A renaissance of 21st century action cinema

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  I hadn’t realized how jaded action cinema had become until I watched this. I’ve been joining the lines and buying the tickets for the Marvel onslaught since Iron Man. Watching the Hobbit trilogy with my eyes half open with the sameness of it all. I loved the birth of CGI after The Abyss and T2 and gasped in wonder at Gollum and Caeser.


But eventually all of the third act of all action movies became saturated with digital everything. Now comes Fury Road, an analogue testament to practicality and inventive insight into making it visceral. 

Now I know there ARE digital effects in this, I’m not stupid but they are there to enhance, polish and assist in the stunt work and vision of the Director NOT to bury the artistic nature with endless repetitions of glinting danger.

In Road there are characters, people who we can identify with and see them change and grow through the shared experience of their struggles. You can feel the fear and adrenaline within them, you can feel the danger, the closeness of death. 

Millers’ created world is dazzling in its realness, and the photography is blistering to the eyes. I was overwhelmed by the color palette he used. And to hear the audience stunned into silence was fascinating. The person I was with forgot they had popcorn until the credits rolled! 

Maybe those spoiled by being raised in the Transformers era can believe in the power of filmmaking for the first time. 

For myself? Born in the 60s and raised through cinema of the 70s and 80s, watching a 70 year old Millers’ Cinematic art form on the big screen made me feel young again.

Last week the best thing at the movies was a tv series!

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I have loved movies since i can remember running around the garden being a black and white private eye looking for a troublesome dame.
I love going to the theater and waiting and simply sighing with the calm joy of a movie that hasn’t quite started yet but is imminent.
Last week i had time off and money, a rare combination, so i pondered through Fandango for a great movie to enjoy. i don’t live in a major Met city but there are three multiplexes in the area. i wanted something worthwhile and smart, something written with intelligence and daring.
Something?
Well something cinematic and worth my earned and rare spare dollar. What fulfilled all these criteria in movie world?

Game Of Thrones The Imax Experience!

The only decent, well written, risk taking cinematic treat across the boards was an HBO tv series. now i used to be a bit of a snob about tv shows but i did grow up through Larson’s Knight RIder and other 80s camp but lovable drivel. GOT completely captures what cinema fails to do nowadays. it takes huge risks with story and characters. it creates and slowly forms character arcs across its huge canvas AND it forms complete, complex characters that you care, hate and relate too.

All this and dragons too and they feel more real than most of the stock 20 million dollar “Actors” that drive the bloated industry today. Cinema and tv have always been enemies although they accidentally have assisted each other. I remember straight to video movies whose sequels made it to the big screen due to word of mouth in blockbusters video and the like.

Nowadays my multiplex has the same film playing in 15 screens, another in 5 and a couple of older films filling the rest. This is not variety, this is a lack of risk in a business terrified of falling foul of the opening weekend. if it doesn’t perform in those three days its a failure.
Are we really to believe that after release and the multiple forms a movie takes after theater that these movies don’t make a profit? I realized the other day that i have purchased The Abyss in every format since theater and am waiting for the blu ray release.
That includes, vhs, widescreen vhs, laserdisc, Laserdisc special edition, dvd, dvd box set, instant streaming! i think that works out to about 200 dollars pluson one movie that , to be honest, i don’t even love as much as i used too.
So, i loved watching GOT at the movie theater, even though i had seen it before on my HD tv with nutter bastard surround sound. It’s, as always, that collective moment. a couple of hundred people joined together in a finite space of time dreaming together.
That is cinema, pure and simple.