You’re driving me Furiosa! (CREDIT: Warner Bros. Pictures/Screenshot)
Starring: Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth, Alyla Browne, Tom Burke, Lachy Hulme, Nathan Jones, Josh Helman, John Howard, Charlee Fraser, Angus Sampson, Quaden Bayles, Daniel Webber, Jacob Tomuri, Elsa Pataky
Director: George Miller
Running Time: 148 Minutes
Rating: R for The Bloody Violence and Grisly Gruesomeness of the Desert
Release Date: May 24, 2024 (Theaters)
What’s It About?: Imperator Furiosa was the breakout character of Mad Max: Fury Road, and now she’s got her very own prequel! Yes indeed, it’s time once again to return to the sandy, fiery post-apocalypse of the Australian Outback. Originally brought to life inimitably by Charlize Theron nearly a decade ago, the mantle of Furiosa now falls to Alyla Browne as a tween and Anya Taylor-Joy in young adult form. She grows up in one of the few areas in this wasteland where vegetation grows plentifully, but then she’s kidnapped into a life of servitude and forced to watch the execution of her mother (Charlee Fraser). She initially winds up in the clutches of the vulture-nosed warlord Dementus (Chris Hemsworth) before getting passed over to big baddie Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme), who’s happy to have her as one of his many brides. But her mechanical skills, slippery resourcefulness, lust for vengeance, and an unquenchable desire to return home ensures that her life won’t be quite so simple or quite so repressed
What Made an Impression?: Predictable, But Also Not Predictable:Mad Max is one of those franchises where continuity really doesn’t matter. Every single entry has been directed (or co-directed) and co-written by George Miller, but he’s never exactly felt bound by what he himself has established. Fury Road, for example, played more like a reboot rather than a legacy sequel (understandably so, considering its recasting of the lead role and the fact that it came out 30 years after the previous entry). So it’s a little surprising then that Furiosa plays similarly to Rogue One‘s place in the Star Wars timeline, insofar as it barrels right towards the point where Fury Road kicks off. But that’s not to say that Miller is doing anything obvious. It may be true this time that the continuity is more linear than usual, but the depth of imagination is still staggering. Miller doesn’t give us what we think we want, because he’s speaking an entirely different language than anybody else on the planet. How’d He Do Dat?: I’m not sure if I’m fully enthralled by Furiosa’s world. Similarly, I admired Fury Road more than I adored it, and my initial reaction to this distaff follow-up is pretty similar. (Though I wouldn’t be surprised if I gradually start feeling a bit zestier). But I can say without reservation that I am absolutely in awe of George Miller’s nutty band of merry stunt workers. With all sorts of sand bikes, monster trucks, and precision-strike firearms, it’s hard to believe that everyone survived the production. (I pray that no terrible exposés emerge to reveal otherwise!) Fury Road already flame-threw the action adventure genre to levels never witnessed before, and Furiosa somehow manages to be even more relentless. It’s nonstop set piece after set piece, each one of them thoroughly thrilling, witty, and reality-altering. This is cinema, baby!
Furiosa is Recommended If You Like: Stunts, Stunts, Stunts, Stunts, and also Stunts
Plumbing the depths (CREDIT: Nintendo and Universal Studios)
Starring: Chris Pratt, Anya-Taylor Joy, Charlie Day, Jack Black, Keegan Michael-Key, Seth Rogen, Fred Armisen, Sebastian Maniscalco, Charles Martinet, Kevin Michael Richardson
Directors: Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic
Running Time: 92 Minutes
Rating: PG for Scrapes and Scuffles That Don’t Leave a Mark
Release Date: April 5, 2023 (Theaters)
What’s It About?: The Mario brothers are ready to take their plumbing business to the next level! Better watch out for those pipes, though. Based on the long-running series of Nintendo video games, the gang’s all here in the faithfully colorful Super Mario Bros. Movie. Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day) find themselves suddenly sucked into a fantastical kingdom where wooden blocks hold the promise of physical transformation. They team up with Princess Peach (Anya-Taylor Joy) to defeat the over-the-top villainous Bowser (Jack Black), while a mushroom creature (Keegan Michael-Key) and a goofy gorilla (Seth Rogen) round out the core crew.
What Made an Impression?: Mario and Luigi have of course made it onto the big screen before, though 1993’s live-action Super Mario Bros. was widely considered an unmitigated disaster. Bizarrely enough, this latest cinematic adventure keeps the same basic skeleton, as the Mario brothers drive around Brooklyn in their plumbing van, only to then find themselves in the middle of an interdimensional conflict. But beyond that shared setup, it’s a vastly different journey this time. The 1993 version isn’t exactly a misunderstood classic, but it is unlike pretty much anything else that came before or after. Meanwhile, this computer-animated update is basically a series of right-down-the-middle cutscenes.
It’s harmless and amusing in spots, but stripped of way too much personality. It all starts with the voice of the stocky fellow at the center. Chris Pratt has some useful tools in his skill set, but bringing to life an iconically cartoonish ball of energy is not one of them. There’s even a joke about how he sounds nothing like the Mario of the video games! Now look, Bob Hoskins didn’t exactly sound like classic Mario either, but he brought something undeniably unique. Pratt’s mandate, meanwhile, appears to be to turn him into Bland Everyman Hero.
At least everyone else is able to stretch and have some fun. Black in particular has a blast, as he transforms Bowser into the dragon-turtle version of Tenacious D, while Fred Armisen’s Cranky Kong sounds just like his impression of Anna Nicole Smith trial judge Larry Seidlin. There are also plenty of reliable needle drops, though I’m not sure some of them have anything to do with Mario. (“Take on Me,” anyone?) Ultimately, my favorite part of The Super Mario Bros. Movie is the Illumination logo at the beginning that features a Minion attempting to drive a go-kart, which led me to realize that it’s high time to incorporate those little yellow fellas into the Nintendo universe.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie is Recommended If You Like: Bright colors and simple plots
Starring: Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Fiennes, Nicholas Hoult, Hong Chau, Janet McTeer, Judith Light, John Leguizamo, Reed Birney, Paul Adelstein, Aimee Carrero, Arturo Castro, Mark St. Cyr, Rob Yang
Director: Mark Mylod
Running Time: 106 Minutes
Rating: R for Deadly Threats That Demand to Be Taken Seriously
Release Date: November 18, 2022 (Theaters)
What’s It About?: Would you pay upwards of $1000 for a seat at the most exclusive molecular gastronomy restaurant in the world? I certainly wouldn’t! Although maybe I would think about it if somebody else were paying for me, though I might still look askance at the whole affair. In that way I’m very much like Margot, Anya Taylor-Joy’s character in The Menu, as she finds herself whisked along by her pompous foodie boyfriend Tyler (Nicholas Hoult) to a remote island dedicated to the culinary craftsmanship of Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes). He’s assembled an exacting series of courses and a very particular lineup of guests for the evening. This is his last hurrah, and that’s very bad news for his customers, if you catch my drift…
What Made an Impression?: I gotta be honest: I thought this movie was going to be about cannibals. And that very much made me want to go see it! But there are in fact zero cannibals in The Menu, at least not literally. Nevertheless, I still had a good time. So that should tell you something. When a film simultaneously fully defies and satisfies expectations, you know we’re in business. Director Mark Mylod delivers the fun and games by meticulously altering reality just so. You might find yourself screaming, “There’s no way this could possibly happen!” Yet in the same breath, you’ll gladly concede, “But I’m grateful for this fantastical catharsis.”
A big reason for that is because Taylor-Joy is so preternaturally easy to root for. The brand of seared-black satirical humor on display here requires characters who obviously deserve their comeuppance. Most of the cast fits that bill with aplomb, but Margot on the other hand is an unassuming interloper. It’s nice to have a peep of light piercing through the darkness. Otherwise, you’d have to wallow in the stink of the wisecrackers, which can be entertaining, but also somewhat exhausting. With a surrogate like Margot, however, you can safely smile as everything burns.
The Menu is Recommended If You Like: Eating the rich
The Northman (CREDIT: Aidan Monaghan/Focus Features)
Starring: Alexander Skarsgård, Nicole Kidman, Anya Taylor-Joy, Claes Bang, Ethan Hawke, Bjӧrk, Willem Dafoe, Oscar Novak
Director: Robert Eggers
Running Time: 137 Minutes
Rating: R for Lots of Blood and a Fair Amount of Skin
Release Date: April 22, 2022 (Theaters)
If nothing else, Robert Eggers movies are experiences. Sometimes, in the case of The Witch, it’s an experience I very much want to be a part of. Other times, in the case of The Lighthouse, it’s like: hoo boy, this might be a little too much for me. His third feature, The Northman, lands somewhere in the middle. It’s his longest but also perhaps his most straightforward. That might have something to do with the fact that the main character is a legendary Scandinavian figure who served as the direct inspiration for Hamlet. I encountered that factoid after watching the movie, but it makes sense in retrospect, as the story beats are plenty familiar. Despite the hallucinogenic flourishes, this is your classic tale of revenge and bloody familial entanglements.
It’s Viking Times! 895 AD, specifically. Young Prince Amleth (Oscar Novak) doesn’t have a care in the world, but then his uncle Fjölnir (Claes Bang) kills his father (Ethan Hawke) and takes Amleth’s mother Gudrún (Nicole Kidman) as his own queen. If you’ve ever seen The Lion King, you know what’s coming, as we leap ahead several years, with our hero (now played by Alexander Skarsgård) returning with a girlfriend in tow (Anya Taylor-Joy as the witchy Olga of the Birch Forest) and ready to take back what’s his. Now, at this point, you may find yourself thinking, “Hey, didn’t Skarsgård and Kidman play husband and wife a few years ago?” To which I must let you know, The Northman does not flinch at the ickiest of its implications.
Basically, if you’ve ever been watching a Shakespeare production and wished that it was even bloodier, and a whole lot muddier, and also featured plenty of psychedelic freakouts, then The Northman is here for you! And if you also wanted a deadly mashup of lacrosse, handball, and rugby thrown in for good measure, then you can rest easy. I don’t want any beheadings in my own personal day-to-day, but I can approve of a few fictional decapitations serving as the cherries on top of a Robert Eggers sundae. It’s a healthy way to get the violent urges out of our systems.
The Northman is Recommended If You Like: Revenge served as cold as historically possible
Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Fratricides/Avunculucides/Matricides/Nepoticides
CREDIT: Kimberley French/20th Century Studios; Parisa Taghizadeh/Focus Features
Last Night in Soho
Starring: Thomasin McKenzie, Anya Taylor-Joy, Matt Smith, Terence Stamp, Michael Ajao, Diana Rigg, Rita Tushingham, Synnøve Karlsen
Director: Edgar Wright
Running Time: 116 Minutes
Rating: R for Some Bloody Knife Violence and a Few Moments of Sex and Drugs
Release Date: October 29, 2021 (Theaters)
Antlers
Starring: Keri Russell, Jesse Plemons, Jeremy T. Thomas, Graham Greene, Scott Haze, Rory Cochrane, Amy Madigan, Sawyer Jones
Director: Scott Cooper
Running Time: 99 Minutes
Rating: R for Unflinching, Bloody Gruesomeness
Release Date: October 29, 2021 (Theaters)
Last Night in Soho and Antlers are both arriving in theaters on Halloween 2021 Weekend, and I happened to see both on the same day, so I figured I might as well go ahead and review them together. Neither one is your traditional franchise fright flick, though they do share a well-considered approach to presenting their scares, so they’re worth giving a spin at the old multiplex if you happen to be in the right mood.
SNL: Lil Nas X, Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Redd (CREDIT: YouTube Screenshot)
You are now currently reading a review of the Saturday Night Live Season 46 finale – can you believe it? 7 months ago, could anyone have predicted that this episode would be hosted by Anya Taylor-Joy with musical guest Lil Nas X? Probably. Whether you predicted it or not, it happened.
The cold opening had an honest-to-goodness title displayed on the screen: “What I remember about this year” (Grade: 3.5/5 Remembrances of Things Past). As it opened with the longest-serving veteran cast members on the stage, I had to wonder if this would be their last episode (and I doubt I was the only one who thought that). That matter was never directly addressed, though. Instead, everyone just mentioned unusual things that happened during the past several months … and they also stretched the truth a little bit. SNL Life sometimes truly is stranger than SNL Fiction!
Starring: Rosamund Pike, Sam Riley, Anya Taylor-Joy, Aneurin Barnard
Director: Marjane Satrapi
Running Time: 110 Minutes
Rating: PG-13 for A Little Love and Some Death
Release Date: July 24, 2020 (Amazon Prime Video)
Is there anyone who has been more iconic in the annals of both science and romance as Marie Curie? Her research has had far-reaching effects on human society, she was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize (and the first person of any gender to win a second Nobel), and she was married to a fellow scientist who by all accounts greatly respected and encouraged her work. Considering all that, a biopic about her ought to be pretty wondrous, and that does seem to be what the Marjane Satrapi-directed Radioactive is after. As Marie, Rosamund Pike delivers an appropriately ethereal and almost supernatural performance. But like many true life cinematic stories that cover a wide range of time, the film struggles to focus on its strongest elements.
The Curie love story is sweet as Marie and Pierre (Sam Riley) find their way to each other via their own peculiarities. Their courtship is marked by lines like, “How do I look at you? Like a fermenting brain?” She initially holds him at arm’s length, worried that he will expect her to be the sort of wife who gives up her own pursuits for the sake of marriage. Of course, dramatic irony and the historical record assures us that isn’t the case, and it is lovely to see how the mutual respect of these two played such a big part in influencing the future of the whole planet.
Alas, the Curies’ marriage lasted barely more than a decade, as Pierre died in an accident at the age of 46. That leaves a pretty good chunk of movie left, during which Marie and Pierre’s elder daughter Irene (Anya Taylor-Joy), yet another scientist in the family, ascends to fill the role of her mother’s on-screen partner. During this back half, we get plenty of foreshadowing of the deadly fate that awaits Marie due to her years of exposure to radiation. Satrapi and screenwriter Jack Thorne could have played up this element a bit more to achieve more of a horror bent. It probably wasn’t what they were aiming for, but it would’ve made the film more distinct.
Beyond all that, the most effective element of Radioactive is the handful of flash-forwards we get to demonstrate the influence of Marie’s work: a doctor employing an experimental treatment on a young boy with cancer, the bombing of Hiroshima, a nuclear test explosion in Nevada, and a visit to the Chernobyl disaster. I wish there had been more of these moments, as they’re where the message really hits home the hardest. If the movie were structured more thoroughly around them, it could have made for a fully affecting film instead of an intermittently affecting one.
Radioactive is Recommended If You Like: Science, Feminism, Colleague Spouses
Starring: Anya Taylor-Joy, Johnny Flynn, Bill Nighy, Mia Goth, Miranda Hart, Josh O’Connor, Callum Turner, Rupert Graves, Gemma Whelan, Amber Anderson, Tanya Reynolds, Connor Swindells
Director: Autumn de Wilde
Running Time: 124 Minutes
Rating: PG for A Butt
Release Date: February 21, 2020 (Limited)/Expands March 6, 2020
In the latest adaptation of Jane Austen’s meddling matchmaker, there are two moments that happen back to back in a pair of private quarters which really represent the power of this version. First we see Emma Woodhouse’s longtime companion and confidant George Knightley (Johnny Flynn) being dressed by his servant. The sequence begins with him stripped down to his birthday suit, giving us a quick peek at his bare behind. Once he is all set to o, it cuts to Ms. Woodhouse (Anya Taylor-Joy) receiving the final touches from her help, and while we do not get a full au naturel view of her, she does take a moment to hike up her dress and pose while placing her hands at her side. Taken together, it is marvelously striking how rarely we get to see bare legs like these in a literary English period piece, especially in one that is so otherwise bright and bold in its costume decisions, what with its feathers in caps and a mustard-yellow trench coat.
It makes sense that we get such a peek into private spaces, considering how much first-time director Autumn de Wilde has chosen to emphasize the vulnerability at the core of this story. It is no big surprise to see Flynn as Knightley cut to the emotional core of any conflict, but you might be taken aback by just how much we get to see his beloved open up as well. Emma presents herself as a know-it-all, but when she realizes that she may have screwed up, her worry about catastrophe is devastating (so much so that her nose starts bleeding at one point). Taylor-Joy and her big, expressive eyes are quite the casting coup here. There’s no way for her to fully hide what she’s feeling. When she discovers how badly she insults Miss Bates (Miranda Hart), and how wrong she’s steered her friend Harriet (Mia Goth), and how much she’s offended Knightley, the tears come flowing as she confronts the fear that she may have made herself the biggest pariah around.
One of the biggest themes of any version of Emma is the power in allowing people to fix their mistakes. In this Emma., when those re-dos occur, the characters have big smiles on their faces, and I bet you will, too. It’s a lovely adaptation, and I can’t get it out of my head. It’s a story I was already intimately familiar with, and yet it has somehow awoken previously undiscovered sections of my heart and subconscious.
Emma. is Recommended If You Like: Wit mixed with tears
Here’s another great song/music video I discovered while walking around the Sony Building. Hozier vs. Anya Taylor-Joy is the Great Psychological Battle of 2019: who’d a thunk it? (I’m in love with the lone “ah” that Hozier lets out at 3:26.)
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