Film and television reviews and sometimes a few other things.
Remember Mad Max? He’s back, in Tom Hardy form.
Thirty years after the events of Beyond Thunderdome, Max returns in Mad Max: Fury Road, another dystopian jaunt through the Wasteland helmed by long-time series director George Miller.
Aah, Beyond Thunderdome. Truly the misfit of the Mad Max franchise. The only one to put basically zero focus on cars, but shitloads of focus on actual shit. Also the only one with a tie-in single (it was 1985, after all). Beyond Thunderdome is a wild ride, but not in a good way. We’d better get started.
Continue reading “Should You Watch: Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome?”
The best way to think of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior is if you took the original Mad Max, broke it down into its constituent parts (the Australian Outback, Mel Gibson, car stunts and leather), injected those parts with some experimental growth hormone, watched them all go crazy and then stuck them all back together. That’s a really ham-fisted metaphor, and I apologize – the point I’m trying to make is that The Road Warrior is big, bold and bloody brilliant, making its predecessor look like a weakling left behind in the dust.
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I’m an Australian, and as an Australian there are some things that are just considered part of the culture. We all love a meat pie with sauce. We were all devastated by the passing of Steve Irwin. We all know that “oi yeah nah” and “oi nah yeah” mean completely different things. And finally, for Australians, the film Mad Max is basically mandated viewing.
When looking at the preview for Bachelorette on Netflix, I initially assumed it would be the kind of light-hearted film that you watch on a Sunday afternoon when it’s raining and you’re wrapped up on the couch with a cup of tea. An unlucky- in-love career-woman is upset that her friend is getting married before her, but she overcomes her confidence issues to find love for herself, bolstered by the support of her two comic-relief friends (one of them sarcastic, one of them ditzy). A happy ending and a couple of safe laughs, all within the space of ninety minutes.
Boy, was I wrong.
Netflix’s new limited series Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer is not viewing for the faint-hearted. That probably goes without saying, as if you know even a little bit about the content that the series covers – the discovery and subsequent capture of notorious serial killer Richard Ramirez, dubbed by the media as the Night Stalker – you know that things are going to be pretty disturbing.
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They always say that jealousy is the green-eyed monster. When it locks its eyes on you and takes control it can cause you to do all sorts of awful things, making you turn your back on the ones you love and doing anything to get what you want. Jealousy is a monster, and what’s worse; it can turn you into one too. This is the central theme of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
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Have you ever had the fear of being watched in your own home? Suppose your wi-fi connection is not as secure as you thought. Maybe that webcam on your laptop is actually recording everything you’re doing. Or perhaps someone has even found a way to access your computer remotely. What would the person on the other end be doing with all of this information? Would they keep it for themselves, or would they share it online, in a place you can’t possibly access, for people you’d never want to meet in your wildest dreams? In the digital age these fears are not completely unfounded, and they are thoughts that have probably passed through everyone with a computer’s head at least once. They are also the central premise of 2018’s Unfriended: Dark Web, a sequel to the 2015 computer-screen horror film Unfriended.
Unfriended, a horror film directed by Levan Gabriadze and released in 2015, is an unfortunate example of a good premise wasted on poor execution. Throughout the first twenty minutes of the film I was actually very impressed with both the story and the way it was portrayed. Unfortunately the hour that followed these initial twenty minutes was a definite case of diminishing returns culminating in all-out stupidity.
I’ve mentioned this on the site before, but science-fiction is my favourite film genre. The ten films on this list comprise some of the best offerings of the genre, in no particular order.
I’ve tried to provide a range of films, from ones that lean into more hard sci-fi territory to those that are just a whole bunch of fun. If you’re a fan of sci-fi films chances are you’ve seen some, if not all of these already, but if you’re just getting into the genre these are the ten films that you absolutely cannot miss!
Continue reading “10 Sci-Fi Films You Need To See Before You Kick Off This Mortal Coil”