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Tag Archives: The Fast and the Furious

Mad Max: Fury Road

21 Thursday May 2015

Posted by Ben Whittaker in Movie Reviews

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Bane, Batman, Car Chases, Charlize Theron, Explosions, George Miller, Immortan Joe, Imperator Furiosa, Mad Max, Mad Max Fury Road, Mel Gibson, Nicholas Hoult, Nux, Skins, The Fast and the Furious, Tom Hardy, Warm Bodies

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via empireonline.com

“Mad Max: Fury Road” has some of the best action sequences you’ll see this year, and they’re made all the more exciting by the fact that they are done, for the most part, with practical effects. However, that doesn’t make it a great movie. The dialogue is bad, the acting isn’t great, and it has been completely overhyped. This is an action movie, and it hits every note in that sense, because it’s on another planet as far as the ninety minute chase scene goes. Explosions, fast cars, death – that’s what this movie puts all its effort into. Still, the fact that it gets that one element right doesn’t make it a 10/10 film, because its flaws take away from the immersion that’s vital to make the audience care about the fate of the characters, and as a result the impact of the actions lessens significantly by the end.

The film is about two characters, Max (Tom Hardy) and Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron). At the start of the film Max is captured by a group of pale-faced wastelanders known as the War Boys. He’s taken to their home, Citadel, where we are first introduced to two of the key figures of this story, Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) and Furiosa. From that point the film follows Furiosa as she attempts to free ‘the wives’, women that Joe has specially selected for breeding. This betrayal forces Joe to take action and attempt to stop Furiosa from escaping, which escalates into an all-out car chase across the wasteland.

The story is loose, predictable and dull, as we are supposed to empathise with these women that have been treated like ‘things’, but never really get the chance to connect with them. They want their freedom in a dark and ugly world, and because Furiosa is trying to give this to them we are supposed to like her (and also Max when he ends up helping them on their way), but we know so little about them that it really is hard to care.

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via collider.com

There’s nothing new or ground-breaking in this narrative, as the group speed across the empty desert landscape, with Joe fast on their tail, hoping to find solace in a place we all know will provide none. The story isn’t what you should come into this film hoping for, because it’s surface level and lacking any real substance, so if you haven’t seen the film yet but are planning to that’s something to be wary of.

The opening sequence in which Max was captured was awesome, and it set the tone for the chase that followed. Max was introduced swiftly, as George Miller wasted little time on character development, hoping that his audience would either have seen previous instalments or stick around for the action. Once Max was captured the pace was pulsating, as the camera jolted with Max’s movement, blurring the screen in a way that would mirror his vision as he shook his head from left to right. In all of ten minutes Max is taken, escapes, and is captured again; it’s a viciously delicious opening with wonderful sound, cinematography, and acting. Max’s fear and desperation is matched by the War Boys’ glee at the chase, and that theme is seen throughout the film, as the heroes want the chase to be over, but the villains revel in the hunt and delight at each grunt of their engines.

The performances were adequate, it’s not as if they were bad, but nobody had anything to do beyond the fight scenes, and at the end of the day it was the extras that were doing the more exciting stunts. The dialogue was awkward and sometimes embarrassingly weak, as the characters attempted to convey the feeling that nobody could possibly trust another human being in the wasteland, yet we all knew that in the end Max and Furiosa would unite for to save the wives.

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via bustle.com

There’s been a lot of talk about Theron’s performance, with many stating that this is actually Furiosa’s film. I disagree because Theron does nothing special in this movie. She expresses the sadness and worry that she feels through her eyes, and she does so quite well, as they look piercingly out into the emptiness, their shine being accentuated by the black paint she sometimes has around them. Still, I was never really sold on her as an action hero – she was good as the protagonist in this film because she had a noble cause, so the audience could get behind her and will her on, but her performance lacked depth due to the fact that she did nothing to make me believe that Joe would trust her enough to make her his right hand (wo)man in the first place. She didn’t portray any real ferocity or ruthlessness, with her character sometimes seeming too sentimental for this brutal world, and I didn’t believe that she had had the past that the film hinted at (working for Joe).

The problem here is largely due to the fact that the script is just awful! It’s so weak and hollow, and it really does seem like all the effort has been put into choreographing these huge action sequences, with the story being forgotten and thrown in as an afterthought. It’s hard to do a good job as an actor when you don’t have any interesting lines, and you’re constantly being cut away from so that the camera can thrust the next explosion into the audience’s face. On top of that, some of the dialogue is completely inaudible, particularly at the beginning of the film, which renders the actor’s efforts pointless. Nicholas Hoult’s lines at the start of the movie could’ve been delivered brilliantly and I’d never have known, because I just couldn’t make them out over the sound of engines revving.

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via justwatch.com

The characters themselves weren’t that well developed, because we never had a full grasp of their pasts or their motivations. Was Furiosa that badly off before she tried to help the wives escape? It seemed like a lot of people respected her, and although Joe was cruel and unkind, it doesn’t seem as though anyone else in this universe is much different. Why was Nux (Nicholas Hoult) in need of a blood transfusion in the first place? Why did he think he’d go to Valhalla if he died for Joe? We never found out what was wrong with Nux to begin with, so the fact that he was ill at the start of the film was made to feel like a plot device to get Max on the road with the rest of the caravan, rather than something meaningful that the character was going through. This thought was only added to by the fact that he didn’t need blood again after crashing with Max – he survived for what seemed like days without any further blood transfusions and nothing was said!

A lack of development isn’t actually as much of an issue as far as Max is concerned, because I’m not sure if I needed to have seen the previous films in order to understand his character. I didn’t know who the girl plaguing his memories and dreams was, but I could assume that she was a character from an earlier film, or perhaps a placeholder for a character that Max might’ve bumped into along the way. However, the other characters in this film needed much more development to be truly compelling, because they’re the ones that we can believe are in actual danger, and we should become invested in them over the course of the movie so that the carefully crafted action sequences have their intended impact.

The relationships between the characters were intended to make the audience feel invested, but they didn’t earn their place; none of the characters were all that nice to one another, and although they went through a lot together they were still more interested in their own survival than anything else. It seemed to me like this was the kind of craziness they went through every day anyway in this post-apocalyptic future, so their feelings for one another felt contrived and worthless (particularly the relationship between Nux and Capable (Riley Keough)).

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via nerdist.com

I didn’t even end up hating Joe as much as I thought I would, because he was never really explained. I didn’t know why he was so bothered about his wives, I just knew he was a sadistic and freakish man with bad intentions – but so were 99% of the people in this movie! Couldn’t he have just gotten himself a new set of wives? Why did these ones matter so much? Why did it matter to him if he had children? Yes he was oppressive, and visually he was scary, but who cares? I didn’t care about the wives any more than I cared about him, they could’ve all died and it would’ve had no impact on me whatsoever, as long as Max lived and the cars kept rolling on.

I’ve criticised this film a lot so far (and I think fairly) but it does do a lot of things right as well. What makes this movie what it is, and saves it from mediocrity, is the action. “Fury Road” is one long chase scene which oozes testosterone and has you wanting to put your foot down on the way home; it’s fast-paced, powerful, creative, and visceral, and each fight scene is fantastically and meticulously choreographed. Nobody could come out of this film and say that they weren’t impressed, because every action scene is on another level to anything you’ll have seen before.

People love “The Fast and the Furious” as a franchise because it has ridiculous stunts and flashy cars, but this movie makes that film look like a cheap Hot Wheels knock-off wrapped in newspaper on Christmas day. In those films they do some crazy things, like driving a supercar through a skyscraper, and yes that’s a fun idea, but it isn’t real. You do that in the real world and you plummet to the earth and become encapsulated in a fiery ball of death, end of story.

“Fury Road” goes above and beyond to create realism in its action sequences by using practical effects and having the actors actually play the role of their characters – you can’t help but notice the difference as the backgrounds don’t look computer generated, and the cars look like they are genuinely kicking up dust, whilst a pale-faced killer rides on the hood. Everything is so much more impressive because of the lengths that George Miller has gone to in order to make this film seem as real as it possibly can.

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via christylemire.com

It’s incredibly daring to make a film like this today, because fans could easily become tired of the chase if each sequence wasn’t larger and louder than the last. You wonder how the film could possibly top itself in terms of action after Max leaps from one car to the next, guitar screeching from a vehicle to his left, and explosion after explosion complementing each chord, but it manages to do that scene by scene. The chase is a strange but wonderful concoction of every little fantasy going on inside George Miller’s mind, crafted into a cohesive film that constantly gets bigger and better, even if it does lack substance.

The brilliant choreography and cinematography of the action scenes is only added to by the ear-popping sound of wheels slamming against sand and bullets escaping their chambers. It’s a joy to behold, and I’m glad I went to see the film, because George Miller has pushed the boundaries of filmmaking with these scenes. Action is at the forefront, it’s the focus of this film, and it shows.

However, the action is substantially less impressive when the story doesn’t hit on every level, and I think that’s why I’m coming down so hard on this film. Most people will see this movie and leave the cinema awestruck, because there are moments within it that are genuinely amazing, and I have no problem with that; if you can ignore the flaws of something because of the positives that isn’t a bad thing, as long as you recognise that you’re doing so. Nevertheless, what I see is a film that could’ve been something absolutely incredible, but fell short on a number of levels because its script wasn’t as carefully woven together as its action sequences.

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via youtube.com

In contrast to the meticulously thought out organised chaos that took place as the characters were on the road, the dialogue and the story felt as though they’d been lazily put together by someone more interested in the spectacle than the overall narrative. This really annoys me because it’s the story that makes the spectacle worthwhile! The novelty of the car chase loses its appeal by the end, because you aren’t worried about Furiosa or Max due to the potential for a sequel, so to keep the audience invested and make the film truly memorable what was needed was something more substantial in the form of character development and narrative than what we got. I came out of this film feeling indifferent because of the story, which is a crime given how great it was for long periods of time.

Back when action movies were at their peak, in terms of popularity, it was okay to have a chiselled man beating up a stereotypical villain – it didn’t matter if the dialogue was cheesy or silly because that was the nature of the beast. Filmmaking has changed since then; it costs a lot more to go to the cinema now so expectations are much higher. I don’t believe for a second that this film is intended to be cheesy, so the fact that it has what I take to be B-movie-like moments has to be seen as a problem. We want substance in our action movies today – filmmaking is an art which requires perfection in a number of areas to be truly great, so having fantastic set pieces isn’t enough. Tom Hardy isn’t Arnold Schwarzenegger; he’s a great actor capable of captivating an audience, so it’s ridiculous that he’s given so little to do here.

After watching “Mad Max: Fury Road” I was conflicted; I genuinely can’t decide how good I think this movie is. It’s an action movie, and its action is as amazing as you’re ever likely to see, but does that make it great? I’m honestly not sure. For me, it’s a film that succeeds where it wants to but not where it needs to. Immersion is lost when the characters are delivering clichéd lines, and things don’t feel consistent when characters act in strange ways that conflict how they were set up earlier in the movie. The writing left a hell of a lot to be desired, and as a result a lot of the more sentimental dialogue felt forced and artificial. It’s an ambitious, well-directed, and well-shot film, but it isn’t the whole package and it has been completely overrated since release in my opinion.

7.5/10

The Walking Dead: Season Five

31 Tuesday Mar 2015

Posted by Ben Whittaker in Television Reviews

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Tags

Alexandria Safe Zone, Andrew Lincoln, Breaking Bad, Chandler Riggs, Comics, Corey Brill, Danai Gurira, Daryl Dixon, Game of Thrones, Graphic Novels, Hannibal, Horror, Jon Bernthal, Lauren Cohan, Lennie James, Melissa McBride, Rick Grimes, Robert Kirkman, Ross Marquand, Sarah Wayne Callies, Seth Gilliam, Sonequa Martin Green, Steven Yeun, Television, Telltale Games, Terminus, The Fast and the Furious, The Walking Dead, The Walking Dead Season Five, The Wire, TV, Zombie Apocalypse

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via collider.com

“The Walking Dead : Season Five” has been a mixed bag for me. I liked the first half of the season because there was a certain brutality to it all, and the showrunners weren’t trying to be overly artistic or take themselves too seriously. Some of that did return in the latter half of the season, but at times I was frustrated by the fact that the people in charge thought they were visionaries again, and started to try to make the characters more complicated and layered than the quality of the writing allows them to be. Nonetheless, it’s been a good season, and any annoying aspects towards the end were mollified by how great the finale turned out to be.

“The Walking Dead” is to television what “The Fast and the Furious” is to film. It’s not a high standard of acting or writing, but at times it’s very entertaining, and that’s enough to get people with their bums on seats. There’s nothing wrong with knowing your limits, and there’s nothing wrong with being mediocre if what you’re delivering is still enjoyable, but there’s something very wrong about trying to make a work of art and ending up with something that’s barely worth sticking on the fridge.

Some of the writing in the latter half of the season has been truly dreadful, and the new characters have often felt very one-dimensional as a result. Sasha (Sonequa Martin-Green) and Gabriel (Seth Gilliam) are ridiculously dull, and the overacting on show from both of the actors playing the roles has been laughable. Furthermore, the group from Alexandria are all very predictable and lack real depth, particularly Pete (Corey Brill), who was just there to move the story along by getting under the skin of Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and Carol (Melissa McBride), and was less of a character than a plot device.

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via collider.com

However, it hasn’t been all bad and I’d be lying to myself if I said that I hadn’t been excited to watch each episode, it’s just that sometimes this show lets itself down when it comes to character development. Having said that, Carol is a layered character now, and the season has seen Melissa McBride flourish in the role. A lot of people were already saying that after the mid-season finale, because she had undergone a transformation which saw her turn into a fighter rather than the victim. At that point I disagreed, because I didn’t think that the change was gradual enough, or that it was done with enough care. I felt as though a switch had been flicked and she’d gone from being one person to another, which wasn’t entirely believable.

I’m glad that she’s still being developed and that the show is persisting with giving her a greater role, because now that we’ve seen her be a powerful and pragmatic member of the group for a few more episodes, I think that it suits her quite well, and I’m able to buy into her transformation now that she is more careful with her decisions. Melissa McBride has really grown alongside the character, and when I’m watching her I’m more immersed in the story than with any other character.

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via nerdishgeekweb.files.wordpress.com

Glenn (Steven Yeun) has also developed this season, and now that he’s within a community of weak people he shines as someone who’s battle-hardened. When “The Walking Dead” began he was a runner for the group and he was brave, but he wasn’t a strong and intimidating person. Now he comes across as though he’s in control, and he’s really come into his own. Steven Yeun is a good actor and I wouldn’t have said that before this season, so that’s a big plus for the show going forward.

This season has had a compelling arc, and there’s been a clear underlying theme that’s made things better than they seem in isolation. The whole season has been about how the group, but mainly Rick, can’t go back to the way things used to be, and this has constantly been reaffirmed as things have progressed. Season five began with the group escaping from Terminus, and ended with their infection of the Alexandria Safe Zone. They’ve gone from chaos and near death to what should’ve been a civilised and normal life, but they clearly haven’t adapted as well as they might have hoped.

This season has told us from the start that there is no going back, and Rick stated it again in the mid-season finale, but there’s been other moments that are slightly less explicit which have given off that same impression. Just before the group were approached by Aaron (Ross Marquand), Rick told the group that the world wasn’t going to change, and said ‘we are the walking dead’. That’s a great line just by itself, but it wasn’t just a nod to the comics, it was a foreboding warning to the audience that the group aren’t an unlucky bunch of travellers anymore, they’re vicious when they need to be and they bring destruction with them wherever they go, just like any other zombie horde. They’re as broken as the world around them, and just like that world, it might be too late for things to get fixed.

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via amcnetworks.com

When the season began the group were being tortured at Terminus, but it ended with them acting as destructive invaders. They did to the Alexandria Safe Zone what the unnamed group from the first episode flashback did to the people at Terminus, although not in such an intentional or evil way. They’ve torn the place apart and left the people wounded; that’s what happens to people who try to live in this world as though nothing has changed. People can’t change the world back to the way it was, rather, this world changes people – the group are past the point of no return, and to try to go back is to face annihilation from someone else who doesn’t want to.

Rick was turning into a bit of a psycho by the end of the previous season, after all, he did rip a person’s throat out with his teeth and gut a man like a pig! But he did that for all the right reasons and although the means were excessive, the end was necessary. This season he’s gone a step further and almost lost what was left of his humanity, so again it doesn’t look as though he can go back to the way he was before the dead took over the earth. He’s still made out to be the good guy, but good guys don’t act like he does; in my opinion he’s causing all the problems right now, so he shouldn’t get any brownie points for eventually solving them.

The theme was clear from the first half of the season, but the way that the season ended definitely re-established it. Morgan (Lennie James) appeared in the very first episode of the first season, and is a reminder of who Rick used to be, so for him to appear just as Rick reached his lowest moment demonstrated to the audience just how far gone the character actually is. Morgan is a beacon of hope for Rick as a character, and I could see his introduction sparking a change in the group whereby the theme of this season gets turned on its head, because he had slipped into craziness the last time we saw him, but it seems like now he’s as right as rain (or at least as sane as a man can be in a world filled with walking corpses).

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via tribzap2it.files.wordpress.com

I could definitely see Morgan acting as a catalyst for Rick to change into something like a normal human being again, reminding him of the man he once was, and making him realise that he owes it to Carl (Chandler Riggs) and the memory of Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies) to take a step back and regain his humanity. Morgan can tell Rick about how much he misses his son and his wife, and how it’s not too late to change, and because he’s a lot like Rick, or at least the man that he used to be, I could see him getting through to him. I think that’s got to be his role going forward, and I thought that could be seen through the line that one of The Wolves said at the start of the episode; ‘everything gets a return’.

Either way, I’m glad that Morgan is back on the show, because he reminds me of a time when “The Walking Dead” was still exciting and promised so much. Morgan is still one of the show’s most memorable characters, and part of one of its best moments, in which he couldn’t shoot his wife, even though she was a dangerous and lifeless zombie.

The season has ended in an interesting place, not only because the Alexandria Safe Zone is a great setting, but because the characters are all in the balance as far as their mental states are concerned. It’s been really fun to see how the characters have reacted to being thrown back into a functioning society, because they’ve been wandering a living Hell for so long. I had my reservations initially, because to me it felt like Woodbury all over again, but I think it’s different enough that those comparisons die away. There have to be plenty of places like this left in the world, so the fact that the group has come across another isn’t sufficient to warrant criticism, and it’s from the comics so it’s fine with me.

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via comicbook.com

The Wolves are lurking on the horizon and by the look of it they could be a formidable foe. I hope that it doesn’t take too long for season six to get going and for them to try to take the Safe Zone, if that’s the direction that the series is going to go, but I also hope that if things have to go badly in the Safe Zone, it doesn’t just get destroyed like Terminus did. I don’t want the group to move on straight away next season, I want them to have time to build before everything gets ruined again.

All in all it’s been a pretty decent season, but one problem that’s been apparent from the very start of the series is that none of the important characters have been killed. A couple have bit the dust in the past, most notably Shane (Jon Bernthal) and Lori, but in this season there wasn’t a single death that I actually cared about. This takes a sense of urgency out of the show and makes it seem less realistic. I don’t mind that some of the bigger characters in the show get a pass, because I want to see my favourite characters live on; I don’t want Carol, Rick, Glenn or Daryl (Norman Reedus) to die, and the shock value wouldn’t be worth it to have them gone. However, I think that the show has to do away with Carl, Michonne (Danai Gurira), or Maggie (Lauren Cohan) next season, or it will start to lose credibility (I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – please let it be Carl! He’s such a waste of a character it’s time to let him go).

I enjoy “The Walking Dead”, and this season is no exception. I like creative zombie kills (not the pinpoint headshots), and I like the melodrama between the characters when believable performances are given. I don’t think that it’s worthy of a fraction of the praise and attention that it gets, but it’s a guilty pleasure that I’ve stuck with for a very long time. This season has been good, maybe even great at times, but the quality of writing often lets it down. If it were perhaps half the length then I think it would work much better, but the producers like money, and that’s just that. Overall, it was a well-crafted season of television, but it wasn’t up to the standard of other big name television shows like “Hannibal”, “Game of Thrones” or “Breaking Bad”.

6.5/10

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