Yesterday is an innovative piece of new writing by Stephen Hyde and Katie Hale. As new writing goes this is a pretty bewildering case. Written as a musical, it is a story told by three female characters linked by their relationship to one man. It is a bewildering because the writers have taken a particularly different approach to telling the story. Not only is the telling of the narrative fragmented by the multiple narrators, but the chronology of the story they tell is itself fragmented. For what we hear are not simply three different but sequentially coherent voices, but three perspectives on the story telling different moments of the story.

It is a particularly intriguing form of storytelling, not least because it is set to music. Not content only to introduce variation in time and perspective, the writers have also segmented the story with differing musical styles. Each perspective on the story is characterized by its own musical style and motifs. In the scenes I saw the more conventional Sondheim esque musical form was well and present: soaring choruses , group harmonies and the like. But intriguingly there was also a big band style jazz piece, which made for a refreshing change.

From my preview it was not yet clear how this fragmentation of time, perspective and music was going to interconnect. If however on the night it does, then this could be a truly stupendous achievement. The intricacy both aesthetically and conceptually of such a piece would make it one of the most stunning bits of new writing this year. Nonetheless I’m still not sure whether the script has the potential to do this, let alone whether it actually will.

The overarching story the audience will have to piece together is told by the wife mother and mistress of a man we never see. The story concerns his life told through his interactions with these significant women in his life. I’m still not too clear what is special about this particular man or what it is abut his life that makes it dramatically interesting. But I’m sure on the night we will be rewarded if we stick with clues we are given. If these narrative clues coalesce in order for a conceptual and aesthetic coherence to emerge, then this ambitious fragmentation could indeed be the achievement that it elusively promises.

Selena Gomez. Vanessa Hudgens. Harmony Korine. Any of the above three names attached to a film ought to scream “awful” to any fan of ‘high’ cinema, and perhaps rightly so. Yet in a weirdly compulsive match, the combination worked wonders with James Franco to bring audiences a terrifying, bubblegum-pop feature that marked the death of sugar-coated depictions of teens and brought about a watershed in recognition of the destructive, murderous tendencies of girls who more closely resembled Pussy Riot than anyone out of High School Musical.

Featuring landmark creepy performances from Gucci Mane, the ATL Twins and Franco, doing his best to imitate southern rapper Dangeruss (not Riff Raff), Spring Breakers gave director Korine a chance to play with the pink-yellow cinematography which defines the film visually; blood-red spring sunsets, neon green bikinis, and the girls’ lurid pink balaclavas combine in a disturbingly beautiful scene in which Franco’s Alien and his teenage posse brutalise rival drug dealers to the maudlin strains of Britney Spears’ ‘Everytime’. It’s impossible not to draw comparisons with the ‘Singing in the Rain’ ultraviolence scene from Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. The film’s visual stylisation, overstated and exaggerated to an almost dreamlike state, is arguably its strongest point.

For a film about extreme consumption and the excesses of youth, Spring Breakers does well to avoid criticising the girls as they tear through strip clubs and drug mansions. Instead, we are shown a type of happy vulgarity that allows us to make up our own minds about the crimes they commit. The modern teenage girl, according to Spring Breakers, is more than capable of looking after herself.

The Multiplex is under threat. This is nothing new. Cinema audiences have been declining for decades, pretty much ever since the 40s in fact. After displacing the theatre as a centre for communal entertainment, the cinema has been forced to adapt, firstly by the advent of television, and more recently by that of the internet. Nowadays we see IMAX, 3D, and high frame rates extolled as wonders only available from the much vaunted ‘cinematic experience’. But what does all this mean, and is cinema really under threat?

What it means is that industry bean counters are feeling the pinch. No one values what they can get for free, and the explosion of piracy in the years since video streaming services became an online norm have not been kind to the industry. No longer is piracy a matter of stashing a badly printed DVD cover into your coat after haggling for it with a market trader of questionable morality. No, now piracy is easy – it’s in our living rooms, just a couple of clicks and barely a second thought away. And so people are staying at home and if they are not actually pirating, they are at least flicking through their mile-long Netflix queues.

How has the industry responded? The same way they did when television cannibalised its audience in the 50s – with gimmicks. 3D returned in a blaze of glory, championed by industry heavyweights Jeffrey Katzenberg and James Cameron, only for initial excitement to peter out, and revenues to steadily decline. Since 3D’s 2010 heyday, distributors have moved onto large for- mat screens such as IMAX to lure in the crowds. But these gimmicks only drive audiences to a certain type of film: big, events-driven spectacles, whose box office is inordinately front loaded on opening weekends, where studios, rather than distributors, pocket most of the money. And it means that mid-budget films are headed the way of the dodo, whilst would-be-indie-breakouts remain confined to the art house ghetto, relying on public funding to keep them on screens.

Adding value to the cinematic experience can sometimes be great. But what about the other way that distributors have offset falling revenues? Ramping up the ticket prices. This ill-advised policy has turned audiences off – cinema-going attendance has been in marked decline in recent years, hidden by artificially inflated revenues. What’s more, with chains now offering optional luxury seating (on top of ticket prices inching north of a tenner), the communal experience is being split between the haves and have nots. And when you can lose yourself in a film at home without distractions, it’s difficult to want to pay for glowing phone screens, and the ceaseless crunch of the perennially present popcorn, a reminder that you’re just another consumer to be extorted, whether that be at the ticket booth, or the concession stand.

Anyway, isn’t the cinematic experience the appreciation of film itself – the sharing of a heightened experience of emotion, thought and aesthetics straight from the mind of the director to that of the viewer? Why need this be a communal activity? The impact of first experiencing a film is not diluted doing so alone. Surely no one would argue that any great classic, be it from Bergman, Fellini, Ozu or Coppola, has been withered merely by distance from a release date?

Audiences want, and need, to support the things they love – films wouldn’t get made if no one paid to see them – but cinemas need to meet them in the middle. Lowering prices would bring the crowds back. The extinction that the ‘cinematic experience’ is facing is entirely of its own creation.

★★★★★
Five stars

In my recent internet skulking, I’ve come to find that much of the fan conversation surrounding the new Mad Max film is dominated by mentions of age. Director George Miller (who also helmed the three previous entries in the post-apocalyptic car-western franchise) is rounding 70, and it’s been 30 years since the last entry, Beyond Thunderdome. ‘But does it feel like the old films?’ cry those yet to take the plunge.

It’s not an unfair question to ask, but it ultimately does the film a disservice. This is no mere imitation, no attempt to recapture the magic of the 80s; Mad Max: Fury Road has molten blood and gasoline coursing through its veins, and an iron heart to pump them. Miller is an uncompromising visionary, and this is the head-rattling, bone-crunching stuff of his visions. If ever it doesn’t feel like the old movies, it’s because the intensity and insanity have been turned up beyond belief – the result is incredibly fresh and, resoundingly, the best Mad Max film yet.

Fury Road is an exquisite cocktail of elements from earlier films in the series, running a split between the more story-heavy first entry, and the straight up action of the second. Though the film leans more towards the latter (the bulk is essentially one extended chase sequence, with a couple of detours here and there) it nonetheless presents us with some of the franchise’s richest characters, not least in Charlize Theron’s ‘Imperator Furiosa’. Furiosa is an inspired creation, equal parts warrior, mother and leader, which has led many to applaud Fury Road for its feminist bent. If this wasn’t exactly Miller’s explicit intention from the outset, it’s nonetheless extremely refreshing to see men and women so naturally and evenly integrated in a blockbuster of this kind – the rarity of this sort of treatment cannot be exaggerated.

The character of Max himself has seen something of an overhaul from the Mel Gibson trilogy. Tom Hardy is solid in the role, though he lacks something of Gibson’s tacit aura of sly wit. Where Gibson’s Max was a silent, unfeeling warrior, Hardy plays him as an animalistic mutterer, haunted by visions of his wife and child. These visions hark back to the character’s for- mative moments in the first Mad Max film, and do a fine job of setting the stage for those who haven’t seen it. Fury Road is just as enjoyable for newcomers who haven’t seen the original trilogy; this is neither a reboot nor a sequel but, in Miller’s words, an “episode”. The franchise has never been big on chronology and this is no exception, though series veterans will get a nostalgic kick out of the buggy, rig and muscle car designs.

And these machines are glorious. The extended action sequences which make up a significant portion of Fury Road are stunningly and outrageously choreographed, every bit the vehicular equal of The Raid or Oldboy’s martial arts mastery. The scenes are absolutely thrilling throughout, and Miller and co know exactly when to mix it up and throw in new ideas, so it never even begins to feel stale. The effects (largely practical, and you can tell) and imagination on display are uniformly breathtaking. See it on as big a screen as possible – the visceral joy of the visual experience is overwhelming.

Of the (appropriately thin) plot, I could mention the slight middle act sag, when we take a very necessary break from the fireworks. But the film is so fucking awesome (and it’s clear that everyone involved had as much fun as you will) that I struggled to care – Mad Max: Fury Road is the best film I’ve seen this year, and I can’t wait to go again.