Movie/TV recommendations

[Merus]

The biggest complaint I've seen about Mad Max is that there's no backstory to the characters and people felt it was too hard to work out what people were about. I suspect this is going to hurt Fury Road in the long run - critics fucking love it, but the general population don't get it.

 

This is a shame because I would very much like the movie to make enough for a sequel.

[Cleinhun]

 My only niggles are a couple of clumsy PG-13ifying cuts and pans that I'm hoping will be corrected for the home release.

 

I'm not sure what specifically you are referring to, but I would assume they were deliberate choices considering the movie is rated R anyway.

[Reyturner]

I'm not sure what specifically you are referring to, but I would assume they were deliberate choices considering the movie is rated R anyway.

Was it? It was 14A in Canada and that usually translates to PG13.

Some of the hits (including some important ones) seemed weirdly cut and framed, like it was done in a hurry in post without the option of reshoots.

[Twig]

I had literally no issues with weird cuts. It all felt deliberate and good to me. Shrug.

 

Actually I really only have one minor complaint about the movie at all, and it's pretty minor.

 

The war boy who turned traitor, he was played as super competent, albeit "not as good" as Max and Furiosa. And he was cool. And then there was that one moment where he jumps onto the war rig and the chain gets caught and it was this slapstick moment where he fell apart.

 

I had no issue with the slapstick itself, obviously, see also: Doof Warrior, but that it was that guy in particular felt out of character. Going from competent and badass to comical for one brief moment and then back to competent and badass was weird.

 

But oh well.

[feelthedarkness]

I think one of the cooler aspects is how much backstory they imply but leave on the table. Every character has a name even if they don't get said. It's something I think is a hallmark of good science fiction when people don't explain their everyday items/experiences to other people who those things would be common to (or the local amnesiac).

[Patrick R]

This is the official line in the sand where I pass from "classic film enthusiast who is skeptical about the current state of Hollywood" to "hopelessly old fashioned fool", because I don't think Fury Road holds a candle to The Road Warrior. It's got some of the ugliest digital photography I've seen in a while, for one. What's the point of loading a movie with practical stunts (though, let's be honest, it's a LOT of CGI) if you're going to do all that speed-ramping garbage and make everything look fake and unreal anyway?

 

Whatever, I'm clearly a lost cause. I'm glad everyone likes it, because it feels like a step in the right direction. It's just a much much smaller step than I was expecting.

[feelthedarkness]

I think it's basically impossible to compare a modern thing to a classic thing! The classic thing isn't born classic. Road Warrior has the benefit of history, and success, and it's developed cache.

 

Also, I don't doubt there wasn't a lot of post processing, but MMFR by all accounts leaned as hard on practical effects as possible in a modern era. 

[Merus]

The speed-ramping complaint is a little weird, because a lot of the movie is overcranked. It's essentially the same effect as when a video game slows right down because there's way too much on the screen.

[Patrick R]

The speed-ramping complaint is a little weird, because a lot of the movie is overcranked. It's essentially the same effect as when a video game slows right down because there's way too much on the screen.

 

That's what I mean. It's overcranked and then it goes into slow motion and then it's regular speed and then it's overcranked. It looks like Domino or Running Scared or a Saw movie. Or a video game.

 

EDIT: And to clarify, I just think the action isn't as good as the action in The Road Warrior.

[Merus]

Overcranking is when a movie is running at less than 24 fps. Frames are being held on screen for longer, unlike with slow motion. I don't think the movie does much undercranking, and I don't recall any incidents where it's playing action back faster than 24 fps.

 

We'll have to agree to disagree on the action scenes because in my opinion the motorbike bombing run and the pole transfers were a damn sight better than anything in The Road Warrior.

[Patrick R]

Nevermind. I don't want to argue terminology.

[melmer]

Did anyone else think the war boys were singing/chanting Duran Duran when they were getting the war rig ready

[Cyborg771]

There were definitely some parts where the film was visibly sped up, usually on zooms, and I honestly did find it a little distracting, but it also didn't really feel out of place with all the other insane aesthetics.

[Zeusthecat]

I had the unfortunate experience of watching a bit of Hot in Cleveland. What an absolutely terrible piece of shit show. None of it is funny, the whole premise seems to be about rich white women making fun of fat and poor people, and the whole thing just comes across as very mean spirited. I'm just shocked that there are actually multiple seasons of this show. Is it just because it has Betty White?

[BusbyBerkeley]

I've not seen Fury Road yet (this weekend!) but I did rewatch Mad Max and The Road Warrior this past weekend and at least one, probably both of them but I'm not for certain, had that thing where some shots of cars driving by looked like they had sped up the film. It was weird, but fine.

[Patrick R]

The Road Warrior definitely has some undercranked shots. Common action technique for car stunts that are too dangerous to perform at high speeds. But it's not nearly as pervasive as Fury Road, and it's not digital.

 

It's the importance of the latter aspect to me that makes me hopelessly old-fashioned. But I think the way Miller shoots The Road Warrior is so beautiful looking as well as exciting, and the fact that it's shot on film with naturalistic color is a huge part of that. And it really does make a world of difference for me to know that all the stunts actually had to happen in front of the camera. Fury Road goes so far over the top that the action loses most of the tension.

 

But it's definitely better staged and conceived than most modern Hollywood films, certainly.

[Ben X]

The Road Warrior definitely has some undercranked shots.

 

You mean overcranked, right? Overcranked = slow-motion, undercranked = sped-up/timelapse (which makes sense if you take it as literally referring to whether an olde time cameraman would be cranking the film through te camera over or under the usual speed).

[toblix]

I didn't necessarily feel that having a bunch of people attend an extremist congregation made the long "cool" sequence of brutally killing them in the movie Kingsman okay.

[Sno]

A shocking number of the effects were practical, though. Things you wouldn't believe could have possibly been practical are practical. It's been quite eye-opening looking at some behind-the-scenes footage of the film. There is so much massive and manic creativity happening in that film, and it's incredible knowing how much of it was done practically. Shots that seem impossible, stunts that seem unfeasibly dangerous.

 

I haven't actually seen the "good" Mad Max movies, i had only ever seen Beyond Thunderdome and i thought it kind of sucked. I recognize it's the black sheep of the franchise, so i'm sure i'd enjoy the other two a lot more, but it's just a series of films i never really had enough interest in to go out of my way to see. So, that in mind, i wasn't planning to go out and see Fury Road until the internet started getting supremely hyperbolic about it, and it turns out that i don't think the internet is at all wrong. In fact, i think it's entered into my short list of favorite films.

 

I've seen some people deride it as having no plot and no characters, and i can't help but wonder if it's a side affect of so many modern action movies teaching audiences to stop thinking while explosions are on screen, because Fury Road is a film where characters continue to exist and have arcs during those giant set pieces. Character beats happen, character development happens, there is even world-building happening during the action scenes. The story does not stop for the action, almost everything in that movie is happening with a narrative purpose. There is virtually no character setup or exposition in that film, but an action scene like the brawl between Furiosa and Max tells you everything you need to know about those two characters. (I mean, and it works in large part due to terrific performances from both Hardy and Theron.) It's so god damn good, it's how action movies should always be.

 

The way the soundtrack is integrated into the film is just so wonderful to me, with diegetic elements and explicit film score playing into eachother. I even love the way shot framerates are manipulated constantly to almost subliminal effects that are far more subtle and unusual than the grossly excessive "check out this cool shit" speed ramping that is so prevalent in other modern action films.

 

I love a lot of the thematic undercurrents. I'm not going to pretend like it's always nuanced in how it approaches things, though it is surprisingly so, and it's layers of additional texture where there didn't have to be. It's also supremely refreshing to see a strong female presence in a huge blockbuster, but there's other things i don't see people talking much about, like Immortant Joe, People Eater, and the Bullet Farmer all being obvious parodies and critiques of blind religion, corrupt business, and unrestrained military. ("Who killed the world?" indeed.)

 

The movie has kind of a great sense of humor too, Max's savvy world-weary awareness creates a bunch of understated absurd beats throughout the film.

 

Nux's arc is great, Immortan Joe is a fantastic villain. Hell, this film even gives a shit about incidental characters that might only appear for a handful of scenes, you're given enough information about them to put together a picture of who they are.

 

It was a "Best. Movie. Ever." kind of viewing experience for me. It's absolutely thrilling to me that, as an adult, i can still have a reaction to a film that is as strong as i had when i saw movies like Indiana Jones and Star Wars as a kid. Fuck yeah, George Miller, way to go.

 

(Now somebody gets to come along and tell me "MEH, IT WAS OKAY.")

[BobbyBesar]

Was People Eater the oil guy, I assume? I've just been calling him the oil baron in my head.

[Reyturner]

Considering the Warboys were designed to look indistinguishable and uniform, I loved the little character moments a lot of them got. I really appreciated Furiosa's relationship with her 2nd in command Warboy (credited as Prime Imperator in the credits, did I mention the names of the characters in this movie are great?) He clearly respected and trusted her, they worked closely together when fighting the Buzzard raiders and his outrage and sense of betrayal was palpable when he figured out what she was up to. 

 

Nux's arc as well. He wasn't just a faceless berserker, but someone looking for meaning and to make something of his life before he died which, by his own reckoning, was going to be soon regardless. When Max and Furiosa are fighting, he helps Max by grabbing the bullets clearly eager to please. When he thinks they've secured the wives for Joe, he's talking to Max like a comrade. He isn't just a killer who turned a new leaf, he was always looking for friends and connections and meaning anywhere he could. The fact that he found it in Joe's cult, that ALL the Warboys and the Warpups are being raised in this toxic environment is tragic, but also gives you hope that they can all be something better if given a chance. 

 

The fact that the Warboys seem to have a genuine bond of friendship and respect and a collective desire to belong and be recognized humanizes them just enough to ground their absurdity in reality. They erase their individuality and humanity but they're not indistinguishable or completely inhuman. They're not all just baby eating monsters. Well, they ARE baby eating monsters, but not JUST baby eating monsters.

 

And there isn't one second of explicit exposition telling you any of this. 

 

It's a quality that I loved about Road Warrior and I'm so glad George Miller didn't forget about it. 

 

Holy shit you guys, the Warboys are GamerGate D: 

[Twig]

hahaha goddamnit reyturner you monster

[syntheticgerbil]

Finally saw Song of the Sea! Purchased the blu-ray with some extra cash since I missed it in theatres in March. Was gorgeous and I liked the character acting. The layered effects on the background elements were perfect.

 

I feel like the story sort of lost me in the beginning and left me with a bunch of weird indifference with the characters, but it fortunately picked up later. I think it would have helped if the logisitics of the selkie myth were explained better. Even with glancing wikipedia, it's not entirely clear to me what rules we were dealing with.

[Patrick R]

You mean overcranked, right? Overcranked = slow-motion, undercranked = sped-up/timelapse (which makes sense if you take it as literally referring to whether an olde time cameraman would be cranking the film through te camera over or under the usual speed).

 

I mean undercranked. Hence "Common action technique for car stunts that are too dangerous to perform at high speeds." You perform them at lower speeds and undercrank the camera so it looks faster. See James Cameron's Terminator car chases for a lot of this. It's also how they did the near miss

.

 

 

 

A shocking number of the effects were practical, though. Things you wouldn't believe could have possibly been practical are practical. It's been quite eye-opening looking at some behind-the-scenes footage of the film. There is so much massive and manic creativity happening in that film, and it's incredible knowing how much of it was done practically. Shots that seem impossible, stunts that seem unfeasibly dangerous.

 

A lot of the stunts were practical but also a lot of the shots were achieved by compositing several different practical things into a single shot, or were touched up with CG explosions or debris. Again, I'm just very old fashioned, but it's very obvious to me and once I can tell it takes me out of it a bit. As opposed to something like Avengers, where it's so cartoonish it never even tries to ground you in reality. 

 

Not that the action in Avengers can touch this. But I went in expecting "Greatest action scenes ever! All practical!" and found them vastly inferior to the scenes and stunts that were done back in the 80's. Crazier but not more exciting.

[BobbyBesar]

My favorite (I assume) practical effects show was also the most ostentatiously CG one

 

When the Doof Wagon eats it, the speakers fall off and tumble onto the ground in a very real physical objects and non-bombastic way. They just sort of thud down and bounce maybe once or twice instead of flying all over the place explosion style.

That's followed by the 3D steering wheel eating the camera.