Mad Max: Fury Road
First things first: I hated the trailer for this movie, more than almost any trailer I’ve ever seen. So arch, so cloying, so outsize for its own sake, every image and mashup car and face-painted villain clearly aiming to be the Next Film Icon. All sizzle and no steak, like Kim Jong Un’s ersatz chest-medals or The Donald’s self-anointed coat of arms. So it was with deep reservation that I agreed to see this, eking out the best possible circumstantial counterweights — reclining seating and a colossal ICEE.But Mad Max: Fury Road is, to be honest, nowhere near the hollow self-aggrandizing yawnfest its trailer suggests. I mean, it’s self-aggrandizing, sure, but it’s an interesting and ultimately quite thoughtful action film. It gets a surprising amount done story-wise with only minimal dialogue and a measured, almost subtle pace of exposition — which is strange in such a brazen, howling, in-your-face post-apocalyptic car chase movie. There’s more to Fury Road than meets the eye, and while random gas-rubber-and-steel action sequences do roar on and on, little chips of story drop out. It’s deeply thematic — about women and power and religion and hope and salvation and memory — and visually unparalleled, I give it that. (The chimeric bare-metal hot rods and blinded figurehead metal guitarist are over the top, sure, but it all works better than I thought it could.) My complaints are that it’s all just too much at times — too heavy, too loud, too exaggerated, too unrealistic, too trite — and it’s mistitled in that Mad Max (played by Tom Hardy) in fact plays a fairly quiet second fiddle to Charlize Theron‘s Furiosa — but it’s a triumph of minimalist storytelling and, yes, fine, visually iconic.
Haus Verdict: Go see this. You’ll find something to like here, even if it’s not the revolutionary be-all-and-end-all that so many fanboys, and whoever baited them with that wretched trailer, seem to think.
Pitch Perfect 2
The first Pitch Perfect was, to my mind at least, something of a sleeper hit. A film about college acapella that was equal parts Glee and Bridesmaids and brought in a $65 million windfall against a $17 million outlay. It was fun, cheery, had some good musical mashups (which do please yours truly), and Elizabeth Banks. Oh, and Anna Kendrick singing some stuff. It worked. As, by the numbers, has its sequel, — doubling the budget to $29 million and already spinning up a fat $70 million pocket roll on opening weekend alone. Sequels sell. What they don’t do, often, is improve on the original, and this is no exception. Yes, Pitch Perfect 2 is a fun movie. Yes, it has the usual complement of “Rebel Wilson is fat” jokes, vocal covers of popular dance tracks, Barden Bellas “finding their voice” and facing steep competition. But it’s lacking the college feel of the first one. There, Beca struggled with the paradigm shift of first year university — new friends, new dorm room, new extracurriculars, parental adjustments. Here, there’s a freshman Bella singer — a thinly veiled and quite possibly ill-advised plant to drive Pitch Perfect 3 now that all the principals are graduating — who faces precisely none of these issues. We don’t see a single shot of her dorm, her friends, her adjustment, her new life. She exists only as an accessory to the Bellas’ story, and that’s too bad. It’s the environment and personal journey that give great college films heart. And yes, I’m including Van Wilder in that.
This outing is directed by Elizabeth Banks, which interested me some — but not as much as sharp detour to dramatically more potent racial jokes this time out. I’m not exactly a sensitive ear, but do these add much? Elizabeth? Story isn’t super strong either. The rivalry here is contrived, and as is the drama. Keegan-Michael Key though — who you’ll remember most recently as Obama’s anger translator at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner — is brilliant.
Haus Verdict: Not a great sequel, but the music is good, the film is fun, it’s upbeat, and — strange racial overtones aside — is unlikely to upset anyone. Which is why, I guess, it’s making so much money.
After I left the cinema having seen MM:FR I almost wrote you asking for a Haus review ASAP. Looks like that request would have been premature. Hell I would have asked for one after seeing the trailer, which I thought was one of the few recent ones that makes a case for seeing the film on the big screen.
I’m sure you can understand, then, my surprise at your thoughts. It has CARS. Ok, not Formula 1. But it’s a bunch of race/chase scenes in open desert locales with more action than one can possibly internalize. The dialogue is purposefully bland, terse, and frankly terrible. I also found the storytelling lacking, although the themes were admirable. This is a spectacular film in the sense of being veritable spectacle.
Also, no mention of George Miller himself? I know this is an SJ post, but thoughts on whether he is deserving of the accolades now at his feet?
Lastly, how can you not love names like Toast the Knowing and Cheedo the Fragile? (I am a huge fan of the Doof Warrior, aka the metal guitarist, by the way.)
CLG — it’s all too arch! Too self-aware. Too knowing. I liked the other side of it — the sometimes subtle storytelling. The cars and all — too much, too overdone. I actually like it less the more I think about it…
A rare Haus-CLGJr disagreement!
#ouch