Not Your Parents' Mad Max

We saw Mad Max: Fury Road with friends this weekend and it was amazing. I knew a little about the film from the trailer and that some people were upset that it was a “feminist action movie”, but it was definitely one of those movies that I didn't want to know too much about beforehand, so if you haven’t seen it, don’t read beyond the trailer below.



Fury Road is a challenging movie in many regards. It helps to have watched the previous movies (which my friends had not) and it requires a certain amount of visual literacy to enjoy it to the fullest (remember that I went to art college). Every frame is filled with so much detail like car parts, logos and tattoos. Three-quarter views, profile views and symmetrical shots add a lot of visual interest and show off the cars and craziness. Much like how authors will write entirely in dialogue or start their story by discarding the first part, Fury Road is told almost in visuals and with very little dialogue. Most dialogue sounds pretty grunty anyway! Close attention needs to be paid to how the characters use objects and speak through their actions. For example, Charlize Theron as Imperator Furiosa expresses emotions mostly with her eyes and Tom Hardy as Mad Max has a wild, fearful look most of the time. It’s the ultimate in “Show, don’t tell”.

Come to think of it, Fury Road is not a traditional action movie at all. Fury Road challenges viewers expecting to be spoonfed the who, what, when, where and why. It was clear that our friends would have preferred to see Age of Ultron instead as they did not like it at all. “I don’t understand why…” they kept wondering as we wandered the mall afterwards, and I kept piping up with answers like “The War Boys spray their mouths with spray paint because huffing paint gives them a high before battle…”. The movie is so nuts that questioning how the drummers hang on to the sound machine or why the world is so weird will just drive you nuts.

I welcomed the challenge and found the movie so refreshing in many ways. I loved every second, from the practical effects and stunts. The movie does not shy away from showing blood or the effects of violence. Another piece of sly commentary on bloodless CGI, perhaps? Be prepared for a lot of squishy stuff to happen.

Trivia: did you know that George Miller also directed Happy Feet and Happy Feet 2? Are you surprised at all? I’m not, since Fury Road has a strong environmental theme. In one of the more subtle moments, reformed War Boy Nux points at a tree in the desert and doesn’t even know that it’s called a tree (this tree, by the way, is a nod to the Arbre du Ténéré). There’s something hopeless about watching the tree being uprooted by the war rig in order to keep the Five Wives from being recaptured.

Speaking of the Five Wives - five physically healthy and beautiful young women held captive by top baddie Immortan Joe - they are never shown as damsels in distress. Although they are fragile and unsure after living their lives locked behind a vault door, they quickly find their strengths and fight for themselves alongside Furiosa and Max. All the women in the movie are given agency, and there’s even room for older, wrinkled women to shine. The Vuvalini are bad ass little old ladies on motorcycles that show up about halfway through the movie. It’s all right for men to look a little rugged in movies, but never women. Furiosa and Max fight as equals, never trying to one up the other and sometimes shooting at the exact same time. They triumph not just physically over Immortan Joe but over inequality of the sexes when they stand together in victory at the end. A movie that shows men and women working together equally and respectfully to solve a problem? OMG!

It seems that all the reading that the Wives did put some ideas into their heads about equality, and as seen in the trailer, they wrote “We are not things” in their sheltered paradise. At every turn Miller slips this idea in that people are not commodities. Max is treated as a “blood bag” by Nux, the Wives are stored away like precious jewels and the War Boys are Immortan Joe’s disposable warriors. I really liked that Nux, shown as a crazy disciple worshipping Joe and V8, is allowed to become human again. So many times society writes off people who have made poor choices in life. Once bad, always bad - but the wife known as Capable does not believe this about Nux and treats him with love and kindness.

Whoo…I should probably stop here. A whole book could be written on all the subtle intricacies and meanings of Fury Road. Just enjoy it if you see it, and marvel that George Miller was able to make the film he always wanted to make 30 years ago.

Made in the 70s Saturday

The world is full of knock-offs meant to trick parents and grandparents, from toys to movies, and if you ever received a Go-Bot or a My Little Phony, you may have also been disappointed with a trip to see...

Starcrash

I thought my husband's enthusiastic embrace of The Starlost meant that he would be all over this 1978 movie. He kept hemming and hawwing and even my plea that the 16 people that read this blog regularly were losing out on a fun column couldn't persuade him. So I made some popcorn, got out my notebook and found it on YouTube. Later when he wandered out of his man cave, he asked "So what was it about?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know?" He was mystified.

"Well, it's about this space outlaw named Stella Star and she wears this leather space bikini - " He rolled his eyes at my description of leading lady Caroline Munro.

"And she travels with her space navigator and in their spaceship they get chased by space cops..."

My husband squinted at me something fierce as I continued. "And they go to separate space prisons...but then they are freed because the space emperor needs them to defeat the space devil, well, he looks like Satan, so they go to this planet with space Amazons and I don't know what they were doing there, but they face the giant space Amazon robot. Then they go to this other planet with space cavemen..."

He slowly walked away from me before I could utter another mention of "space". However, that's the best way to describe this movie in a time where science fiction films were not exactly taken seriously nor had great production values. Starcrash is no Star Wars, but while Stars Wars has roots in pulpy serials of the 30s and 40s, Starcrash has them proudly on display as Stella Star leaps into a new plot every fifteen minutes. When I realized that I didn't understand why things were happening, I thought it was a case of inattention. But nope, there are whole...holes...happening.

Is Starcrash a bad movie? Well, it's a bad movie, but it's also a FUN movie full of hilarious lines, goofy acting and out of the blue costume changes. It never takes itself seriously and Caroline Munro does such a good job as a plucky space heroine. It dares to be whimsical when so many movies opt for grim and dark. What's not to love about a robot with a Texas twang, David Hasselhoff wearing too much mascara and Christopher Plummer appearing as if he had wandered onto the wrong set? Star Wars it is not, but at least there's a ten minute laser battle near the end that must have been awesome on the big screen.

Oddly enough, Starcrash opened up a whole new genre of film for me. Surely you have heard of spaghetti Westerns? Have you heard of spaghetti science fiction? Looks like there is plenty more fun and weirdness to indulge in :-)

Guardians of the Galaxy Movie Review

We saw Guardians of the Galaxy last Sunday and it was awesome! Maybe it was several months of being plied with trailers and advertising, but the coolness I originally had towards it warmed up to the point where I was practically vibrating. Why, why am I so excited to a movie with a trash talking raccoon and one of my favourite actors as a tree? Maybe it was that being in an air conditioned movie theatre for two hours was way more exciting than lying limp around the house.

Out of all the Marvel movies, this is quite possibly the best one to date. It's free of earthly concerns and has such an interesting and diverse cast, characters and settings. Maybe too, I'm just tired of dark and gritty reboots, movies that are just a little too based on coincidence or forget how to tell a story completely. There's only so many times you can watch Iron Man be a jerk, after all. Come to think of it, it's easier to describe GotG by what it's not. The main characters don't drag each other down, there's no big city destruction scene (well, just a little) and it's not serious at all. Serious characters get their dramatic comic book speeches, but also get upstaged by humour. GotG is incredibly self-aware of having one foot in B-movieland.

The movie is pretty tight, zipping along at a fast pace and helped along by the "awesome mix" soundtrack. Right after the opening scene, the audience gets to dive in as Peter Quill steals an artifact, an orb, from an ancient temple (if that scene looks a little familiar...it's just the start of nods to the 70s and 80s that will make a lot of freeze frame fun later). It would take a lifetime of reading Marvel comics to understand all the characters and why Ronan and Thanos are baddies, but after a little planet hopping, the audience has all it needs to know without too much set up. We are here to see a talking raccoon and a sentient tree, after all!

All five main characters are flawed in ways that anyone can relate to, and for a group that doesn't initially get along, they come to treat each other with a lot of respect. Rocket, for example, could have been played solely for laughs and comic relief, but he's not just a cute funny animal. He delivers some devastating lines (which he can, because he's an animal). He might talk tough, but he's a softie inside. Likewise, the other characters stretch their personalities - Peter Quill finds a higher purpose, Gamora wants to redeem her past (and is never treated as a sex object - she rejects Quill's "pelvic sorcery", and Drax learns to love his enemy. Uh, I'm not sure what Groot's flaw is, maybe it's that he can only say three words - but his strength is definitely in his selfless actions. GotG does a great job of showing the characters - we don't have to sit through long and convoluted backstories. I guess that's important to note too - the movie treats the audience with respect as well. Surprisingly, the real lesson of GotG is that friendship is magic :D

It's tempting to see it again this weekend...we were excited for another piece of nostalgia, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but it looks more like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turkey, so we'll probably pass.

Edge of Tomorrow Review

We escaped from Choreville and To-Do Town to watch Edge of Tomorrow in 3D on the weekend. It was awesome, and I'm not even a fan of Tom Cruise (I prefer Matt Damon or Vin Diesel, at minimum). But the peculiarly non-aging Cruise did a fabulous job as a reluctant hero thrown into a battlefield.

We didn't know much about the movie except that it had scored high on Rotten Tomatoes and was described as a science fiction Groundhog Day. The mister has a soft spot for time travel movies, and this was a neat take on the genre. This movie was also totally made for fans of PC or video games. It's easy to relate to the endless grinding or change of plans required to get past a target. And the constant reloading and switching of equipment and ammo. With drop ships, futuristic exo-skeletons and battle ready marines, Edge of Tomrrow crosses from the XBox to the big screen. Once Cruise's character, Major Cage, learns the secret to ending the war, resetting is played for laughs (honestly, this was surprisingly funny once the grimness of it wore off) and he wearily tries new things each day in hopes of defeating the aliens, called mimics.

My husband was reminded of Independence Day; I thought of Starship Troopers. Edge of Tomorrow still finds something new to explore with such a simple humans versus aliens plot. It's never quite revealed why the mimics are here - at one point Cage finds himself in a bar with some speculating seniors, but he shuts them down by saying something like "It doesn't matter, because they're already here". That too, is an apt metaphor for conflict - we don't know why we're supporting something except that it's happening. After a while, I stopped caring about the alien conflict part and cared a lot more about how Cage and fellow soldier Rita Vrataski were going to solve their time trap. The human factor never gets bogged down in technology or CGI.

Emily Blunt, who we loved in Looper, was fabulous as Rita, who has also experienced the same effect and guides the hapless Cage through his new-found power. It is Cage's transformation from coward to hero which is the heart of the story and the movie never waivers from that. Edge of Tomorrow really impressed me by also sticking to "show, don't tell". It makes me cringe when a movie starts out by narration the backstory, because it means something has really gone wrong with the movie! But you won't go wrong at all with Edge of Tomorrow, trust me. We scarcely noticed that two hours had gone by because it was so engrossing.

Now I just have to get a copy of All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, which the movie is based on, and toss it on the to-read pile.

70s Saturday Sci-Fi Scans

Today's Swiss Army knife post is a book review, a movie preview and a 70s Sci fi scan, because the 70s could only have produced...

Rocket Raccoon

I have been gamely trying to get through this book since I bought it in November and really pushed to try and finish the original comics collected in Rocket Raccoon and Groot. It was one of those titles I had often heard about, but didn't want to spend hours digging for every year the local comic expo rolls around. Marvel has saved me from boxes of dusty newsprint by thoughtfully combining the original Groot comic, Rocket Raccoon comics and part of the new GotG series together in one volume.

Now, part of the excitement is that Bradley Cooper will be providing the voice for the plucky procyon lotor in Guardians of the Galaxy this summer. My anticipation for it has been been up and down - nothing is worse than a bad comic book movie after all - but then I found out Vin Diesel is voicing Groot. Groot is a tree. Let me rephrase that: One of my favourite actors is playing a CGI tree. 

The new trailer is out and I don't know what to think:

But let's dial back to the mists of time, when Groot first appeared in 1960. There's something dorky about a sentient space tree that terrorizes a town, and he meets a predictable, goofy end. Rocket shows up in 1976 with his furry pals, who are the guardians of the Keystone Quadrant and protectors of the Loonies - mentally ill people who...well, I really don't know what they do except bounce around in straitjackets. They all live on a planet called Halfworld, where competing toy companies start a war. Colourful, weird and punny sum up the original comics. At times they were almost unreadable, but then I went through a box of old Thor issues and realized it was just the style at the time - it was I, the reader who had changed! I can appreciate the editorial and creative freedom that abounded.

Even though the 2008-2010 comic version of Guardians of the Galaxy is slicker and well, more coherent in its narrative, it's hard to beat the sheer gleefulness of the 1970s series. Eye popping colour, dynamic action and a whole lot of weird, is something that comics have lost. The whole "dark and gritty" thing can get pretty old. Just look at this scene - killer clown tanks! Banana bombs! What?! There's creating something to send a message, and then there's creating a work just for the sheer fun of it. In that case, it's mission accomplished for Rocket Raccoon :-)

Click on over to Comixology where you can download the issues for your mobile device or just marvel (heh!) at the previews. I suppose I'll be back in a few more months reviewing the movie - until then, I'm going to try and figure out how they're going to make a cross-over with the Avengers ;-)

American Hustle Review

One of the things I love about Christmas vacation is doing normal people things, like sleeping in, staying up late and eating chocolate for breakfast. When your days are spent in an office from 8-4, it's easy to forget that there is a whole other world out there! Mom gave us movie passes that expired today, so it felt like playing hooky when we took off for the theatre last week. We had planned to see the only showing of non 3D Thor: The Dark World, but got there just too late. The Mister has a lazy eye which means 3D turns into headache vision.

But we were just in time to watch American Hustle, and after a quick check of Rotten Tomatoes, we sat down with a feedbag sized popcorn. Sometimes the best movies are the ones you know nothing about (I didn't even recognize Christian Bale) - and it's easy to see why American Hustle scored so high. The movie is drenched in the sights and sounds of the late 70s, and the cast is just superb in this fictional retelling of the ABSCAM scandal. If you like heist capers, you'll love the convoluted and complicated world of Irving Rosenfeld (Bale) and his partner/mistress, "Lady" Edith (Amy Adams), as they play federal agents and politicians, and each other too.

Overall, American Hustle felt like a toned down version of Goodfellas or Casino. There's very little violence for a crime caper, and I enjoyed the relationships between the characters. It's also very funny. There's a kind of beauty as the characters want to believe things about themselves and others - and convince others to do so as well (Edith is not British, but from New Mexico!). Irving's friendship with the mayor of Camden, Carmine, is surprisingly touching, and gets complicated when Irving realizes he's never had a real, sincere friend before. My favourite moment had to be a big reveal about Bradley Cooper's FBI agent, Richard DiMaso's personal life that I won't spoil here. Really, American Hustle is easily spoiled by the smallest details, so just get out there and see it :-) You won't regret it.

A lot of the acting was improvised, which showed - the acting was surprisingly real, adding another layer to the whole real/fake theme. Jennifer Lawrence was amazing as Irving's neglected and unstable wife, Roslyn. She was really channelling a spurned woman, and you just know that it's coming from a very personal place. After being confronted by Edith in the ladies room when the two accidentally meet, she plants a big kiss on Edith. There was no faking Amy Adams' shocked reaction! The crazier the scheme gets, the more stressed Irving becomes - and I was even beginning to feel stressed from watching Christian Bale.

My only complaint about the movie is that the ending wraps up a little too neatly after all the messiness, but at 138 minutes, it just ran out of time (as almost did my bladder). We definitely want to see it again, as there were a few places where all the plots, double crosses and characters left us trying to remember how it all connected afterwards.

70s Saturday Sci-Fi Scans

I was pretty sure there would be something Christmas themed in our collection - no luck. Not even a cheesy kids book where Santa saves Martian reindeer or something like that. But I did remember a cheesy kids Christmas special from the 70s. Hint: trivia ahead!

It's all too easy to link to the fabled Star Wars Christmas special (just like that!). Truly an awful, unwatchable show. The one part of the special that is often praised is the cartoon that introduces Boba Fett. Han Solo's squished in face aside, do you know why it's the best part? Because it's Canadian! The ten minute short was made by Nelvana, a studio notable for producing lots of service cartoons like Babar, Care Bears and more in the 1980s. But as I said before, there won't be a groovier time again like 1970s, when creative people had incredibly free rein. There's no other way to explain the existence of...

A Cosmic Christmas

There's no Santa, but there are a trio of intergalactic wise men who come to Earth to learn about the meaning of Christmas. Rendered in mostly black and blue, it's not very festive, it's actually kind of strange, but at least the sweet voice of Sylvia Tyson chimes in for a couple of short songs. I didn't watch it enough to feel nostalgic about it as an adult, but if it weren't for YouTube, I would have thought it was something I just totally imagined as a five year old!

Ender's Game Review

I came out of yesterday afternoon's showing of Ender's Game with a huge headache and feeling very confused. I even said so to Mr. Potenti. He started to helpfully explain what the entire movie was about. "No, no, no," I protested wearily. "not confused like that, but, confused." You know you have to be pretty confused when you don't even know why! 

The wild differences in reviews made us waffle about wanting to see it. People either love it or hate it. Some said it was close to the book, while others said chunks had been left out. But with nothing else to do but watch the snow fall, we were among the few who trekked out to the theatre - it was only half full. Neither of us have read the book, surprisingly enough, and it isn't hiding on the bookshelf. We went in with low expectations and none of that "Will the book be better than the movie?" baggage.

If you haven't read the book, it's about a young boy, Ender Wiggin, who demonstrates the skill and savvy to be a great battle commander against Earth's ant like enemies, the Formics. The Formics haven't attacked Earth for 50 years, but it won't stop the International Fleet from letting it happen again. Gifted children are trained in the ways of war and it is kind of painful to see them manipulated by a larger war machine against an enemy from a different generation. The world is so joyless for them. Heck, even in the first ten minutes we see Ender brutally beat up a kid who threatened him. Some reviewers have noted that the violence was toned down to make the children more acceptable to audiences. Ender's siblings, Peter and Valentine, flunked out of Battle School for not having the right stuff.

The story of an exceptionally skilled chosen child is a pretty standard one, and there are some that even accused JK Rowling of stealing from Ender's Game. In these stories the reader or viewer enjoys the growth of the character from orphan/deck scrubber/thief to president/admiral/CEO. Maybe that's what was wrong - Ender is quickly promoted through the ranks and there really is no sense of time passing. He comes out on the other end looking exactly the same (in the book it takes years). This is one of the reasons why I don't feel it's a movie for young people - there's no emotional or physical growth to Ender.

I rewatched the trailers, and still don't understand what I saw. There's no romance between Petra and Ender, and to be honest, the two trailers kind of give a lot a way :\. Graff makes the other children hate Ender, but he ends up making friends. Graff says he plans to isolate him, but he never seems to be that way - there's no sense that the geeky Ender is lonely, just a loner.

The special effects, set designs and battle scenes were pretty good, although not really thrilling. One could almost wait for the DVD because there aren't any eye popping effects. The design of the Formic ships were cool, although the constant blue grey tone of Battle School felt oppressive at times. Maybe that's what gave me the headache! The cast was stellar and has too much talent to fail, although Ben Kingsley gets such a small role. The cast was racially diverse and Asa Butterfield was simply stellar as Ender. And although Harrison Ford played Hyram Graff lazily, he pulled off grumpy old warmonger pretty well. It would seem that Ender's Game is just a technically well done movie without the heart and story to go along with it. The movie starts out decently, but gets choppier and choppier in the second half trying to cram more and more in (and it's 114 minutes by the way). Maybe the reason I felt so beat up by the end was that it was too hard to suspend my disbelief - every scene change and little inconsistency wore my brain down. Despite being an opening weekend, the audience lacked the usual buzz and energy, so maybe it just wasn't me. When Ender triumphs, the feeling just wasn't there in the theatre. I left without feeling entertained, unsure of the point of the film and confused about what it was trying to accomplish. Ender's Game would have been better served by being released in two parts, but no studio would want to take a chance on that. Some have said that it was an unfilmable, but it's just a story not well-told :\

Yesteday I remarked how I was glad that the movie wasn't made in the 80s - it would have looked awful! Today we joked that we don't own a copy of 1984's The Last Starfighter, where a teenager is recruited for his video game prowess. It runs about the same time as Ender's Game, but even with its cheap effects and dorky haircuts, it would seem a vastly superior and well-told story about the militarization of young people.

Riddick Review

I'm not sure where to start with a review of Riddick, which we watched last night in a packed theatre. There were no drink fumblers this time and no talkers. Although, at the quietest, most tense part of the movie, there was a bag crinkler! The bottom line is, was I entertained? Yes. Did I think the movie was good? Yes. Did the movie have flaws? Yes. Was it a waste of $16? Nope! 

It is an R-rated movie, so the language is naughty, the violence squishy and red (think Robocop), and there's some briefly frontal female nudity, so be warned. Also, mild spoilers ahead.

I am shameless in my affection for Vin Diesel, so that was a big plus for me right there. I'd watch a movie of the man reading the phone book (even better if Matt Damon co-starred). The Riddick character is unique too, being neither all good or all bad. 

The beginning of the movie catches up with Riddick as he waits for his leg to heal after being deposed as Lord Marshall of the Necromongers - it turns out he wasn't doing that great a job. It does help to see the first two movies because the third contains a lot of references to them. After the success of Pitch Black, Chronicles of Riddick was an overblown CGI fest that kind of tanked the series for nine years. So just as Riddick tries to find his earlier success by becoming uncivilized again, so too does the movie with a bare bones budget and setting. It is similar enough to Pitch Black without being a complete remake. Riddick thankfully abandons the cheesy red, yellow and blue filters and is mostly yellow in hue. This is a nice change from the blue/orange colour schemes newer movies are bathed in.

Realizing his only hope to get off planet is to bring a ship to him, he activates an emergency beacon and then waits for the mercenary murder spree to begin. This middle part was my favourite and done really well - the mercenaries are jumpy, but overconfident. They are a brutal, ragtag bunch who are disgusting in their awfulness. It's easier to write a hero part than a villain, but their leader, Santana, is as gritty and ugly as they come. Maybe just a few notches down from Angel Eyes in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, if you need a comparison. They are joined by another mercenary group, who have all the trappings of being good. Meanwhile Riddick haunts the place, and yes, there's even a shower scene. Such little nods to horror films abound. The movie trips and falls in the last act, however. Endings seem to be a problem for Hollywood lately. The ending to Elysium could have been less ham handed, for example. Skyfall and Star Trek: Into Darkness made viewers sit through multiple possible endings.

It is possible to still enjoy a flawed movie though. Riddick reminded me of Aliens and Predator and had that gleeful violence and deadpan humour that 80s movies are known for. The scene with the Necromongers at the beginning could have been cut along with a few characters. In trying to be faithful to Pitch Black, it feels all over the place.

Riddick is the kind of movie where thinking too much about it will drive you crazy. There were a lot of odd choices in the movie that could have definitely been done better, especially in the dialogue between Riddick and Dahl (Katee Sackhoff). Dahl is never a damsel in distress, and I loved how she kicked butt. 

Yet I'm not ready to write Riddick off as completely brainless either with thoughtful set choices and minor details. The gritty, rusty mercenary outpost was a nice change from the bright and sleek sets found in other movies, and I liked how the motorcycles had English horse saddles for seats. One ship sports a heraldic shield, suggesting valiance, honour and a family history. Early on, Riddick comes across the last vestiges of a civilization and makes a tomb like sleeping place there. There's a nod to the resurrection later when he has escaped from it. The problem with Riddick, maybe, is that there was far too much choice for the filmmakers. They didn't want to save things - scenes, characters or dialog - for another movie. They threw it all in a pot and hoped for the best. The end result is palatable and pleasing, but not quite gourmet.

But don't take just my word for it - Rotten Tomatoes has plenty more opinions, from critics and average folks alike.