Witness the ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ director heading the Cannes jury

Who says cinephiles are snobs? What is turning out to be one of 2015’s most award-gobbling films is a rip-roaring action movie featuring unquantifiable automotive mayhem (read: almost nothing but car crashes) and a dude rocking a flamethrower guitar.

RELATED: Interview: Josh Brolin has (very mild) beef with his father

“Mad Max: Fury Road” has 10 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. And now its director, George Miller, will be heading to Valhalla, shiny and chrome — which is another way of saying he will be presiding over the 69th Cannes Film Festival jury in May.

Of course, the fourth “Mad Max” — a series the Australian filmmaker has helmed since its 1979 first — isn’t just your “typical action movie.” It’s so overwrought and precise that even the famously stodgy AMPAS voters couldn’t ignore its craft. Europeans are a little more open to art in genre filmmaking, so bestowing the honor upon Miller and not, say, “Spotlight” (and “The Cobbler”) director Tom McCarthy isn’t too far afield.

RELATED: How is “Carol” not a Best Picture Oscar nominee?

Miller’s CV also includes lots of movies that don’t feature hedgehog cars driven by Russians, such as “The Witches of Eastwick,” “Babe: Pig in the City” (he produced the first), two “Happy Feet”’s, the medical drama “Lorenzo’s Oil” and the best part of the 1983 film anthology “Twilight Zone: The Movie” — the one where a wigged-out John Lithgow thinks there’s a monster on the wing of his plane.