MAD MAX: FURY ROAD

I watched this movie weeks ago and I seriously don't remember the Mel Gibson and Tina Turner version, so I couldn't do any comparison.

Starring Tom Hardy, whom I knew would go far after the 'Inception' movie and he did in 'The Dark Knight Rises', as well as Charlize Theron, this genre of movies of a post-apocalyptic world in a desert wasteland has little appeal on me. However, I like both leads as Max and Furiosa respectively, and was pleasantly surprised to see Nicholas Hoult, who was still strangely cute as the war boy Nux.

Furiosa drove five mistresses of the Immortan Joe to escape from the Citadel where they were held captive as breeders to produce offspring for the tyrant leader. With the aid of Max, Nux and few surviving members of her clan, they escaped further into the desert just to make a turn back to confront Joe and his legion of warriors, before defeating them and returning back to the Citadel.

If given better movie choices, I wouldn't pick to watch this movie though.

Max

Max held captive

a war born and raised boy Nux

who can resist the frowned expression of Nux?

Hugh Keays-Byrne as Immortan Joe

Zoe Kravitz (extreme left) seemed to be appearing in a number of recent movies

WORLD WAR Z

To be honest, I have watched lots of zombie movies. I love some and I loathe some. This movie directed by Marc Forster and starring Brad Pitt, who also owns the movie production company Plan B Entertainment, is one that I happened to love very much because of the fantastic original storyline and pacing. By the way, Matthew Fox had only a split second cameo as the pilot of a helicopter, if I didn't see wrongly.

Compared to the "Man of Steel" which is almost of the same length in terms of duration, this movie has a very good pace and sets the tone for the audience to grip their seats in suspense. There were quiet moments and there were high-strung ones. It was a good mix of both so the audience have time to feel the highs and lows. On the other hand, the former superhero movie was kind of slow in the first hour before plunging full length into a series of action packed sequences involving the complete decimation of the city. It was a blurry mess that made me insensitized to the fight and wondered when the battle would end.

The zombies in this movie were really scary and it only took about a mere 15 seconds to transform a normal human who was bitten and infected into a zombie. Someone who was a kin could potentially turned into a living dead with nary a recognition of their loved ones, as witnessed by many such scenes in the movie. The zombies attacked the living with a vengeance and ferocity like no other. They studied the behaviour of animals and applied what they learnt into the movie with many zombies possessing incredible speed and lunging towards their prey. When there was no sound, these zombies became inactive. However, any loud enough sounds would trigger their immediate response to attack. Even a solid wall at least 20 m high at a refugee camp in Jerusalem could not stop the zombies as they clamoured and climbed onto each other before scaling over the high wall and created havoc by transforming a safe haven that protected the survivors from the infected into a living hell.

Brad Pitt delivered a credible performance as a former United Nations personnel Gerry Lane who was forced, in order to ensure the safety of his family, to escort a virologist to find the source of the infection in order to develop a vaccine but eventually became the hero who found the "cure" to protect humanity against the infected zombies.

I was definitely entertained throughout the entire movie.