Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
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20 UCW JUNE 3-9, 2015 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM The Leading Edge In Contemporary Living MOVE IN TODAY! AddisonRidge.com • 910.227.3775 I get why 99 percent of the people who bought a ticket to see Mad Max: Fury Road (120 minutes) walked out of the theater in love with it. If nothing else, I love it at least a little bit for causing so many in the Men's Rights Movement to froth at the mouth over how the real star of the fourth Mad Max film was clearly Charlize Theron's Furiosa. If I am any less than enthusiastic, it is perhaps due to the fact that the Mad Max franchise drops further down my top 10 list of fantasy/science-fiction franchises every time Mel Gibson says something racist/ sexist/crazy. As you might imagine, Mad Max was about twenty places higher on my list 10 years ago. My husband would tell me to separate the art from the artist, but he is of a more philosophical bent than I. Speaking of separating the art from the artist, does anyone else find it odd that writer/director George Miller is also the genius behind both Babe and Happy Feet? That's weird, right? Can someone please generate a Babe/Mad Max mashup video to go along with the Unbreakable Furiosa video that pairs the opening credits song from The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and footage from Fury Road? The film begins with some Mad Max-position that explains what is going on for the two people in the theater who haven't seen any of the first three films. Then, Max (Tom Hardy) is captured by the War Boys, the sociopathic army of Dennis Hopper's less sane brother, Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne). Turned into a mobile blood bag for a War Boy named Nux (Nicholas Hoult), he is strapped to the mast of a custom car and taken into the desert as the War Boys, along with allies from Gas Town and the Bullet Farm, chase down Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron). The names keep getting more inspired, as Immortan and his right-hand man Rictus Erectus (Nathan Jones) team up with several other bizarrely named patriarchs to chase down Furiosa and reclaim some f leeing women, who also have bizarre names. Personally, I think that of the escaped women, Toast the Knowing (Zoë Kravitz) and The Splendid Angharad (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) drew the best names. As hard as he tries to up the name ante, George Miller has yet to top the iconic Master Blaster duo from Beyond Thunderdome. What follows from this plot sketch is a series of insane car chases, explosions, f lamethrower guitars, mutated and scarred background char- acters and an undeniably feminist subtext. I per- sonally find car chases tedious, but I think that if George Miller was trying to overwhelm the senses with explosions and apocal-icious insan- ity, he certainly succeeded. Overall, you already know if you want to go and see Mad Max. If you're a fan of the franchise, you already know you are going to like it, even if you don't love it. The film is firmly couched in the fin- est Ozploitation aesthetic, even if it was filmed in Namibia due to some uncooperative weather patterns down under. Now playing at Patriot 14 + IM A X . HEATHER GRIFFITHS, Contributing Writer. COMMENTS? Editor@ upandcomingweekly.com. 910.484.6200. We All Go a Little Mad Sometimes Mad Max: Fury Road (Rated R) by HEATHER GRIFFITHS