Before I even begin, I have to say how insane it is that MAD MAX FURY ROAD is an OSCAR NOMINATED BEST PICTURE. Never thought I’d ever type that or for that matter even GET another Mad Max movie from George Miller, writer/director of the three previous films.

The nomination is both completely deserving and impressive coming from the notoriously cantankerous closed-minded Academy. I’m glad that they managed to see the extreme craft of a movie that features a man getting his jaw pulled off via a chain tied to a moving wheel. While that sounds like sarcasm, I am dead serious about the movie using the kind of thoughtful craft and storytelling only possible in cinema.

I stress the storytelling in the movie because the plot of the movie is so simple it can be drawn on a napkin. In a post-apocalyptic Australia where resources are scarce, Max (Tom Hardy) is captured by an evil warlord named Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Bryne) who subjects his people to scant necessities and takes the women for himself in order to procreate. One of Joe’s lieutenants (Imperators), Furiosa (Charlize Theron), takes it upon herself to help the wives escape while Max reluctantly helps them in order to further his own need for survival. With that, one movie-long chase sequence begins and never stops. Continue reading Mad Max: Fury Road →