Burning Chrome: "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga," reviewed.

Drive-By Truckers: Tom Burke and Anya Taylor-Joy in Furiosa. (Warner Bros. / Jasin Boland)

Picaresque in form and Biblical in its savagery, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is the first entry in the five-film Max-iad that unfolds over years instead of days. A revenge flick about the futility of revenge, it sticks the landing, and then binds itself too tightly to that movie we all loved 9 (!) years ago in its closing moments. But it’s still a marvel.

My full Washington City Paper review is here.

"BLOOD, SWEAT, AND CHROME" reviewed in the Washington Post

Zoë Kravitz and Charlize Theron in George Miller’s 2015 masterpiece Mad Max: Fury Road. (Warner Bros.)

Mad Max: Fury Road is one the wildest and most unconventional blockbusters ever made, and I’d like to think I did it justice when I reviewed it for NPR upon its release in May 2015.

I’m just as enthusiastic about New York Times reporter Kyle Buchanan’s new oral history about the movie’s genesis, production, and legacy, which I reviewed for the Washington Post. Anyone interested in filmmaking should read this book.

Pop Culture Happy Hour, Small-Batch Edition: Mad Max: Fury Road

Hugh Keays-Byrne (chalk white, center) as Immortan Joe in Fury Road (Jasin Bolland).

I was under the mojo-sapping influence of a stomach bug when I joined Pal-for-Life Glen Weldon in the studio for a Small Batch dissection of Mad Max: Fury Road, a film I love.

Readers of my Twitter feed know that matters of hydration are foremost in my mind during DC's April-to-November summers, what with 2015 being my 24th consecutive year as a runner and all. So while I accepted most of Fury Road's fantastical elements without question, the matter of how everyone in the movie didn't pass out from heat exhaustion after 30 seconds of combat was one I would be disposed to fixate upon even if I hadn't spent the night prior to the taping on my couch, curled up in the fetal position around a bottle of Gatorade.

And yet it never comes up in our discussion.

How? Professionalism.

I hope I did an okay job of explaining that while Fury Road is essentially one long chase involving dozens of what look to be astonishingly gas-guzzling (but also astonishing, full-stop) vehicles, the film is a marvel of narrative efficiency.

Hear us prattle on here.

What Fresh Hell! Mad Max: Fury Road, reviewed.

Tom Hardy & Charlize Theron play the dual protagonists of the fourth, and best, Max Max.

Melting clocks would not look out of place in the surreal and vibrant post-apocalyptic world George Miller has created in Mad Max: Fury Road, the long-delayed fourth installment in the series that launched his eclectic career 36 years ago. (Four Max Maxes now, but also two Babes and two Happy Feet.) Among its other substantial achievements, the film elevates Charlize Theron into the Sigourney Weaver-Linda Hamilton-Carrie Anne Moss Action Heroine Hall of Fame. Last year was an unusually strong one for blockbusters, but Fury Road is still the baddest to burn rubber and spit fire in many nuclear winters. My NPR review is here.