Tuesday, August 4, 2015

Movie Round up…July 2015


That Face!

Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015): I am a noted action film hater, but the lure of Tom Hardy's gorgeous face (even though it spends half the movie covered with a cage-like mask) and that trailer intrigued me.  And then the reviews, oh those raves, intrigued me even more.  I can't say it was a five star film for me, but it was a cinematic experience.  From nearly the first frame, the action is propulsive, exciting, and awe inspiring.  I spent the entire movie nervous, heart pounding, hand covering my mouth.  Well, except one extended dialogue scene where the action stops and strategies and loyalties are discussed.  Miller had two great expressive actors in Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron and was smart to let them use facial expressions and their actions to deepen the characters.  The few scenes they spent talking, I found myself itching for more action! 

The story is simple: The apocalypse has happened, the world is dry.  Evil war lords like the beyond disgusting Immortan Joe have taken over.  Charlize Theron's Imperator Furiosa, a trusted lieutenant of Joe, steals his five beautiful wives and plans to set them free in "the green place" where she grew up.  A chase ensues.  Parallel to this, Max is kidnapped by Joe's terrifying looking War Boys and used as a human blood bank.  Their paths cross and they team up less for solidarity and more to increase each other's chance of survival.  The action is breathtaking, most importantly and successfully, and easy to follow.  So many times, I can't tell what is happening in an action scene. Mad Max makes it easy to follow the characters we care about and uses an economy of storytelling to raise the stakes.
Now that I think about it, maybe Miller included the slow scene I complained about so that the viewer wouldn't have a heart attack and die.  It can't be safe to keep your heart racing for an hour and a half, right?


About Time (Richard Curtis, 2013):  This was a movie on HBO I got completely sucked into.  It has a pretty ridiculous premise: men in this family can time travel to different points in their lives.  Tim (Domhnall Gleeson, utterly charming) uses it to get girls (typical).  He meets adorable Mary (Rachel McAdams) and woos her, sometimes having to travel back in time to fix all the dumb mistakes he makes.  Honestly, not much happens in this little romp, but there was a dog eared charm to it that I couldn't resist.  Plus, it hit my sweet spot of romantic comedies, London, and Bill Nighy.  It reminded me of my favorite, Sliding Doors; you know, a little about fate, love and the choices we make, but mostly just a lark to remind us that life is beautiful and precious.  Domhnall Gleeson was so appealing as a lovable, sweet, normal guy.  There isn't much too it, but it was the perfect way to while away an afternoon.

This makes the movie look much scarier than it actually is. 
The Nightmare: (Rodney Ascher, 2015): Room 237, Rodney Ascher's exploration into fan conspiracy theories regarding Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, was one of my favorite films in 2013.  So it was with much excitement that I approached The Nightmare, his new documentary exploring the terrifying phenomenon of sleep paralysis.  Sleep paralysis is essentially, well, to be honest, I can't tell you.  Ascher's film makes much of the imagery of sleep paralysis, in which people are in a dream-like state where they feel awake but can't move their body and many experience a dark figure coming towards them, but does little to explain the phenomena. The images are creepy, definitely, but are so repetitive that I feel they lose their power.  He reenacts nightmares described by people from the United States and England who have sleep paralysis, but he does little to delve much deeper.  What causes sleep paralysis?  What can be done to help people?  How does it really affect their lives?  He answers these questions on such a surface level, I walked away very disappointed and not even a tiny bit scared.


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