Grateful for what this film was, disappointed in what it shied away from.

Straight Outta Compton is extraordinarily timely in its treatment of brutality, fearmongering, and the importance of passionate expression. For anyone who has posted one of those godawful memes about the “irony” of violent protests in response to recent racial profiling scandals, this should be absolutely mandatory viewing. Not because it makes its protagonists out to be angelic social justice warriors, but because it allows us to be vaguely uncomfortable with their methods while still convincing us to cheer for their cause. To err on the side of the oppressed, and to ask where anger comes from rather than criticize it from our smug vantage points. NWA were a product of their times; a visceral shout from a community that desperately needed a voice. F. Gary Gray puts us there in the thick of it: the gangs, the dope houses and militant raids, the feeling of being entirely abandoned by society.

In my white, middle class upbringing, I’ve never felt abandoned by anyone. No authority figure, police or otherwise, has been anything but kind to me — if a friend of similar class and privilege shouted “fuck the police”, I’d say “well, it’s more nuanced than that” or some similar wet-blanket sentiment. But in 1989 Detroit, amidst a sea of middle fingers, Gray gave me a glimpse of how that chorus might feel to someone living it. And it feels incredibly gratifying. It does what art is supposed to do: it transports.

Unfortunately, West Coast gangsta rap often traded one form of oppression for another, and NWA et al were no exception. While the film trusts us to put violent bravado in its proper context, it seems desperate to minimize the rampant misogyny. Oh, it’s there occasionally — orgiastic pool parties, a “Bye Felicia” origin story, dutifully acknowledging a side of hip hop culture that Gray knows the audience won’t totally side with. But it only gives us obligatory scraps of admission, which almost feels worse than outright denial. Absent is any toll it takes on the women around them, whose three varietals (slutty groupie, saintly mother, strong-willed wife) might as well be different species. I felt a bit of unease watching parade after parade of topless women worshipping our protagonists — not because they shouldn’t have shown it, but because they could have shown so much more alongside it. We see Politically Correct Uproar and we see blanket approval, but we never see the (I assume massive) conflicted middle.

That lack of trust in the audience was most evident in the broad strokes it used to paint its characters. Suge Knight is a bad dude and bad dudes do bad things, period. Eazy is given the most flaws of the group, but only to preface a Prodigal Son redemption. Ice Cube, the obvious pro-First-Amendment warrior, voices all of the aggression and violent rhetoric — he’s earned it, it’s safe with him. But save the too-entertaining-to-be-offensive “No Vaseline”, we rarely get vulgarity (or even basic anger) without clear “socially conscious” overtones. You’d almost think they were Public Enemy.

Dre? He’s a saint in a DJ booth, perennially above it all, urging his friends to cut the gangster shit and think about the art. He’s seen in concert, he’s seen spitballing with Snoop, he’s seen on billboards as a multi-platinum artist, but he’s rarely seen participating in any of those things that made him famous. Dre, whose verses (ghostwritten or not) with NWA (“One Less Bitch”) and collaborations with Snoop (“Bitches Ain’t Shit”, “Ain’t No Fun”) were perhaps the most vile and damning of the lot, who helped shift the focus from the hyperbolically-violent sexism of the era to the women-are-flesh-bots-and-isn’t-that-awesome sexism that still echoes in hip hop today, irony-free. I’m not saying they had to show him assaulting Dee Barnes or getting a lecture from Oprah about respecting women, but to have him just sit there as a sort of pre-Apple-Exec Christ figure? For a movie with plenty of grit, it felt oddly spineless.

Straight Outta Compton, like the album that inspired it, puts a well-needed spotlight on a particular time and place, and for that I am very glad it exists. And like the album, there’s a good deal of baggage that comes with that endorsement — but who knew, 25 years later, the problem would be that it’s too tame?

“Jason Segel to Play David Foster Wallace in James Ponsoldt’s The End of the Tour.” The headline stuck me as absurd when I read it. James Ponsoldt, chronicler of sweet high school romance and alcoholism. David Foster Wallace, virtuoso author, architect of tangled prose about ununtanglable feelings, patron saint of “Not yet, but it’s next on my reading list.” Jason Segel, perennial schlubby best friend, a sort of stoner Kramer who dances with muppets and showed his penis in that one thing.

Don’t get me wrong. Separately, I have a lot of love for each of these people. That’s actually the problem: I knew them already. From Freaks and Geeks to the last season of HIMYM, I’ve spent years accidentally bumping into Segel. Ponsoldt’s last two films both hold a special place in my heart. And despite an avalanche of pretension headed my way for saying this, Wallace is absolutely my favorite author: not just Infinite Jest, but short fiction anthologies, Harper’s travelogs, a bizarre primer on number theory, and the very interview this film is based on. I wanted it to be good, I did. But mostly I dreaded it with a sort of preemptive, vicarious embarrassment. What if it’s just Marshall Erickson in a doo rag?

In hindsight, I’m not sure why I was so skeptical. Because if there’s one thing all three artists share, it’s a respect for the sincerely-felt mundane. In his now-famous commencement speech, DFW extolled the virtue of the obvious, of the “myriad unsexy” sacrifices that comprise true freedom. His characters struggle with loneliness in privilege, fraudulence in success, addiction, depression, the overwhelming pressure of talent or beauty. Whether found on a luxury cruise or porn convention, “First World Problems” were simply human problems.

James Ponsoldt has plenty of respect for human problems. The best scene from Smashed may as well be narrated by Don Gately: Mary Elizabeth Winstead in her first AA meeting, feeling self-conscious about her lack of a Real Problem, fumbling to explain that Fun just isn’t so fun anymore. The Spectacular Now elevated high school interactions into something powerful, profound — Sutter’s relationship may be a doomed nostalgic blip, but his loneliness strikes us as real and adult. The strength of The End Of The Tour is that it doesn’t try to mold Wallace and Lipsky into tragic figures or cute sentiments; it just asks us to sit and listen. On a groggy freeway at sunrise, cold coffee in tow, talking deeply about life as blinding light hits the windshield. We’ve probably all had a drive like that, where begrudging smalltalk snowballed into something sprawling and personal — the silly philosophical argument that felt so profound in the moment, the moments of silent communion that feel more profound in retrospect. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this particular brand of intimacy happens side-by-side rather than face-to-face. It’s not about mining for conclusions or peeling back each other’s masks, it’s about living life together, eyes on the road.

Jason Segel’s characters are obsessed with sharing life’s tiny pleasures. This John Bonham solo, that one cheeseburger he swears exists, a puppet rock opera about Dracula — he may be a lawyer or world star chef, but trust him, you have got to get in on this Gouda. As Wallace, he’s a believable contradiction: hyper-verbose artist, lover of Alanis Morissette and Pop Tarts, ex narcotics user whose deepest addiction is television. The everyman persona feels deliberate without ever feeling affected, and that’s a crucial distinction. He knows the Mall of America is gaudy (and Marshall probably doesn’t believe in ghosts), but better to aim at excitement than settle for hip discontent. Relentlessly self-aware, yes, but with a genuine root. Funny enough, the very reason I couldn’t imagine Segel in this role might be what made him so perfect for it. A comedian who traditionally writes his own dialogue, forced to mimic an icon verbatim — isn’t that what fame feels like?

If you can’t tell by now, I’ve been really struggling to make this review cohere. There are too many directions I’d like to take it. I want to tell you about the film’s similarities to the Before series, about how self-aware pretension is so endearing to me. Or about My Dinner With Andre, and that gratifying “Cut the bullshit, you’re a fraud and I’m lonely” moment both films share. Or about the bizarre feeling of watching a movie whose script I’ve essentially already read performed by actors I can’t unrecognize, or the distinct way James Ponsoldt uses light to make it feel like you’ve lived somewhere all your life, or how Good Old Neon would make for a great companion piece if you imagine Lipsky reading a yearbook, or how Jesse Eisenberg is so good at playing an asshole in movies it makes me subconsciously dislike him in real life. And in this sprawling conversation where I’m straining to sound so goddamned insightful, I still haven’t mentioned if I liked the movie.

I really did. I hope you will too. We talk about it more on this week’s podcast.

Psychological thrillers have an awful lot to say about psychology. Deep insights from Captain Obvious, I know, but it’s interesting what anxieties our stories betray about us. Maybe your luxurious home won’t make you feel any less alone — maybe its excess will feel empty, terrifying. Maybe you don’t actually know the person you’re in bed with — maybe you can’t really know anyone at all. Here’s Johnny the “provider”, betraying your vulnerability. Here’s Margaret the “nurturer”, brandishing misplaced love like a knife. Monsters terrify in peripheral glimpses; people terrify up close. And the biggest terror of all is nothing, the lack of a pay-off, the fear that your own mistrust might have been the monster.

The Gift’s greatest asset is the same thing its (laughably bad) trailer lacked: subtlety. It begins with a discomfort we’ve all faced, lets that discomfort grow into fear, and gives us just enough to nurture that fear while maintaining plausible deniability. At least for a while. Simon and Robyn run into Gordo, an old acquaintance from high school who seems good-intentioned but…off. Polite obligation leads to a superficial dinner or two, but Gordo doesn’t want some asymmetric nicety — he wants them to care, genuinely care, like he does. Simon doesn’t want to fake it; Robyn wants to mean it, but there’s a gnawing unease she can’t shake. That social anxiety, beyond any jump scare or eerie visual, is the real source of tension here. It’s a problem without a solution: Simon’s “rational” answer feels heartless, Robyn’s “empathy” rings false, our fear echoes the worst sort of upper-class prejudice…but if it’s true, then what? As emotions heighten, that uncertainty weighs heavier. We’d all like to be Robyn, but we’ve probably also been Simon — and, more innately, we’re terrified of being seen as Gordo. For a pulpy thriller, the tension it builds is surprisingly complex.

You might notice that I’m not mentioning the “consequences-from-the-past” theme — the one that dominates that godawful voiceover trailer. In the proud tradition of pulpy thrillers, The Gift also works as a thinly-veiled, hokey morality tale about bullying — it feels tacked on and, luckily, doesn’t overwhelm the movie. But it does mean characters are prone to making profoundly one-dimensional decisions every thirty minutes or so, and nowhere is that more distracting than in the climax. If you want my specific complaints, you can listen to the spoiler section of the episode. For now I’ll leave it at this: this is a surprisingly solid thriller, which thrives in foggy allegiances and doubts and fears. I wish it’d stayed in that haze, where people were just people who you couldn’t quite trust. In the cold light of day, monsters and pawns are a hell of a lot less satisfying.

Have you ever been sober at a comedy club in the afternoon? Seen a quiet band play an outdoor festival? Watched The Mindy Project? If you’re like me, these situations lend themselves to a particular brand of dissociation. You recognize the stimuli responsible for “fun”, and you’re aware of the enthusiastic response around you — but something just won’t click. Even when it’s decent, hyperawareness imposes a curve: the gap between “fine” and “great” becomes awkward, unbridgeable.

So maybe I’m the problem. Because like last week’s Trainwreck, my detachment from Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation began with the opening sequence. A remarkably-still-charismatic Tom Cruise was dangling from an airplane, and I just couldn’t seem to squeeze through the screen and join him. Everything felt a little too overexposed, a little too efficient in its Action Checklist ticking: agents with unclear allegiances (tick) do spin kicks chopped by manic camera cuts (tick) in search of an elaborately guarded McGuffin (tick). I saw Fun™ but I wasn’t having it. By the time I’d calibrated to the IMF universe, Ethan was already four or five set pieces ahead of me; an “impossible” mission was completed before I’d even internalized the stakes. As I felt the film draw to its inevitable close, I marveled at how uninspired the whole thing had been.

Then it peeled off its imitation James Bond mask and nondescript artistic voice modulator, hopped on a Fast and Furious motorcycle, and raced for a half hour towards something totally thrilling. I really can’t stress how disjointly satisfying that final half hour was; like the filmmakers had saved every bit of playful energy for the third act. To call it a “payoff” would suggest some sort of cohesion — this wasn’t a payoff, it was a great movie stapled on the back of a forgettable one. Or maybe it was the same movie the rest of the audience had been watching since that opening airplane scene; maybe 90 minutes in, I’m what finally clicked. Regardless, I wish I’d been there for the first half.

I’m not sure what to blame for that extended disconnect: if the overwhelmingly positive reviews are any indication, you’ll probably slip into the “better movie” a lot quicker than I did. Unfortunately, no grand finale or benefit of hindsight could free me from that generic hour and a half — however admirable the eventual rescue mission. Chris and I review on this week’s episode

Super late in posting this, so I’ll cut to the chase: Southpaw is a thoroughly entertaining, skillfully crafted, totally unnecessary adrenaline hit. There’s no good reason for you to see it, but you’ll probably have a great time if you do.

Antoine Fuqua, of Training Day and (more recently) Equalizer fame, is an expert at turning two guys beating the crap out of each other into a madly addictive spectacle. This primarily holds when one of those two guys is Denzel Washington. But what Jake Gyllenhaal lacks in the being-Denzel department, he more than makes up for in sheer commitment: his turn as hot-headed heavyweight champion Billy Hope is utterly transformative. Brokeback and Nightcrawler may have stretched him emotionally, but this is the first time I’ve seen him physically embody someone else — let alone someone capable of terrifying me. Rachel McAdams and Forest Whitaker are equally strong in their supporting roles, elevating everything they touch. With such unrelenting talent on both sides of the camera, it’s easy to forget you’re basically watching an extended Eminem music video.

Dig deeper than raw machismo, though, and you’re bound to come up empty. Here’s the arc in a nutshell: Billy’s aggression brings him fame, Billy’s aggression destroys his life, Billy learns to channel his aggression through a slightly smaller pinhole, Billy’s aggression (possibly?) saves the day. The film’s first act does a phenomenal job of convincing me that a particular brand of punching someone in the face for money is barbaric, and takes a dangerous emotional toll on the victor. What it totally fails to do is persuade me that alternate ways of punching someone in the face for money circumvent this. Yet by the end of the film, no one is mourning an absurd vicious cycle a la The Wrestler; there’s no palpable sadness on display. Instead, we find ourselves cheering, Rocky-style, for a father to win back his daughter via the same vice that (deservingly) lost her. And whether or not he succeeds, that’s a hollow message to stomach. Like the original 300, I liked it well enough; I just don’t think I like what that says about me.

Is it possible for eyebrows to break the fourth wall?

I know it sounds like a low blow, but I mean it as a complement. Cara Delevingne is striking and intense: runway model, Instagram superstar, Saint Vincent sweetheart, bane of Sacramento morning talk shows. She’s a real person who knows precisely what she wants, not a blurry average of every other teenage fantasy. She’s John Green’s thesis and third-act twist — and she’s on screen in the first two minutes of the movie.

I can’t quite explain why Paper Towns felt so off to me. It’s not that it felt untrue: Green’s prose sounded remarkably accurate, and even if it was only slightly less manipulative than your run-of-the-mill YA fiction, it pegged teenage wish-fulfillment to a T. And it’s not that it was half-assed, halfhearted, or poorly acted. Quite the contrary. Everyone is talented, hearts firmly affixed in the right place. I really respect where they went with this one. I only wish I could have joined them earlier along the way.

Instead I felt stuck in a noisy theatre for the first 70 minutes, watching a handful of fully-grown characters pantomime a Bildungsroman. Actors learning lessons I never believed they needed, to right a wrong that only existed when the script and (quite good!) soundtrack called for it. The journey required me to immediately accept a few things as Gospel: that Quentin is hopelessly obsessed with Margo, that she’s a conventionally popular teenager desperate for escape, that he needs to learn to put himself out there, to take a risk for once. “You need to learn to put yourself out there — take a risk for once!” [a paraphrased] Margo insists, in a scene meant to be laden with either naive fantasy or knowing nostalgia. But as much as I appreciated the attempt, I couldn’t identify with it at a distance or feel its emotional pull up close. Minus the heartstring tugs, the variably-charming collection of moments barely held together in service of its admirable message. It’s a shame, isn’t it? When all those strings just break?

No child dreams of becoming Ant Man, but plenty want to direct. So when internet chatter first erupted in 2012, the buzz had less to do with any superhero than the underdog at the helm: Edgar Wright, whose credentials as a genre geek (Cornetto Trilogy) and hyper-real stylist (Scott Pilgrim) fit uncannily with the Marvel aesthetic. Fans were excited, sure, but mostly in the vicarious sense. When that meta-hero was ousted, everyone rooting for him — myself included — felt their excitement shrink faster than [OBVIOUS ANALOGY].

When you’re hauling $130M of cargo and the captain’s suddenly been ejected, it’s not the time to bust out fancy aerobatics. You keep your head down, and aim for a safe landing. That’s the only explanation I can think of for why the Ant Man Marvel salvaged manages to be so impressive while leaving such a tiny mental footprint. Shooting somewhere between the horizon and the moon, it’s an inconsequential but confident bullseye.

I had plenty of fun with this movie, mostly because it was having so much fun at its own expense. Self-deprecation is Ant Man’s real superpower, and Marvel has never seemed so in on the joke. Like that final rap battle in 8 Mile, self-criticism is levied before you can get a word in edgewise. Think the Avengers’ stakes are getting absurdly high? Sidelined female characters, perfunctory romance? You’re in good company: Paul Rudd thinks so too, and it’ll be way funnier when he says it first. Neither universe-protecting demigod nor war-torn antihero, he’s just a regular guy in an ant suit. And someone else’s suit at that.

But while Rudd is typically great and Michael Douglas makes for a surprisingly game foil, it’s Michael Peña’s scene-stealing role that left the biggest impression. Which is telling, because he’s the furthest removed from the action. By contrast, the monster-of-the-week villain and corresponding set pieces were half-gone the moment I’d left the theatre. As a “superhero movie” the beats barely stuck while they were going on, let alone enough to make me crave a sequel. Which is fine! If the only alternative is fatigued grandeur a la Age of Ultron, I’m more than happy for snappy fluff. It’s probably truer to the comic book spirit. But calibrate your expectations accordingly: for a planet in the Marvel Universe, it’s an awfully small, small world.

I love documentaries for the same reason I hate reality television: everyone knows they’re being watched. It permeates everything. Every broad emotion, every word, every well-placed tear is unconvincingly choreographed to maximize our empathy for the subject. I love it, because people are such terrible actors. Not only do we still see them for who they are, we get to see who they think they ought to be in our eyes. Ego and superego battling on screen.

That dynamic informs The Overnighters in more ways than one. The film centers around Williston, North Dakota, where the recent oil boom has caused a massive employment spike rivaled only by a complementary spike in immigration. Poor blue-collar laborers from across the country have flocked to the promise of high-paying, low-barrier-to-entry jobs. When barriers to entry inevitably arise, they turn to Pastor Jay Reinke, whose “Overnighters” program allows them to sleep on his church grounds free of charge. Much to the chagrin of his holier-than-thou congregants. Not that they’d come out and say it explicitly — God, and the camera, are watching.

Of all the masks people hide behind, the Overnighters’ are the most empathetic: fresh haircuts, apologetic slips of profanity, lipservice to “the grace of God” when they really mean “thanks for the couch.” True hypocrisy is a luxury the poor can’t afford, and the Christian detractors are far more convincing in their imagined roles. Don’t get them wrong, it’s a wonderful ministry to help the poor! Praise Christ, serve the least of these, blessings and so forth. They’re just concerned, is all. Widows and lepers have a romantic King-James-ian sterility to them — but deadbeat baby-daddies and registered sex offenders? In their parking lot? Think of the children!

Reinke is hiding behind something too, and that complexity is what keeps this from being another weepy, finger-wagging morality tale. Wide-eyed and soft-spoken, his convictions are constantly at odds with his spine; through the funnel of “pastor” each glimmer of holy fire is reduced to a hunched, muted whimper. He knows exactly what sort of people his church is comprised of, but propriety won’t grant him the adjectives. Waging war without artillery, he’s left hunting for compromises: enforce stricter guidelines, omit details from the elders, keep the more “controversial” Overnighters in his own home or, sadly, send them packing. Whitewash every tomb. Strained relationships breed enemies on all sides, and he meets them all with the same cheery, loving disposition. A smile, a hand on the shoulder, a mostly-earnest laugh.

My Fundamentalist self would have seen his disposition as a Christlike joy in all circumstances. Today, I found it heartbreaking. It’s a portrait of a man who knows, deep down, that his worldview won’t survive this unbruised. That his love runs deeper than Christian platitudes, try as he may to conflate them. Doubt is the unspoken theme of the film: be it the American Dream or the Good News, everything is in flux. We first meet Pastor Jay as he’s ministering to his flock, greeting the sunrise with a cheery hymn. By the penultimate sunset, there are no hymns — and any reference to God sounds empty and perfunctory. When a meth addict misquotes “Psalms, no, Proverbs” to describe his sexual history as some frenetic demonic transaction, Pastor Jay feels no need to correct him. A stare, a pause, a vulnerable hug. “We’re both broken” he sobs, and it hurts to know how much he means it.

The Overnighters is a soulful ode to those who journey to any sort of Promised Land, only to find it doesn’t have room for them. It’s heart wrenching without being sentimental, damning without ever losing love for its subjects. It’s nothing but people, and it’s wonderful.

Get it on iTunes here

At one moment during San Andreas, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson dives out of a Cessna clutching his soon-to-be-ex wife. Below, the world has gone to hell: residential skyscrapers crumbled, human debris littering Chinatown like discarded Dim Sum coupons, remnants of a nation far too shocked to mourn. 95% of San Franciscans have been annihilated, and TED-talk-auditioning scientists promise that the worst is still to come. “I haven’t gotten to second base with you in a while,” he quips.

The Disaster Movie formula is inherently ridiculous, and any attempt I make to criticize this one is going to feel profoundly tone deaf. You already know why it’s stupid. Co-opting the visuals of real-life tragedies for popcorn-flick amusement isn’t exactly ethically sound. Nor are the priorities it begs of us: precisely five lives are sacred in this film, five million more are utterly expendable, and at least one is disposed of with jeers and whistles. Value of life is inversely proportional to wealth and directly proportional to upper body strength. Melodrama is shoehorned in the least opportune places. “You had another kid, but she drowned, right?” is seen as valid exposition. Plot, when feebly attempted, is absurd.

But there’s a reason we’re drawn to this stupid genre: utter powerlessness is exhilarating. It may be the only truly universal human experience, and the more realistic the setting, the greater the thrill. With its clear geography and detailed set design, San Andreas is more than adequate at communicating that thrill — even as it’s cartoony enough to sidestep most ethical concerns. It’s a total What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get flick, and from my vantage point in Ground Zero, I had an embarrassingly fun time watching my city get destroyed. A forgettable, inexcusably dumb time, to be sure. But if you saw the trailer and expected anything better, it’s your own damn fault.

Armed with an hour of disastrous puns and worse Paul Giamatti impressions, Chris and I review it on this week’s Spoiler Warning.

Everything tastes better covered in bacon, but the “best” restaurants don’t serve it by the pound. Why? Read any celebrity chef’s tell-all and compare guilty pleasures: a bucket of fried chicken, a spoonful of Ben and Jerry’s, a crispy grilled cheese with way too much butter. They know you want it and they know how to make it, but their job isn’t to give you what you already know you want. Paula Deen and a thousand post-last-call burrito joints have that market cornered. The best meal of your life won’t satisfy a pre-existing craving; it will invent a new one to haunt you. And in a world where bacon satisfies pretty much everything, newness demands restraint.

But what if bacon had more to say? What if you could make bacon be so uniquely bacon that its own excess became art? That’s the question George Miller poses with Mad Max: Fury Road…er, you know, figuratively. With a script that consists entirely of crescendos and a character palette whose primary colors are “evil”, “badass”, and “fire”, it has precisely one objective and it aims to maximize it: adrenaline. No narrative frills, few humanizing character arcs, nothing toned-back or off-limits. Just two hours of raw, frenetic, gleefully unrestrained mayhem that’s so much much it feels fresh.

John Wick taunted my need for subtlety and Furious 7 got me too drunk to care, but Fury Road is the first film in recent memory to flat out rebut it. With a unique visual lexicon and exquisite choreography that feels less like battle than deranged ballet, it’s hardly a “guilty pleasure.” Proudly unsubtle and viscerally pleasing, yes, but too damn good to be guilty. Some of that goodness is thematic. By sporting strong female leads who espouse a weak-shall-inherit-the-earth populism, it manages to one-up the Other Miller’s graphic aesthetic while inverting his garbage worldview. Charlize Theron rules the film with her non-iron fist, and Hardy’s just along for the ride — this is no 300-esque flex-off. But the film is 1% message and 99% chaos, and that chaos is really why it works. To borrow Chris’ comparison on the podcast, it’s a haunting fever dream a la Cirque du Soleil. You’re not quite sold on the “who”’s and “why”’s, but art lies in the motion.

It’s not my favorite film of the year, but Mad Max: Fury Road easily lives up to the hype.