Culture Representation: Taking place somewhere on a post-apocalyptic Earth, the sci-fi/action film “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” (a prequel to 2015’s “Mad Max: Fury Road”) features a cast of predominanly white characters (with a few black people and Asians) who are survivors of an apocalypse.
Culture Clash: Furiosa grows up from being an orphaned child to being a fierce warrior battling two major villains.
Culture Audience: “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the “Mad Max” franchise, the movie’s headliners, and sci-fi action films that have stunning fight scenes and fascinating characters.
Tom Burke and Anya Taylor-Joy (seated in front) in “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” (Photo by Jasin Boland/Warner Bros. Pictures)
“Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” takes entirely too much time (about an hour) on warrior heroine Furiosa’s childhood. But once Furiosa becomes an adult, the movie kicks into a high-gear action spectacle that’s worth the wait. The dark comedic moments are a treat. This is not a movie for people who are expecting deeply intelligent dialogue. However, “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” (which clocks in at 148 minutes) satisfactorily delivers if viewers expect to be fully immersed in a chaotic, futuristic, post-apocalyptic world with unusual characters and brutal battles in the desert.
Directed by George Miller, “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” (which had its world premiere at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival) was co-written by Miller and Nick Lathouris. The movie is a prequel to 2015’s Oscar-winning “Mad Max: Fury Road,” starring Tom Hardy as road warrior Mad Max and Charlize Theron as Mad Max colleague Furiosa. “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” takes place over a 16-year period before the events of “Mad Max: Fury Road.” Miller directed the other previously released films in the “Mad Max” series: 1979’s “Mad Max,” 1981’s “Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior” (originally titled “The Road Warrior”) and 1985’s “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome,” all starring Mel Gibson as Mad Max. (“Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome” was co-directed by George Ogilvie.)
The “Mad Max” stories take place in a futuristic time period in desert wasteland on a post-apocalyptic Earth. (The movies are actually filmed in Australia.) In this “Mas Max” world, life resources are scarce and society has devolved into anarchy where survivors fight over precious resources, and gangs are at war with each other.
Many of the gang members are held in captivity and forced to fight. They have shaved heads and are often covered head-to-toe with an ashy white substance. They have names such as Rictus Erectus (played by Nathan Jones), Scrotus (played by Josh Helman), Toe Jam (played by David Field) and Vulture (played by Ra Roman), but their personalities do not stand out enough for them to get any story arcs or backstories.
In “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” a young Furiosa (played by Alyla Browne) is 10 years old when a motorcycle gang kidnaps her from the Green Place of Many Mothers, a maternal community where women help raise each other’s children. Furiosa’s mother Mary Jabassa (played by Charlee Fraser) and the Green Place’s Vuvaline General (played by Elsa Pataky) frantically look for Furiosa. Mary doesn’t give up looking for Furiosa, and Mary’s fate is shown in the movie.
Furiosa is raised as an orphan by the motorcycle gang leader’s Dr. Dementus (played by Chris Hemsworth), until underage Furiosa (who is mostly mute for most of her screen time) runs away and disguises herself as a boy. Dr. Dementus is in a violent power struggle with Immortan Joe (played by Lachy Hulme), a crime overlord who wears a gas mask. The adult Furiosa (played by Anya Taylor-Joy), at 26 years old, teams up with Praetorian Jack (played by Tom Burke), a former driver of Immortan Joe’s War Rig, to find her way back home.
Of course, Furiosa and Praetorian Jack get caught in the middle of the villainous warfare and fight back in self-defense and revenge. Along the way, Furiosa and Praetorian Jack become close and develop a romantic connection. As time goes one, Furiosa becomes more talkative, but she’s still mainly a stoic character. Taylor-Joy’s expressive eyes and sturdy acting give Furiosa enough charisma to keep viewers interested. Burke also turns in a good performance as Praetorian Jack.
The action scenes and some of the weapons are inventive overall, but there are times when the violence in “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” become mind-numbing and repetitive. On a technical level, the movie’s production design and visual effects are the biggest assets.
Hemsworth’s portrayal of Dementus (who at times looks like a muscular and younger Rob Zombie) is a highlight. It’s a combination of menacing with some cheeky campiness. A running gag in the movie is Dementus’ attachment to a teddy bear that used to belong to Dementus’ dead son.
“Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” suffers from a bloated run time where viewers might start to feel a little cheated that adult Furiosa doesn’t make an appearance until an hour after the movie starts. (The movie’s trailers are definitely misleading, because they make it look like adult Furiosa will be in almost all of the movie.) The scenes with underage Furiosa are competently acted but mostly boring and not very informative. Despite this flaw, “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” is a fan-pleasing movie overall in the “Mad Max” franchise, even though the movie is not the most innovative in the series.
Warner Bros. Pictures will release “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” on May 24, 2024.
Culture Representation: Taking place in New York City, the horror film “Sting” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans, one Asian and one Latina) representing the working-class and the middle-class.
Culture Clash: After a mysterious spider’s egg drops into the apartment where a 12-year-old girl lives, she takes care of the spider that hatched from the egg, and the spider turns into a large, deadly monster.
Culture Audience: “Sting” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in “creature feature” horror movies that don’t take themselves too seriously.
Alyla Browne and Ryan Corr in “Sting” (Photo courtesy of Well Go USA)
“Sting” is an intentionally campy horror film about a spider monster and the 12-year-old girl who unwittingly unleashes this terror and tries to stop it. The movie is a mostly skillful blend of gruesome and comical. “Sting” has some continuity issues between scenes, and don’t expect a lot of witty dialogue, but these flaws are overshadowed by a movie that is entertaining to watch for people who are inclined to like horror movies.
Written and directed by Kiah Roache-Turner, “Sting” takes place almost entirely inside a shabby apartment building in New York City’s Brooklyn borough. (The movie was actually filmed in New South Wales, Australia.) The movie has some flashbacks but shows that the terror began when an egg fell from the sky and crashed through a window of the apartment of a family where 12-year-old Charlotte Krouse (played by Alyla Browne) found the egg and secretly kept it. A regular-sized female spider hatches from the egg. Charlotte calls the spider Sting.
Charlotte lives in the apartment with her mother Heather (played by Penelope Mitchell); Carlotte’s stepfather Ethan Miller (played by Ryan Corr); Heather’s mother Helga (played by Noni Hazlehurst), who apparently has dementia; Helga’s stern sister Gunter (played by Robyn Nevin); and Charlotte’s half-brother Liam (played by Jett Berry and Kade Berry), who is 6 months old. Charlotte’s biological father, who is only called “The Professor” in the movie, abandoned Charlotte and Heather several years ago.
Charlotte still admires her father and has had trouble accepting Ethan (who is the father of Liam) as part of her family. Charlotte is also somewhat resentful of Liam, who is taking up a lot of her mother’s attention. Charlotte still has a lot of her worship of her father—so much so, that she has created a professor character modeled after her father for a comic book series that she writes called Fang Girl. Ethan is the illustrator of the comic book series, which is a hit. “Sting” doesn’t really give an adequate backstory for this unusual collaboration, but there’s a scene where Charlotte is very nitpicky with Ethan about how he is illustrating the professor character in the most recent comic book that they are working on together.
Also in the building are two neighbors who are featured in this movie: a widowed mother named Maria (played by Silvia Colloca) and a nerdy scientist named Erik (played by Danny Kim), who has an aquarium so that he can study fishes’ ability to recreate pancreatic cells. There’s also a talkative exterminator named Frank (played by Jermaine Fowler), who is repeatedly called to the building.
The trailer for “Sting” gives away a lot of what happens in the movie. Sting grows into an enormous deadly spider. Charlotte also finds out that Sting has the ability to expertly mimic sounds. Because this is a horror movie, not everyone is going to make it out alive. A running joke in “Sting” is Helga calling for an exterminator (usually Frank), every time she hears noises in the walls. Helga seems to be unaware that these noises could be people getting killed.
“Sting” does exactly what you think it will do in a movie about a killer spider on the loose in an apartment building. The cast members’ performances aren’t outstanding, but there is good comedic timing in the right places. Fowler (who seems to want to be a younger version of Chris Tucker) has some of the funniest lines in the movie. The gore in “Sting” isn’t over-the-top bloody, but a lot of it will make some viewers squirm. “Sting” serves up enough jump scares and laughs to make it a solid option for mature viewers who want to see a horror flick that isn’t too disturbing or nauseating.
Well Go USA will release “Sting” in U.S. cinemas on April 12, 2024. A sneak preview of the movie was shown in select U.S. cinemas on March 25, 2024.
Culture Representation: Taking place in Turkey, the United Kingdom and other parts of the world, the fantasy film “Three Thousand Years of Longing” features a racially diverse cast of characters (white, black, Asian) as human beings and magical beings representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A Djinn (also known as a genie) is set free from a bottle by a loner middle-aged divorcée from the United Kingdom, and he tells her stories of how he was trapped inside the bottle at various times over 3,000 years.
Culture Audience: “Three Thousand Years of Longing” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of stars Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton, filmmaker George Miller and adult-oriented fantasy movies.
Tilda Swinton in “Three Thousand Years of Longing” (Photo by Elise Lockwood/Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures)
“Three Thousand Years of Longing” is not as weird and edgy as the movie’s trailer would suggest. It’s a sometimes-rambling yet visually striking adult-oriented fairy tale about a genie and the stories he tells to the scholarly divorcée who frees him from a bottle. The film is not a masterpiece, but it’s entertaining enough for people who can engage with a fantasy movie that’s more about storytelling than about fast-paced action scenes.
Directed by George Miller (who co-wrote the movie’s screenplay with Augusta Gore), “Three Thousand Years of Longing” is based on A. S. Byatt’s 1994 novel “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye.” Although the movie is narrated by British scholar Alithea Binnie (played by Tilda Swinton), viewers will learn a lot more about the electromagnetic genie called the Djinn (played by Idris Elba) whom Alithea accidentally releases from a bottle. That’s because almost the entire movie is about the Djinn telling Alithea about three major times in his life that he was imprisoned in a bottle.
In the beginning of the movie, she says in a voiceover: “My name is Alithea. My story is true. You’re more likely to believe me if I tell you it’s a fairy tale.” Swinton is quite good in the role of Alithea, but she’s portrayed many uptight and quirky British women before in other movies, her work in “Three Thousand Years of Longing” is just more of the same, but not as quick-tempered and unhinged as some of her other eccentric characters in other films.
“Three Thousand Years of Longing” opens with Alithea (who lives in London) arriving in Istanbul, Turkey, for a storytelling conference. (“Three Thousand Years of Longing” was actually filmed in Australia, Turkey and the United Kingdom. The movie had its world premiere at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, France.) In addition to being a scholar, Alithea is an enthusiast of fantasy storytelling. Ever since she was a child, she had an active imagination and kept journals of her fantasy writings and illustrations.
A flashback in the movie shows how Alithea at about 10 or 11 years old (played by Alyla Browne) as a social outcast at her all-girls boarding school. During her childhood, Alithea had an imaginary male creature friend named Enzo (played by Abel Bond) that she wrote about and drew in her journals. Alithea could see and hear Enzo but no one else could. Enzo would often comfort her when she was feeling lonely and sad. Don’t expect to find out anything about Alithea’s family, except to know that she has no siblings.
Now in her late 50s or early 60s, Alithea is now a professor of narratology who has been divorced since she was in her 30s. She’s still a loner who writes and draws in journals what comes up in her vivid imagination. Alithea also still sees visions of various magical creatures that look real to her, but no one else can see them.
For example, when she arrives at the airport, she sees a short, odd-looking man who tries to help her carry her suitcase, but she refuses, and he disappears into the crowd. When Alithea tells a male professor colleague (who’s sharing a car ride with her) about this strange experience, she describes the unusual man as “hot to the touch” and “musky.” Alithea’s colleague suggests that she might have seen a ghost.
Alithea is one of the speakers at the conference, where she says that stories about mythical gods have been a part of human hstory for ages. (In the background on the conference stage is a collage portrait of comic book superheroes, to illustrate her point.) During her speech, Alithea sees in the audience a vision of ghost-like elderly man wearing all white in an ancient royal outfit, including a crown.
Suddenly, this mystery spirit lunges at Alithea. And the next thing she knows, she’s being woken up by people on the conference stage because she’s been told that she fainted. Alithea has no memory of passing out. And she insists that she’s feeling perfectly fine.
In her hotel room, Alithea takes out a blue-and-white stripped bottle that looks like a perfume bottle. A brief flashback show that she purchased the bottle at trinket shop in an Instanbul bazaar. The bottle had burn marks on it, but that just makes her more interested in buying. “I like it,” she tells the shop owner. “I’m sure it has an interesting story.”
Alithea takes a toothbrush to try to rub off some of the burn marks. And that’s when the Djinn come out of the bottle, in clouds of purple smoke. At first, the Djinn appears in giant form, but eventually, he shrinks himself down to the form of a human. He begins speaking to her in Hellelnic (a language that Alithea knows), btu then eventually spends the rest oft he time talking to Alithea in her native English language. Alithea is convinced that that the Djinn is part of her imagination, but the more he talks to her, the more she’s convinced that he’s real.
The Djinn essentially says that he’s been trapped in the bottle for nearly 200 years. And in order for him to gain eternal freedom, he tells Alithea that he must grant three wishes to her. There are some caveats to these wishes. She cannot wish for eternal wishes or anything that would end suffering. Her wishes must also be heartfelt and sincere, not taken as a joke, in order for the wishes to really come true.
Alithea insists to the Djinn that she’s perfectly content with her life and doesn’t have any wishes. She has no loved ones and is happy with her job. Alithea only opens up about her her past experiences with love and heartbreak when she briefly tells him about her lonely childhood and her divorce. It’s the only glimpse into Alithea’s personal life.
Alithea was married to her college sweetheart Jack (played by Peter Bertoni, in a flashback scene) for a period of time that appears to be less than 10 years. Alithea and Peter had many things in common, and she thought that they were soul mates. At one point, Alithea got pregnant and was far-enough along in the pregnancy that she knew she was going to have a boy. Alithea and Jack were going to name the child Enzo.
All of this information can be deduced from a brief flash of a pregnancy test vial showing a positive test result. Alithea had kept this pregnancy test vial as a memento in a scrapbook and had written the name Enzo on the vial. When Alithea tells the Djinn about her marriage, she never goes into details about happened to this pregnancy.
However, it’s implied that she had a miscarriage, since the child is never seen in the flashbacks. Alithea says that she and Jack eventually drifted apart (with the implication that the loss of the child was a big reason why), and they got divorced. Jack eventually married a younger woman named Emmaline Porter (played by Lianne Mackessey), and Alithea has seen the happy couple together in London on at least one occasion.
The Djinn has his own stories of loss and heartbreak to tell. His first story of being imprisoned in the bottle is about when he was the servant/lover of Africa’s Queen of Sheba (played by Aamito Lagum), who did not love the Djinn in the way that the Djinn loved her. A love triangle developed when a visiting king named Solomon (played by Nicolas Mouawad) began courting the queen. You can easily guess how this love triangle ended.
The Djinn’s second story of being “incarcerated” in a bottle takes place in the 1530s, during the rule of Turkey’s Ottomon Empire. The story begins with a destitute and enslaved young woman named Ezgi (played Pia Thunderbolt) releasing the Djinn from a bottle. The Djinn grants Ezgi’s wish to marry Prince Mustafa (played by Matteo Bocelli), who is next in line to inherit the kingdom.
However, a power struggle breaks out between Prince Mustafa, his younger brother Ibrahim (played by Jack Braddy) and their father Sultan Suleiman (played by Lachy Hulme). Ibrahim has a sexual fetish for plus-sized women. One of the women in Ibrahim’s harem plays a role in Djinn’s fate.
The Djinn’s third story is supposed to be the most impactful, but it’s the most underdeveloped and seems too rushed in the movie. In this story (which takes place in the mid-19th century in Turkey), the Djinn talks about Zefir (played by Burcu Gölgedar), a woman whom Djinn describes as perhaps the greatest love of his life. The Djinn says that he loved Zefir more than he loved the Queen of Sheba.
At the age of 12 years old, Zefir was forced to marry a Turkish merchant, whose name is not mentioned in the movie. This merchant is old enough to be Zefir’s grandfather. Zefir is the merchant’s third wife in his harem. His other two wives, who are close to the merchant’s age, are very jealous of Zefir and treat her like an outsider. A lonely Zefir eventually finds the bottle where the Djin was kept and frees him.
All three of the Djinn stories involve a woman freeing him from a bottle and some kind of power struggle that ensues. Djinn describes himself in his relationships as loyal and accommodating. And he is that way with Alithea too, but only after she begins to trust him. He can be impatient with Alithea when she’s indecisive about if or when she wants to make a wish.
Because the movie reveals up front that Djinn’s three stories are about how he got trapped in a bottle on three separate occasions, viewers aleady know that each story will not end well for the Djinn. And therefore, the movie’s only real question that needs to be answered is: “What will Ailthea’s wish for, if she chooses to make any or all of the three wishes?”
Alithea thinks that all stories about wishes are “be careful what you wish for” cautionary tales, so she’s afraid of making any wish that could be a big mistake. Through the Djinn’s stories, she starts to understand that life can be a very dull existence if risks aren’t taken. Alithea also learns that it’s not always selfish to ask for what you want.
“Three Thousand Years of Longing” has the look of an ambitious fantasy film, but thankfully is only 108 minutes long. The visual effects and cinematography are well-done, and the acting is perfectly fine from all involved. However, the movie is not without its flaws.
The three stories are unevenly paced to the importance each story has to the Djinn’s life. The second story that takes place during the Ottoman Empire should have been shortened and the time used to expand more on the third story about the Djinn’s relationship with Zefir. There’s not much in the movie to show why Djinn considers his relationship with Zefir to be a great love affair.
Zefir and the Djinn are not shown connecting on any emotional level. The Djinn essentially does what Zefir wants, including making himself disappear, especially when her husband is around. And, as previously mentioned, Alithea remains a bit of a mystery throughout the entire. The only other insight into Alithea’s personal life is when she returns to London and shows disgust for the racial and ethnic bigotry expressed by two nosy, elderly women who live in the house next door.
“Three Thousand Years of Longing” is not going to appeal to people who are expecting any comedic moments. It’s a brooding movie that’s not overly intense or gory, but it’s far from being lighthearted and whimsical. It’s probably one of the most serious-minded gene movies you’ll ever see, Viewers might get some enjoyment out of the acting and the storytelling format of the movie, which has a timeless message about valuing love, no matter where and when someone exists.
United Artists Releasing/Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures released “Three Thousand Years of Longing” in U.S. cinemas on August 26, 2022. The movie is set for release in Australia on September 1, 2022.
