Entertainment
Cannes: 'Fury Road' prequel ‘Furiosa’ forgets what makes the 'Mad Max' movies great
When Australia’s George Miller came here in 2016 to serve as jury president, just months after his “Mad Max: Fury Road” won six Oscars, he swept in like a conquering hero. His movie was undeniable: a reinvigoration of both his career and the action genre. Often, the relationship between Cannes and the blockbuster directors it invites comes off as strained — see French artist Zaho de Sagazan serenading “Barbie” filmmaker and this year’s jury president Greta Gerwig at Tuesday’s opening ceremony — but with Miller, the moment felt right.
Things change. His “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” (in theaters May 24), a somewhat dutiful new prequel to “Fury Road,” had its world premiere out of competition Wednesday, unspooling at the capacious Grand Lumière Theatre to a rapt audience that, it must be said, didn’t laugh once. “Who laughs at the end of the world?” you may ask. But that would be to deny Miller the richness of his grungy post-apocalyptic series, one that pairs brutal action sequences with emotional resonance, dark mythmaking, sociopolitical alarm and, yes, the odd Ozploitative chuckle at some catastrophic personal misfortune.
Some of that is in evidence in “Furiosa,” but nowhere near enough. For the first time in Miller’s now-five-film franchise, he seems to be falling shy of the immediacy he’s sustained, often deliriously, for an entire feature. Any prequel would necessitate a certain distance: This is what happened before the story you already know. And if you ever confused Charlize Theron’s hollowed-out stare in “Fury Road” for a lack of backstory (that’s actually the performance you’re noticing), “Furiosa” is here to supply that material for you, not unentertainingly. But with every supersaturated blue sky, russet-colored desert shot and faux-literary chapter heading (“2. Lessons from the Wasteland”), the movie gets further away from feeling like a tale that’s happening, to one that’s already been told, cleaned up and prettified.
Miller still mounts a story more confidently than just about anyone on the planet, and his kickoff, a 10-minute, near-wordless chase, is the definition of getting off on the good foot. A ferociously protective mom (the wonderful Charlee Fraser) trails, on horseback and motorcycle, a gang of kidnappers who have fled with her preteen daughter Furiosa (Alyla Browne, expressive during the film’s first hour). The latter, while unfortunate to be caught, is resourceful in her own way, chewing through fuel lines and blessed with the benefit of an especially prescient name. Flung over the back of a bike, her long hair flowing in the wind, the shot brings to mind to another defiant woman in Miller’s 1982 “The Road Warrior.”
A scene from the movie “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.”
(Jasin Boland / Warner Bros. Pictures)
A word about that stone-cold classic: By dint of the technology that was then on hand (i.e., no digital effects and a nutso stunt crew), “The Road Warrior” throws you into bodily panic with every kinetic setup. “Furiosa” rarely feels dangerous. Too much of its blood and fire is the work of computers, and for the first time, that work is obvious. There’s something very un-“Mad Max” about this; the tactility of the earlier films fed into the realness of potentially surviving the fall of civilization, even if that meant coming face to face with a tyrannical Tina Turner.
But the punkish spirit of the young Furiosa — forced to sit in a cage like a sad pet — goes a long way to setting up our connection with the story. Less so her captor, Dementus, played by Chris Hemsworth, who, though he tries hard to build an arm-swinging, cape-wearing, motormouthed swagger, doesn’t have the lines to give his gang leader the kind of vanity we could relish in a villain. Eventually we get those bleach-pale War Boys from “Fury Road” again, along with the monstrously masked Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme), his thuggish mutant son Rictus (Nathan Jones) and a geographical trade war that’s a bit more complex than it needs to be.
Miller, who with co-screenwriter Nick Lauthoris worked out these script details before they approached “Fury Road,” mainly have their sights set on a centerpiece that comes close to redeeming the entire film: a lavishly armed War Rig truck barreling down an endless highway, hounded by attackers with propellers strapped to their backs. Finally, the grandeur of the older movies is here, as is Anya Taylor-Joy, whose Furiosa has now gone through her Yentl-passing-for-a-boy phase and now seems meant to wear a glamorous black smudge on her forehead and learn everything she needs to know about “road war” from Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke of “The Souvenir,” channeling the Leone-esque minimalism that marked Mel Gibson’s original antihero).
Tom Burke and Anya Taylor-Joy in the movie “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.”
(Jasin Boland / Warner Bros. Pictures)
We have a lot to learn about road war as well. What’s a bommy-knocker? (I won’t spoil it, but generally, you pay extra for that option.) There’s a finding-your-calling film built into “Furiosa” — maybe it took the apocalypse for this former fruit-picker to discover what she does well — plus a hint of a front-seat romance that’s never made explicit. But just as the movie is hitting its stride and Simon Duggan’s cinematography settles down, Miller strays back to a less-exciting vengeance narrative.
Much has already been made of Taylor-Joy’s lack of dialogue — hardly a drawback when you take in her burning stares and see how potently she’s making something out of nothing. If the movie has a deficiency (and it does), it’s not one of exposition but euphoria. The “Mad Max” universe was never that cautionary, not if you yourself ever wondered how you’d make it through societal meltdown and what kind of mohawk you’d get. The exhilaration of the polecats sequence in “Fury Road” — that fact that there’s such a thing as polecats — made the series a constant source of glee.
“Furiosa,” to its distinction and detriment, ends up being too self-regarding, too downbeat. It takes the fun out of survival. Miller’s imagination has fed into “The Last of Us,” “Fallout” and a host of other grayscale nightmares for movies and TV. He knows better than anyone that forward momentum is key to a “Mad Max” movie. Leave the prequels to those who don’t have any gas left in the tank.
Memories of cinema past and present come rushing at you like 2001’s Star Gate sequence in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Her Private Hell, his first return to cinema since 2016’s Neon Demon and his first project since dying for 20 minutes from a serious heart condition three years ago. Somehow, it was excluded from the Cannes Film Festival’s official competition in favor of films that look very much like 20th-century television, but so far Refn’s film is the only suggestion at this year’s event that one of its key directors is even remotely curious as to what the real future of film might look like — as opposed to a mess of known IP and AI recreations of people who’ve been dead for 50 years. It seems the French, who once disdained le cinema du papa, have a little bit of catching-up to do.
The film it most closely corresponds to is last year’s Resurrection by China’s Bi Gan, another awake-dream that aims to haunt rather than entertain (although the two things are by no means mutually exclusive). In terms of art, it brings to mind ballet, since so much of what’s important in that medium is hardly what you’d call storytelling in the Hollywood narrative sense. To expand on that further, it would be impossible to discuss the power of this film without mentioning Pino Donaggio’s phenomenal score. Bringing much-needed context to Refn’s style-overload, Donaggio’s achingly emotional soundtrack guides the film in a way music hasn’t since the early silents, or the heyday of Powell & Pressburger, and even, at a push, the experimental films of Kenneth Anger.
What’s it about? Whatever you like. The setting is a surreal futuristic Japanese city of the most unrealistic high-rise kind, and at the story’s core is Elle (Sophie Thatcher), who is about to make a film with a younger influencer type named Hunter (Kristine Froseth). Hunter is obsessed with fame and obsessed with Elle, and the whole film draws quite heavily, in a similarly symbiotic way (whether knowingly or not), on Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 psychodrama Persona, which no genre director ever has ever not found endlessly fascinating. As they prepare for the shoot, Hunter meets Dominique (Havana Rose Liu), Elle’s former lover and now her father’s new wife. It’s a complication that obviously hurts, but Hunter is either slow on the uptake or, more likely, couldn’t really care less.
If we’re going to apply film-school formalism to a film that intends to live rent-free in your imagination whether you want it there or not, the “inciting incident” that the girls see a murder in a nearby tower block, and a young woman is defenestrated. It corresponds to the myth of The Leather Man, a tormented, Orpheus-like demon with piercing red eyes and razor-sharp diamond-studded gloves who stalks and kills young women in a bid to replace the daughter he lost to the underworld. We then jump-cut to a scene from a breathlessly exciting space movie, with Elle starring as the leader of an female sci-fi movie that looks like a fantastic space-opera version of Tarantino’s Fox Force Five and which serves as a reminder of Refn’s past interest in remaking Barbarella.
Things get more puzzling and more interesting — depending, of course, on your tolerance for ambiguity — with the arrival of Private K (Charles Melton), an American GI on the trail of The Leather Man, avenging mistreated women wherever he sees them, and drawn like a moth to the dress shop where he used to shop for his now-missing daughter. Private K isn’t at all connected to the main story, but as in Refn’s Thailand-set horror-thriller Only God Forgives, there is a sense that, somehow, justice can be willed into life in the east, and there is a sense that — perhaps — Elle has somehow summoned Private K into being, as the father she will never have.
How does it all fit together? Well, it does and it doesn’t, and Refn leaves you alone to figure out the true significance of The Leather Man and his two fabulously gnomic assistants (Ms. S and Ms. T). The genius of Her Private Hell is that, like a kind of visual ASMR, it offers nothing really concrete, just a lot of satisfying triggers and sensory associations. The actors feel that energy too, and the performances almost dare you to follow them, experimenting wildly with their characters in ways that make only the most subliminal kind of sense.
Is it pretentious? You bet! But it’s the kind of pretension that’s been missing for far too long in cinema; where once critics used to applaud Luis Bunuel for casting two actresses as the same character in 1977’s That Obscure Object of Desire, now they castigate Christopher Nolan for putting Elliott Page in The Odyssey.
Her Private Hell is either for you or it isn’t and you’re either for it or you aren’t. Either way, this is a film that demands you pick a side.
Title: Her Private Hell
Festival: Cannes (Out of Competition)
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
Screenwriter: Nicolas Winding Refn, Esti Giordani
Cast: Sophie Thatcher, Havana Rose Liu, Kristine Froseth, Charles Melton
Distributor: Neon
Running time: 1 hrs 49 mins
It’s a tight three-way race at the top, with a second helping of “Beef,” which won eight Emmys for its first serving, barely ahead of Richard Gadd’s “Baby Reindeer” follow-up, and a suburban noir with abundant heart from Steven Conrad, the maker of “Patriot.”
Glenn Whipp says, “ ‘DTF St. Louis’ is the standout limited series, a murder mystery in form that’s really about suburban loneliness, particularly the isolation that can cripple middle-aged men.”
While Lorraine Ali calls “Half Man” “the series to watch in this race,” not all of her Buzzy buddies are as enthusiastic: “I fear that ‘Half Man,’ Richard Gadd’s aggressively unpleasant follow-up to ‘Baby Reindeer,’ will get a knee-jerk nomination here,” says Kristen Baldwin, “but that vote would be better spent on PBS’ superb adaptation of ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ or Riz Ahmed’s ‘Bait.’ ”
Tracy Brown says, “Recent trends suggest this race might come down to voters’ appetites for bleak British miniseries” such as “Half Man,” but “ ‘Adolescence’ co-creator Jack Thorne’s ‘Lord of the Flies’ adaptation was a bit more in my lane so I’ll give it the edge.”
The twice-cooked “Beef” isn’t to all the panelists’ tastes, either. Matt Roush says it “left me cold but probably has a better chance than the streamer’s terrific historical drama ‘Death by Lightning.’ ”
More predictions: Limited / TV movie actor | Limited / TV movie actress
1.“Beef”
2. “Half Man”
3. “DTF St. Louis”
4. “Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette”
5. “All Her Fault”
6. “The Beast in Me”
7. “Bait”
8. “Lord of the Flies””
Los Angeles Times
Lorraine Ali
1. “Half Man”
2. “Bait”
3. “DTF St. Louis”
4. “All Her Fault”
5. “The Beast in Me”
“ ‘Half Man’ is the series to watch in this race, but what should you watch on your screen at home? ‘Bait,’ which follows a struggling British Pakistani actor (Riz Ahmed) as he auditions to become the next James Bond. Is the world ready for a brown Bond? Not really. Hilarity ensues.”
Freelance Critic
Kristen Baldwin
1. “Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette”
2. “Beef”
3. “The Beast in Me”
4. “DTF St. Louis”
5. “All Her Fault”
“I fear that ‘Half Man,’ Richard Gadd’s aggressively unpleasant follow–up to ‘Baby Reindeer,’ will get a knee-jerk nomination here, but that vote would be better spent on PBS’ superb adaptation of ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ or Riz Ahmed’s ‘Bait,’ a surreal blend of showbiz satire and immigrant-family comedy.”
Los Angeles Times
Tracy Brown
1. “Beef”
2. “DTF St. Louis”
3. “All Her Fault”
4. “Lord of the Flies”
5. “The Beast in Me”
“Recent trends suggest this race might come down to voters’ appetites for bleak British miniseries. I wouldn’t be surprised if ‘Baby Reindeer’ creator Richard Gadd’s ‘Half Man’ is among the nominees, but ‘Adolescence’ co-creator Jack Thorne’s ‘Lord of the Flies’ adaptation was a bit more in my lane so I’ll give it the edge.”
Blavity
Trey Mangum
1. “Half Man”
2. “Beef”
3. “Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette”
4. “All Her Fault”
5. “DTF St. Louis”
“ ‘Love Story’ was the talk of the town when it first premiered, but the last few episodes seemed to have landed softly with the majority of people. I think later entries ‘Beef’ and ‘Half Man’ are immediately dominating conversations, and at the right time.”
TV Insider
Matt Roush
1. “Half Man”
2. “Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette”
3. “Beef”
4. “DTF St. Louis”
5. “All Her Fault”
“Not the strongest field this year, though Richard Gadd’s ‘Half Man’ and Ryan Murphy’s ‘Love Story’ seem unstoppable. The offbeat ‘DTF St. Louis’ might be a spoiler. Season 2 of Netflix’s ‘Beef’ left me cold but probably has a better chance than the streamer’s terrific historical drama ‘Death by Lightning.’ ”
Los Angeles Times
Glenn Whipp
1. “DTF St. Louis”
2. “Beef”
3. “Half Man”
4. “Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette”
5. “All Her Fault”
“ ‘DTF St. Louis’ is the standout limited series, a murder mystery in form that’s really about suburban loneliness, particularly the isolation that can cripple middle-aged men. The cast — Jason Bateman, David Harbour, Linda Cardellini, Richard Jenkins and Joy Sunday — is superb. Emmy noms for all!”
Arts
Mother Mary
Director: David Lowery
A24, Topic Studios, Access Entertainment
In Theaters: 04.24.2026
“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee,” or whatever the fuck those silly little Catholics say. With David Lowery’s ninth feature, our dear Mother Mary is anything but full of grace. Though she is full of something … g-g-g-GHOSTS!
Mother Mary follows a distraught pop star (take a wild guess at her name), played by the always lovely Anne Hathaway (The Princess Diaries, The Devil Wears Prada), who dramatically ends up on the doorstep of her ex-best friend and costume designer, Sam Anselm (Michaela Coel, Chewing Gum, Black Mirror). She confesses to Sam, after barging her way into her secluded design studio, that she needs a dress that feels like “her.” This is something she feels her current team of designers can’t do and is very important, as she’s performing a new unreleased song to celebrate her comeback. During the creation of the gown, the two women reminisce and catch up, all in the same haunted breath. During their heart-to-heart (pun intended), they both realize that at some point since their separation, they each have been taking turns experiencing a haunting by the red, shapeless form of a (what they both determine is at least female) “ghost.”
Now, not to sound like a broken record, kids, but what is my favorite saying? That’s right, “there are no perfect movies,” and Mother Mary is an example of a very complicated and imperfectly okay movie. Lowery’s writing is, at times, far too abstract or obtuse, which can lead to quite a bit of confusion for about 100 of the film’s 112-minute runtime. Before it’s clarified, the relationship between the two female leads is hard to decipher. Are they best friends, former lesbian lovers or a secret, worse, third option? Does this red ghost actually have anything to do with unresolved feelings these women still have for each other, or is it just aesthetic?
There are also interesting “visions” Sam gets when talking things through with Mother Mary that feel somewhat like they tangle the film’s overall seam. It also lacks a lot of raw edges you would normally see when two women discuss a “friendship break-up.” Mary Mother also has yet to break the curse of the inaccurate on-screen popstar portrayal. I’m not sure why, but for some reason, Hollywood cannot get the feel of a popstar just quite right on screen. Mother Mary is supposed to be Lady Gaga, yet it feels like her on-stage scenes are what dads imagined watching Hannah Montana must’ve looked and felt like to their daughters. This is something that seems unfathomable when you have Jack Antonoff and Charli XCX to help write the soundtrack.
That being said, once the ending hits you in the face and you finally get the full picture that Lowery is painting, the film saves itself. Lowery does something interesting and unique when it comes to the haunting genre of horror, as his characters are not haunted by ghouls and goblins but by emotional moments or memories in time. This is something that, when done right, is the epitome of beauty and is frankly more terrifying than any jumpscare by a James Wan demon. What’s more haunting than the what-ifs and what-could-have-beens of an intense connection with another human being, romantic or platonic? What’s more punishing than being the one who committed the sin that severed your red thread connection? Lowery also puts the infamous Bechdel Test to shame, as there is not a single male character with dialogue for the entirety of the film.
Do I love what Lowery is trying to do here? Yes. Does he stumble and fumble along the way? Absolutely. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t see Mother Mary, but also if you miss it … you’re not missing much. —Yonni Uribe
Read more film reviews by Yonni Uribe:
Wasatch Mountain Film Festival Review: Protecting Our Playground
Film Review: The Drama
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