Carsploitation
May. 16th, 2015 11:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calzephyrA friend pointed out to me recently that the carsploitation genre is a thing and it's true that car movies appear quite a lot under the movie tag. I couldn't say why, if it's because my husband loves cars or that I worked on a car website for about five years, but I love the action, plus we have seen most of the movies that show up on carsploitation lists, like Mad Max, Deathproof, Duel and The Car (which I really enjoyed for its unintentional existentialism). And purely by accident, I swear, I became a huge fan of Vin Diesel when we saw Fast & Furious at the cheapie theatre.
Speaking of Vin Diesel, we saw FF7 shortly after it came out. It was good. It was not as good as FF6, naturally, because Paul Walker died halfway through filming. I thought there would be more stunts by Jason Statham or The Rock, but that didn't happen. It was only possible to tell the CGI walker at the very end. The tribute was so touching - brief and not cheesy either. In hindsight the story of the film was so disjointed until the big car chase in Los Angeles, but somehow they made it work together that my sense of disbelief was suspended for the movie. I loved that there was a woman nerd too. Somehow the FF franchise delivers on the smallest whims of its fans :-)
We saw Mad Max: Fury Road today and I loved it despite that the beginning exposition was ruined by the wrong filter being applied for 3D and the audience getting upset. This isn't the first time that something was borked in this theatre too. Anyway...the spoiler free version is that the movie is a tad too long (maybe about 15 minutes or so) and that it is not a traditional action movie and it has very little dialogue. It's very artsy and thinky, and it helps to have watched the previous movies. George Miller just throws the viewer into his post-apocalyptic wasteland and goes from there. If you're expecting a Marvel movie, this is not it. As an Australian, Miller brings a whole different aesthetic compared to American movies. You can see the wish fulfillment on the part of Miller, that he was making up for all the stuff he couldn't do 30+ years ago.
There was a lot of symmetry, which I naturally liked, and as an R-rated film, it didn't shrink from violence at all, which could be quite juicy at times.
Cool stuff I loved - the grannies (Vuvalini) on motorcycles, the sound machine, the hedgehog cars, the night scenes, Charlize Theron.
Around 80% of the movie was all stunts and practical effects, which I really enjoyed because I find CGI too fake and blurry sometimes.
I didn't think too much of Tom Hardy, but he did play his role as a traumatized and emotionally wounded Max brilliantly with lots of nuance as a "feral". For example, when he's trying to file off the face cage, it reminded me so much of a dog that just couldn't satsify an itch on the back of his head.
Charlize Theron's character, Furiosa, is quietly intense too and conveys most of her emotion with her eyes as she helps the Five Wives escape.
Speaking of the Five Wives, they are portrayed brilliantly as fragile, sheltered things at first. Their characters quietly develop over the course of the movie - for example when the wife known as The Dag takes possession of a satchel full of seeds or Capable treats Nux kindly and wins him to their side.
There are loads more subtleties in the movie, like the "mayor" of Gastown, People Eater, whose giant girth and swollen feet are a quiet testament to greed. He tells lead baddie Immortan Joe something like "Protect the assets" when the chase is renewed. This ties in nicely with the graffiti seen in the vault that Joe keeps the women in - We are not things. Throughout the whole movie people are treated as things, from the expendable War Boys to Mad Max himself as a "blood bag" whose blood type refreshes the radiation sickness experienced by Nux.
All the characters are so detailed in the way they use objects, wear objects and inteact with objects that I would see the movie a second time just to satisfy my lust for material culture. As I mentioned before, Fury Road is not a traditional action movie. There is no romance between Furiosa and Max, although there is great respect. I'm pretty sure the movie would pass the Bechdel Test. At the very end, when Max and Furiosa stand together in victory...well, that was a swell moment I wish there was more of in any movie.
Speaking of Vin Diesel, we saw FF7 shortly after it came out. It was good. It was not as good as FF6, naturally, because Paul Walker died halfway through filming. I thought there would be more stunts by Jason Statham or The Rock, but that didn't happen. It was only possible to tell the CGI walker at the very end. The tribute was so touching - brief and not cheesy either. In hindsight the story of the film was so disjointed until the big car chase in Los Angeles, but somehow they made it work together that my sense of disbelief was suspended for the movie. I loved that there was a woman nerd too. Somehow the FF franchise delivers on the smallest whims of its fans :-)
We saw Mad Max: Fury Road today and I loved it despite that the beginning exposition was ruined by the wrong filter being applied for 3D and the audience getting upset. This isn't the first time that something was borked in this theatre too. Anyway...the spoiler free version is that the movie is a tad too long (maybe about 15 minutes or so) and that it is not a traditional action movie and it has very little dialogue. It's very artsy and thinky, and it helps to have watched the previous movies. George Miller just throws the viewer into his post-apocalyptic wasteland and goes from there. If you're expecting a Marvel movie, this is not it. As an Australian, Miller brings a whole different aesthetic compared to American movies. You can see the wish fulfillment on the part of Miller, that he was making up for all the stuff he couldn't do 30+ years ago.
There was a lot of symmetry, which I naturally liked, and as an R-rated film, it didn't shrink from violence at all, which could be quite juicy at times.
Cool stuff I loved - the grannies (Vuvalini) on motorcycles, the sound machine, the hedgehog cars, the night scenes, Charlize Theron.
Around 80% of the movie was all stunts and practical effects, which I really enjoyed because I find CGI too fake and blurry sometimes.
I didn't think too much of Tom Hardy, but he did play his role as a traumatized and emotionally wounded Max brilliantly with lots of nuance as a "feral". For example, when he's trying to file off the face cage, it reminded me so much of a dog that just couldn't satsify an itch on the back of his head.
Charlize Theron's character, Furiosa, is quietly intense too and conveys most of her emotion with her eyes as she helps the Five Wives escape.
Speaking of the Five Wives, they are portrayed brilliantly as fragile, sheltered things at first. Their characters quietly develop over the course of the movie - for example when the wife known as The Dag takes possession of a satchel full of seeds or Capable treats Nux kindly and wins him to their side.
There are loads more subtleties in the movie, like the "mayor" of Gastown, People Eater, whose giant girth and swollen feet are a quiet testament to greed. He tells lead baddie Immortan Joe something like "Protect the assets" when the chase is renewed. This ties in nicely with the graffiti seen in the vault that Joe keeps the women in - We are not things. Throughout the whole movie people are treated as things, from the expendable War Boys to Mad Max himself as a "blood bag" whose blood type refreshes the radiation sickness experienced by Nux.
All the characters are so detailed in the way they use objects, wear objects and inteact with objects that I would see the movie a second time just to satisfy my lust for material culture. As I mentioned before, Fury Road is not a traditional action movie. There is no romance between Furiosa and Max, although there is great respect. I'm pretty sure the movie would pass the Bechdel Test. At the very end, when Max and Furiosa stand together in victory...well, that was a swell moment I wish there was more of in any movie.
