“Drove…came back.”
The after credit scene of Doof Warrior climbing down off the truck’s hood, emptying the gas out of his guitar before packing it up, then driving home in a beaten up Ford Focus, to be greeted by Mrs. Warrior and their infant child, Doof Jr. before heading into their ranch style cave was a perfect finale to the movie. I’m glad I stuck around after the credits rolled.
Yeah, Fury Road was one of those “chills” movies for me as well.
I remember “There Will be Blood” doing that to me in theaters.
I didn’t get the chills from Mad Max, I got a case of boredom. It felt like it was an art project first and a movie second. Its clearly not a bad movie but I didn’t connect with it. It didn’t do enough to get me invested in what was happening I think.
I liked Mad Max, but the last movie that gave me “the chills” was either Whiplash or Edge of Tomorrow. Both were so amazing.
Man, I’ll continue to reveal myself as an artistic luddite, but There Will Be Blood is one of those movies my gf drug me to in the first few years of our relationship that I’d have in no way sat through if I wasn’t so damned into her… I was bored out of my mind for the first 90% and stifling giggles after the final scene.
The fact that Greenwood’s score kept hyping up dramatic moments that never came was perhaps the most maddening thing. So many orchestral swells with so little payoff.
I mean, I’m totally not the target audience for that kinda flick, and I can imagine all sorts of ways other people might have enjoyed it. Your comment mostly just reminded me of how awkward it was to try to follow along with her gushing about the movie afterwards while wondering if she’d caught me dozing off a couple of times in the theater…
I also got the chills form Fury Road. Before that Whiplash, I think, and Blue is the Warmest Color (this one sits atop pretty much everything in the least decade for me). Going back memory becomes blurrier, but certainly Haneke’s Funny Games remake was one of them, and United 93.
I don’t watch as many movies as I used to, but thankfully movies this good are so far in-between than I like to think I’m not missing that many.
Beyond being fantastically fun to watch, I admired how the movie stayed on a small scale, telling a (f*cked up,) family feud and nary a world-hangs-in-the-balance plot point to diminish the stakes. Memorable characters with competing and unpredictable motivations. Not overexplaining grievance and history, just releasing the aftereffects. That fat accountant tallying the damages. So good.
(if I have a minor niggle it’s with their ultimate destination… even if it hadn’t turned into a swamp, it didn’t look much like a hard place to access or easy place to defend against the inevitable party crashers, ladies with guns notwithstanding.)
Hmm… you had the same reaction as my girlfriend… who I drug to that movie. THE SCORE WAS THE BEST PART (not really) but, that score kept the tension ratcheted up the entire film! I felt exhausted when that movie ended. I could talk for hours about how incredible that movie is. I saw it twice in theaters, and I know I have said it here before, but they were completely different experiences. One was at the Sundance cinemas here in town, quiet theater, no ads, hand made lattes and popcorn with real butter. Theater was silent, and the final scene was eerie and chilling. Took the GF to the local multiplex, sodas and “butter” on the popcorn. Theater was packed (weird right?) and not entirely silent through the movie, a few gasps at some of the darker moments… the final scene… raucous laughter! And then… as the scene progressed, and the bowling pin continued to fall… dead silence in the theater. Movie ends.
I want to watch it again right now.
You want to talk about score-generated tension? Another PTA movie: Punch Drunk Love. That Scopitones thing they were doing on the soundtrack had me literally on edge the entire movie. It was like having Hitchcock whispering in my ear about murder and under-the-counter medication.
There Will Be Blood was definitely good, but felt a bit too much like acting for the sake of acting to me.
Whiplash was GREAT.
OK, I watched Under the Skin on Amazon prime.
I liked it, sort of, but… masterpiece?
“Let’s make the weirdest friggin’ art house horror movie we can dream up, with a mind-bending musical score, all of which is totally okay because there’ll be TONS of nudity to draw in the masses!”
OK spoilers, so stop reading now if you haven’t seen it.
I did not find the message – alien has no morality, encounters people, makes halting attempts to understand them, gets nearly raped and then burned alive for its trouble – particularly remarkable. Awesome score, amazing cinematography, but arthouse to the damn hilt.
Also Jesus H. Christ this movie has one of the worst Children In Peril scenes I have ever had the misfortune of watching. No big deal, 18 month old kid, you were just left to die while crying your eyes out on a cold Scottish beach after watching your parents both drown, and the guy who rescued your dad (before he waded back in to save his wife, who went in for a dog, and then drowned for real) cracked on the skull with a rock and dragged away in front of you by some woman.
Fuck, how I didn’t need to see that. Just punch me in the damn face next time, why don’t you, Tom. That’d be easier to process and less painful.
I don’t think Under the Skin was ever intended to “draw in the masses”. :)
But, yeah, I’d definitely say a masterpiece. Brutal, weird, unique, mesmerizing. Also, Glazer’s track record is really astonishing for how different the movies are and how distinct they are: Sexy Beast, then Birth, then Under the Skin. Watching his movies makes me think this must be how people felt as they watched Kubrick’s career unfold.
-Tom
That Force Awakens thread should really take some pointers from here…
No, we aren’t.
No kidding. Maybe they’ll learn before Episode VIII.
On a more topical note, we finally watched this again tonight, and I’m really regretting not going to see it twice in theaters now. It’s the first bluray I’ve purchased of a 2015 movie, in stark contrast to how I reacted to 2014. Granted, increased streaming may have something to do with that.
I don’t remember if I had any complaints back when Fury Road came out, but forget about them if I did. This movie is perfect, especially the pacing and sound.
We may have already discussed it in this thread but the connection seems to be that the Happy Feet movies taught George Miller how to choreograph insanely complex scenes featuring objects as the main characters. (Penguins are obviously living creatures but he wasn’t directing penguins, he was directing uncanny valley abominations.)
I hadn’t followed the pre-release press much on this movie so I spent much of it wondering who this new, visionary director was and almost fell out of my chair at the end when I saw it was George Miller. But it all makes sense now.
This is how I felt as well. My jaw was on the floor for most of the movie. I kept wanting to rewind or turn to the person net to me and say, “Did that really just happen?”
It’s been a good two year stretch for movies delivering an experience unlike anything I’ve had at the theater before. Under the Skin and The Revenant have both been mentioned already. I may take a drubbing for this but I’ll add Gravity, a movie which I knew would not translate well to the small screen but, on the big screen, it was an astonishing experience (even while I knew the plot was just passable.)
This may be one step too far for some, but I would add Interstellar to that list as well.
I dunno, Interstellar’s flaws were certainly not with its visuals. That seems a fair point to me.