MOVIE: Furiosa – A Mad Max Saga (2024)

by benmweilertNo Comments
Fuirosa: A Mad Max SagaYear: 2024Rating: RLength: 148 minutes / 2.46 hours Having seen most of the original Mad Max films, Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) was such a shocking visual smorgasbord that it only made sense to capitalize on its success. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) attempts to give us more of the setting, characters, and aesthetic from Fury Road, but with less of the tight octane-fueled pacing of its predecessor. It's not bad by itself, but its premise certainly rides on Fury Road's coattails for much of its runtime. While it's crazy that it's almost been a decade since Fury Road came out, I can accept that Anya Taylor-Joy was a passable version of a younger Charlize Theron. The real surprise was how much Chris Hemsworth stole the show, leaning heavily into his Australian roots to give some amazingly authentic craziness to Dementus. That there were so many common elements to Fury Road here meant that it was entertaining...
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MOVIE: Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022)

by benmweilertNo Comments
Three Thousand Years of Longing Year: 2022 Rating: R Length: 108 minutes / 1.80 hours When I saw the posters for Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022) at my local movie theater, I couldn't easily figure out what it was about. A while later, I saw an article headline that told me that George Miller directed it, so I figured I'd give it a chance. I had seen no trailers or ads for it, but I figured the director of Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) and Happy Feet (2006) would have something interesting for me to see. I found it a little ironic that this movie about storytelling was meandering with its own storytelling. Granted, it had three millennia to cover in less than two hours, but the framing of it felt a little odd. There are so many in-between moments in the hotel room that could have been used to intersperse modern life with ancient tales. I will give credit here to the somewhat...
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MOVIE: Happy Feet (2006)

by benmweilertNo Comments
Happy Feet Year: 2006 Rating: PG Length: 108 minutes / 1.80 hours Very few movies have pivoted so hard on me like Happy Feet (2006). I vaguely remembered the trailers for this film back in the day but wasn't too interested in it because it wasn't from Disney or Pixar (I might have also confused it with Surf's Up (2007)). However, the fact that it won Best Animated Picture for that year should have told me there was something special here. However, my expectations for Happy Feet were much different than the plot twist that I hadn't seen coming. Since I was coming in cold to this film (har har), I had expected it to be the standard "individual is unique, but doesn't fit in with the status quo" type plot. After all, the main character (voiced by Elijah Wood) is the odd-one-out in a community of penguins by being unable to sing. However, this inability to sing is overshadowed by Mumble's extraordinary ability to...
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