Anya Taylor-Joy | A Screenwriters Perspective: Current and Past Movies.

For the latest Mad Max movie “Furiosa A Mad Max Saga” the most impressive parts of this film have nothing to do with the screenplay or the acting. This movie is all about sand dunes, old beat-up cars, dune buggies, tractor trailers, and insane special effects. This movie was shot in the deserts and barren locations of Austrailia in the hot sun, where filming had to be a day by day nightmare, of cars breaking down and sand getting into the engines and transmissions of all the vehicles that were driven hard and destroyed within this story. The heat for the actors during so many hours of filming had to be extremely difficult to work in, reminding all of us who are movie fans that movie making is very often not the easy road many think it is most of the time.

This movie stars Anya Taylor-Joy as the lead character Furiosa, who starts as a young girl who loses her mother to a group of criminals and animals. She then grows up to be a great fighter who battles insane gangs in a world that is rapidly coming to an end. Her nemesis is an insane evil character Dr. Dementus, played by Chris Hemsworth. Unfortunately, the story is boring in too many areas and once again, this movie is way too long at 2 hours and 28 minutes.

This is yet another example of special effects and action scenes over a great screenplay – which is always the hardest thing to accomplish within any effort to produce and direct a new movie. The “Mad Max” name recognition is the reason why the producers think “who cares about the story, lets create explosions and car crashes in a huge desert, nobody cares about the story”.

I have never been fan of any of the Mad Max movies, often wondering why anyone likes a movie like this, with characters who are dirty and disgusting and barely alive in a world that is barely worth living in.

The Rotten Tomatoes high ratings of 89% – once again – make no sense, with my rating of 60% and a big pass for this film.

The new movie “The Menu” succeeds in one very big area. It is far different than any movie most of us will ever see. But trying to be so different will never make any film great or even good. This movie goes from one new strange and weird idea to the next strange and weird scene, then on to the next one. Then finally some insane ending, considering all that came before, makes very little sense.

A group of very rich couples all congregate on some isolated Island, somewhere in the world, to experience a dinner given by one of the most highly respected chefs in the world. Everything is going fine as far as the impressive food until one of the workers commits suicide by shooting himself. Then they all find out that they will be dying at the end of the dinner. Then all the men in the congregation have to run out onto the island, at night, and the workers in the restaurant try to find and capture them. Surprisingly, nothing really comes out of this idea – continuing the strange “trying to fool the audience” theme of this movie.

Ultimately, this movie is far too weird and strange – across the board – to ever recommend. The high rotten Tomatoes rating of 89% makes absolutely no sense. The only upside is the long list of named actors who agreed to make this mostly bad and weird movie, including Ralph Fiennes, Judith Light, John Leguizamo, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Janet McTeer. It is even harder to believe that all of these named actors would agree to make this movie after reading the script.

I cannot recommend a movie that is all about being so different, rather than actually being good and entertaining. I rate The Menu a solid pass.