Fury Road: George Miller’s latest road rage masterpiece

Mad Max is the first movie I ever saw. Road Warrior is one of my favorite movies of all time. I’m not even going to pretend I can be objective about this one… just let me gush.

Fury Road is a two hour movie with about eight minutes of dialogue and comes from a filmmaker who thankfully hasn’t learned the “right” way to make a Hollywood blockbuster. Nothing about it is formulaic. Movies as bold as Fury Road make me feel retroactively cheated by more typical films like The Age of Ultron.

Tom Hardy and Charlize Theoron share equal billing in the opening credits—it’s every bit Imperator Furiosa’s film as it is Max’s. Hugh Keays-Bryne, who played Toecutter in the original film, returns as Immortan Joe, a villain who gives Hannibal Lector and Darth Vader a run for their money. Nicholas Hoult (yes, the kid from About a Boy) is nearly unrecognizable as Nux, the famished maniac who proclaims in the trailers: “Oh, what a day! What a lovely day!”

Within minutes of the opening shot, Max’s trademark Interceptor is smeared across the wasteland by the War Boys, presumably the biggest-baddest gang around. Max is captured and turned into a “blood bag” for Nux; as all War Boys are the biological children of Immortan Joe, many share his blood deficiencies and require frequent transfusions. When Furiosa smuggles Immortan Joe’s unwilling wives out of the compound on a big rig, the War Boys give chase, chaining Max to the front of a souped-up car. The chase begins and it doesn’t stop until the movie’s over.

Director George Miller has been trying to make this for twenty years. It shows. You can clearly see the decades of thought enriching every minute of screentime. Each scene is significantly different than the last, despite using the same three elements throughout: a desert, vehicles, and a huge cast of sickly-looking psychopaths. I always cherish a movie that shows me one thing I’ve never seen before. Fury Road does something new roughly every five to ten minutes. I haven’t been this wowed by a mainstream movie since the bridge sequence in True Lies over twenty years ago.

So many action directors working today, all of which are younger than Miller, should be envious and perhaps a little ashamed. This is one of the big ones. This is what keeps me going.

Outland: High Noon in space

William T. O’Niel (Sean Connery) is a space marshal who’s been assigned to a mining outpost on IO, one of the many moons of Jupiter. His wife has left him, disillusioned with the space life. Whereas most boys hide girlie mags under the bed, their son has been caught hiding pictures of Earth.

Peter Boyle plays Mark Sheppard, the crooked operations manager. When the marshal introduces himself to Sheppard’s crew, he’s welcomed by the roughnecks warmly. Sheppard, on the other hand, makes it clear he intends to be the one calling the shots. Meanwhile, some of the miners have been experiencing deadly hallucinations. The marshal discovers an import drug is to blame and, surprise-surprise, Sheppard may be involved in the scheme.

As the investigation unfolds, the marshal makes friends with the infirmary’s head doctor, played by the extremely likable Francis Sternhagen. The banter between these two is often funny and very endearing. Peter Boyle is exceptional, too. “If you’re after more money,” he tells the marshal, “you’re very smart. But if you’re serious, you’re very stupid.” The marshal isn’t after money at all, of course. While the film doesn’t make it clear why he’s so motivated, it doesn’t need to because it uses the shorthand of classic westerns. He’s simply a man with a strong sense of right and wrong; the audience doesn’t question it because he’s played by Sean Connery.

And the marshal really puts his life on the line. In the last quarter of the movie, hitmen are on their way to assassinate the marshal. The minutes to their shuttle’s arrival are counting down on the loud flip clocks that are stationed throughout the facility, grating on the marshal’s anxiety with every click and clack. The marshal fails to deputize any help because the odds he’s facing are suicidal. No, it isn’t a rip-off of High Noon. It’s a loving remake.

Director Peter Hyams is very good at making solid films like Outland. Mechanical plots have always been one of his strong suits and his technical abilities provided him steady work in Hollywood. Some filmmakers are simply good at working within the system while others can only exist outside of it. Both are admirable when they produce films as good as this. Think about it: Hyams managed to make a good sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey, which must have been a job no one envied. So maybe he isn’t what anybody would call an artist with a capital A, but he’s often the right guy for the job.

Highlander: There can be only one (and several sequels)

Highlander 1986

Suppose, for a second, you’re a Trans-Am-driving gun nut who happens upon a dark alley in which two complete strangers are sword fighting. Do you A) drive to the nearest payphone and call the cops or B) get out and shoot at these people who you don’t even know? If you chose B, you belong in this movie.

You know Highlander’s tagline even if you don’t know the franchise: There can be only one. But why must there only be one? When the French Christopher Lambert (playing a Scot) asks questions like that, the Scottish Sean Connery (playing an Egypt-born Spaniard) replies with another question: “Why does the sun rise?” That’s a cheat because even grade school children know why the sun rises, but no one seems to know why Immortals “must” fight. Considering how cool it is, I suppose it doesn’t matter. I mean, who doesn’t like sword fights that produce roughly as many sparks as a bumper car grid?

I’m getting ahead of myself. The year is 1985. Connor MacLeod (Lambert) is spectating a wrestling match at Madison Square Garden that gives him intense flashbacks to his life as a Scottish highlander in the 1500s. When he ducks out early to head to the parking lot, Connor is attacked by another Immortal. Connor beheads the mysterious attacker and absorbs his essence in a supernatural light show known as a quickening. Beheading is the only way to kill an Immortal and the quickening is the process which allows the victor to absorb the defeated party’s strengths and abilities.

Meanwhile, the “seven-foot tall” Kurgan (Clancy Brown) arrives in New York City. The Kurgan is Connor’s arch nemesis, having killed his mentor Juan Sánchez-Villalobos Ramírez (Connery). Don’t worry—through the magic of questionable screenwriting, Ramírez will return for a more significant role in the sequel. At any rate, the Kurgan has spent the last four hundred years quickening as many Immortals as he can. According to Ramírez, if someone like the Kurgan wins this ancient contest, the world will be plunged into eternal darkness.

The pacing is a little rough. The acting is good enough. You will be forgiven for scratching your head or making MST3K-style quips here and there. My mother tells me this was one of the first movies I ever fell in love with and that she would often hear me, from the other room, popping it into the VCR to watch it again and again. I was so young I don’t remember, but it certainly is up my alley.

When the movie was over I slipped Westworld into the Blu-Ray player and all but forgot about Highlander. But when I went to bed later that night, distant memories of the infamous sequel began to haunt me. When I was eight or nine years old, I had rented it on Pay-Per-View and recorded it to VHS. I still have the tape to this day.

I remembered Sean Connery was in it and just had to know what kind of movie magic they spun to bring his character back to life. I had frequently read how awful the movie was, which was at odds with how much I enjoyed it as a kid. So I bit the bullet and decided to watch Highlander 2 for the first time as an adult.

I may never be able to enjoy another movie again.

Highlander 2 (1991)

Forty years after the conclusion of the last film, Connor MacLeod is not just mortal, but an elderly and extraordinarily wealthy individual, as immortality no doubt reaps some great compound interest. He’s devoted himself to science-based philanthropy. One of the projects he helped fund was an artificially generated shield around the planet after corporate greed destroyed the ozone layer. Unfortunately, the shield has permanently blocked sunlight and created a runaway greenhouse effect. It’s also controlled by the very corporation that helped destroy the atmosphere in the first place. As it turns out, the ozone layer has recovered since the shield went up and the project’s executives will stop at nothing to keep this inconvenient (for them) truth suppressed.

Enter Louise Marcus (Virgina Madsen) who seeks to expose the truth by bringing the shield down. Within minutes of meeting Connor, two Immortals from the distant past (or another planet, depending on which version you’re watching) arrive on bitchin’ hover technology to assassinate the former contest winner. Despite his advanced age, Connor manages to decapitate one and quickens, restoring his youth and immortality. Shortly after hopping on a hover board to dispatch the other assassin, Connor and Louise have passionate sex, right there on the grimy streets.

If you’re wondering how they contrive to resurrect Sean Connery’s Ramírez, it doesn’t make any sense… nor does it matter. All that matters is he’s back, he gets a lot more screen time, and the actor seems to be having the time of his life elevating an otherwise standard fish-out-of-water role. Connery alone is worth the price of admission. Ramírez reunites with Connor and helps him and Louise take on the corporate powers that be.

Siskel & Ebert said only brain-dead moviegoers could enjoy Highlander 2. Some regard it as the worst film ever made (those people have yet to see Now you See Me). If you find the utterly ambitious and genuinely creative Highlander 2 more offensive than the plethora of soulless cash grabs coming out of Hollywood nearly every month, I ask you to reexamine your standards. You cannot call this film boring. You cannot call it passionless. Insane? Well, I’ll give you that one.

Highlander 2 is set in a dystopian cyberpunk future. For the most part, it’s a visually convincing setting. Somehow director Russell Mulcahy managed to squeeze better world-building out of his budget than Freejack, Johnny Mnemonic, and Cyborg combined. The theatrical cut of the film (which is what I initially saw on Pay-Per-View twenty years ago) even visited another planet, but the infamous alien subplot has since been reworked and retconned in subsequent editions.

Granted, the theatrical cut of Highlander 2 ruined the mythology of the original film within the first few minutes. It asserts the Immortals were (surprise!) aliens all along. Luckily, this revelatory dialogue had been filmed with characters who spoke telepathically; the obvious fix was to simply rerecord the voice-over dialogue. In the subsequent versions, all verbal references to the alien planet Zeist are edited out of the dialogue even though the visual references more or less remain, albeit visually altered. This way audiences are led to believe (if they’re still paying attention) that it’s not an alien planet, but in fact Earth a long time ago.

These changes don’t really help the film, though, as it still suggests that Connor and Ramírez knew each other prior to their meeting in the original film. If anything, the changes made the movie more confusing. For instance, when the past assassins are given their orders to kill Connor, they say, “But he’s an old man now.” “Now,” even though the scene is set far in the past?

And you know what? Who cares? Just keep slathering on the 90s cyberpunk aesthetic and sparky sword fights. Highlander 2 is incapable of demonstrating restraint in its crusade for awesomeness. You get hover boards. You get bad guys who look like they’re straight out of a Hellraiser film. And you will never see a hero have sex with the heroine so quickly after they meet… and, uh, I do stress the word “quickly.” (Perhaps that’s the quickening.)

Zardoz: The gun is good. The penis is evil.

The year is 2293. Zed (Sean Connery) is a part of a post-apocalyptic group of barbarians who worship a floating head statue called Zardoz. Zardoz shows up from time to time and commands Zed’s group to rape and kill the peasants who live on the countryside. The god even supplies the weapons and ammunition in exchange for sacrifices. This goes on for several decades until, one day, Zardoz commands them to start agriculture. The Brutals begin to question their god, so Zed smuggles himself aboard the floating head to get answers. He soon finds himself whisked away to The Vortex, a domed city where the Eternals live.

This is when things get weird… well, weirder. The Eternals don’t like life anymore. As their advanced technologies have eliminated the need—and subsequently the desire—for sex, one can easily see why they’re so bored. Many of them are thrilled to find Zed has infiltrated their compound as it’s the only exciting thing in ages. At one point the Eternals decide to test exactly what kind of stimuli gives Zed an erection… the scene is hilarious, mostly thanks to Sean Connery.

I’m often accused of liking bad movies, but this isn’t true. Last night I tried watching Ice Pirates for the first time in two decades. That’s a bad movie. What makes Ice Pirates bad and the eighties version of Flash Gordon good is simple: one’s a Star Wars cash-in which tries too hard to be funny; the other is a genuine love letter to its source material. Zardoz is in the same camp as Flash Gordon in the sense there is passionate filmmaking on display here. Casual moviegoers may snicker, but then again casual moviegoers are the reason superhero movies are getting churned out every other week.

Director John Boorman made Zardoz after his plan to follow up Deliverance with a live action adaptation of The Lord of the Rings fell through. After Zardoz bombed, he made Exorcist II: The Heretic, which was… well, you can’t win ’em all, I suppose.

Zardoz is weird at its finest. It’s 2001: A Space Odyssey if directed by Fellini. It’s psychedelic, ambitious, blasphemous, pessimistic, and optimistic. Speaking of Kubrick’s 2001, cameraman Geoffrey Unsworth turns in cinematography here that could’ve won an Oscar. And where else are you going to see a movie star of Sean Connery’s stature in a red diaper and knee-high boots? (Before Connery signed on, the role was supposed to be played by Burt Reynolds, but he got sick… I’m sure he’s not kicking himself over this one.)

Young, fun, and dead before 31: Logan’s Run

In the otherwise utopian future of Logan’s Run, humans are required to die at the ripe old age of thirty. Most people who reach the cut-off age believe the execution ritual is in fact transferring their immortal souls to a higher plane of existence even though all the spectators can clearly see their bodies fucking explode. Those who try to escape their birthday spankings are called runners. The men who hunt them down are called sandmen.

One such sandman is Logan Five (Micheal York). Logan loves the chase. He and his work partner toy with terrified targets before dispatching them violently. The glee on Logan’s face is truly vile; the way he dispenses the word “runner” is analogous to the way white supremacists scream their favorite slur.

One day Logan is forced to go undercover in order to find Sanctuary, the safe haven where runners attempt to go. Unfortunately, Logan’s partner thinks he really went on the lam so Logan must actually run. (I believe Spielberg’s Minority Report owes some unpaid homage to this.) The next thing you know there’s an oddly placed cameo by Farrah Fawcett, a lot of fiery deaths (because sandmen use flare guns instead of pistols), and a “big reveal” that pales in comparison to the one in Planet of the Apes. As you probably guessed, Logan will slowly have the wool pulled from his eyes.

Logan’s Run posits that people under the age of thirty are idiots. The film’s young and insanely attractive citizens mill about their dome city in slinky costumes with sex-crazed mindsets. I’ll be the first to admit these kind of movies are an acquired taste, but I just love this kind of shit. As far as movies go, it’s the closest you can get to the kind of bizarre science fiction that truly insane novelists like Philip Jose Farmer and Roger Zelzany unleashed in yellow DAW paperbacks. You’re going to see an unbelievable amount of sex, violence, and gratuitous nudity for a PG-rated film, and sheer awesomeness in the truest sense of the word.

It’s a hell of a spectacle, yes, but not a seamless one. Analog future technology is adorable when watched in the digital age. The miniature effects look as realistic as toys. There’s a robot effect so painfully obvious you can actually see the lips of the actor who’s wearing the costume.

Logan’s Run is far too goofy to be considered a classic, but you’ll probably grin an awful lot.

How much man could The Omega Man man if The Omega Man could Omega Man man?

Dr. Neville (Charlton Heston) is driving his convertible through deserted Los Angeles. It’s a pleasant day and he’s just vibing, listening to Theme from a Summer Place on an 8-track player. When Heston spots movement in a window, the machine gun comes out and he releases a barrage of bullets. This is two years after a biological apocalypse has rendered nearly everyone else on the planet dead. According to the poster, “The last man alive… is not alone!” That’s because most of the people who survived the plague are now mutants who specifically want to kill Neville.

If this sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because it’s a 1970s retelling of Richard Matheson’s 1954 classic novel, I Am Legend, in which the bad guys are vampires, not mutants. It also served as the basis for Vincent Price’s The Last Man on Earth, which is a fairly standard but watchable B-movie, and a 2007 Will Smith vehicle which bore the same title as the novel even though it entirely missed the point. Matheson’s novel depicted Dr. Neville as a man so badly isolated that when the vampires came to his home to taunt him nightly, he often fantasized about opening the door and stepping out.

The Omega Man scales back the isolation-horror and becomes one of the very first tough guy films, complete with witty one-liners (which mega Omega Man fan Tim Burton has pointed out in interviews). While browsing a car lot, Neville has a humorous conversation with an imaginary car salesman who’s trying to screw him over. After being captured by the bad guys, Heston asks, “Are you fellas really with the Internal Revenue Service?” When it’s revealed that Neville is not, in fact, the last person alive, his love interest decides to go shopping, referring to her shotgun as a “credit card.”

The film’s so hip, in fact, the mutant ghouls wear mirrored shades with their sacramental robes. This may have seemed a little silly in the 70s, but in the time since it’s managed to age like a fine wine. The last woman alive is sassy black Lisa (Rosalind Cash), who’s not the only prominent character in the film who wears a bitchin’ afro. The first time she meets Heston it’s with perfect comedic timing: she catches him caressing the curves of a department store mannequin.

The Blu-Ray looks great, though it’s painfully obvious whenever motorcycle-driving Charlton Heston transforms into a stunt double with a bad toupee. Also shitty is the inclusion of the same special features which appeared on a DVD version ten years ago. Nonetheless, I haven’t enjoyed the picture more. Watch it before Tim Burton inevitably remakes it.

I (kind of) saw Godzilla 2014

Last night I went to see Godzilla at the drive-in during an intense thunderstorm. Because I am an Oklahoman, it was far from the first movie I watched in a thunderstorm—the first was when I was around sixteen years of age, sharing a plastic bottle of vodka with a couple of friends as we stood in the middle of the field, laughing at the way the hairs on our arms and necks were rising from all the static electricity in the air. As I went to the bathroom, the power suddenly went out. I cannot adequately describe the existential horror of being trapped in a drive-in bathroom as it’s darker than the Mariana Trench… and you really don’t want to touch anything to find your way out because it probably hadn’t been surface-cleaned since the 1950s.

Nonetheless, I really enjoyed Godzilla. At least, once the storm finally passed around halfway through.

Dual-wield sniper rifles in Wolfenstein: The New Order

You assume the role of William B.J. Blazkowicz, whose favorite pastime is killing Nazis. The game opens in 1946 and initially feels routine, like a retread of Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Then a laboratory explosion puts a chunk of shrapnel in B.J.’s skull and the character spends the next fourteen years in a coma. When Nazis are ordered to shut the hospital down, B.J. wakes up just in time to slay the bastards. In this alternate timeline, the Nazis have won the war after dropping an atomic bomb on New York.

Severely culture-shocked, B.J. interrogates a Nazi commander with a chainsaw to find out where members of the underground resistance are imprisoned. Naturally, he breaks them out and finds himself battling the Nazi bastards all over the world… and the moon. Yes, that’s right. The friggin’ moon.

B.J. is a surprisingly sympathetic killing machine. His love interest—the woman who took care of him while he was in a coma all those years—is believably realized in both appearance and voice. Having recently played the less-than-stellar Rage, I’m surprised by how realistic these characters are rendered by the id Tech 5 engine. Take, for instance, the paraplegic Caroline Becker. When she and B.J. are reunited in 1960, they take turns listing their injuries and injustices in an attempt to one-up the other. The pissing contest is concluded with a hug, at which point Caroline warmly says, “Good to see you, William.”

Which isn’t to say the game is flawless. You’ve no doubt heard a lot of reports the game isn’t as linear as the demo which journalists first saw a year or two ago, but those reports are misleading. You’re constantly told what to do in great detail by another character (e.g., “B.J.! Get up to that ventilation shaft and try to ambush the bastards!” etc.). On top of that there’s almost always a little beacon pointing you to an easy-to-miss objective. I understand many gamers don’t have the patience for getting stuck, but the hand holding is a little strong.

As for the multiplayer? There isn’t any. Perhaps that’s just as well as I can’t say I had a whole lot of fun in DOOM 3’s multiplayer and what they tacked onto Rage wasn’t even worth the bandwidth. The developers focused on what really counts: a kick-ass game with very little fat.

What makes the game really special is the way it feels, something that doesn’t translate well to gameplay videos. You’ve gotta try it yourself to truly appreciate it.

Splice isn’t what you think it is

Behold: the birth of a human-designed creature! It’s the second of its kind—a gross, slimy monstrosity about the size of a football. The scientists responsible, who happen to be dating, are Elsa and Clive (Sarah Polly and Adrien Brody). They drive a Gremlin. They eat pizza at work (because movie scientists always eat pizza). They think their designer creature is cute. And this will become relevant later on: Clive wants kids while Elsa doesn’t mind waiting.

The scientists are on the cusp of curing all the bad things that tend to happen to the human body. Naturally, bureaucrats conspire to take the project away. The scientists’ lofty goals simply aren’t profitable to the company’s investors. Polly pushes forward with the research anyway. It results in something that resembles a human fetus outside the womb. Now they’ve got something on their hands that was highly unethical to make in the first place. Getting rid of it is even more so.

The scientists attempt to keep the creature a secret, but this causes one complication after another. And if you’re anything like me, you’ll be waiting for the routine horror stuff to begin any second. Thankfully, the movie doesn’t become routine until the last seven minutes or so. By then, it’s earned it. Its horror is bizarre, cerebral, and wonderfully gross a lá David Cronenberg’s The Fly. The “monster” (and I’m really trying not to give too much away here) has more in common with Frankenstein’s than you might suspect.

So do you like body horror? This picture’s got it. You like dance scenes? There’s a pretty unique one, I guess you could say. You like movies that really aren’t for the faint of heart? Then step right up. Sure, sometimes you kinda know where it’s going, but that’s part of the fun: watching characters on a slow motion collision course with outcomes that could have been easily avoided earlier, but can’t be avoided now.

Event Horizon doesn’t affect the outside observer

When Sam Neill attempts to explain black holes to his crew members, they roll their eyes. One says, “Singularities? Speak English!” I can’t imagine a depressing future in which people who live in space are lost at the mere mention of singularities, but Paul W.S. Anderson apparently can. He’s the guy who made Mortal Kombat, Resident Evil, and Alien Versus Predator. He’s got as much taste as a toenail.

The Event Horizon, an interstellar ship with an experimental gravity drive, has vanished. Seven years later, it mysteriously reappears, orbiting Neptune. A second ship is sent to investigate. Sam Neill is the scientist who designed the Event Horizon, Laurence Fishburne is the captain, and Kathleen Quinlan looks great in a tank top. Due to unforeseen circumstances, the rescue vessel is damaged and the crew have to swap ships. Unfortunately, the Event Horizon begins to make the characters hallucinate. We’ll soon find out it’s been places it shouldn’t have been and brought something sinister back with it.

It’s fair to compare Event Horizon to Alien, even though that’s like comparing restroom graffiti to Picasso. On second thought, it’s actually among the better Alien rip-offs (and some of the official sequels, to be honest), because instead of yet another alien running around, it at least tries to do something different with the supernatural angle. I often see Event Horizon regarded with reverence in movie forums, and I certainly see why others love it, but I just wish it were a little more fun.

To be clear, it’s okay for horror films not to be fun, but those need to be exceptionally good in other ways. Event Horizon is not exceptionally good in any way. It’s not just joyless, it’s pointlessly joyless, partially because the director has the emotional complexity of a housefly. Compare it to another Sam Neill horror movie, one that’s also as serious as a heart attack: Possession. That’s a movie that actually has something to say and it’s even more unsettling than this one.

I’ll be the first to admit Event Horizon isn’t without merits. The set designs look fantastic, though there’s no logical reason for the maintenance lighting to turn eerie colors or for there to be a hundred headlights all over the wormhole generator. The CGI is terrible, but the rest of the special effects are top notch. I’ve heard tale that there’s a more graphic cut somewhere in the studio’s vault. I have the sneaking suspicion that’s a better film than this, the watered down theatrical version. I would be extremely interested to see it some day.

As is, Event Horizon just isn’t my cup of tea. Almost, but not quite.