Tag: Apocalyptic

I don’t get it. I don’t know why it is called Z for Zachariah. None of the main characters are named it. I could have easily missed it if someone said their brother/dad/whatever was named Zachariah.

It sounds biblical in a way, and there was a Zechariah in the Bible AND Quran, making him a big deal. But he was just the father of John the Baptist, and I have no idea why that matters.

Damn it. Someone smarter than me should eventually comment why. It might be more obvious in the book version, but I will definitely never read it.

They are watching where the TV would be. You know, if channels worked. 🙁

Guess what, everyone is dead! Boooo! Nuclear war fucked everything up and radiation is a bitch.

But guess what. Ann Burden (Margot Robbie) is alive! Her farm was located in a small area that the radiation was able to avoid. You know, in the mountains in a valley and stuff like that. In fact, her whole family survived, their church and all.

But the parents felt it was their duty to go look for survivors, and they never returned. So her brother also left to look for them. So she is all alone, with her dog, running a farm and struggling to survive.

However, she comes upon a man in a radiation suit and a cart, Loomis (Chiwetel Ejiofor). He has been searching for a radiation free zone for a long time, being in a bunker when all the bombs went off. She saves his life, and they learn to live and love each other. Even if he isn’t religious.

That would be too convenient. Him helping her get gas for vehicles, design a water wheel, and all that stuff. Life cannot be easy. Which is why a third person joins the group, Caleb (Chris Pine). He is just stopping through, but Loomis gets jealous. Caleb is a religious boy and Ann likes him too.

When you only know that three people exist, it just seems natural for a love triangle to form. Are one of the guys evil? Are both of them good people? Who knows. Maybe Jesus?

Jesus killed for your sins. So don’t kill one of the three people on Earth.

Seriously. What the fuck does the title mean? Argghhh.

When you have a movie with only three characters, not even background people, you have to hope they are all great actors or else your movie will suffer because of them. Margot Robbie is the assumed weakest link right off the bat, because she doesn’t have as significant of lines of work as the other two gentlemen. She was made famous from The Wolf of Wall Street, she was terrible in Focus, barely in About Time, and was average in Pan Am. Yes, I watched all of Pan Am.

Despite her average film history, that hasn’t stopped people from over hyping her role as Harley Quinn in the Suicide Squad Movie that is roughly a year away still. Just from trailers, the things meant to overhype things! I assume someone won’t be fantastic in a movie until they prove to me they can act great in said movies. Thankfully, Robbie is fantastic and this is easily her best work to date.

Ejiofor, as always gives it his all and gives a wondrous performance. But we expect that from him. Pine might be the only actor I had an issue with. He is supposed to be suspect, being the last to join the group. But he seemed to overdo it and didn’t always act like a normal person. He overacted the role, while Robbie and Ejiofor felt more natural and subtle.

The best part of the film outside of the acting is just the general atmosphere and world they created. No one was ever really happy, everyone they knew was likely dead. Life sucks, but they were making the best of it and trying to create something sustainable. That is great.

The film does seem to lack enough events to really keep the viewer interested still. I am not saying I have ADHD, but damn, let’s get some more important things to occur, outside of working montages and glaring. The ending is also a bit vague, and in this case pretty annoying. This is a simple movie and interpretation is stupid. Just let me know what happened, damn it. It is probably the book’s fault. Boo, books. Just give me fantastic movies, damn it.

Day 5 of Yay Women Week! Wait, what. This is about MAD MAX. And how FURY the ROAD is. That doesn’t sound go power women ya ya ya at all. But hey, what do you know. You probably haven’t even seen it yet.

After all, early reports about Mad Max: Fury Road is that it actually passes the Bechdel test. So take that haters. Let’s say it fits the theme.

I admit my experience with Mad Max is slim to none. I haven’t been able to see any of the previous three movies (and apparently they don’t matter to this one either).

No, my experience with the franchise are the obvious pop culture quotes, and the NES video game. It involved driving around a barren landscape, looking for gas I think, and getting shot at by cars. In reality, it was about me playing it for like, a minute and dying and stopping. That game was hard.

“Calm down, viewer! Now’s not the time for fear. That comes later.”

Max (Tom Hardy) is pretty crazy. Mad you might say. A loner, roaming the Australian barren plains on his own just trying to survive. He lost everyone close to him. His only care in the world is his survival. You see, the world sucks now. Oil became scarce. Wars, environment, all of that collapsed society. Shit, even water is hard to find.

But you don’t need to know a lot about Max. You just need to know that he has been captured by King Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) and his army of skin head pale War Boys. He has his own huge water supply, so he rules the world. The only reason Max is able to escape is thanks to Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron). She has decided to do the right thing and smuggle the Five Wives (Zoe Kravitz, Riley Keough, Abbey Lee, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Courtney Eaton) away from Joe, who wants to breed future war leaders.

And that’s all you need to know! Women get stolen, Max and Furiosa on the run throughout a wasteland, trying to get the ladies and themselves to safety. On their tail is several large war bands, with guns, flame throwers, bombs, and crazed thugs who are basically all suicide bombers. Here you might find some high octane dudes, like, Nicholas Hoult, Josh Heman, and Nathan Jones.

Metal as fuck.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck. The hype train is real. The. Hype. Is. Real.

I didn’t believe it and I didn’t want to believe it. This was my second choice to see this week after Pitch Perfect 2, and if I didn’t go to a screening I would have waited until DVD release. But I am glad I saw it on a giant screen. It helped blow my mind. Here is the thing. The acting? It is pretty darn good. Hardy and Theron were excellent as always and they were completely believable in their roles. Hoult was like an entirely different person and I would have never expected him to do so much. And hell, some of the actresses I saw associated with the film, namely the Five Wives, I felt very questionable towards but even they did a good job. It turns out that with a majority of our escape party being women, this actually fits the theme pretty well.

The plot also is a very decent one. Miller does a fantastic job at world building and creating so many unique elements to really make you realize how much effort went into this movie.

And the action. Hot damn. Most of the action of course takes place on dusty roads with armored dudes chasing each other on cars, but it doesn’t ever feel repetitive. The final chase/action sequence goes on for so long, it is probably longer than the final train scene in The Lone Ranger. And it just keeps on coming at you. Action, explosions, fighting, great choreography. I was amazed. Don’t worry, the film isn’t 100% action, there are quieter times. So let’s just say 85% action. When the action is going, it is going to 11.

I can’t even describe that enough. This is so far the best action movie of the year and one of the best of the last few years. I would say in terms of pure action, The Raid 2 is better, but in terms of extreme brutal violence, Mad Max: Fury Road is miles ahead of the competition. Man, all this bro talk, I feel like the dudes on Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle. I’m gonna go listen to Wilson Phillips.