Eddie and Venom are on the run. Hunted by both of their worlds and with the net closing in, the duo are forced into a devastating decision that will bring the curtains down on Venom and Eddie's last dance.
Tom Hardy reprises his role as Eddie Brock for the last time in 'Venom: The Last Dance'. Directed by Kelly Marcel, this third instalment introduces a new villain, possibly Knull. The film is set to release in Indian cinemas on 25th October 2024 and will be available in multiple languages
Tom Hardy is set to make his final appearance as Eddie Brock in one of the most anticipated anti-hero films of the year, 'Venom: The Last Dance'. The film, which is the third part of the franchise, comes to an epic conclusion, promising even more thrills, symbiote action and space creatures. In 'Venom: The Last Dance', Hardy reprises his role as the iconic character Venom.
Writers: Christopher GoldenMike MignolaBrian Taylor
Stars: Jack KesyJefferson WhiteAdeline Rudolph
Hellboy: The Crooked Man review:
Story:A robot becomes marooned on a remote island after a violent storm capsizes the ship transporting it. Stranded in a lush, untamed wilderness, far from human civilization, the robot must adapt to this new environment. Over time, it forms a profound and unexpected bond with an orphaned gosling and the island's wildlife, defying its mechanical programming and embarking on an uncharted journey that reshapes its purpose forever.
Review:While many films have explored the relationship between robots and humans, The Wild Robot takes a refreshing departure, presenting the story of a machine's interaction with the animal kingdom. Meet ROZZUM Unit 7134, or Roz (voiced brilliantly by Lupita Nyong’o) – a cutting-edge, multi-functional robot designed to assist humans in all aspects of life. Programmed for utility, Roz’s purpose is clear: to serve. However, fate has a different plan when Roz finds itself in a forest where the only living creatures are wary animals. Initially viewed as a foreign and intimidating presence, Roz gradually forms a deep connection with its surroundings, especially with a vulnerable gosling named Brightbill (voiced by Kit Connor). Alongside characters like Fink (Pedro Pascal), a wily red fox, and Pinktail (Catherine O'Hara), a resourceful opossum, Roz begins an extraordinary adventure in the wild, taking on the responsibility of nurturing Brightbill and preparing him for his first flight to join the migration.
What sets The Wild Robot apart from typical animated features is its originality, unburdened by the expectations of a pre-existing franchise. Director and screenwriter Chris Sanders delivers a narrative that is both heartfelt and imaginative, resonating with viewers of all ages. The film’s emotional core is powerful, inviting the audience to share in the bonds Roz forms with the forest creatures. The character development is rich and authentic, drawing the viewer deeper into this unique story.
The animation itself is visually stunning, with breathtaking attention to detail in the rendering of the island’s vibrant ecosystem. Cinematographer Chris Stover captures the beauty and danger of the wild, immersing the audience in this visually lush environment. The seamless editing by Mary Blee ensures that the film never loses momentum, keeping the story engaging without dragging. Kris Bowers' musical score further elevates the experience, adding emotional depth with its delicate, moving compositions that beautifully complement both the humour and the heartache present in the story.
Lupita Nyong'o’s voice performance as Roz is nothing short of exceptional. She infuses the character with warmth, vulnerability, and nuance, turning a robotic entity into a deeply relatable figure. Her portrayal is an emotional tour de force, making Roz’s journey one that audiences will remember long after the credits roll. Supporting performances by Pedro Pascal, Kit Connor, and Catherine O’Hara are equally commendable, bringing their respective characters to life with distinct personalities and emotional resonance.
Although The Wild Robot features a relatively straightforward plot, it never feels predictable. Roz's trials in the wild, and its eventual confrontation with human and technological worlds, are compelling and often surprising. The film subtly explores themes of identity, belonging, and the complexities of human (and non-human) connection, wrapped in an accessible yet meaningful narrative.
Ultimately, The Wild Robot is a film that transcends its genre, offering a heartfelt meditation on the power of relationships and the enduring spirit of compassion. It's a timeless tale of love, survival, and self-discovery, one that stirs deep emotions and often leaves you with a lump in your throat. Profound and beautifully crafted, this animated gem is a must-watch for audiences of all generations, leaving an indelible impression long after its final moments.
Several generations following Caesar's reign, apes – now the dominant species – live harmoniously while humans have been reduced to living in the shadows. As a new tyrannical ape leader builds his empire, one young ape undertakes a harrowing journey that will cause him to question all he's known about the past and to make choices that will define a future for apes and humans alike.show less.
Directed by Wes Ball, 'Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes'opens with a clear shift away from the iconic figure of Caesar, confirming that this beloved character's story is definitively concluded. The film focuses on Noa (Owen Teague), a young chimpanzee who survives a brutal attack on his village. His quest for answers and revenge is the heart of the plot, and his journey reveals more about his species' complicated relationship with humans and the machinations of the despotic Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand). Along the way,
Noa encounters Mae (Freya Allan), a human whose role is crucial yet not fully explored, and Raka (Peter Macon), an orangutan who represents the lost values of Caesar's original vision of harmony between apes and humans.
Although the story and characters in this new instalment don't achieve the same intensity as the previous trilogy, the film sets the stage for an intriguing journey, providing a glimpse into a future that holds potential for more engaging storytelling. The primary characters are mostly digital apes, convincingly portrayed through the remarkable work of visual effects artists and motion-capture performances. They are instilled with realism through their physical movements, facial expressions, and emotions. This technical marvel ensures that the apes are believable in their pursuit of building communities, whether they align with good intentions or more nefarious plans.
Visually, it is a spectacle portraying a desolate world overgrown and reclaimed by nature. Abandoned skyscrapers, lush scenery, and Proximus' stronghold are all rendered with exquisite detail. However, the film occasionally lingers too long on these landscapes, resulting in pacing issues that leave viewers yearning for more narrative depth. The foreshadowing and hints at future storylines suggest that this instalment may serve as a stepping stone for future films, albeit at the cost of leaving some storylines unresolved.
Despite the film's narrative shortcomings, it is an entertaining adventure that engages viewers. The performances, particularly by Teague and Durand, are commendable, and the visual effects set new benchmarks for the franchise. While it may not linger in the memory as the preceding trilogy did, 'Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes' is a worthy addition, offering a mix of action, drama, and visual wonder.
With Thangalaan, Pa Ranjith crafts a stunning spectacle on human greed, societal oppression, and self-assertion. The film often feels like a psychedelic trip through pages of history, and Ranjith, through the story of Thangalaan (a fantastic Vikram, who delivers a beast of a performance that is full of fury and fear), takes us from the 18th century onwards all the way back to 5 BCE.
When Thangalaan begins, we are introduced to the simple 18th century life of its titular character, who is one of the very few land-owning members in his community. Most of them are already bonded labours to a landlord, who has managed to deprive them of their land through crooked means. And soon, Thangalaan, too, falls a victim to his wily ways.
But he sees a way out when Clement, a British explorer, seeks help from the community to get gold from a region believed to be haunted. Thangalaan, who has already heard of his forefather's vain attempt at getting gold from the region, decides to accompany Clement, hoping that discovering gold might help him earn money to win back his land and even empower his people. Can he succeed in his mission, especially when it's not just the unforgiving landscape that's standing in the way.
The term visionary is so casually tossed around these days, but with Thangalaan, Pa Ranjith can stake a valid claim to it. The film is a true-blue big-screen experience that immerses us into its world and keeps us glued with arresting visuals and intense drama. Not since Aayirathil Oruvan have we seen such go-for-broke filmmaking where we are left in a trance by the visuals even if the narrative doesn't make complete sense. Interestingly, GV Prakash Kumar, who was the composer of that film is also behind this one's music, and he comes up with a score that's grand even if it's a little loud at times. It also doesn't help that the dialogues aren't clear in some places; this is a film that would have benefitted from having subtitles.
But the four to five setpieces, like the flashback involving Thangalaan's forefather, and an extended stretch that involves a perilous crossing of a river that is followed by a battle with a black panther and culminates with a guerilla attack where chaos reigns, that are truly world-class in the way they have been conceived. The visual effects of the creatures, though, are a sore point.
Much of the film unfolds like a horror movie, with the horror coming in many forms - mythical, personal and social. And in between these, we get brief moments of tenderness that capture the simple lives of Thangalaan and his people. Ranjith does a great job capturing the intimacy between Thangalaan and his wife Gangamma (Parvathy Thiruvothu, who adds more to the role with her performance even if the way it's written falls short), and the psychic connection of sorts between his protagonist and Aarathi (Malavika Mohanan, who looks every inch a warrior woman), the fierce guardian angel who has been protecting the land of gold.
Even without the social aspect, the film would have been an engrossing adventure, but it's this element that elevates the film into something truly special. Though the oppressor characters (especially the Brahmin interpreter, who works for the British) come across as somewhat caricaturish, Ranjith shows how "varna sadhi" has managed to deprive a few communities of what's rightfully theirs. Early on, we see Genguvan (Pasupathy, another actor who fixes the writing shortfalls with his sheer presence), one of Thangalaan's community members, urging them to follow in the footsteps of Ramanujar and wear the poonal, so that they will no longer be discriminated, only to later realise that just the mere prop might not be enough to 'uplift' an oppressed person.
The director doesn't spare the British as well. Even if Clement promises better things for the people who agree to work in his mine, we later see how greed turns him into just another version of an oppressor.
The magical realism in the final act does make us wonder how much of what's unfolding is happening inside Thangalaan's head, but Ranjith's refusal to spell it out is what makes the film singular. And while history may have played out otherwise when it came to deciding the fate of the workers who worked in the Kolar gold fields, the director's revisionist take doesn't come across as fanciful, but only as an effort at self-assertion
After the events of Stree, the town of Chanderi is being haunted again. This time, women are mysteriously abducted by a terrifying headless entity. Once again, it's up to Vicky and his friends to save their town and loved ones.
“Stree 2” picks up right where the 2018 horror-comedy Stree left off, bringing us back to the eerie and quirky town of Chanderi. This time, the villagers are confronted with a new supernatural threat, a terrifying entity named Sarkata, who seems to be a more significant challenge than Stree herself. The movie is expected to blend horror and comedy seamlessly, keeping audiences at the edge of their seats while making them laugh out loud.
Rajkummar Rao reprises his role as Vicky, the endearing yet somewhat dim-witted tailor who once again finds himself at the centre of the spooky chaos. Shraddha Kapoor returns as the mysterious woman with a questionable identity, leaving us guessing whether she’s an ally or foe. Pankaj Tripathi’s character, Rudra, the eccentric “know-it-all” with a penchant for ghost stories, is back with his signature witty one-liners. Abhishek Banerjee and Aparshakti Khurana return as Vicky’s loyal but equally terrified friends, Jana and Bittu.
New to the cast is Tamannaah Bhatia, who plays Shama, a character introduced briefly in the first film. Her role is crucial to the unfolding mystery and promises to add an exciting new dynamic to the story.
The film is filled with absurdly funny moments that keep you laughing from start to finish. Rajkummar Rao plays a tailor with a supernatural ability to measure clients by looking at them. He’s also a sewing whiz, and his father thinks he’s a reincarnation of a tailoring deity. Their conversation about sex is hilarious!
The ghost in the film is equally comical, with a penchant for kidnapping men in their birthday suits. The camaraderie between the three friends is heartwarming and feels authentic, like real-life conversations between childhood buddies. And Rajkummar’s clumsy attempts to woo Shraddha will surely make you smile.
What to Expect?
Fans of the original film can expect Stree 2 to maintain the perfect balance between humour and horror that made its predecessor such a hit. The film delves deeper into the lore of Chanderi, exploring new myths and legends while keeping the audience engaged with its well-crafted screenplay. The dialogue, a highlight in the first movie, is sharp and witty, ensuring that the humour lands right amidst the spooky atmosphere.
This film’s real heart and soul lie in its engaging characters and their witty banter. Pankaj Tripathi steals the show as the local wise guy, and his comedic timing is impeccable. We can’t help but wish he had more screen time! Aparshakti brings a cynical charm to his role, while Abhishek Banerjee delivers a hilarious performance as a man possessed. Shraddha Kapoor exudes a captivating mystery, and her chemistry with Rajkummar Rao is undeniable. Rao, however, is the film’s true star, elevating even the most absurd moments with his nuanced performance. His reactions to the supernatural occurrences are priceless, and his awkwardness around Shraddha adds a delightful touch of humour. Compared to the First Film – Stree
While Stree introduces us to the peculiar world of Chanderi and its haunted history, Stree 2 expands on this universe. The stakes are higher, the horror elements more intense, and the comedy more refined. The sequel builds on the cliffhanger ending of the first film, answering lingering questions while posing new ones, making it a worthy continuation of the story.
“Disney’s so stupid,” Deadpool declares trollishly at the beginning of “Deadpool & Wolverine.” It’s the sort of jab — in this case, at the studio distributing the film we’re watching — that we’ve grown used to from this dude, a potty-mouthed exterminator in a face-obscuring suit vaguely reminiscent of Spider-Man. Not quite a hero, not quite anything else, Deadpool is an answer to the conflicted but upstanding superheroes of 21st-century Hollywood. He kills messily, he makes a lot of inappropriate jokes and, in an industry that practically decrees a profit-boosting PG-13 rating, his movies are always rated R.
Despite first appearing in Marvel comics, Deadpool (played by Ryan Reynolds), a.k.a. Wade Wilson, also used to stand slightly outside of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But in the six years since his last big-screen appearance in “Deadpool 2,” the Merc with the Mouth has been shoehorned into the M.C.U., along with the X-Men, for reasons involving Disney’s 2019 acquisition of 20th Century Fox. (Which was promptly renamed 20th Century Studios, and you can be sure Deadpool will joke about that too.)
Deadpool explains all this very quickly at the beginning of “Deadpool & Wolverine,” just to catch us up. He has a lot of expositional ground to cover, since he also has to clarify how this movie will avoid desecrating the memory of Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), a.k.a. Logan, who was laid to rest in the excellent eponymous swan song from 2017. “We’re not,” Deadpool announces. Deal with it.
The first two Deadpool movies set out to skewer the conventions of superhero cinema, with “Deadpool” (2016) scrapping conventional opening credits for alternate text jabbing at tropes: “A British Villain,” “A Hot Chick,” “A Moody Teen,” “A C.G.I. Character” and also some words we can’t print here. Deadpool broke the fourth wall constantly, remarking to the audience about what was happening or about to happen, as well as the paltry budget of the film and the silliness of him, a minor and ridiculous character, being in a movie at all.
Based on the best-selling videogame, this all-star action-adventure follows a ragtag team of misfits on a mission to save a missing girl who holds the key to unimaginable power.
The film operates like Borderlands 101, focusing on Cate Blanchett's grumbly bounty hunter Lilith. Roth and co-writer Joe Crombie – replacing original co-writer Craig Mazin, whose name mysteriously vanished from the project in 2023 – interpret Gearbox's interplanetary world-building in disappointingly linear fashion. All the excitement of traversing Pandora's Skag-ridden territories and Psycho outposts is jettisoned, as Roth boxes his characters into a single mission: Lilith is hired by business titan and arms manufacturer Atlas (Edgar Ramírez) to find his daughter on Pandora – and that daughter ends up being the dainty demolitionist "Tiny" Tina (Ariana Greenblatt). But, in true Borderlands fashion, Lilith's objective isn't just about rescuing Tina from former mercenary Roland (Kevin Hart) and Psycho Krieg (Florian Munteanu). There's also an ancient Eridian vault, and Tina might be one of three required keys to opening it.
Roth’s movie blends together plot points that span the Borderlands timeline, but the experience is regrettably simplistic. It's only a matter of time before Lilith, Tina, Roland, Krieg, and everyone's favorite mouthy robot, Claptrap (Jack Black), form a vault-hunting squad. Between the adversarial Crimson Lance soldiers led by Commander Knoxx (Janina Gavankar) and massive Threshers that could swallow a hunter whole, their mission seems daunting. But any challenge they face breezes by with deflated stakes. Lilith lucks into a crucial artifact by opening a single drawer, while Roland avoids what should be certain Psycho-inflicted death off camera, neutering any sense of peril. It's like watching gameplay on God Mode with infinite lives, except these characters don't even take damage – so what's the point?
The internet is full of Borderlands fan fiction that’s more inspired than Roth's vanilla nostalgia fest. He directs action sequences like he’s posing action figures, instructing Blanchett to posture, hips-cocked, as if Lilith were Dystopian Marauder Barbie. The characters’ costumes are always pristine despite enduring battlefield wear and tear, explained away by a silly "electric shower" gadget that eliminates stains. The question "Wouldn't it be cool if?" seems to be the most thought anyone put into Borderlands, and the answer is frequently "No." Roth's production doesn’t genuinely invest in the universe Gearbox has built, so why should we care about this emaciated excuse for a sci-fi adventure? Sure you’ll ride Marcus’ (Benjamin Byron Davis) bus, spot Dahl ECHO HUDs, and gander at Pandoran locales like the acidic Caustic Caverns. But it’s all spoonfed, familiar, and as filling as a single rice cake.
Visually, Borderlands is one of the ugliest studio releases you'll see this year. Even in IMAX, Pandora's dusty digital backdrops resemble pixelated vomit. There's an early scene where bunny-eared Tina tosses explosive stuffed animals at Lilith from above, and the green-screening of Greenblatt atop her junkyard perch doesn't even attempt to believably plug Tina into place. Later, when Atlas confronts our unlikely heroes, it's like Roth shot them against an LED wall showing a low-res YouTube feed. The games’ cel-shaded, pleasingly pop-arty aesthetic is one of their most attractive features, so why would you drown the movie’s opening sequence in dimly lit murk? At least the wardrobe department nailed the ensembles’ outfits, which burst with signature colors – but even those look like trash against the washed-out, eyesore landscapes inserted during post-production.
Outside of Greenblatt – playing an explosives addict clearly modeled after Harley Quinn – no one on screen appears to be enjoying themselves. Especially Blanchett: She's the correct choice for Lilith, but plays the gunslinging mercenary with eye-rolling ambivalence that translates into a dry, disinterested performance. Kevin Hart plays Kevin Hart in a beret, portions of Florian Munteanu's nonsense dialogue are inaudible, and Roth can't even coax a consistently funny Claptrap out of Jack Black. Gina Gershon's Mad Moxxi lacks seductive burlesque charm, while Jamie Lee Curtis' neurotic Dr. Patricia Tannis exists merely to rattle off exposition. The complaint here isn’t one of Hollywood stars failing to properly emulate their in-game counterparts – it’s more that Roth wastes their talents, treating a cast of heavy hitters like personality-free eye candy for the fandom.
In all honesty, Borderlands feels incomplete. Roth's storytelling rushes forward with a conspicuous briskness, as if crucial building blocks were missing from the plot. (Maybe those two weeks of reshoots under fill-in director Tim Miller shaved Roth's vision down to what we see here?) Why else would Krom (Olivier Richters) deserve a portrait in the end credits when he's barely a last-minute cameo in the movie? Something's not adding up. Gearbox's games are dense, expansive, and brimming with the freedom to get buck wild, whereas Roth's interpretation is like a preschooler's Guardians of the Galaxy coloring book. Verdict
Borderlands is an abysmal waste of a beloved franchise that takes a kooky band of murderous misfits and drains the life out of their first adventure together. Eli Roth is no James Gunn, and this film has none of the lovable lunatics, awe-striking sci-fi visuals, and out-of-this-world storytelling of Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy. The hyper-stylized flair of the Borderlands games is replicated only on the most superficial level, and with a PG-13 rating, all the limb-severing gore, dirty-minded humor, and uniquely deranged themes are replaced by recycled blandness geared toward mass marketability. It's the worst-case-scenario Borderlands movie that goes against everything Borderlands stands for as a series – a miserable failure.
Rex, a Florida party girl, turns out to be the only hope for the NASA space program after a fluke puts her in training with other candidates who may have better resumés, but don't have her smarts, heart, and moxie.
There’s a well-tested, and mostly well-liked, formula being recycled in Amazon’s lightweight Fourth of July comedy Space Cadet. It’s the mildly rousing story of an underestimated blonde excelling in a more serious field, something Goldie Hawn aced in Private Benjamin and Protocol before Melanie Griffith took over with Working Girl and Born Yesterday, followed by Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde (the less said about Jessica Simpson’s two under-the-radar attempts, the better). It’s an easy, against-all-odds rise for us to get behind and a career-defining every-scene showcase for an actor who may have also found herself unfairly undervalued by the industry.
The Imaginary review – charming anime about made-up best friends from former Ghibli protege
There’s something for both actor and character to prove, and when it’s done right, we should be able to taste the same hunger, cheering for an inevitable victory. But in the writer-director Liz W Garcia’s blandly cobbled together attempt, one will have trouble tasting much of anything. It’s another cheap and poorly made category-filler, the kind that makes you want to reconsider how many streaming subscriptions you’re paying for, a grim, plasticky reminder of what so many films look and feel like now.
The Netflix-led rise of romantic and female-led comedies has been a superficial win, given how they’d been largely absent from the big screen in recent years, a large audience barely catered to. But too many of them have been made without much care, lazily thrown together unlike the glossier films that they’re modeled on. Space Cadet is as garishly lit and shoddily green-screened as the worst of them, which is distractingly bad enough in itself but something that could perhaps be tempered by other elements. The current Netflix hit A Family Affair, with Nicole Kidman romancing Zac Efron, looks far uglier than it should, but there’s enough charm from the performers and the script to make it just about work. Here the visuals are as rough as everything else, saving graces nowhere to be found.
The star Emma Roberts has been somewhere similar before, in 2007’s Wild Child, in which an English boarding school tamed her Californian excess. Here the journey to self-discovery takes her, as the improbably nicknamed Rex, from Florida, where she has turned bartending into a lifestyle, drinking and partying hard with her best friend, Nadine (Hacks’ Poppy Liu), to Nasa, where she hopes to live out her dream of going to space. Rex had been accepted to Georgia Tech years ago but dropped out when her mother got sick. After Nadine spruces up her application to become an astronaut with some embellishments, she finds herself in her element but out of her depth.
The film exists in the kind of frothy far-away fantasy land where audience questions are not only discouraged but ridiculed. It’s not supposed to be taken seriously, defenders would say – fine – but even in such heightened territory, there has to be some sense of structure and Garcia’s script just isn’t smart or slick enough to have us suspend disbelief entirely. No one would check to see if she had really won a Pulitzer? References would be obtained long after she was hired? A one-time Georgia Tech applicant would attend her first day in skimpy party gear? The problem is that Rex’s ascent is not only absurd but crucially uninvolving - we simply don’t care if she makes it to space or not – and Roberts, comfortable and competent in this territory if not entirely convincing, is unable to lift her character out of network sitcom cliche.
The uplift of a woman triumphing in a male-dominated Stem world isn’t enough to get us through a mess of grindingly unfunny dialogue, too-broad performances and an utter, movie-killing lack of charm. Films like Space Cadet should feel graceful and light, going down easy like the many sweet cocktails we see Rex prepare, but this one is hopelessly muddled, a bitter first sip that proceeds to curdle.
In a post-apocalyptic wasteland, a woman rebels against a tyrannical ruler in search for her homeland with the aid of a group of female prisoners, a psychotic worshipper and a drifter named Max.
Director: George Miller
Writers: George MillerBrendan McCarthyNick Lathouris
If you’ve relished the Mad Max series, your heart will leap in Mad Max: Fury Road the first time a “War Rig” made of leftover car and truck frames (human skulls affixed to the grille) or a turbo-charged, weaponized jeep swerves into the foreground and then suddenly roars off into the distance at a 45-degree angle while the camera continues on its scorching horizontal track. It’s a signature move by director George Miller, who gets scary-close (he’s fucking with us) and then says, “Eat my dust.”
That dust tastes damn good. The majority of sequels have no reason for being apart from sequel money, but watching this fourth Mad Max, I could sense after roughly .0001 seconds that the 70-year-old Aussie director has been revving his engines for a long, long time, itching to get back to the blacktop and deliver even wilder automotive mayhem. After all, his last two films, Happy Feet and Happy Feet 2, centered on animated dancing penguins. He has some serious punk cred to restore.
As you no doubt know from all the buzz, most critics think Miller has his cred back and then some, and they’ve given him a hero’s welcome. That gives me happy feet. The man made Max Max, The Road Warrior, Lorenzo’s Oil, and especially Babe: Pig in the City, which is like Charlotte’s Web retold by Dickens. (As a sequel, a box-office megabomb, and a film starring a pig, it has never gotten its due.) And Mad Max: Fury Road is certainly a blast and a half: You don’t just watch it, you rock out to it. How satisfied you’ll be after all the “wow!”s and “whew!”s will depend on how fine you are with a film that starts in the middle of the story and is basically a long chase. I saw it twice and liked it vastly more the second time around, when I’d adjusted my expectations and had my bearings from the get-go. Then it became about digging the spectacle — not to mention the hilarious sexual politics.
This is not, it should be said, a “reboot.” It’s the same Mad Max, post-Thunderdome, though now played by Tom Hardy, Mel Gibson having been judged too old and, more important, too genuinely mad to continue in the series that launched him to stardom 36 years ago. “My world is fire and blood,” says Max in voice-over, standing on a cliff, at one with the poisoned, postapocalyptic wasteland, his face hidden by a swarm of filthy hair. He stomps a big boot down on a scurrying lizard, snatches it up, and shoves it in his mouth: crunch.
A blizzard of images evokes his inner life: bombs, bodies, the killing of his wife and child. The little girl calls to him in visions, which is strange because I remember his child being (a) a toddler and (b) a boy — but it was a long time and many bodies ago, and I might be wrong. Or maybe she’s not his child but a sort of emissary from the world of child spirits. Miller does a cool, stroboscopic fun-house effect with the little girl’s face — now flesh, now bone, now flesh again. Max wants like mad to be emotionally dead, numb to the carnage, but this moppet keeps jolting him back to life.
The prologue in which Max is chased, captured, tattooed, branded, and put in a cage by raiders from a towering citadel is stunningly well done — particularly if you see the film in 3-D, which Miller uses like a macabre ringmaster, chucking arrows, bones, and parts of cars and bodies at you. This citadel — known far and wide as “the Citadel” — is presided over by Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne), a sickeningly disfigured tyrant who stands high above his sheeple, promising them immortal life in the corridors of Valhalla while taunting them for their dependence. (He makes them beg for water.) Actually, everyone in the Citadel is sickeningly disfigured, emaciated, or studded with tumors from living in a radioactive landscape. But Immortan Joe takes the uranium cake. His flesh is mottled and covered with … yecchy stuff. In a steel mask notable for its Neanderthal set of choppers, he looks like a walking shrunken head topped with a white fright wig.
This is all awesome, but I actually had a hard time getting past my awe and into the movie. Max isn’t just emotionally remote. He’s matted with dirt and kept in shadow. He’s chained to the front of a truck, everything below his eyes concealed by a steel face-cage. It’s mighty peculiar that here, as in The Dark Knight Rises, an actor with maybe the most fascinating visage in movies spends so much time behind a mask. You do get a lot from those eyes, which signal sadness and desperation. But the lips are where it’s at. They’re not just fashionably pillowy. They’re neo-Brando blubbery. They signal a swelling, an excess of emotion. They make you understand why the sounds that come out of his mouth are not always recognizable as English: What words could do justice to that much feeling? Casting Hardy as a man who shrouds his emotions and then covering his face is just … mad. Half an hour into Mad Max: Fury Road, I felt as if the nominal hero and I hadn’t been properly introduced.
There is, of course, another hero. Heroine. The story proper kicks off when Immortan Joe’s top raider — Furiosa, played by Charlize Theron with a shaved head and one steel arm — sets off on a mission in a ramshackle War Rig before suddenly changing course. Joe checks on his breeders, but they’re gone. He screams to Heaven and orders up his army. The chase is on!
Wait. Who is Furiosa? (She has barely said a word.) Who — or what — are the breeders? Who is the old woman shrieking at Immortan Joe? By now it’s clear that Miller’s strategy is to throw you into the tumultuous action and only later show you what’s at stake and why you should care. He thinks he’s cunningly withholding major details to keep you guessing, but there isn’t enough information to guess from before he, well, cuts to the chase. It’s backwards storytelling.
Call me bourgeois, but I like a little more context for my mayhem, which is why I was more involved the second time, when I knew Furiosa, knew the breeders, and knew a bit more about why Max was on the front of a truck connected by an IV line to a skinny, bald guy with a white face and blackened eye sockets — who looks on first (and second) glance exactly like the hundred other skinny bald guys with white faces and blackened eye sockets but turns out to be a major character called Nux (Nicholas Hoult).
Mad Max: Fury Road wakes up, dramatically speaking, when Max and Furiosa meet, with (rousingly staged) fisticuffs at first but soon with more affection. Slightly more, anyway. Both their hearts having been tanned into leather by tragedy, they’re wary of connection, and Furiosa isn’t too trusting of men to begin with. It’s an extraordinary performance by Theron, who barely emotes but whose hardness is broken by glints of guilt and grief. It’s a mighty moment when, given terrible news, she staggers towards a titanic sand dune — it rises from nowhere, but nothing less would be worthy of her — and sinks to her knees in despair. At time like that, you might wish the film had been called Mad Maxine and had followed her from the start.
It’s a woman-centric movie. Furiosa is fleeing across the vast wasteland in search of a matriarchal oasis she calls the “green place of many mothers.” And those breeders turn out to be a pampered harem of willowy model types (one brown-haired, one white-blonde, one redhead, one tall and black-haired, one smaller and more racially exotic) tasked with bearing Immortan Joe healthy children. Why a group of women so skinny they look as if they’d pitch off the side of a runway from lack of food should be so evolutionarily desirable in a time of sickness and starvation is a mystery — but not really much of one given the high level of wowza on display. Maybe the best visual joke in the movie is when Max staggers out of the desert and beholds them for the first time, shimmering in the heat, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Zoe Kravitz, Abbey Lee, Courtney Eaton, and Riley Keough in skimpy, shorty, filmy dresses, hosing one another off in lyrical semi-slow motion.
Mad Max: Fury Road is actually full of brilliant visual jokes, its desert a mythic stage for a punk-rococo circus of freaks. Behold the great pile of steering wheels on which the bald warriors descend, each man bearing his own away with reverence, as if it’s Excalibur. There’s a little tree in the middle of the desert that looks like it’s waiting for Vladimir and Estragon. The sight of a half dozen or so bongo drummers on the back of a War Rig is a marvelous setup for the revelation of the masked, heavy-metal rocker guitarist tied to the front, his instrument belching flames at moments of peak bloodlust. (The authors of Dogme 95 would be pleased: Miller has incorporated his musicians into the action.) In the climactic, high-speed road battle, warriors on long poles bend in and out of the frame throwing bombs and snatching up women: It’s as if you’d smoked weed and started watching an old Western and suddenly the stagecoach turned into a truck full of supermodels and the charging Injuns vampire acrobats. The knowledge that the vampire acrobats are mostly real stuntmen moving really, really fast instead of 1s and 0s in a computer adds exponentially to the WTF quotient.
Miller clearly felt he needed to raise the stakes — to top himself — in Mad Max: Fury Road, and the road fury is, indeed, packed with multiple, crazy-funny variables. But at the end of the road I have to admit that I prefer the cleaner, sharper climax of The Road Warrior, which has no CGI whatsoever. You lose things in the clutter.
That said, Miller has a trick up his sleeve that he didn’t three decades ago: grannies on motorcycles. It turns out that what compelled him to make this fourth Mad Max was the notion of a nurturing, matriarchal society far removed from the grotesque sadism of male-warrior culture. The gorgeously weatherbeaten old women who roar out of the wasteland to greet Furiosa and Company tolerate Max and show some affection for Nux — the bald, mortally ill, white-painted War Boy who longed to die in battle but was so lovably clumsy that he wound up on the side of the girls. But these tough old birds don’t want or need men, those disease-carrying homicidal brats who turned a world that was once a garden into a nuclear wasteland. Also, the old ladies gaze on those cute little models as if it would be really nice to curl up with them under the stars.
It’s a wonderful joke that so-called men’s-rights groups have expressed outrage over Mad Max: Fury Road — so wonderful that I’d suspect the studio of cooking up the controversy by itself if I didn’t know that such morons actually exist. In their eyes, Miller has committed an unforgivable sin by appropriating their cultural space to promote femi-Nazism. He has made a movie with more amazing motorcycles than a biker’s rally and more high-decibel mash-ups than a monster truck event: FUCKIN’ A, AWWRIGHT! He has stuffed it with every shape and size of gun imaginable: BOO-YAH! Then he made a bald chick and a bunch of grannies more potent than an armada of male giants with mighty pecs — who turn out under all the war paint to be squalling babies with disease-ridden pencil dicks. The final battle takes place in a narrow passage through a canyon that looks suspiciously like a stand-in for the gates of Thermopylae. That’s when it really hits you: The Lesbos have taken Sparta!
A shy student trying to reach his family in Ohio, a gun-toting bruiser in search of the last Twinkie and a pair of sisters striving to get to an amusement park join forces in a trek across a zombie-filled America.
Twelve years after its release, Zombieland (2009) remains one of the most enjoyable films in the flesh-eating genre. Its secret sauce? Brilliant casting – five Academy Award nominees – fast pacing, and the fact it just doesn’t take itself too seriously.
The premise of Zombieland is pretty simple: four jaded individuals reluctantly join forces and carpool across the country during a zombie apocalypse. The narrator, Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) is a social recluse who has survived by following a list of conservative rules, including staying fit enough to outrun the zombies (Rule #1: Cardio) and shooting them twice to make sure they’re actually dead (Rule #2: Double Tap).
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Director Ruben Fleischer made his directorial debut with this film, and takes great delight in covering each of these rules in gory detail: a homemaker escapes the neighbourhood zombie kids, only to go flying through her windscreen because she’s not buckled up (Rule #4: Seatbelts).
Columbus, with his irritable bowel syndrome and rolling suitcase (Rule #7: Travel Light), is the perfect foil for snakeskin jacket and cowboy hat wearing Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson). Tallahassee is in the butt-kicking business (and “business is GOOD”, Harrelson declares, two chainsaws in hand). After a tense standoff, Columbus hitches a ride.
The film looks set to fade into odd-couple mode, until the pair are outwitted by jaded 20-something Wichita (Emma Stone), and her pre-teen sister, Little Rock (Abigail Breslin). The women quickly hustle the unsuspecting men, taking their guns and their truck (not once, but twice), on a quest to reach Pacific Playland, their childhood happy place.
Part of what makes this film work is the chemistry between the cast. There’s a sense of ease and camaraderie, which is greatly helped by the film’s zippy editing, well-paced flashbacks, clever use of graphics and snappy dialogue (Little Rock’s explanation of Hannah Montana to an engrossed Tallahassee stands out).
Above all, they seem to be having fun, something missing from most of the exhaustingly gritty string of zombie productions that have emerged over the last two decades, from the 11 angst-riddled seasons of The Walking Dead to Hollywood hit World War Z and umpteenth Resident Evil film. When the cast trash and smash an Arizona gift store, their delight is so genuine, you kinda wish you could be in there with them. A standout moment is the appearance of actor Bill Murray, who shows up in a brilliantly executed cameo.
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While Murray almost steals the show, it’s Harrelson as Tallahassee who ends up carrying the film. His character offers a handy roadmap in how to deal with the apocalypse: indulge in blind rage to vent your frustration, develop a dark sense of humour, and pursue your comfort food of choice (Twinkies) at all costs. He even inspires Columbus to add another rule to his list (#Rule 32: Enjoy the Little Things).
It doesn’t set out to be, but by the end this zombie movie is quite sweet. Sure, there’s blood, guts and gore, but the virtues of loyalty, trust and family are established without feeling cheesy or insincere. Almost as much of a triumph as surviving the apocalypse.
After a family tragedy, three generations of the Deetz family return home to Winter River. Still haunted by Beetlejuice, Lydia's life is turned upside down when her teenage daughter, Astrid, accidentally opens the portal to the Afterlife.
Director: Tim Burton
Writers: Alfred GoughMiles MillarSeth Grahame-Smith
Beetlejuice” gets off to a start that’s so charming it never lives it down. The movie is all anticlimax once we realize it’s going to be about gimmicks, not characters.During the enchanted opening minutes of the film, we meet a young married couple who have just moved into a strange new house, and we’re introduced to some of the local townspeople. All of these characters have an offhand, unforced innocence, and no wonder: The movie was directed by Tim Burton, who created a similar feeling in “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure.” It’s hard to describe what makes the opening scenes so special. Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis, as the young couple, seem so giddy, so heedlessly in love, that they project an infectious good cheer. The local folks are so gosh-darn down-home they must have been sired by L. L. Bean out of the “Prairie Home Companion.” The movie is bathed in a foolish charm. And, fool that I am, I expected that note to be carried all the way through the film. But it was not to be.
The young couple die in a silly accident. But they still live in the same house. The only problem is, there’s nothing outside the door except for a strange science-fiction landscape that looks borrowed from Paul Schrader’s “Cat People.” It takes them awhile to figure out they’re dead, and even longer to realize what has happened: Their fate is to remain in their former home as ghosts, while it is sold to a New York family (Jeffrey Jones and Catherine O’Hara, with Winona Ryder as their daughter). The New Yorkers have big plans for remodeling the haunted house.
This is all, I guess, a fairly clever idea. And the movie is well-played, especially by Davis (the girlfriend in “The Fly”) and Jones (the emperor in “Amadeus” and the obnoxious principal in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”). But the story, which seemed so original, turns into a sitcom fueled by lots of special effects and weird sets and props, and the inspiration is gone.
To be sure, there has never before been a movie afterworld quite like this. Heaven, or whatever it is, seems a lot like a cruise ship with a cranky crew. The newly-deads find a manual, which instructs them on how to live as ghosts, and they also find an advertisement from a character named Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton), who specializes in “exorcisms of the living.” They enlist him to try to scare the New Yorkers out of the house, but he turns out to be a cantankerous demon – more trouble than he’s worth.
The best thing about “Beetlejuice,” apart from its opening, is the set design by Bo Welch. Both Welch and Burton seem inspired by the spirit of “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” and “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure,” in which objects can have lives of their own and architectural details have an unsettling way of rearranging themselves. The look of the film might be described as cartoon surrealistic. But the film’s dramatic method isn’t nearly as original.
One of the problems is Keaton, as the exorcist. Nearly unrecognizable behind pounds of makeup, he prances around playing Betelgeuse as a mischievous and vindictive prankster. But his scenes don’t seem to fit with the other action, and his appearances are mostly a nuisance. It’s also a shame that Baldwin and Davis, as the ghosts, have to spend most of their time playing tricks on Jones and O’Hara and winning the sympathy of their daughter; I would have been more interested if the screenplay had preserved their sweet romanticism and cut back on the slapstick.
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