I’ve been hearing all along that despite a feeling of occasional CG-ishness in some of the shots in George Miller‘s Mad Max: Fury Road, the film is very much a tour de force of practical effects. “We had to do it old-school,” said Miller during a post-screening q & a in Los Angeles on 4.29 (as quoted by Vulture‘s Kyle Buchanan). “This is not a CG movie…we don’t defy the laws of physics.” So why does some of the trailer footage seem a bit hard-drivey? Presumably because of the intensity of the color scheme, which Buchanan describes as “eye-popping” with “the teal of the desert sky and the orange of the explosions cranked up to hypersaturated heights.” Miller said that “one thing I’ve noticed is that the default position for everyone is to desaturate postapocalyptic movies. It can get really tiring watching this dull, desaturated color.” Thank you!

If this was set along the Oregon coast and starred Keanu Reeves, Robin Wright and Ethan Hawke and being released by Lionsgate, I’d be skeptical if not cynical. But being from Norway and particularly from director Roar Uthaug (Escape, Cold Prey) tells me it might be okay. As long as it’s not American, there’s a chance. Boilerplate: “The film draws from a real-life scientific prediction that an 80-year-old natural catastrophe — in which a large mountain slide generated a massive tidal wave in Norway — will occur again, likely sooner than later.” Opening in Norway on 8.28 but no U.S. release date as we speak.

Visited my ailing, sleepy mom earlier today at her facility (The Watermark at East Hill) in Southbury, Connecticut. No chat, no words, her eyes closed. Just hugs, neck rubs, hand holdings. Then I thought, “I know…Sinatra!” I gently covered her ears with my headphones, turned the volume down a bit and played the Nice ‘n’ Easy album. At first she didn’t seem to respond but then I noticed her left foot tapping to the rhythm — a moment. Hers, I mean. Now I’m in Wilton and visiting with an old friend, cartoonist-musician Chance Browne, and his wife Debbie in their homey red farmhouse on Indian Hill Road. A Bedlington terrier puppy, three cats, a talking parrot and a rabbit. Listening to Vin Scelsa‘s last day on the air. Not a big filing day.

I was initially unhappy with Avengers: Age of Ultron, which I saw today in 3D (but not in IMAX) at Loews 34th Street. A more accurate term would be “convulsed by and twitching with hate.” Letmeouttahere, letmeouttahere, letmeouttahere. On top of which two 20something fanboys were sitting behind me and chortling and yaw-hawing at every in-joke and smart-ass riposte. And two Asian toddler kids sitting to my left (with their parents, of course) started making a racket about a half-hour in, and yet I didn’t care because their whining and chattering at least took my mind off the film. I was thinking I might have to duck out and see this thing in installments, like I have with Furious 7. That or I’d have to be tied down with eyelid clamps (like Alex in A Clockwork Orange) to make it through to the end.

But then I chuckled at a couple of bitterly sarcastic lines spoken by Ultron (voiced by James Spader). And I found myself half-enjoying a thrash-down between Ironman (Robert Downey) and the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo). And I faintly chuckled at Ultron’s misanthropic justification for wanting to rid the earth of humans (i.e., because they’re no damn good). And I didn’t half-mind the romantic current between the Hulk and Scarlett Johansson‘s Black Widow. And then bit by bit I found myself making actual sense of this and that portion of the plot. I was far from fully engaged, much less enthralled, with Ultron, and like everyone else I found it awfully labrynthian and a little too cast-heavy but I found myself starting to half-tolerate it. I was saying to myself “this is pretty good on a scene by scene basis but it’s a little oppressive as a whole.” I was also muttering during the second half that “this isn’t great but it isn’t awful.”

Publicists repping Gil Kenan’s Poltergeist (20th Century Fox, 5.22) are declining to screen it for critics in at least one major Northeastern city.  They could always change  their minds but even this tentative decision (a) indicates the usual-usual and (b) offers a slight hint as to how good it is.  “Looks like Fox is crying ‘uncle’ by not screening this,” a friend writes.  “First casualty of the summer movie season.”  Not to mention another gravy stain on the rep of producer Sam Raimi.

“Even those who don’t count themselves among the transgender-prostitute-movie-shot-on-an-iPhone demographic will want to try Tangerine, an exuberantly raw and up-close portrait of one of Los Angeles’ more distinctive sex-trade subcultures. Centered around two sharply drawn transgender women (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez, Mya Taylor) who find the resilience of their friendship tested and affirmed over the course of one busy Christmas Eve, writer-director Sean Baker’s sun-scorched, street-level snapshot is a work of rueful, matter-of-fact insight and unapologetically wild humor that draws a motley collection of funny, sad and desperate individuals into its protagonists’ orbit. The result is a big-hearted, stripped-down yet technically innovative feature obviously destined for a limited audience, but it should be enthusiastically embraced on and beyond the LGBT fest circuit.” — from Justin Chang’s Variety review, 1.24.15. Costarring James Ransone (HBO’s The Wire). Tangerine opens theatrically and otherwise on 7.10.

“The experience of watching Avengers: Age of Ultron — which is not just long but, in Iron Man’s words, ‘Eugene O’Neill long’ — runs as follows. First, you try to understand what the hell is going on. Then you slowly realize that you will never understand what is going on. And, last, you wind up with the distinct impression that, if there was anything to understand, it wasn’t worth the sweat. I gave up around the time that we were presented with something called the Mind Stone, yet another cosmic thingamajig, and apparently one of six ‘infinity stones,’ which sound like the kind of stuff that Bilbo Baggins would hawk on QVC.

“All of this is a bitter disappointment, not least because the movie was written and directed by Joss Whedon. He is a smart and witty operator, as was evident to anyone who saw Much Ado About Nothing, the deft little jeu d’esprit that he knocked off in between this dose of Avenging and the last. Now and then, in Age of Ultron, amid the pap about ‘molecular functionality,’ we get glimpses of what Whedon can do, as in the fine scene where Thor’s comrades attempt, in turn, to lift his mighty hammer.

My plan all along was to avoid the actual submissive experience of sitting down (or standing in the back of the theatre) and watching Avengers: Age of Ultron while selectively quoting this weekend from this or that dismissive review. Get the hate on, wear it like a sweater, run it up the flagpole. Then it hit me this morning that this won’t do and that I need to suffer through it first-hand. God help me but that’s what I’ll be doing an hour or two from now. The suffering will happen at Leows 34th Street, or a six-minute walk from the Starbucks on Eighth Avenue and 23rd Street where I’m now sitting, proscrastinating, dreading it.

The Hitfix guys have been tossing around notions about which was the greatest film year of the past half-century. They’ve apparently decided, in short, that all the significant film years before 1965 are…what, not click-baity enough? Because most online film buffs regard the ’80s as fairly musty and before that it’s pretty much the Dead Sea Scrolls. Conventional wisdom says three of the greatest years were 1999, 1962 (here’s my list of 36 films released that year that enjoy classic status) and 1939, but only ’99 cuts ice with the Hitfixers, at least for the time being. And what about that piece I ran a while back about 1971, in which I singled out 28 films released that year that live in eternity? In any case the combination of having jetlag problems this afternoon and Drew McWeeny having somehow gotten it in his head that 1988 was some kind of landmark year has stalled my brain activity. You know what 1988 was? Three films — The Last Temptation of Christ, Mississippi Burning (despite the absurd and arguably racist attitudes inherent in the film’s jaundiced re-imagining of the FBI’s role in breaking the case of the three murdered civil-rights workers) and Bull Durham. I’m more of a 1989 type of guy — sex, lies and videotape, The Abyss, Batman, Born on the Fourth of July, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Dead Poets Society, Do the Right Thing, Drugstore Cowboy, Field of Dreams, My Left Foot, Roger & Me, Say Anything, When Harry Met Sally, etc. I don’t know. I guess I don’t care all that much. I’m not much of a list queen.

With Ex Machina having caught a wave last weekend, A24 is looking for an enhanced uptick this weekend. The buzz is out there. A hot robot you’ll probably want to bang. If you missed it last weekend are you thinking of giving it a shot or is it…what, higher on your VOD list or just on it or what?