, and loopy adventure that has what so many blockbusters lack: a personality. For better and for worse (mostly for better), Fury Road is undeniably an un-compromised work from a singular vision that has clearly stayed limber. 

That singular vision is amplified, not restricted, by the limitations of the story. Despite several well-chosen lulls across the film's two hours, Fury Road boils down to one big chase. With this straightforward template laid out, Miller is able to stuff each scene to the gills with visual and sonic flourishes. Frankly, a more complex plot would have only gotten in the way of Fury Road's blunt visceral impact. 

For even though this tale of Max (Tom Hardy) and Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) on the run from a psychotic warlord touches on some important issues, it does so through the lens of an adventure. Imagine if Wagner had composed "The Ride of the Valkyries" while snorting cocaine, and you'll have a decent idea of what to expect from this cinematic circus maximus.

Like Max, the viewer is thrust into a post-apocalyptic nightmare with little time to fully understand the specifics. After Max's initial remarks (via voiceover), he is immediately captured by a group of thugs for the warlord Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne), a bloated mass of a man with a shock of white-blonde hair and eye make-up that would send the Devil packing. Joe's citadel contains many luxuries, but only for the chosen few. The huddled masses are at Joe's mercy, and their desperation comes through not just in their screams, but in the lifetime of trauma shown on their bodies. Fury Road takes the pop-punk dystopia elements of its predecessors and turns them up to 11. The scars and deformities are unlike anything you've ever seen, and that's just touching the surface of the warped imagination on display.

Since Miller's story and his characters' goals are so minimal, it comes down to these world-building details to make it all somewhat convincing. In that regard, Fury Road is a downright masterclass. Between 80 and 85% of the stunts that occur (and 100% of the vehicles used) are real, and it shows. There are cars stacked on top of oil tankers, and old-fashioned buggys covered in nasty metal spikes. There's a mega-truck that has a damn tractor mounted on the back. And, yes, there is a vehicle whose sole purpose is to blast screeching death metal, led by a demonic musician with an electric guitar that shoots fire. And yet, for all of the bombast on display, Miller refuses to become indulgent when showing off the madcap stunts of his ensemble. Fury Road is as subtle as a scream and has all the blunt force of a hurricane, but it's also an exercise in understanding when to give the audience a break. 

Had Miller kept up the pace of the first half hour for the remaining 90 minutes, Fury Road's simplicity would have quickly become its undoing. Instead, Miller weaves in a string of moments that either greatly reduce the action, or stop it all together. Yet in these spaces that allow the eyes and ears to recover, Miller never loses control of his story's momentum. There are no expository flashbacks or longwinded speeches that threaten to grind the narrative to a halt. There is great seriousness amid Fury Road's chaos, but Miller never pushes it to the point of dour pretension. 

The simplicity of the story is reflected in the simplicity of the characters, and that includes Hardy's Max. Max is, if anything, no more than a gateway character. His manic grunts and twitchy head movements (he spends a quarter of the film acting as a living IV bag, after all) show that he is a man pushed far over the edge. And yet Hardy never goes out of his way to steal the show. Max is the outlier of the story, and a surprisingly good fit to play second fiddle. 

The first chair, quite clearly, belongs to Theron's bald, bionic woman, and Fury Road is all the better because of this. Max's motivation can be reduced to mere survival, but Furiosa is out for something that cuts deeper: redemption. In the bright orange wastelands of a world gone horrifically insane, she seeks asylum not just for herself, but for the living cargo she carries with her: five slave brides married to Joe for the purpose of breeding and producing milk. 

Despite the muscle cars, explosions, and outlandishly macho cries for a glorious death, Mad Max might just be one of the most unabashedly feminist blockbusters in recent memory. Though Joe's slave brides spend most of the film in skimpy white bikinis, they prove to be more than damsels in distress. And, later on, Miller introduces an entire clan of warrior women of all ages, who prove up to the task of going toe-to-toe with Joe's horde of male soldiers. There are characters in Fury Road who exploit women, but Miller himself does all he can to empower them. Fury Road is about fighting against the odds, not post-apocalyptic love, and the dedication to life-or-death stakes leaves the film refreshingly asexual.   

With only a few notable instances of visual effects (the most obvious being an overwhelming sandstorm), Mad Max stays relatively grounded (yes, even with the flame-spewing guitar) compared to contemporary blockbuster fare. It's a chase movie that lives and dies by the success of its vehicular carnage, and not by how many fantastical digital creations it can force onto the screen. There is madness aplenty, but it is sweaty, tear-streaked, gnarly madness rooted in a self-contained story. This isn't a tale about cataclysmic events that changed the world, but rather a story of survival long after the dust has settled, and there's nothing to do but charge forward. As Furiosa herself puts it, "You wanna get through this? Do as I say. Now pick up what you can, and run."

Grade: B+

Review: "Prometheus"

Down to its title, Ridley Scott's Prometheus, the director's return to science fiction after three decades, has some lofty ambitions. Opening with shots of a primordial earth that recall moments of last year's The Tree of Life (well, until the hulking white alien shows up...), Scott's film, written by Jon Spaihts and Lost alum Damon Lindelof, though executed beautifully in terms of atmosphere, can't quite muster the courage to fully follow through on its somewhat lazy attempt at grandiose wonderment about our place in the universe. Still, the film's successes, of which there are plenty, deserve credit, and as far as being an engaging, well-crafted ride goes, Prometheus hits all of the right notes, even as it fails to launch into the same legendary stratosphere as Scott's previous sci-fi endeavors. 


After a beautiful prologue that captures the mysterious origins of all life on earth (DNA strands exploding out of a single, towering creature as it decomposes), the story proper begins with a team of archaeologists in Scotland. At a cave in the Skye Islands, the team has discovered a 35,000 year old cave with a painting that appears to show a large figure pointing toward a cluster of stars. Chief among the group are Dr. Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green), who are also romantically involved. Their discovery, the latest in a series of digs conducted over several years, finally gives them enough evidence to receive funding from the powerful Weyland Corporation to find the star cluster, and see if there are any planets capable of sustaining life. The goal, at least for the archaeologists, is to see if mankind can truly meet its makers.


And, for roughly 45 minutes (an hour?), Prometheus remains set in a state of calm, just as Alien did decades ago before letting hell break loose. We witness the ship's Peter O'Toole-idolizing android, David (Michael Fassbender) waking the ship's crew up from deep sleep, and though David's presence sets the scenes apart from the complete stillness of Alien's opening, there remains something oddly magnetic about the sequence. It's in this first hour that Scott shows what made his first two forays into sci-fi so special: a willingness to take time, and slowly build a sense of place and atmosphere. Whether it's on board the titular transport/research vessel, or on the planet the crew lands on, the production design and visual effects create a remarkably tactile world, one that doesn't feel overly reliant on nice-looking, but plastic-y digital creations. As captured by cinematographer Darius Wolski, the locales of Prometheus posses a cold, at times slimy sheen that only adds to the overall feel. Even in the dark, subterranean exploration scenes when the team first enters a massive pyramid, there remains a sense of clarity to the imagery.


That the film gets the tone right so early on is an obvious boon to the overall effect. The performances are effective as well, although the size of the cast means that there are quite a few throwaway characters who are merely there for bad things to befall them. When the actors come through, however, they shine, even as Spaihts and Lindelof's script leaves them lost in space without much in the way of arcs. Rapace, most famous for being the original girl with the dragon tattoo, makes an appealing heroine, with a nice mix of vulnerability and steely determination. The combo comes in handy when the actress is required to go through a bit of Cronenberg-esque body horror in a scene that, while never reaching the impact of a certain moment from Alien, will surely leave many uncomfortably squirming in their seats. Fassbender's fastidious android is also fun to watch, with his mix of calculated distance and semi-human behavior proving to be one of the film's most intriguing mysteries. It's one of the few times that Fassbender has avoided injecting a true element of emotional vulnerability into a role, and thankfully it pays off and makes David more interesting to watch. Marshall-Green, as the science-first counterpart (as contrasted with the Christian Dr. Shaw), has some nice moments as well, although he's ultimately not given much that distinguishes him from the lower rungs of the ensemble aside from more face-time. Finally there's Charlize Theron, in her second icy role of the summer, remaining pretty one-note, while still being a compelling presence. Watching her yank David aside to pull information out of him is one of the most suspenseful scenes in the film, and there's nary a slimy monster in sight.


And speaking of slimy monsters, don't worry, Prometheus has its share. Whether it's the serpentine first creature the team encounters - which, when closed up, looks like an icky, pale tulip from the bowels of hell - or the tentacled menace that finds its way into a crew member, the creature designs and effects all come through. They're entirely CGI creations, yet they're rendered and shot with such skill that they feel uncomfortably real and dangerous. Only a large, squid-like monster fails to feel fully tactile; the bigger the creation, somehow the less real it feels.


Yet for all of its strengths in production design, direction, and atmosphere, Prometheus has, to invoke another name of myth, an Achilles Heel. The culprit is, unfortunately, the script. After opening such grand possibilities on the thematic front with the opening, Spaihts and Lindelof settle for a more routine execution that never quite follows through on its potential. The quest for mankind's origins and our place in the universe becomes more plot-point than theme, so that even when the film reaches its conclusion, it fails to inspire the same sense of awe that the visuals do. The direction manages to elevate the material and create some truly exceptional moments, but by the time Prometheus settles into its hectic final act, the weaknesses of the writing become too apparent to ignore, even as the film remains an entertaining journey. The first encounter with an alien creature, though effectively unsettling, is undermined by the outright stupidity of one minor character ("hey, look! some creepy snake creature. I should totally try to interact with it! No way that it will do anything aggressive!"). Character development also gets tossed aside, even with Shaw, the character most ripe with potential for a full, satisfying arc. As things get more hectic, Prometheus simply abandons attempts at ideas in order to simply satisfy the thrill-ride quota, which ends up leaving the last act feeling overly long. There's a handful of mini-conclusions that feel like they should segue into the very end, only for the film to keep going.


Yet despite its flaws, it's hard to deny that Prometheus succeeds in enough places (though perhaps not brilliantly so) that it works, even as it devolves into a more standard sci-fi thriller as it progresses. The ideas are admirable on paper, though on screen they feel more like hastily sketched out premises that the writers forgot to follow through on. Still, once one removes the pretense of Spaihts and Lindelof's writing, what remains is still a rollicking, atmospheric, gorgeously-rendered slice of science fiction, filled with enough tension and thrills to make it memorable, albeit not to point where we'll be talking about it years from now. Whereas Scott's other two sci-fi films both made significant stylistic and thematic contributions to the genre, Prometheus is merely a nicely-handled entry that boosts its profile, without doing anything to give it a special place in the sci-fi canon. 


Grade: B

Review: "Snow White and the Huntsman"

Arriving three months after Mirror Mirror, the other big studio Snow White film, Snow White and the Huntsman is drastically different in style and tone. Looking more like HBO's Game of Thrones, in comparison to Mirror's super bright, campy, family-friendly design, Huntsman is aimed at a slightly older demographic, one willing to take its fairy tales with a little more gravity. Yet despite individual pieces that are ultimately more successful, Huntsman isn't really an improvement over Mirror Mirror as it is, well, just different.


For the most part, the basic elements of the story are expected: a king makes a seriously bad choice in his second wife, who kills him and imprisons his daughter, only to determine that she needs to consume said daughter's heart to live forever. Thankfully, director Rupert Sanders and company help everything feel fresh with the rugged, lived-in medieval look. This is a lush world, one that feels more like it lives, breathes, and dies than the hyper-artifice of Tarsem Singh's film. And for a good half hour or so, everything comes together - despite fleeting blips - to create something rich, dark, and compelling.


Magnetic from her arrival on screen, Charlize Theron is wickedly entertaining as Ravenna, the evil queen holding Snow White (Kristen Stewart) as a prisoner, all while sucking the youth and beauty out of other captive maidens. Dressed in Colleen Atwood's sumptuous costumes, Theron embodies Ravenna with the icy heartlessness of a woman taught from birth that the key to a woman's success was her beauty, and nothing more. It's Ravenna's reign of terror that is the most enjoyable to watch, and the further the film gets from that, in the wildly uneven middle, the more it suffers. First-time director Sanders knows how to create some effective imagery and atmosphere, and when it all comes together, it can be quite compelling. Aside from Ravenna's scenes in the opening, the director also nails Snow White's nightmarish hallucinations as she stumbles through the Dark Forest during her escape from the Queen's forces. It's appropriately dark and unpleasant, and helps reinforce the idea of a more grown up world. Many fairy tales, were, after all, filled with extreme darkness, with everything from murder to suppressed sexual anxiety running amok, and Sanders' film reaches its high points when it taps into this. 


Unfortunately, the trifecta of writers don't keep up the momentum. Once Snow and the Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth) escape the Forest together, the movie becomes simultaneously rushed and sluggish. There's an entire plot thread involving Price William (Sam Claflin) and his desire to find Snow White, not having seen her since they were separated during Ravenna's brutal take over of the kingdom. It's not terribly interesting, and it distracts from the relationship between Snow and the Huntsman, who comes across as much more engaging. It feels like the film wanted to build some sort of love triangle, but then got tired of it and simply gave up without seeing through on any of it (yup, even in the end). The film also rushes into its climax, complete with an uneven war speech with lots of obligatory SHOUTING, and then next thing we know, Snow is all ready to go into battle (apparently it just doesn't take that long to learn how to wield a sword...in full battle armor...which was just lying around in her size...).


Thankfully the finale redeems some of this, although it doesn't carry the intrigue of the opening act. The grittiness comes through in both the real, actual battles and in the fantastical elements. The darkness and menace are always present as well, even when the film stumbles in execution. Even the film's one moment where it could potentially go into an overload of fantasy schmaltz, set against a magical forest populated with sprites and other creatures, ends with a moment of violence.


Snow White and the Huntsman ends up being a mixed bag, but it deserves credit for when it works. Some films are complete disappointments, but Sanders' film does come together with strong results. Had the middle built on the momentum of the first act, instead of squandering it, this could have truly built into a stellar big budget fantasy. As it  is, though, it's a mixed bag with a wide range of highs and lows that keep it from being the majestic, gritty epic it very likely has the potential to be.


Grade: B-/C+

Theatrical Trailer: "Snow White and the Huntsman"

To offset the dreary early spring season (at the cinemas at least), Hollywood has really been doling out the goods when it comes to promotional material for the summer's major aspiring blockbusters. The latest, and one of the best (though not quite as great as yesterday's masterful Prometheus trailer) is the theatrical trailer for Rupert Sanders' Snow White and the Huntsman. One of two Snow White projects being released this year (the other being this month's iffy-looking Mirror Mirror), Huntsman may lack a notable director at its helm (Mirror has Tarsem Singh), but it looks like it will be a vastly superior film. Tarsem Singh is known for having such stunning visuals in his films, so it's slightly awkward to see that Sanders' film, a grittier, more Game of Thrones-like take on the story, creates much more of an impression with its images. The richer, dark look looks extremely convincing, and gives the sense that this film has the stuff to launch a small franchise (which is Universal's hope). Throw in a wonderfully cast Charlize Theron, and all in all this looks like a winner.

My only reservation is that the story ultimately rests on Kristen Stewart's shoulders, despite the fact that the marketing has leaned so heavily on Theron. She's a capable actress, but her work in the Twilight series seems to have somewhat stunted her abilities. Let's just hope that Sanders (making his debut) and Stewart's cast mates can help bring out the best in her. To an extent, the movie really depends on that happening. Otherwise, this looks like a grand slice of big-budget fantasy filmmaking, with enough of its own look to not feel derivative (although that hulking creature with the horns does feel like it belongs in a Guillero Del Toro film; kudos for taking inspiration from a master, though). Also, that crazy sequence with Charlize flying around the room in the form of a million little knives (glass shards?) is outstanding. Consider my ticket bought.

Side Note: Kudos to Charlize Theron, who has this opening 1 week before Prometheus, in which she also stars.

Trailer Grade: B+/A-

One step forward, two steps backward: Trailers to ring in 2012

Even though we're still dealing with awards season craziness, it's never too soon to start looking past the acceptance speeches and trophies, and into what cinema holds in store for us in the new year. Over the past two weeks, three trailers have emerged for three very big potential blockbusters. One is a sequel, while the other two are prequels (more or less). And all three have one thing in common: insanely high expectations.

When your previous film develops rabid fanboys, becomes a massive box office success, and scores an actor an Oscar, all while being a super hero movie, the next installment is under scrutiny from day one. That's certainly been the case with Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises, the director's final contribution to Batman's cinematic legacy. Everything has been picked apart, and concerns have been raised regarding everything from casting to costume choices. With the release of the first full trailer, however, Nolan's latest is finally putting some (or at least, my) worries to rest. The trailer covers quite a lot thematically without spelling out the specific direction of the plot. It also gives us some nice looks at Tom Hardy as Bane, and Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle/Catwoman, who shakes off her rom-com personality to inject a surprising amount of menace. The actions scenes look intense, and the idea of Gotham actually falling into chaos (a fulfillment of the Arkham breakout in Batman Begins) looks like an interesting way to bring Nolan's trilogy full-circle. Oh, and the creepy chanting that plays over the last half of the footage? Perfection.

Trailer Grade: A-

Next we have Prometheus, Ridley Scott's long-gestating prequel-but-it-sort-of-isn't to Alien. Boasting a stellar ensemble, the film's entire look is fantastic, and I can't wait to see more footage. We need another well made, big budget sci-fi flick to counterbalance the likes of Transformers. That eerie, monolithic face statue, as well as that strange crescent structure are enough to get me hooked from a visual standpoint. Even more interesting will be to see the creation footage that Scott and crew were reportedly filming in Iceland. On a nerdier note, it will be interesting to see how the film plays off of its mythically based title. Given the film's tag line, it's probably meant to be a rather dark variation. Scott has been a bit of a slump that past few years, but here's hoping that a return to sci-fi will help him return to his best. Love that gradual reveal of the title too.

Trailer Grade: B+

Finally, we come to the most troubled of the three: Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. The first of two films covering the novel (part two hits in 2013), the film has struggled to move ahead with production. Guillermo Del Toro was originally set to direct, before financial and legal issues delayed the start of shooting so much that he bailed. Jackson is back in the chair, which is reasurring that at least it will be the exact same vision as before. Let's just hope it doesn't end up feeling, stale, though. The footage is relatively simple, not showing anything epic, and focusing more on the characters and the lighter nature of the narrative. A lot of the footage still needs to be color-graded, but overall I'm very hopeful that the long-delayed return to Middle Earth will be worth it. The film is being shot on cutting-edge technology at the highest frame rate ever for a major motion picture. How this will affect the film, for better or for worse, remains to be seen, but at the very least it will help the film feel slightly different. Now if only we can get around to seeing some footage of Smaug...

Trailer Grade: B

Review: "Young Adult"

Over the course of his first three films, Jason Reitman explored three very different protagonists. First there was the charming big tobacco lobbyist in Thank You For Smoking, then the whip-smart pregnant teen in Juno, and finally the loner traveling corporate man in Up in the Air. Whatever their considerable differences, they at least shared one common trait, albeit in varying degrees: likeability. Sure, Eckhart's role in Smoking may be that of a man who sells poison, but by the story's end, he was a sympathetic character. This likeability, however, is where Reitman makes his biggest departure in his fourth film, Young Adult, which might feature the year's stand-out unlikeable protagonist (unless you're an avid hater of Margaret Thatcher and are still seething over the trailer for The Iron Lady).

Reuniting with Juno scribe Diablo Cody, Reitman's latest finds him returning to a female subject to scrutinize. She's Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron), a ghost writer for a series of Gossip Girl-esque young adult novels that is about to reach its end. Upon receiving an email that her old flame Buddy (Patrick Wilson) and his wife have just had their first child, Mavis returns to her tiny hometown with the delusional hope that she can win Buddy back because they're "meant to be together."

As with Up in the Air, Reitman uses the opening sequence to (almost wordlessly) establish Mavis within the confines of her Minneapolis apartment. She drinks, has Diet Coke for breakfast, and is accustomed to one night stands. But something's different here, and not exactly in a good way. The opening act of Young Adult is missing a sharpness, both in writing and in editing that made Up in the Air demand our attention so immediately. Though Cody's screenplay is generally devoid of the hipster-y quotability of Juno, the flip side of this is that it often feels like a first draft. The result is that the first chunk of the story often feels burdened with weird moments filled with nothing but dead air. This may be an attempt to show how empty and aimless Mavis' life is, but the execution left me feeling more like it was simply a usually on-point director missing his mark.

That the film gets off to such a rocky start is a shame, because Theron is clearly giving the role her all, even when the script feels like giving her only the thinnest of "nasty bitch" material to work with. The constant looks of emptiness and disgust Theron throws around should provide a constant jolt of dark humor, but more often then not they feel like wasted opportunities, because the character is a bitch simply because, well, she just is, okay???. But unlike, say, Shame, which never explored the source of Brandon's addiction, Young Adult never gives Mavis enough of an arc to make the time spent with the character feel fully earned. One could argue that she has something of a realization about how rotten she is, but it's not enough to make a solid case that she really changes, or will change. And if Mavis' stagnation is supposed to somehow be the point, Cody seems unconcerned with sharpening the point of the whole piece.

But even though the point may not quite be there, there's at least some material that's totally worth it. The film isn't exactly the dark comedy it's billed as (though it's dark), but a few moments do earn a decent, wicked laugh. As the story (which clocks in at a clean 90 minutes) moves through its acts, the dead air starts to fade away, and the character interactions feel better distilled, devoid of unintentional awkwardness or narrative flab. Largely, this is due to Theron's work as Mavis, which is so committed that you wish Cody and Reitman had taken a few months to really punch up the script so that the journey would be one that people recommend despite the protagonist's unlikeability. Instead, Young Adult leaves us with a decent enough film with a strong performance at its core. The work from other cast members, like Patton Oswalt, Wilson, and Collette Wolfe, is engaging, but not enough to really make a mark. The film is All About Mavis, but the problem is that Cody hasn't given the role quite enough meat, and the film suffers because of it, even though portions feel right on target. Young Adult is clearly meant to be an uncomfortable, darkly funny film, but at the end of the day it's neither uncomfortable nor darkly funny enough to really justify the journey it takes us on.

Grade: B-