Posts Tagged ‘Anya-Taylor Joy’
Thursday, May 30th, 2024
Note: There aren’t exactly twists or anything to spoil in FURIOSA, but this is all spoilers. You really should see the movie first. This review is the discussion afterwards.
There are over one million things I’ve always loved about the MAD MAX movies, and one of them is that they’re separate tales. There’s no continuity, no narrative references to or consequences from a previous chapter, and other than Max Rockatansky and his Last of the V8 Interceptors there’s never been a returning character, location or faction. They don’t necessarily take place in any order, and they’re so separate that some people think Tom Hardy’s Max is a different character from Mel Gibson’s. I’ve always thought of them as more like the Man With No Name trilogy than, say, STAR WARS.
But FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA isn’t a MAD MAX movie. Says it right there in the title – it’s a saga. And we knew it was the backstory of Furiosa, written in conjunction with MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, shown to Charlize Theron to help her performance, at one point supposedly considered to be shot back-to-back, at another to be done as an anime movie directed by Mahiro Maeda (director of the Second Renaissance episodes of THE ANIMATRIX and animator on NAUSICAA and KILL BILL VOL. 1). So FURIOSA is a traditional prequel in the sense that it depicts an earlier stage of the specific world and characters of FURY ROAD. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alyla Browne, Angus Sampson, Anya-Taylor Joy, Charlee Fraser, Chris Hemsworth, Dawn Klingberg, Elsa Pataky, George Miller, George Shevtsov, Goran Kleut, Guy Norris, John Howard, Lachy Hulme, Nathan Jones, Nico Lathouris, post-apocalyptic, Richard Norton, Tom Burke
Posted in Reviews, Action, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 126 Comments »
Thursday, November 10th, 2022
This year I celebrated Halloween by taking the day off of work and watching a witch-themed triple feature. This is not something I ever thought I’d do, because I’ve always had that issue with historical witch movies where it kinda bothers me to pretend there’s a such thing as witches, since that’s the superstitious bullshit that real life tyrants used as an excuse to torture and murder many innocent people in this country and elsewhere. But there were a couple witch-related movies I’d been thinking I’d like to rewatch, and at the same time I’d been thinking about my late mother, who loved to dress as a witch every Halloween. She painted her face green and glued on a warty latex nose with spirit gum. Some of the younger kids in the neighborhood were terrified of her, but she got a kick out of it. So I dedicate this witch-a-thon to her.
I chose to view them in order of when they take place: first Rob Eggers’ THE WITCH (1630s), then George A. Romero’s SEASON OF THE WITCH (1970s), and finally Robert Zombie’s THE LORDS OF SALEM (twenty-teens). (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: A24, Anya-Taylor Joy, Bill Hinzman, Blumhouse, Bruce Davison, Dee Wallace, George Romero, Harvey Scrimshaw, Jeff Daniel Phillips, Judy Geeson, Kate Dickie, Ken Foree, Maria Conchita Alonso, Meg Foster, Patricia Quinn, Ralph Ineson, Rob Zombie, Robert Eggers, Sheri Moon Zombie, Torsten Voges, witches
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 22 Comments »
Wednesday, April 27th, 2022
THE NORTHMAN is the new one from Robert Eggers (THE WITCH), his version of a badass viking revenge story. Of course that’s filtered through his arcane sensibilities, making it a cousin to David Lowery’s fantasy-by-way-of-A24 movie THE GREEN KNIGHT and, moreso, Nicolas Winding Refn’s VALHALLA RISING. It’s actually a little bit more straightforward and traditionally entertaining than either of those, or at least doesn’t descend into an abyss of strangeness with no visible exit sign. But it’s not GLADIATOR either. It won’t pass as a movie made for normal people.
It has a basis in Icelandic folklore, especially versions of the story of Amleth, which inspired Hamlet. Eggers wrote it with an Icelandic author named Sjón, who wrote REYKJAVIK WHALE WATCHING MASSACRE and LAMB, but also grew up with Bjork, co-wrote some of her songs and performed with The Sugarcubes under the name “Johnny Triumph,” so he got her to have a cameo as a prophetic witch or whatever. A significant casting coup there in my opinion. She doesn’t act that much but it would be cool if this gave her the bug again and then she got to be a villain in FAST X or something. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alexander Skarsgard, Anya-Taylor Joy, Bjork, Claes Bang, Eldar Skar, Ethan Hawke, fantasy sword dudes, Gustav Lindh, Hafbor Julius Bjornsson, Iceland, Nicole Kidman, Robert Eggers, Sjon, vikings, Willem Dafoe
Posted in Action, Fantasy/Swords, Reviews | 48 Comments »
Monday, January 21st, 2019
Like many of you I was a pretty big fan of M. Night Shyamalan’s UNBREAKABLE when it came out in 2000. It was a different time. One year after THE SIXTH SENSE, the idea of Shyamalan as a master of suspense was not a punchline, and quiet, sad Bruce Willis characters were fairly new territory. It had only been about a month since the very first X-MEN movie came out, and would be years before Batman began and the Marvel Cinematic Universe followed, so when we were blindsided by the opening title card of oddly useless comic book statistics
, and Samuel L. Jackson (THE SPIRIT)’s character proceeded to make grandiose generalized proclamations about the comic book mythology, it was semi-forgivable. The ads gave no hint of this, but the movie took the idea of super powers and put them in a grounded suspense thriller context that felt like a pretty new combination of flavors at the time.
Sixteen years later Shyamalan had been a laughing stock far longer than he’d been a respected auteur, and the popularity of SPLIT counted as a comeback. Though I found the “oh, this was actually a super villain origin story” ending a little anti-climactic, I thought most of the movie was effectively creepy and I was really impressed by James McAvoy’s playful turn as the many personalities of “The Horde.” And of course I enjoyed the wacko reveal at the end that it was I DON’T THINK THIS IS A SPOILER ANYMORE taking place in the same universe as UNBREAKABLE.
Now, finally, Samuel L. Jackson is… GLASS. Except he gets a “with” credit. McAvoy gets top billing, because he does the most acting, by many different meanings. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anya-Taylor Joy, Bruce, Bruce Willis, Charlayne Woodard, James McAvoy, M. Night Shyamalan, Samuel L. Jackson, Sarah Paulson, Spencer Treat Clark
Posted in Bruce, Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews, Thriller | 32 Comments »
Monday, February 6th, 2017
Request: please be extra careful in the comments not to give away that one surprise thing
where people might see it by accident.
SPLIT is M. Night Shyamalan’s odd little thriller about three teenage girls abducted from a parking lot and kept locked in a room by a man calling himself Dennis (James McAvoy). Terror turns to confusion when he starts coming to the room talking different, acting different, claiming to be different people. It turns out Dennis is just one of 23 personalities in this guy, and they don’t all necessarily support what he’s doing.
Logically you assume this kidnapper is gonna be a rapist or killer, and these may be true, but for now he’s being told to cool it by “Patricia,” a female personality who shows up occasionally to make the girls mayo sandwiches and assure them “he’s not supposed to touch you.” Oh, okay, that’s comforting. He also shows up as “Hedwig,” an 11 year old boy who likes to dance and listen to Kanye West and giggles a little when he warns them that “The Beast” is coming.
I haven’t always been on board for McAvoy (WANTED, VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN, X-MEN FIRST CLASS), who’s obviously a good actor but seems weirdly prone to playing heroes who are a little too douchey to completely root for. But here he’s truly great. Each character has a different voice, accent and body language – you can recognize them even before he speaks, even if he doesn’t change his clothes. (Though he usually does. He seems to be very fast at it.) McAvoy is clearly having alot of fun with this, taking his acting skills and doing a bunch of donuts and wheelies and shit. Going off jumps.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anya-Taylor Joy, Betty Buckley, Haley Lu Richardson, James McAvoy, Jessica Sula, M. Night Shyamalan
Posted in Horror, Reviews, Thriller | 24 Comments »
