Mad Max: Fury Road

What an amaxing evening with friends laughing at friends of those friends.  So here’s the story, me and buddy decide to go see Mad Max and holler at a couple other buddies to see if we can get a party going.  One buddy shows up with a couple of his buddies and the meet us at a Mexican joint for some pre-movie margarheeetas.  And a shot.  And a blunt.

These are not our typical party with us folks.  One popped.  Barely got the car pulled over in time.

So we laughed.

Dude chilled out laying down beside the road for about 40 minutes.  We left a couple times but came back.  We figured in this part of town someone sees a black dude passed out beside a Volvo they gonna call the cops.  Then he might get shot.

So we laughed some more.

Then the other one popped.  And we laughed.

But these kids are game, the moment pased and we headed off to the film.  One of the reovered felt so good he needed a Red Bull.  Then he needed another Red Bull.  It tasted like blueberries.

And praise Allah we made it to the movies before the Red Bulls needed out.  And we laughed again.  Does it still taste like blueberries we asked?  And laughed and laughed and went into the movie.

Initially I want to say how absolutely over the top dumb this movie is, but tI’m just having so much fun with these dummies.  And it’s better than the most recent incarnation of Godzilla.  And I decided Avengers 2 wasn’t all that bad.

It’s like I’m watching Idiocracy come true.  It reminded me of lots of movies, actually.  Remember The Men Who Stare at Goats?  Where they are driving around the desert with no real direction and no real idea where they are going?  They did that a lot.  Desert environment and overly fat boily dudes with crazy respirators – Dune. And duh, they had Mad Max in a Bane mask half the the damn time.  Ya think Tom Hardy’s agent woulda been Hell No!   Didn’t necessarily remind me of Mad Max….

Having said that, it was fairly entertaining.

My favorite part of the movie, other than the Victoria’s Secret models of course, was the giant speaker truck with the dude hanging from the front with a double neck guitar/bass monstrosity.  His job was to just rock out whenever the truck was in motion.  That’s a pretty sweet gig.  Until they start ramming other trucks with your face….

Whenever a vehicle exploded, and there were lots, you could literally see every single peice of the machinery being ejected into the sky.  That was pretty cool.

It’s too long.

So like for 75% of the movie they are hauling ass AWAY from some place, then they figure they need to go back and it only takes like 5 minutes.  I see what you did.

It was also pretty cool when they were hanging from the giant ass manifold on top of their trucks.  While they were tearing ass through the desert.  Just hanging on up there spitting gasoline into them.  No big deal.  I’d think it’d be hot to the touch…

And talk about amazing mechanics, dude fixes an engine.  While tearing ass through the desert.

The graphics are amaze-balls so go see it for the excitement of the big screen.  I give this movie a margarheeta, a shot and a bong hit.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

Pretty bad ass.  To sum it up real quick like.

The apes looked real.  Nearly seem-less CG.  Overall not the most visually stimulating film of the year, but the apes appear so realistic and lifelike it is quite amazing, really.

I liked the overall “humanity” of the apes.  It is interesting to note the evolution of the apes since they’ve had ten or so years to themselves.  The powerful ones have started to gain their speech.  They have developed a primitive tree dwelling type of society, kinda like the Ewoks.  They teach all the little baby apes sign language which is a really good idea.

I don’t buy the relationship between Caesar and Michael Clarke’s character.  All he ever did was say he was sorry, all the while death and destruction rain down upon Caesar and all he’s accomplished in the ten years the apes have been free of humanity’s cruel hand.

I suppose Caesar recognizes the impending clash between species and tries to delay it as long as possible….

…and they did gain trust with their medicine.  Sneaky Americans.

This is one of the better big budget films of the summer.  Better than Godzilla, Trans4mers, whatever Tom Cruise sci fi flick that wasn’t actually half bad…I guess this might be my favorite big budget popcorn muncher of the year.  Nicely done, Apes.

Fairly dark in tone, it’s Pg-13 and that’s about right.  Not for the little ones.

Go ahead and get ya the number two combo, Large Popcorn and two Large Drinks.  😉

 

SPOILER ALERT____________________________________

Ceasar saw Koba, his brother, commit mutiny against him and lead dozens of apes to their death…Ceasar has witnessed the true nature of man.  The sequels could get interesting.

Where the hell did all those apes come from?  They’ve been breeding like rabbits apparently!  I don’t think there are that many apes on the continent, much less rescued from animal clinics in the San Francisco area.

Godzilla

The monster looks freaking fantastic!

And I wish he had eaten every human in the movie.

Even Bryan Cranston and Ken Watanabe.  And I love both those guys.  But damn.  Cranston’s character was like he did all that meth that he made in that other show.  Cracked out of his head.  He was spouting all kinds of crazy all the time.

He ranting and he said something like, I know what’s out there!  You’re hiding something out there!  I’m right? Aren’t I?

I mean, I know, it’s a movie.  It’s a remake of a classically hokey guy in a lizard suit monster movies.  It’s supposed to be big budget popcorn muncher mindless entertainment.  I get all that.  But come man.

It is visually very impressive.  You could really skip on the 3D and not lose anything.  Some of the perspective shots are pretty nice with 3D, but it doesn’t necessarily add to the experience.  Unfortunately to see it on the biggest screens you’ll have to see it in 3D.

Some of the monster scenes are dark and scary, and Bryan Cranston pulls off some pretty intense freak out scenes.  It is PG-13.  I don’t recall any language…and there’s no boobies.  It wasn’t hard PG-13 language anyway.

I could be wrong and you could love it!  Plenty of people do.

You thought the 1998 Matthew Broderick Godzilla was bad?  I think this “kid that played Kick Ass” Godzilla is worse.

 

SPOILER ALERT-

Anyone remember a movie called Executive Decision with Kurt Russell and Steven Segal?  If you’re familiar with that film, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

The other monsters I thought were simply lazy composites of the last five or six giant screen monsters.  Cloverfield, Super 8, even the giants from Noah, and a touch of Alien, but not enough to make even that cool.

I’m not buying Kick Ass as lead in a film of this magnitude.  Sorry.  He may be that guy at some point in his career, but not this one.

Take Kick Ass out, but Bryan Cranston in the lead role and start the movie with Godzilla making his first screen appearance.  The first 45 minutes of the film could be cut without disrupting the storyline.  Seriously.

A friend of mine reminded me today, I’m not a critic, I’m a guy with a blog.  He loved this movie!  He thought it paid proper homage to the classic guy in a lizard suit monster movies and maybe I should go back and watch a few of them.

I just felt there was far too much CW drama.  Too much talking on the phone and crying.  Too many random children put there to make us feel like the hero is a good guy because he’s concerned about this poor stupid little kid gets stuck on the subway because he’s watching idiot lead guy play with a random action figure we’ve never seen before but is all of a sudden a plot advancement device….but it really doesn’t have anything to do with the plot at all, and the little boy’s parents are at the next stop anyway and they wander off and never even say thanks….