Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2023)

Director: George Miller

Cast: Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Burke, Alyla Browne

Have I Seen It Before: Nope!

Did I Like It: I struggled with it for a good long while, not unlike I struggled with Mad Max Fury Road (2015). I know I am supposed to like it. A lot. I’ve gotten the memo. And yet… The craft of the stunts are pretty great (although my memory is telling me that the CGI here is a little wobblier than its predecessor) but the bombast and supposed hopefulness of the characters always leaves me detached from the proceedings. I’d be absolutely useless in a real apocalypse; I’m pretty useless when they’re depicted on screen.

But still, after a bit of slow going, I found myself oddly charmed by this one. I might be the perfect audience for the series as it continues. Apparently the series doesn’t even care about continuity, so for a long stretch I just assumed Praetorian Jack (Burke) was Mad Max—Burke is more of a dead ringer for a younger Mel Gibson than Tom Hardy ever was—and had fun with it. I guess I was wrong, but I’m not entirely sure Miller cares how I have fun with these movies, as long as I do.

Then there’s the ending, where I really think the film becomes special. Any number of revenge epics—sci-fi or otherwise—come to a head where the protagonist finds the object of their, well, fury. The story can really only go one way from here, but this movie acknowledges that, makes that part of the character’s struggle, and then finds a surprising and just fate for the evil that men do. I’ve honestly been thinking a lot about that ending since walking out of the film. Action movies have a hard time doing that these days.

Oddly enough, with that in mind, I now have a hankering to watch Fury Road again. That’s probably a pretty good endorsement for this, all things being considered.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023)

Director: Aaron Horvarth, Michael Jelenic

Cast: Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Day, Jack Black

Have I Seen it Before: Well, here’s the thing, if you’ll forgive me for getting into the review right away. As much as people—and by “people”, I also include both the corporation and creative professionals behind this movie—have looked down on Super Mario Bros. (1993) in the last thirty years, both of these films feel the need to start with nearly the same presence. Mario (Pratt, strangely not nearly as miscast as he appeared on spec) and Luigi (Day) are brave but put-upon Brooklyn plumbers who are pulled into a adventure taking place in a myserious world existing below the New York they know, with the help of a princess (Taylor-Joy) to put a stop to the evil plans of a… guy?… who might be alternatively called Bowser or Koopa, depending on the territory.

Those are the same movies, right? It wasn’t like establishing the brothers in our world was something with which the video games never seemed to bother.

Did I Like It: Aside from that strange parallel to its predecessor, I had to say I was pleasantly surprised by the majority of the film. As I said, Pratt wasn’t nearly as bad as he could have been. The rest of the cast equates itself well, and up until the moment he starts signing, Black is completely unrecognizable in the role. The humor and adventure are well-calibrated to not unduly favor one over the other. That feels like its a complaint, as if it couldn’t be bothered to be interesting, for fear of failing in the attempt, but I understand where they are coming from after everything that happened with the live action attempt. It is a safe, inoffensive piece of entertainment.

In fact, the only particular complaint I can reach for is the strange preponderance of needle drops littered throughout the film. “No Sleep till Brooklyn” might feel like it belongs in the movie, but it’s the Beastie Boys (I’m usually against them showing up anywhere in film, just see <Star Trek (2009)>, but they’re already in Brooklyn when it plays, and I’ve managed to beat all of the NES Mario games, but I apparently lack the skills to understand what “Take on Me” is doing here, other than the fact that the rights holders for a-ha are hard up for cash and willing to let it go for next to nothing.

Last Night in Soho (2021)

Director: Edgar Wright

Cast: Thomasin McKenzie, Anya Taylor-Joy, Matt Smith, Terrence Stamp

Have I Seen it Before: Never, but man, how I’ve wanted to. The film had completely flown under my radar until seeing a trailer for it tied to No Time To Die (2021). The marketing was spot on. Beside both films sharing an essential Britishness, there are plenty of subtle Bond nods in the film, including setting the film precisely in time with a massive Thunderball (1965) poster greeting us in the past, and characters reflexively ordering Vespers.

Did I Like It: In my review of The Night House (2021), I remarked that it was possible that the fusion of ghost stories and Hitchcockian thrillers was intuitively obvious, but ultimately disappointing.

I spoke too soon. Wright has yet to make a bad movie, and this is a perfect fusion of style and suspense. That alone would merely meet expectations, but the man who has made his bones making confections of almost pure homage in the TV series Spaced and his collaborations with Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead (2004), Hot Fuzz (2007), and The World’s End (2013)) has moved on from purely making a reference to something else, but instead charting his own course.

This type of film isn’t going to be at all accepted by the audience of the visual world is not completely immaculate (and other examples of the genre can at least lay claim to that much), but here the true legacy of Hitchcock is maintained and the plot is completely immaculate. I may have had a sense that Ms. Collins (Diana Rigg, who died shortly after production and ended her stellar career on a high note) knew more about what was happening to Ellie (McKenzie, also perfectly cast) and so the big twist may not have hit as hard as it had been intended, but the trip trough it was so delightful, I couldn’t possibly care. After all, who younger than the age of 60 saw Psycho (1960) for the first time and didn’t know what was coming in the fruit cellar?

Wright here has pulled over a supreme trick, and one for which I cannot readily award another filmmaker. He has grown up beyond the types of films which made him famous (films which I enjoyed immensely) and leaves me in equal measures not mourning the fact that he might not make those types of films ever again, and supremely excited for what he might have up his sleeve next.