For the week of September 1st, Warner Home Entertainment is bringing Mad Max: Fury Road to Blu-ray. The late, great Roger Ebert began his now-infamous review of 1985's Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome with "it's not supposed to happen this way. Sequels are not supposed to be better than the movies that inspired them…[are]n't supposed to create a world more complex, more visionary, and more entertaining than the first two." How easy it was/is to criticize Ebert for his hyperbole here, particularly in light of Beyond Thunderdome perceived shortcomings, and yet I'm now equally ready to declare Mad Max: Fury Road not just the best film in the franchise (The Road Warrior feels like a warm-up for this one), but also one of 2015's best films. That co-writer/director George Miller has completely reinvented his own action extravaganza is not surprising; he did, after all, guide the Babe movies from the warm, gentle climes of the first film to the surreal, vaguely dystopian thrills of Babe: Pig in the City (another Miller sequel that Ebert preferred to its predecessor), so his reimagining of Max as a new antisocial loner (Tom Hardy replaces Mel Gibson) wandering a desolate wasteland – and having very little of the same shared backstory as Gibson's version – doesn't seem so extreme. No, what is extreme is that despite the title, this isn't really Max's movie. He's an integral character, to be sure, and repeat viewings reveal how crucial Hardy's gift for comic understatement is in grounding the bugnuts stunts and action: he's got a way of staring cockeyed at the most extreme vehicular chaos that recalls Bugs Bunny or Wile E. Coyote in a Looney Tunes cartoon, and the contrast between the florid mayhem and his dry reaction shots gives Fury Road necessary humor without damping any of the suspense. But as for the main character…well, those duties go to Charlize Theron's Imperator Furiosa. After serving as loyal subordinate to the warlord Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne, who played Toecutter in the first Mad Max) for many years, Furiosa goes rogue and flees her venal overseer, although not without first grabbing a War Rig (a tricked-out diesel truck that looks like the nitro-boosted equivalent of the gas truck from the end of The Road Warrior) and all of Joe's sexually subjugated breeders (Zoe Kravitz, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Riley Keough, Abbey Lee, and Courtney Eaton). And with that, the chase is on, as Joe marshals a fleet of suicidal War Boys to kill Furiosa and retrieve his women, and Furiosa finds an unlikely ally (in the most unlikely of ways) in the near-feral Max. Fury Road is Furiosa's story, and she gets more screentime than Max, all of which Theron makes a meal. She's an action icon for the ages, right up there with John Rambo and Ellen Ripley, but Theron plays beautifully in moments large and small. Would that we could see this character grace a few more movies, and even though Theron has been reticent to commit to further entries (by all accounts, this was not a happy shoot, given Miller's tendency for improvising major action beats and Hardy's difficult nature), she could definitely score a Best Actress nomination if she campaigned hard enough. And she's got to be that good to make an impression, given how boldly Miller stages the almost-nonstop chases and action sequences. We never tire of watching all the ways he's dreamed up for cars to smash into one another (and with comparatively minimal CGI, to boot), and when you think he's run out of options, he'll toss in some kabonkers detail you didn't expect, like the "pole cats" bobbing on flexible rods above moving cars or a literally explosive sandstorm the size of Texas or a nighttime pursuit mid-movie that has the blue tint of a silent movie and one nasty surprise after another (and I haven't even mentioned the marsh-land crow-walkers or the guitar-shredding "Doof" that scores Joe's pursuit). The action is so pervasive and overwhelming that you almost overlook Miller's political agenda: if the prominence of Furiosa wasn't hint enough, Fury Road is a savage critique of the patriarchy, with the female leads empowered thinker-fighters and the male leads ranging from, at best, addled lunatics (Max) to, at worst, inbred psychopaths (Joe and his cronies). Miller clearly blames his male characters for the downfall of the species, yet he's, at heart, an optimist – when his male and female characters work together, they can accomplish great things, and you need look no further than the sniper sequence between Max and Furiosa or Max's unusual way of cleaning blood from his face. We often dock Hollywood blockbusters for being too much, but when they're as exciting, as funny, as strange, as inventive, as moving, and as well acted as this one? Bring 'em on.
In his own rave review, Kenneth Brown wrote that "Miller and co-writers Brendan McCarthy and Nico Lathouris deliver far more than two hours of bizarre characters, rampaging war machines, roaring engines, truck-top fights, and guzzoline explosions. Fury Road is a masterclass in world building. Little is told, yes, but so much is conveyed that each return trip reveals detail after detail that only make Max's world that much richer. Everything from the cars to the various road tribes, V8 gods, artistry, post-apocalypse jargon, costumes, weapons, and tools of a mind-bent culture tell tiny stories all their own, and together weave a tale that's nearly inexhaustible. For some, that will no doubt frustrate. Questions are heaped atop questions, often with no answers to be had. But for those who enjoy exploring and experiencing a strange new world without being subjected to hours of exposition, Fury Road's wasteland will prove to be anything but a wasteland. Miller's ideas are so densely packed that dialogue couldn't possibly cover as much ground as the film's visuals. Fury Road in many ways evokes a silent movie. Max and Furiosa speak only when it's necessary, leaving most of the heavy lifting to the imagination, the nuances of the actors' performances, the suicidal stunts, crashes and vehicle shrapnel, and the deceptively gorgeous repurposed salvage that comprises the production design."
This week also sees a number of projects from comedic actors looking to stretch their range. Most notable is Starz/Anchor Bay's release of Boulevard, which is one of the last completed films from the late Robin Williams. Certainly, anyone familiar with Williams' career knows he never shied away from darkness (if you haven't already, please seek out The Fisher King, One Hour Photo, and Insomnia), but Boulevard finds him working in an especially restrained mode; he plays a reserved man who picks up a male hustler (Roberto Aguire) and slowly - and wholly non-sexually - begins to draw him into his life. This kind of material requires a sensitive touch that, unfortunately, writer-director Dito Montiel can't provide. As anyone familiar with his A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints and Fighting can attest, Montiel works best with blunt-force impact, not with ambiguous ideas of sexuality and human connection (it doesn't help, either, that Aguire is so one-note as the object of Williams' affections). What works, though, is Williams, who gives one of the most delicate performances of his life as a deeply conflicted man trying to combat his roiling inner turmoil with kindness and grace. It's great work, and a reminder of how much we lost when Williams passed last year. Much better as an overall film is The D Train, which covers similar notions in a far more comic and satirical vein. Here, Jack Black stars as Dan Landsman, a boring everyman whose attempts to spice up his class' high-school reunion bring him into the orbit of former classmate - and current struggling actor - Oliver Lawless (James Marsden, once again proving himself an underrated comic force). Landsman hopes that getting Oliver to attend will finally make him cool in the eyes of his now-grown-up peers, and it's easy to imagine a version of this story with Black as the small-town nerd made good (a male Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, perhaps), but directors Andrew Mogel and Jarrad Paul have different ideas, and they turn Landsman's reconnection with Oliver into an awakening of a very different sort. The D Train isn't perfect - it soft-pedals some important material in the third act, and it mostly wastes the talents of great comic actors like Jeffrey Tambor, Kathryn Hahn, and Mike White (whose 2000 cult classic Chuck & Buck plays like the completely uncompromised version of this story). But Black and Marsden are so good that they make this uneven farce work, especially the thornier its notions of ego and respect get.
Of Boulevard, Martin Liebman wrote that "Robin Williams makes Boulevard. While the film's core drama is strong enough to carry it, Williams tackles it with an air of believability by way of his uncanny ability to convey the character's deeply rooted pain that lingers below the surface, gnawing at him every hour of every day, fighting a steep uphill battle with a public persona that's become so much a part of his life that he's all but fooled himself into believing that he's the man everyone know[s] and admires - a good friend, a solid companion, in line for a promotion, a real pillar of his community - rather than the person he knows himself to be. The film is much less about the character's sexuality and more about his burgeoning escape and the lingering wounds and the façade that stymie his happiness. Williams is absolutely brilliant in the part, allowing that pain to creep only so close to the surface to where he and the audience - and only then because the audience is privy to the truth - can see it and feel it while it remains closed off to the rest of the world, a world too preoccupied with everything but the essence of a man to take notice that something's wrong. In that way, there's a constant sense of discomfort to the connection between Nolan and the audience as both are pulled in two very different directions and as the strain builds on both sides, as the façade crumbles and each begins to blend into the other. Gradually, Nolan becomes a victim of both worlds, where the exterior cannot accept the changes in his life but at the same time Leo struggles to understand the foundations of his relationship with Nolan, seeing only money and the nonexistent sex rather than the open and wounded heart that's crying out to him for help." Then he wrote that The D Train "is less a comedy and more a dark human interest tale that interweaves humor into the journey of a man who is desperate to pull off the best class reunion ever because...the other people on the committee haven't yet warmed up to him? They won't go get a drink with him? Jack Black's Daniel is strangely portrayed as an outsider, a loser, someone who wasn't popular in high school and who remains unpopular with his classmates into adulthood. Yet he managed to marry one of the girls from school with whom he has two kids. He's also the proud owner of a nice house and works a good job where he has a great relationship with his boss, who trusts him explicitly. All of these details come into play later in the movie as his burgeoning relationship with Oliver begins to take an emotional toll - the fall after the (literal) high - but the film fails to paint Daniel as a sympathetic character because, outside of the class reunion scenes, he's anything but. He's an upper middle class working hero whose got the whole nine yards going in his favor. His desperation comes off like a crutch, a necessary "something" that the movie uses to push forward and get to the topsy-turvy relationship he builds with Oliver. It's all very much inorganic and disappointingly so, a waste of a decent enough core idea that's crippled by a poorly constructed foundation."
And from Shout Factory comes two horror-movie pairings with IFC Films: Backcountry and The Harvest. You'll never mistake either one for a genre standard - they're too slight, both in scope and in ambition - but you could also do a lot worse, especially on a rainy Sunday afternoon. Of the two, The Harvest is the most high-profile option, given the presence of director John McNaughton; McNaughton made the neo-realist slasher Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, a still-disturbing horror classic that quickly drew him the support (and ire, in some cases) of viewers following its 1986 release. It's his Citizen Kane, which, unfortunately, establishes a set of expectations that The Harvest just can't match. The story of a young girl (Natasha Calis) who strikes up a friendship with her sickly neighbor Andy (Charlie Tahan), The Harvest sports a nicely evocative first act, as McNaughton builds up the mystery surrounding Andy, and he gets great performances from Samantha Morton and Michael Shannon as the boy's parents, both of whom imbue their roles with equal parts menace and familial love (in a semi-surprising turn, Shannon plays the far more subdued role, while Morton gets to be terrifyingly unhinged). However, Calis and Tahan aren't charismatic enough to give The Harvest the emotional center it needs, particularly once McNaughton drops the film's big twist, which is simultaneously shocking and overwrought (it retroactively makes the title much too obvious). Thankfully, Backcountry doesn't share The Harvest's too-histrionic tendencies. Talking about the film is difficult because, like From Dusk Till Dawn or Audition, it's the kind of genre venture that starts out as one thing and ends as another, and even though you don't have to look far if you want to be spoiled (like, say, the cover of the Backcountry Blu-ray case), writer-director Adam MacDonald structures his film so deliberately that you have to imagine him being pleased with a marketing angle that didn't immediately give up the ghost. The first half is a straight drama, with Missy Peregrym and Jeff Roop's yuppie couple testing their relationship during a camping trip. MacDonald gives us some external menace in the form of an overly flirtatious fellow camper (a terrible Eric Balfour), but for the most part, the problem lies within, as the natural elements immediately begin exacerbating all the little resentments and insecurities that the two lovers harbor towards one another. We could be watching a mumblecore feature...until Something Happens, and that internal struggle becomes a very real, very bloody fight for survival. I'm a sucker for movies that genre-hop, so I probably enjoyed Backcountry more than most, yet even I have to admit that it doesn't get the balance of tones correct. We spend so much time on the relationship drama that by the time the horror elements kick in, the movie is already two-thirds of the way over, and we're left with two films that don't quite work: a relationship drama that ends just as it's getting interesting, and a horror movie that hustles along so fast we don't get a sense of mounting suspense and terror. Still, you could do a whole lot worse than The Harvest or Backcountry.
Jeffrey Kauffman called The Harvest "a fitfully engaging thriller that plays on tropes of claustrophobia and what initially seems like parental concern about a perhaps mortally ill child, only to offer a florid twist part way through the enterprise which suddenly sheds a completely variant light on most (if not all) of what has been presented thus far. Director John McNaughton, still basking at least a bit in the reflected "glory" of his long ago first feature Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (at least as evidenced by The Harvest's marketing campaign, anyway), hasn't been an especially prolific director, often taking years between projects (according to the IMDb, his last two credits prior to The Harvest were in 2006 and 2007, and both of those were episodic television outings). That may lead some curmudgeons to wonder why parts of The Harvest seem at least relatively slight. But McNaughton uses that very mundaneness to create some of the very misdirection which serves as one of the film's best features. As McNaughton and producer Steven A. Jones aver in their commentary on this new Blu-ray, the whole first sequence of the film in fact acts as a sort of non sequitur (in McNaughton's words) or willful misdirect, with a little league game that ends in apparent tragedy when the pitcher is struck by a forceful smack of a baseball right on his breastplate. The kid falls over, seemingly mortally wounded, but a quick trip to the emergency room and skillful work by heart surgeon Katherine (Samantha Morton) bring the kid through. It's a deliberately discursive way to introduce Katherine, one of the film's central characters, and the very context of that introduction is in and of itself something of an illusion." Then, he wrote of Backcountry that "if the film's marketing campaign gives up the ghost (and/or bear) too willingly, it's ultimately not the deal breaker that some might assume, at least for those who go into Backcountry without an expectation that the film will be bear attacks and nothing but bear attacks. The more compelling emotional heft here is attained not so much through the (ultimately quite horrifying) bear attack, but by the subtle shift of personalities depicted as Alex's initial 'can do' (and 'don't question me') attitude gives way to the increasing fear that the duo are lost out in the wild without any means of contacting civilization (another writing sleight of hand that MacDonald probably could have more artfully handled). There's kind of an interesting schizoid quality to Backcountry that will either make it more palatable or less convincing to audiences, depending on how they tend to approach horror films. On one hand, there's not much 'there' there, when you get right down to it, with the film trafficking in well worn clichés of a couple, and then an individual, battling the elements and struggling to survive. On the other hand, the film is simultaneously full of character bits involving Jenn and Alex, an element which is typically not of much importance to horror meisters who are probably more intent on simply getting to the blood and guts."