The MoFo Top 100 Sci-Fi Films: Countdown

I really just want you all angry and confused the whole time.

Brazil (1985)



MASTERPIECE ALERT!
This is an extremely well made movie full of imagination, breathtaking music, great directing, sometimes hilarious situations and some very sharp dialogue! I'm still shaking from the brilliance of this movie. It was astonishingly awesome!

Terry Gilliam takes us to a retro-future world lead by a very repressive government.
In the beginning of the film, we see how a man tries to kill a fly and how this fly ends up between his typewriter and because of that incident one of the automatically typed names becomes barely readable.
This little incident causes an administrative error and an innocent man gets arrested by the ministry and is later executed.
Meanwhile we meet a daydreaming bureaucrat, named Sam, who is part of an important family, but doesn't really seem to have much ambition. He has to solve the problem by handing over a refund check to the innocent man's widow to 'cover' the government's mistake. When he arrives at the apartment, he sees the 'angel girl' of his dreams (literally), who happens to live in the same building and from that moment on his sole purpose in life is to find and be with her. Because she witnessed the arrest, she forms a potential danger to the state, however, so he also has to save the girl from the bureaucratic regime.
This adventurous quest develops both in the real world as well as in his own metaphorical daydreaming world.
Will he ever find peace with the woman of his dreams in this dangerously controlled world or will his increasing problems lead to his downfall? There's only one way to find out...

If you want to go on a spectacular trip through one of the most interesting sci-fi worlds ever and meet a bunch of great characters who also happen to be funny, you shouldn't wait much longer and see this masterpiece.

I rate this movie:

The Road Warrior aka Mad Max 2 (George Miller, 1981)

The second Mad Max film qualifies as the best to me. The interesting thing about the trilogy is that the three films are all entirely self-contained. It's true that in the prologue of this film, there are scenes which show why Max (Mel Gibson) went mad, based on what happened in the first film, but they basically have nothing to do with what happens in this film. We are still in a post-apocalyptic world. There are remnants of civilization who are refining oil and turning it into gasoline. And then, there are the violent crazies who need the gas to perpetuate their concept of a dog-eat-dog world.

One of the reasons I like this movie the best is that it definitely has the greatest collection of oddball characters. I mean, the "good guys" even have such wackos as the Gyro Captain (Bruce Spence) and the Feral Kid (Emil Minty), and the bigtime bad guys have the Lord Humongous (Kjell Nilsson) and his truly insane, subhuman lieutenant Wez (Vernon Wells) who goes bonkers when his boyfriend bites it. This film also has the best car chases and stunts, and they're well-paced throughout the film. This is also probably the funniest Mad Max film.

Of course, the unifying factor which brings the entire film together is Max, and Gibson plays him as both world-weary and looking for a way to survive and thrive in a wasteland. Max fits comfortably between the "Good" and "Bad" sides because he knows that he has both of those characteristics within him. I'm not trying to say that people enjoy the Mad Max flix because they are deep, but, along with being a cool, entertaining popcorn flick, this one also has an intelligence about it which makes it clear that if you're looking for some meaning here, then you will probably find it.

MAD MAX 2: THE ROAD WARRIOR

My expectations were set very high when I went to the theatre to watch Mad Max: Fury Road and they were met. The movie was enjoyable, and it only tried to be fun. However when I decided to watch Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, I used expectations for Fury Road, and they were surpassed. This film was a perfect mix of action, sci-fi, and fantasy, and they blended perfectly together for this film, and it much surpasses its slower paced Mad Max, and the more action-packed Fury Road.

After avenging his family's death, Max Rockatansky tries to protect an outside tribe from nomadic marauders trying to steal their gasoline. Max must deliver the gas 2,000 miles and help the tribe escape. Every single scene of this movie is completely action packed. From bikes to tankers to gyrocopters, the props and setting is used to it's fullest. Some of what makes the film hold up so well after 34 years is the use of only practical effects. CGI was not very popular when Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior was released, and I could not imagine how much more I would have hated the film if they used CGI. The practical make every crash and death look so much more real, and it helped with the immersion of the film.

I can't exactly tell you why I enjoyed this film so much more than Fury Road, because they are definitely very similar films. If I had to pick a reason, I would say that it was surprisingly how much smaller Road Warrior was in comparison. Road Warrior is definitely not a small film at all, but much smaller than current day action films. I loved the uniqueness of every shot, character, location, and line of dialog. Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior is one of the greatest action films ever made, and I loved every second of it.

Whoawhoawhoawhoawhoa...

I just went back to check and somehow Brazil is not on my list. It should have made my top 10 but somehow I totally blanked on it (maybe because the idea of a horribly incompetent business-like dystopia doesn't feel like fiction anymore - zing!).

Mad Max 2 was my #25, but I'm too angry with myself about leaving off Brazil to say anything about it.