Midnight movie from the 80's!

Rating: 8/10 (28 May 2015)

I've seen Mad Max: Fury Road twice and tried to see it a third time tonight. (They were only showing 3D screenings after 8:30 p.m. so I had to pass... who's with me on this? 3D is for kids...)
Since I very rarely watch movies twice in a theater, this is an odd impulse, which I don't entirely understand, made more odd by the fact that I didn't like the movie too much the first time I saw it. I didn't like it, but I also felt I was in the absolute wrong frame of mind to digest what was being thrown at me on the screen. So I went back.
What I found on second viewing is that Mad Max: Fury Road is the filmic equivalent of an unbelievably great, if slightly challenging, hard rock record. The pleasure in watching it isn't really story and suspense (there's little of either), but just soaking in the craziness, the out of this world textures (cars, costumes, weapons), the awesome soundtrack (music and effects). During the second screening it seemed for most of the show I had a huge smile plastered across my face, because I felt so in tune and aware of all of these elements intertwining. When I wanted to go back a third time tonight, it was with the same impulse that I might want to listen to a great record again. To take that journey once again, and to capture even more nuance and subtlety in the compelling vision being played out on the screen.
In the end I feel like this movie captures something lost about my teenage movie-going in the 80's, when we used to go see stuff like A Clockwork Orange; Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii; or Texas Chainsaw Massacre Pt. 2; and (not always of sober mind) have really extreme audio-visual experiences in a movie theatre. That kind of filmmaking to my mind has largely been lost in an era of, on the one hand, incredibly dumb Hollywood movies, and on the other, extremely self-consciously "arty" films made to impress critics.
For me, it's great to see George Miller, for at least one shining moment, explore other possibilities with the medium.