Two Movies - Two Visions of the Future

Mad Max Fury Road – a 4 out of 10 on the JWO scale
Mad Max is truly a dark vision of our dystopian future. It picks up after the Thunderdome, where it is clear Max failed to keep the children in his care safe which has sent him into madness and savagery. Maybe at this point I am just becoming jaded about movies like this, after seeing one too many. (which I think ties into the Tomorrowland theme). This movie just had an idiotic or no plot and script.  This movie seemed to be written with punk rockers and x games aficionados in mind.  I really just didn’t get the guitar player with fire coming out of guitar as something that would happen in a dystopian nightmare.  Would they really waste their energy on that.  I know, I know, its not real, only a movie, but if there is complete disregard for reality, then, this is not a real future possibility and whole premise of the movie falls apart. In fact there were times in the movie I actually laughed ouut  loud  due to seeming absurdity  in tthe movie  The movie’s violence and noise just didn’t appeal to me. I did  appreciate the feminist and ableist angle that the movie interjected.  It was novel for this type of  movie.  But it wasn’t enough to offset ongoing death and destruction with little or no plot line.  I like Tom Hardy and love  Charlize Theron as actors but they didn’t have much to work with here.

Tomorrowland a 6 out of 10 on the JWO scale
Tomorrowland has one strike against it immediately, because going in, I saw this cynically as a way for a  movie to promote the Disney Parks.  From a business perspective I like it, but from a movie perspective it takes a bit of the purity away from the movie.  Having said that, I enjoyed the movie. George Clooney puts in a typical George Clooney low key professional performance. Britt Roberston did a great job playing  the innocent energetic youthful imaginative budding engineer protagonist who wakens Clooney from his slumber.  The movie showed us two visions of the future, one idyllic, and another dystopic. I think you have to be physicist to understand the plot line regarding alternate universes and time shifting.   I gave up trying to figure that out after awhile. The movie’s message for me is what we spend our time on, what we focus on, will determine our future. If we dwell on the negative, the negative future will occur. If we dwell on the positive and act with wonder about what is possible we are more likely to create a world filled with wonder.  And by the way you can find wonder in Tomorrowland at Disney World. But I am sci-fi nerd and I appreciated the shots of the 64 worlds fair, and jet packs, and a multicultural, multiracial future and the questions about whether Artificial Intelligence can have emotion.  It was a fun movie with a good message.  Well worth watching.

Movie Review August: Osage County – a 7.5 on the JWO Movie Rating Scale

Perhaps because I just led a service on compassionate communications today that this movie struck a chord with me due to its lack of the same.  It is the story of a dysfunctional family after its patriarch has committed suicide (it happens in the first few minutes of the film, so I am not giving much away here). It is heavy on words and light on cinematography and action.  The acting is just spectacular, although occasionally over the top. There are just so many good performers in this, I almost didn’t recognize Abagail Breslin (from a great movie Little Miss Sunshine, which I now realize is 9 years old and it makes sense why I might not recognize her)  And although the matriarch of the family says she is truth telling, the movie is all about how the secrets we keep and the truth we hold within ourselves, ultimately poison us.  It is about how we really don’t understand others’ lives often, as one character states:

“Maybe its hard for you to believe, looking at me, knowing me the way you do, all these years. I mean, I know to you, Im just your old fat Aunt Mattie Fae. I’m more than that, sweetheart, there’s more to me than that.”

People don’t just fit into the nice little boxes we imagine them to be.  Life is more complex than that. The movie also shows how we are affected generationally by the suffering of our parents. It is clear how each one of the children is a reflection of and a reaction to their parents. And although the end of the movie didn’t tie everything up in a nice little bow, I think that is the point.  Our lives are never complete, and they are always unfolding.  The best we can do is to try to understand ourselves and bring the truth to light as difficult as it may be.