Can’t Fight the Friction

Mission: Impossible – Fallout

I was so skeptical of the sixth Mission: Impossible movie that I didn’t put it on my list of most anticipated movies this year, even though I loved the last three dearly. I was influenced by the news stories about it: Christopher McQuarrie bucking the trend of having a new director for each film. Jeremy Renner choosing to be in Avengers 3 over this. Henry Cavill growing the world’s most expensive mustache. We were due for a disappointment, it seemed inevitable. I was wrong: instead we got the best Mission: Impossible yet.

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The Fast and the Furiosa

The Fate of the Furious

After 16 years and eight movies, pretty much everyone is in on the joke when it comes to the Fast and Furious series. We all know the first four fluctuated between kinetic messes and charming absurdity, and that the fifth through seventh are insanely entertaining. But eight is a lot of movies, let’s take a moment to appreciate the rarefied air the franchise is now breathing. This is how many Harry Potter movies there are (not counting Fantastic Beasts). This is double Hunger Games. We’re talking James Bond, infinite franchise territory. With that in mind, I’ve been looking for the right James Bond movie to compare F8 to, and despite the icy connection to Die Another Day, I think it’s Spectre.
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T3 97: Top 10 Movies of 2015

The best movies of last year are here and ready to party! Yeah, whether it’s grueling physical suffering in the name of brutal revenge, the world turning into a monotone hellhole, or some good old-fashioned destruction of the American economy, no one can deny 2015 sure was a blast. What’s that? You want to hear us talk about a movie in which journalists hopelessly battle against the Catholic church’s institutional abuse of children? We’ve got that! A woman and her child forced to live in a box smaller than most people’s bedroom for years? We’ve got that too! The reality that the one thing the futile war on drugs can accomplish is turning idealists into cynics? No, Sicario didn’t make anyone’s list, we don’t have that. But check out the podcast, it’s a lot of fun.

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John’s Top Ten Movies of 2015

Every year I try to watch movies I don’t think will be on anyone else’s list. I watch under appreciated dramas, foreign films and documentaries, but rarely do these pan out. Meaning, most of my favorite films of 2015 were yet again some of the most popular. You might see one “outsider” pick, but not much else you haven’t already seen on a dozen other top ten lists. 2015 was Not a bad year by any means, but certainly not one with as much variety as I would have liked.

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Colin’s Top Ten Movies Of 2015

I don’t really have much to say about 2015 in movies, as Sean pretty much summed up my feelings, since as he failed to mention, I saw a lot of the movies to come out last year with him as my wingman. And I agree that there are a lot of different ways of watching movies these days, but I still don’t think you can beat the communal experience of seeing a movie on the big screen in a theater. Especially when you’re seeing a weirder, more off-the-beaten-path film, where you don’t exactly know what you’re in for. Though I suppose it’s that fear of the unknown that fuels the thinking behind the “I just wanna go watch a sequel/reboot/rehash mentality”. Anyways, here are the films that made those risks into completely worthwhile endeavors… Continue reading →

Sean’s Top 10 Movies of 2015

When I think back to 2015, I’ll remember John falling asleep at the most exciting part of Furious 7. I’ll remember the last-minute “dream team” viewing of the second Avengers movie with friend-of-the-blog Paul Otteni and my dad. I’ll remember exhaustedly dropping myself into a Washington, DC theater seat to watch Tomorrowland, just because I couldn’t bear any more walking. I’ll remember my car not getting out of the shop in time and my friends having to make multiple trips between Seattle and the Eastside just so we could all be disappointed by The Good Dinosaur (dinosaurs were such a letdown in 2015). Basically, I’ll remember how fun it is to go to the theater and give yourself over to a movie. It’s an experience I cherish, and one I think I did more often than any other year.
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Maximum Madness

Mad Max: Fury Road

The recent resurgence in more visceral action movies has been a quiet delight. Movies like The Raid: Redemption, Dredd, and John Wick all told straightforward stories that enabled their badass heroes to plow through as much action as possible about 100 minutes. That allowed their filmmakers to focus on stunt choreography and practical effects, making those movies more thrilling than a thousand Man of Steels, even with less than half the budget. Well that silent revolution just got a whole lot louder with the amazing Mad Max: Fury Road, and I hope we’ll be seeing many more films of this ilk in the years to come.

To be fair, director George Miller has been bringing the thrill of extremely dangerous stunts to theaters since the first Mad Max crashed into theaters in 1979. That first movie is OK, but it was the second one, Road Warrior, that always stood as the best in the franchise. Road Warrior had a simple arc too: Max wandered into a messed up situation, saved the day, then disappeared back into the wasteland. Mostly it was about hilarious biker/dominatrix gangs, killer boomerangs, and some of the best car stunts you’ll ever see. Believe it or not, that movie has a more complicated plot than Fury Road.

Fury Road is the story of Max (now played by Tom Hardy wielding another unusual accent) escaping a gang that captured him along with a group of women led by Furiosa (Charlize Theron), the only person we’ve met so far who is a match for Max. Almost the entire movie is Max and Furiosa driving away in their massive truck, the War Rig, as they are chased by evil gang leader Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne, returning in a new role from the first movie) and his wacky acolytes and allies.

The joy in watching Fury Road is watching all the vehicular carnage unfold – and I know that’s what I said about Furious 7 but it’s different here. Furious 7 was built around giant moments – like cars jumping between skyscrapers – but to get their it had to do that whole break-in scene. Fury Road is just the chase, it is, as they say, all killer no filler. You might see the most ridiculous car crash of all time, but you won’t know when it’s coming and the movie will keep moving before you spend too much time thinking about it. It is relentless spectacle, but it works because George Miller knows what the hell he’s doing.

I read somewhere that Miller worked with his cinematographer to make sure all the shots in action scenes had the focus in the center of the frame. That way he could cut quickly between shots without disorienting the audience – our focus would never change even though the shot did. I’m not saying that’s the reason this movie works, but it is emblematic into the forethought put into Fury Road. After all, Miller has been making movies for a long time and was working on this one for at least the last 10 years. I’m glad it paid off.

Anyway, it’s been more than a month since Fury Road came out and I’m kind of itching to go see it again in 3D. A little more than a week before this movie came out, I saw the Avengers battle an army of robots on a flying city. I’ve seen the Transformers destroy Chicago, Superman level Metropolis, and the giant evil Enterprise crash into San Francsisco, but somehow a bunch of cars driving through the desert feels like the biggest movie I’ve watched in a long time. Madness.