"Mad Max: Fury Road" Review

OP-ROB RATING: BENCH

A whole lot of fury. Not. Much. Else....

About half way through “Mad Max: Fury Road”, Max leaves the overheated "war rig" and his band of survivors to try and save them from an oncoming enemy. This oncoming enemy happens to be a dune buggy packed with assailants armed to the teeth with machine guns and other weapons of destruction. Max departs carrying only his clothes and a can of gasoline. He walks down the road into the fog and out of view. A few moments later we see a large explosion and Max emerges back from the fog carrying belts of ammunition and a bag full of guns and more ammunition. What did Max do? How did he do it? The entire scene takes place off-camera and we are simply left to guess. If you walk into “Fury Road” expecting answers for every character and explanations for how this all came to be, then you will not enjoy the film. However, if you are a person who can stand back and just soak up the vivid imagination of director George Miller splatter onto the screen, then the reward will be all yours.

The last Mad Max film, Beyond “Thunderdome”, was released thirty years ago in 1985. The franchise began with the original “Mad Max” in 1979 and was followed by “The Road Warrior” in 1981. Obviously filmmaking has come a long way since those early years, and after seeing “Fury Road” it is clear that director George Miller has not missed a beat. The appeal of the early Mad Max films were in the epic road chases featuring Max battling crazy people. From 1979 to 1985 the franchise became increasingly weird. The energy-crisis setting from the first film deteriorated into a full-blown post-apocalyptic wasteland in the third, and the villain’s went from being normal human being psychopaths to being deformed freakish psychopaths. Regarding the earlier films, Miller has once again ramped up the weird in “Fury Road” and has injected more action and more special effects than ever before.

            Mad Max portrayed by Tom Hardy is a survivalist who “runs from both the living and the dead… a man reduced to a single instinct: survive.” As is apparent from the opening scene, Max is haunted by people he has failed to save and is visited by their faces in flashbacks throughout the movie. The backstory regarding the “Fury Road” version of Mad Max is barely explained. All we can really tell is that he has been in “the struggle” for quite some time. He has long scraggly hair and a Duck Dynasty beard and his iconic V8 Interceptor is a cobbled mess of what it was in the earlier films. The film’s opening is short and is narrated by Max as he explains basics of his situation. This narration is curtailed when Max has to flee from a group of enemies.  Max is captured and in the first few minutes of the movie the audience is boldly thrust into the hostile, derelict wasteland that George Miller has been dreaming up over the past thirty years.

            The guys who captured Max belong to a group known as “war boys” or “half-lives”. They are unhealthily skinny, bald, severely scarred and all look the same. These high-energy creeps serve Immortan Joe, lord of the citadel, in a cult-like fashion. For their sacrifice in his service and a glorious death in battle he promises them “You shall ride eternal. Shiny and chrome.” Joe is played by Hugh Keays-Byrne, who actually played the main villain in the original Mad Max. Clearly very old and in ailing health, Joe waddles around the in the top of his kingdom drinking fresh water and impregnating his “breeders”, beautiful women imprisoned in his lair. The citadel is this massive rock structure complete with an aquifer, hanging gardens, and a massive elevator operated by the “war boys”. The peasants of the citadel all mull around beneath the structure begging for water. Joe sometimes pours water down onto the people through two gargantuan faucets on the citadel, but cuts off the flow before anyone can really quench their thirst. The economy of this world is defined by fuel and water, both of which Joe has plenty. As you can imagine, logistics in a post apocalyptic wasteland can be quite dangerous, the road is wrought with marauders and rival armies. That is why Joe employs Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) who drives a battle-ready big rig from town to town to conduct trade. In an act of mutiny, Furiosa helps the breeders escape the citadel and embarks on a journey to the “green place” where the women can live fulfilling lives. Joe freaks out and sends his entire army of War Boys after the big rig. Max comes along for the ride strapped to the front of one of the War Boys’ buggies. This particular War Boy is named Nux (Nicholas Hoult) and needs Max as a “blood bag” so that he has the energy to join in the chase.

            The setting for “Fury Road” is quite spectacular. However, nothing is really explained and we are left guessing about 95% of the plot and the characters. The timeline of the Mad Max films is not continued with Fury Road, and the backstory for the movie will actually be revealed in a series of comic books being released by DC comics. The world that Miller has created is intricately designed, intense, and undeniably unique. Everything from the War Boys down to the explosive tipped javelins they use in battle are unlike anything I have ever seen before in a movie. From the opening scene the pace is high and the action non-stop. For those people who are fans of the devastating car chases in the earlier films, “Fury Road” will be more than pleasing.

            On the other hand, “Fury Road” is not thoroughly explained at all. The plot is muddled, and too many of the characters prove only to be set pieces for the aura Miller is trying to create. Behind the carnage and weirdness Miller is trying to convey a message of environmentalism and feminism, yet neither idea is fleshed out enough to make any sense. By the end of the movie I felt somewhat misled, and unhappy with Max’s character development. Tom Hardy was more vocal in the role of Bane in “The Dark Knight Rises” than as Max Rockatansky in “Fury Road.” Perhaps none of those complaints matter though. Perhaps “Fury Road” needs no explanation. Perhaps George Miller has decided to show his audience that “yes” he can contend with Michael Bay in the area of special effects and that he can keep producing some of the most eccentric characters and pieces in film. If Miller’s goal was to deliver a movie that will be remembered for its action and not for its narrative heft, then he has certainly succeeded. However, as a member of a 21st century audience living in a time with complex and interesting issues, is a movie like “Fury Road” really worth watching? Can’t I find something that might expand my mind a little bit? Make me think in a new way about something? “Fury Road” makes subtle points regarding the role of women and the health of our planet, but just as Max fades out of view in the fog, so do those important subjects, and in the end all we get are explosions.

"GETT: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem" Review

OP-ROB RATING: ALL-STAR

“GETT: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem” is a French-Israeli film that takes place in only two rooms, each with blank white walls lit by fluorescent lights. There are no special effects, or mind-bending plot twists. In fact, “GETT” is just dialogue and nothing more. It is also the most complex film I have seen in the past year.

            The film takes place in Israel and explores the trial of a woman named Viviane Amsalem played by Ronit Elkabetz. The story is quite simple: Viviane wants a divorce from her husband Elisha (Simon Abkarian). Unfortunately, this is no easy task for a woman living in Israel. For a divorce to be finalized in a religious court, the man must give his consent and the woman can only plead her case.

            One would assume that the film has a major conflict marked by a scandalous husband refusing his wife a divorce, but in “GETT” this is not the case at all. Elisha is a good husband by all definitions. He is an honest man, he provides for his family, he is a devout Jew, and he is also very flexible with his wife's desires. Viviane is a good wife. She has raised two beautiful and trustworthy children, she is loyal to her husband, yet through all of this she is unhappy and wants a divorce. As the film paces along and small tidbits of information are collected through hearing after hearing, the root of the conflict becomes clearer.

Elisha is a traditional Jew, and his vision of a good marriage falls in line with what his society values as a good marriage. Viviane’s ideal marriage clearly does not fall in line with what Elisha believes, and throughout the film she never really tells us her perfect situation.

            What is made undeniably clear is that the two are “incompatible”. They simply do not get along. This is thoroughly outlined as the depositions get more and more intense within the court.

The trial ultimately boils down to religious marriage versus independent marriage. One has tangible objectives like noble children and a specific role for the wife in the household. The other is more geared toward personal pleasure and happiness.  The impossible question is which type of marriage is the “right” one. The reality is that all people fall somewhere on a spectrum and you really can’t group all marriages into one category or the other. And it is always very hard to characterize a marriage as “good” or “bad” or “right” or “wrong”.

Going into the theater I thought that I would be seeing an intense movie about how women are mistreated in a country closely aligned in the United States. I was prepared for some strong feminist undertones and a vivid statement at the end. However, “GETT” really wasn’t about feminism or the mistreatment of women. It was about marriage and the grounds on which one should be broken. For all the flash and intricate plots that constantly stream out of Hollywood, sometimes the most compelling films are the most simple. What really matters? “GETT: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem” seeks to answer this question regarding an institution that affects each and every one of us. 

"It Follows" Review

OP-ROB RATING: LEGEND

Do you feel your child is prey to the rampant hook up culture of today? Are your warnings of a tainted marriage and STDs not enough to keep him/her celibate? Well a sufficiently harsh message just came out in theaters last Friday. "It Follows", a horror film by David Robert Mitchell is enough to scare even the most determined teenager out of testing the humidity.

Some horror movies simply stick to real-life scares. Such as a serial killer or a kidnapper. Others choose to employ the supernatural to frighten their viewers. Those that do are challenged with the difficult task of finding the balance between telling-all and leaving the viewer in total confusion. The consequences of either extreme results in an overload of exposition or in the audience leaving the theater saying to themselves, "None of that made any sense... What the hell was going on?” These films must inform the viewer what it is they are dealing with, while keeping that all-important aura of mystery and darkness. "It Follows" manages to do this spectacularly.    

Jay, played by Maika Monroe has sex with Hugh (Jake Weary) a guy she has been dating. Post coitus, Hugh chloroforms her and the next we know she is tied up on the upper floor of an abandoned school building. The vibes are going a certain way until Hugh explains that he isn't going to harm her in any way, and she must listen to what he is about to say even though she probably won't believe any of it. He explains, “Wherever you are, ‘It’ is somewhere walking straight for you”. "It" is slow, but it is also smart. "It" arrives in many forms, could be a stranger, “It” could be a relative. He emphasizes that she cannot by any means let "It" catch her. He advises Jay to keep her eyes open, keep moving, and pass "It" on to someone else just it has been passed to her, by (insert euphemism for sex). It is important the next person keeps passing it on, as "It" will simply kill the previous inheritor after the most recent one is caught. As Hugh wraps up his talk he points out a nude woman lumbering up to the building. "You see it?!?", he exclaims. Hugh then waits for the woman to enter the building and approach Jay before rolling her away and driving her back home. Hugh dumps her in the street and drives away. So now it is Jay who must contend with the curse.

The storyline is simple, and the film moves quickly. Shot in the suburbs of Detroit, the run down houses and ragged buildings are already there for director David Robert Mitchell to exploit for their creepiness. The otherwise boring landscape shots are made into spine tingling moments thanks to a vividly eerie score from Disasterpeace.

The entire film is so captivating that the underlying message of "It Follows" is subtle. Having sex with someone you barely know won't result in an invisible stalker set out to mutilate and kill you. To declare that to your children would be ridiculous. However, "It Follows" uses simple and effective tactics to frighten the viewer, while delivering the message that sex comes with attachments that can be physical or emotional. To assert that sexual intercourse can be like tennis in that it is "just an activity" is just as illusory as the story of a shape shifting being constantly walking in a straight line to kill you.