A Few Thoughts After A First Viewing of Mad Max: Fury Road

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Best of 2015, Charlize Theron, cinema, film reviews, films, first thoughts, George Miller, Mad Max, Mad Max: Fury Road, Movies, Tom Hardy

In almost all cases, I prefer to ruminate on a film before I sit down and try to attempt any manner of critique or discussion. In honor of George Miller’s rule-breaking little film Mad Max: Fury Road, however, I’ve decided to break my self-imposed rules and offer some initial thoughts on the film, straight from my very first viewing (the credits have just finished, as we speak). Keep in mind that, as with any and everything on The VHS Graveyard, these are the thoughts of a very stubborn and obnoxious individual and should, of course, be taken with the utmost caution. In that spirit, then: my initial thoughts:

— There is no better paced action film this year than Fury Road. After thirty minutes of break-neck, ceaseless action, Miller takes a little breath…before going into the next half hour of ceaseless action. It’s the same concept behind the best songs: build to epic proportions…wait…and then…slam the guitar solo in your face. Fury Road is the Pixies song of action films.

— Isn’t it about goddamn time we had an action film that not only featured a kickass female lead but an overtly female focus? This isn’t simply the case of having CT whip ass from one sandstorm to the next (more on that later): this is the case of having a film in a traditionally misogynist genre (I can rib cuz I love) where the female characters are not only not helpless damsels in distress but are active participants in their own salvations. This, friends and neighbors, is not the status quo.

— And while we’re talking about kickass heroes…holy shit…did ya get a load of Furiosa? Effortlessly, casually, leisurely amazing (her quick fix with the wrench is poetry), Theron’s Furiosa is, without a doubt, an iconic character, easily in league with a genre mainstay like Lt. Ripley. It’s tempting to call Hardy the lead, simply because he’s got his name in the title, but take a look at who really moves the machine.

— And what about Hardy? I’ll admit: I’ve never been bonkers on the guy, although I’ve enjoyed him from time to time. Here, his Eastwood (but mumblier) routine is so good it hurts. Or looks like it does, at least. As a total geek for the original trio, it was always gonna be hard to replace Gibson in my head: with Fury Road, Hardy went a long way towards showing me my fears were unfounded. Max Rockatansky: thy name…just might be Tom Hardy, after all!

— The world-building in this is simply stunning. And I mean that in an age where that particular term has probably lost a lot of luster: the world-building is stunning. This isn’t some half-assed “five years in the future,” people in a white office, funny lights on the wall kinda bullshit…this is the real McCoy, Jack! This is the kind of fully immersive world that lets you leave your questions at the door and just live it: there’s so much getting thrown at the screen, at any given point, that’s all but impossible to pick up the details on one viewing (says the guy who’s only seen it once). The fact that there are no easy answers only makes it that more mysterious, leading us into our next point…

— There are no hands held here and no desire, whatsoever, to dumb the film down to fit a modern aesthetic. Need an info dump to keep up? Stay confused, sunshine. Need a preexisting set of characters in order to feel safe within the chaos of a complicated storyline? Don’t let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya. Unlike pretty much every superhero, comic book, fantasy or sci-fi film in recent memory, Miller’s Fury Road doesn’t see fit to hammer audiences with all the pertinent backstory, minutiae, repetitive details and tedious A-B bullshit that they think they need: Miller knows that the film stands on its own and he’s more than happy to let audiences come to it that way or not at all.

The film starts in high gear and only ratchets up from there: any breaks in the action aren’t to allow for needless information downloads (so-and-so is the so-and-so of so-and-so so blah di blah) so much as to give audiences a chance to take a breath and relax for a beat. Same basic idea behind roller-coasters. Most importantly, let Miller be the shot across the bow in a new war on information: audiences don’t have to know every single aspect of a film. Once upon a time, we were allowed to use our imaginations to supplement what we saw: Miller is giving us the greatest gift of all by giving that back to us. We’d be fools not to take it with open arms.

— The effects and actions sequences in Fury Road are so astounding that Miller just throws away sequences that would be centerpieces in other films.  It’s like a car maker saying, “Well, it’s a Stingray but it’s not a Rolls Royce…toss it on the scrap heap.”

— Immortan Joe is a great villain but never really gets the chance to be a truly despicable one, ala Toecutter in the first film. I’m not saying he’s not one totally cool dude, mind you, but I have a feeling the most interesting part of Joe’s tale happened just prior to this film.

— There’s a lot of sensory overload in the film but that axe-rockin’ mutant dude is always gonna be a highlight. That’s what I see whenever I headbang to Maiden.

— This film manages to (inadvertently) make a better version of Dune than the actual film.

— The “blue swamp” scenes (capped by that bit that stomps Sin City into mush) are pretty damn amazing.

— I spent the entire two hours on the edge of my seat. That’s actually a lie: I spend a fair portion of the time standing up, as well.

— In a very full, very rich year of genre cinema, Mad Max: Fury Road still manages to effortlessly rise to the top of the pack. Is it the best film I’ve seen this year? I believe it is. With a week to go, will The Revanant and Hateful Eight top it? To be honest, I’m not sure. They don’t make movies like Fury Road any more. Well, actually, someone does. His name is George Miller and I think he just sent everybody back to square one.

11/6/14: One Is the Loneliest Number

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Andrew Scott, Ben Daniels, Bill Milner, British films, cheating husbands, cinema, Dickon Hinchliffe, dramas, Eastern Promises, film reviews, films, foreign films, Haris Zambarloukos, illegitimate child, infidelity, isolation, Ivan Locke, Locke, midlife crisis, Movies, Olivia Colman, one interior, one-location, Redemption, Ruth Wilson, set in a car, Steven Knight, Tom Hardy, Tom Holland, UK films, writer-director

From time to time, I find myself presented with films that are a lot easier to respect and appreciate than to actually like: normally, this comes from intensely unpleasant, disturbing horror fare but I sometimes get this same experience from more traditional films, such as writer-director Steven Knight’s Locke (2013). While the film is exceptionally well-crafted and makes great use of its “one actor, one location” conceit, I found it impossible to connect with the main character on any meaningful level, rendering the film more of a style exercise than the dramatic character portrait that it obviously aims to be. Nonetheless, Locke ends up being a dazzling, if subtle, bit of craftmanship and gives Tom Hardy one more mildly intriguing character portrayal to add to his resume.

Hardy is Ivan Locke, the titular “hero” of Knight’s film, although “hero” is a bit of a stretch. More than anything, Locke is a man with his back to the wall, almost entirely thanks to his own doing. When we first him, Locke is leaving a construction site in the wee, dark hours of the morning, heading off for points unknown: the entire rest of the film will consist of nothing but the character driving, all interactions with other characters coming via his frequent phone conversations. Right off the bat, we’re thrown into the deep end, coming into the story in media res as Locke tries to deal with various problems, the chief one being thus: in the morning, he’s supposed to be overseeing the single largest concrete pour in European history (outside of military and nuclear installations) but he’s currently driving in the opposite direction, racing across town to a hospital. At the hospital, Locke’s middle-aged secretary, Bethan (Olivia Colman), is preparing to give birth to a child that’s the product of her and Ivan’s one-night stand. Determined to do “the right thing,” regardless of the consequences, Locke has promised to be there for the birth of the child, even though any problems with the construction job will cost his company upwards of $100 million, effectively wiping them from the face of the earth.

And then, of course, there’s the little issue of his family: neither his loving wife, Katrina (Ruth Wilson), nor his young sons Eddie (Tom Holland) and Sean (Bill Milner), have any idea that Ivan is about to blow their happy world apart. When Ivan calls his wife to explain why he won’t be home, the situation goes from zero to one hundred in seconds, with a devastated Katrina giving Ivan the ultimate ultimatum: get home now or don’t come home at all. Ivan is a “principled” man, however, and he’s determined to see his decision through to its necessary conclusion, even as his boss, Gareth (Ben Daniels) screams at him, his kids innocently relay details of a football game that Ivan should have been home watching and Bethan, whom Ivan slept with out of “sympathy,” proclaims her love for a man that she knows doesn’t care about her. As his personal life collapses around his ears, Ivan must also deal with his co-worker, Donal (Andrew Scott), as he tries to troubleshoot him through one work problem after another. Through it all, however, Locke seems to have one mantra running through his head: fix the job and he can fix his marriage. Life is never that easy, however, and as the night rolls on, Locke may just be running out of time…and luck.

Let’s get one thing squared away up front: Locke is a meticulously crafted film that provides a more than suitable showcase for the kind of understated performance that Hardy is capable of when not surrounded by CGI explosions. Cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos makes great use of the film’s one location, giving us plenty of beautifully-lit shots of the twinkling night outside Locke’s car, as well as the dark, dashboard-lit interior. The musical score, by Dickon Hinchliffe, is suitably droney and atmospheric, helping to add tension to scenes that are, literally, just Tom Hardy talking into a car phone. In all respects, Locke’s central conceit could have been its downfall but it ends up working spectacularly, similar to the coffin-locale of the Ryan Reynolds-starrer Buried (2010). Far from being a dull, monotonous affair, Locke is consistently engaging, albeit relentlessly straight-forward.

The biggest issue, at least as far as I’m concerned, is that Ivan Locke is never a sympathetic character: he’s a human wrecking ball whose strict adherence to an ill-defined code of “ethics” propels the film’s narrative in the same way that the T-rex got rid of those pesky raptors in Jurassic Park (1993). Ivan’s motivations are never clear: he obviously has no interest in Bethan and still feels a connection to his family, yet he consistently makes decisions that put him on opposite ends of the spectrum. While the film’s conclusion hints at a resolution, of sorts, the whole thing feels so unemotional and cold as to be largely academic: it’s as if Locke reasoned out the pros and cons of everything, tallied the results and came up with as scientific a response as possible.

This cold detachment sits at distinct odds with the film’s few moments of genuine passion: Locke’s angry explosion when he realizes that Donal is getting drunker by the phone call…the bit where tears roll down his cheeks as his son describes a football goal that couldn’t be less important in the grand scheme of things…these are the little moments, the sparks that threaten to bring Locke to glorious, blazing life, only for Hardy’s composed frown and slightly distracted demeanor to douse the flames. It’s often been said that Stanley Kubrick’s best films were cold and mannered to a fault: while I’ve never agreed with that particular criticism, it’s one that I can level at Locke without a moment’s hesitation…the film is cool, mannered and detached to a fault, bleeding away most of the impact in the process.

Knight, who also wrote and directed the dour Jason Statham-vehicle Redemption (2013), as well as the screenplay for David Cronenberg’s amazing Eastern Promises (2007), is an obviously gifted filmmaker who displays the same eye for the dark, neon-lit gutters of humanity that Nicholas Winding Refn does, albeit without Refn’s trademark deft touch. Despite feeling disengaged from the main character and emotional beats, Locke was always a pleasure to watch, a similar feeling that I had when I first saw Redemption. I’ll always be the biggest supporter of tricky, against-the-grain filmmakers you’ll run into, so there’s no way I won’t give Locke at least a recommendation, no matter how slight. That being said, I can’t shake the feeling that Knight’s sophomore production could have been so much more powerful if I…you know…actually cared about any of the characters. Style over substance? Perhaps but I’m more than willing to accept a ride from Knight the next time he decides to prowl the nocturnal streets.

7/4/14: Moonshine Over My Hammy

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bad cops, based on a book, based on a true story, Benoit Delhomme, bootleggers, brothers, Chris McGarry, cinema, corrupt law enforcement, Dane DeHaan, film reviews, films, Gary Oldman, Guy Pearce, Jason Clarke, Jessica Chastain, John Hillcoat, Lawless, Mia Wasikowska, moonshine, Movies, Nick Cave, period-piece, romance, set in the 1930s, Shia LeBeouf, the Great Depression, The Proposition, The Road, Tom Hardy, voice-over narration

There are some writer/director relationships that end up bearing more interesting fruit than others and the pairing of Australian director John Hillcoat and post-punk savant Nick Cave is certainly one of those. Beginning with the brutal Ghosts…of the Civil Dead (1988) and continuing on into the equally raw The Proposition (2005), Hillcoat and Cave have proved a formidable team: Hillcoat is a masterful director who’s able to wring genuine pathos out of Cave’s often unpleasant, animalistic but eternally vital characters. Stylistically, Cave’s voice approximates Cormac McCarthy’s tales of moral decay, explosive violence and doomed fatalism, which are only complimented by Hillcoat’s panoramic, sweeping visuals. When it was revealed that Hillcoat and Cave’s next pairing would be an adaptation of Matt Bondurant’s novel about his bootlegging family, The Wettest County in the World, I was interested to see how the two native Australians would be able to bring their particular vision to bear on Prohibition-era rural Virginia. Turns out, there’s still plenty of brutality to go around, although Lawless (2012) ends up feeling like a much different beast than either Ghosts…of the Civil Dead or The Proposition.

Lawless involves the various machinations of the Bondurant family: brothers Jack (Shia LaBeouf), Forrest (Tom Hardy) and Howard (Jason Clarke). The brothers run one of the biggest, most impressive bootlegging operations in rural Virginia and are something of local gods, particularly when one factors in the local legend about the Bondurant’s invincibility (an interesting hint of magical realism that also informed bits of The Proposition). Brutish, laconic Forrest is the defacto leader, although youngest brother, Jack, is our entry point into the story. He’s the “new generation,” as it were, and constantly strains at the restraints that he feels are placed by his more cautious older brothers. Jack also idolizes urban gangster Floyd Banner (Gary Oldman), a flashy, tommy-gun-wielding hothead who bears more than a passing resemblance to the legendary “Pretty Boy” Floyd. Forrest, for his part, just wants life to keep going as it has been: the family has managed to carve out their own piece of happiness and success amid the turmoil of the Great Depression and Forrest will do anything to protect their way of life.

Trouble, as it often does, ends up riding into town in the person of sleazy G-man Charlie Rakes (Guy Pearce). Rakes, all ash-white complexion, plucked eyebrows and fastidious dislike of dirt and germs, is a mealy-mouthed monster and just about as far from “law and order” as a lawman can get. Together with corrupt Virgina Commonwealth Attorney, Mason Wardell (Tim Tolin), Rakes is more interested in shaking the Bondurants down and taking a cut of their profits than he is in eliminating the run of moonshine from Franklin County out to the rest of the bone-dry state. Hard-headed Forrest won’t budge, however, initiating a war between the bootleggers of Franklin County and Rakes. As the casualties build up on both sides, the polar ends of the Bondurant clan must deal with their own issues: Forrest begins a halting, tentative relationship with Maggie (Jessica Chastain), a waitress at the Bondurants’ “bar,” while Jack tries to court Bertha Minnix (Mia Wasikowska), the virginal daughter of a local fundamentalist preacher. When Forrest is ambushed and injured during a liquor delivery that Jack was supposed to back him up on, Jack decides to strike a deal with Floyd Banner, which irks Forrest and creates a division in the family. As the corrupt feds close in and their fellow bootleggers either fall in line or are outright killed, the Bondurants must make a desperate last stand to preserve their way of life. Will Forrest be able to pulverize the problem into submission or has his luck (and invincibility) finally run out?

While Lawless has moments of abject brutality that nearly rival anything in Hillcoat and Cave’s previous films (the scene where Forrest beats ten shades of red out of a pair of barroom louts with some brass knuckles manages to be both immensely horrifying and primally satisfying, while the scene where Rakes’ men tar and feather a bootlegger is just horrifying), this is a much “softer” film than either Ghosts…or The Proposition. For one thing, Hillcoat and Cave break up the brutality with the twin romance angles, which bring some delicate balance to the proceedings: while the relationship between Jack and Bertha often feels a bit silly and clichéd, there’s some genuine pathos to the tender, wounded courtship between the formerly big-city Maggie and the resolutely grim Forrest. While neither romance ever really takes center stage, they both serve as decent enough ways to break up the near constant stream of beatings (poor Jack gets wailed on at least three separate times, including once by his own brother), shootings and stabbings, along with the odd rape and tar-and-feathering here and there.

While Lawless looks absolutely gorgeous (veteran French cinematographer Benoit Delhomme provides us with some truly striking, beautiful images, as well as a really evocative way with hard shadows and dark areas), the whole film is let-down by the often out-of-place acting. Hardy, in particular, is frequently kind of awful but there isn’t a single performance in the film that feels genuine or rings true. Perhaps the award here must go Guy Pearce, however, who plays Rakes right to the cheap seats and comes up with something akin to a mustache-twirling Bond villain. LaBeouf (who can be decent-enough, given the right role) feels severely light-weight as Jack and Jason Clarke gets so little to do as “other brother” Howard that I kept wondering if most of his character arc got left on the cutting-room floor. Only Chastain (who’s always been hit-or-miss for me) acquits herself admirably as Maggie: there’s genuine pain in her performance but there’s also some steel there, too, a fighting impulse that somehow seems both more real and more feral than the one ascribed to Hardy’s character.

With more fine-tuned, realistic performances, Lawless would be a much better film, although it’s still decidedly lightweight when compared to Hillcoat and Cave’s other collaborations. There were several points during the film, not least of which during a thoroughly unnecessary closing tag, where it felt like Hillcoat lets the material get away from him and the tone had a tendency to flop violently between breezy, musical montage action scenes and moments such as the one where a character is “reverse-gutted” from tailbone to neckbone. This back-and-forth was also evident, to a much smaller degree, in The Proposition but Lawless’ tone feels less structured and more haphazard. When the film works, it works spectacularly well: the combination of the Depression-era setting, extreme violence and a rousing bluegrass-ish score never cease to get the blood-pumping. When one steps back to examine the film as a whole, however, it seems to come up a bit short. It’s a pity, really: there seems to be a really intense, gritty story locked inside but the constant overacting took me out so often that I ended up viewing events in a much more clinical manner than I would have liked. The greatest criticism that I can level against Lawless is that, for the first time, Hillcoat and Cave appear to have created something that feels disposable rather than essential. Here’s to hoping that their next partnership bears better fruit than this one.