The boat collector

DEAD CALM

1989

Directed by Phillip Noyce

Written by Terry Hayes (based on the novel by Charles Williams)

Spoilers: moderate

"Science fiction triple feature" does still fit the meter, right?

AUTOMATA

2014 Espana/USA
Directed by Gabe Ibanez
Written by Igor Legarreta, Javier Sanchez Donate, and Gabe Ibanez
With Antonio Banderas (Jacq Vaucan), Dylan McDermott (Sean Wallace), Robert Forster (Robert Bold), Brigitte Hjort Sorensen (Rachel Vaucan), and Melanie Griffith (Dupre)

THE ONE I LOVE

2014
Directed by Charlie McDowell
Written by Justin Lader
With Mark Duplass (Ethan), Elisabeth Moss (Sophie), and Ted Danson (The Therapist)

PREDESTINATION

2014 (our future selves traveling to the past)/2015 (while we're still on the upward slope of our curved worldline)
Directed by Michael Spierig and Peter Spierig
Written by Michael Spierig and Peter Spierig (based on the story "All You Zombies" by Robert Heinlein)
With Sarah Snook (The Unmarried Mother), Ethan Hawke (The Barkeep), and Noah Taylor (Mr. Robertson)

Spoiler alert: moderate all around

18 Years a Slave

THE BABADOOK

And, representing the case for infanticide, The Babadook.

2014
Written and directed by Jennifer Kent
With Essie Davis (Amelia), Noah Wiseman (Samuel), Daniel Henshall (Robbie), Hayley McElhinney (Claire), and Tim Purcell (The Babadook, dook, dook)

Spoiler alert: moderate

Anybody in the mood for strawberry daquiris?

YOU'RE NEXT

Class warrior classic.

2013
Directed by Adam Wingard
Written by Simon Barrett
With Sharni Vinson (Erin), AJ Bowen (Crispian), Nicholas Tucci (Felix), Wendy Glenn (Zee), Joe Swanberg (Drake), Margaret Laney (Kelly), Amy Seimetz (Aimee), Ti West (Tariq), Rob Moran (Paul), Barbara Cramton (Aubrey), Simon Barrett (Tiger Mask), Lane Hughes (Fox Mask) Steve Buscemi L.C. Holt (Lamb Mask)

Spoiler alert: moderate

Two plots enter, no plot leaves

MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME

1985

Directed by George Miller and George Ogilvie

Written by George Miller and Terry Hayes

With Mel Gibson (Max Rockatansky), Tina Turner (Aunty Entity), Angelo Rossitto (Master), Paul Larsson (Blaster), Helen Buday (Savannah Nix), Bruce Spence (The Gyro Capt—what? he’s not the same character whose idea was it to cast the same actor who played the guy with the flying machine from Road Warrior in the role of a guy with a flying machine in Beyond Thunderdome but they’re different characters that’s INSANE Jedediah the Pilot)

Why walk away, when you can ride in style?

THE ROAD WARRIOR

1981

Directed by George Miller

Written by George Miller, Terry Hayes, and Brian Hannant

With Mel Gibson (Max Rockatansky), Bruce Spence (The Gyro Captain), Kjell Nilsson (Lord Humungus), Vernon Wells (Wez), Emil Minty (The Feral Kid), and Harold Baigent (The Narrator)

Only two years out from the phenomenal domestic financial success and worldwide impress that was his (in retrospect) artistically disappointing first film, a new George Miller joint arrived in theaters, first in Australia, and four months afterward in America. For reasons that probably have more to do with history and geography than quality, Mad Max had spawned a sequel. And in the annals of film follow-ups, Mad Max 2, or The Road Warrior, or Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior—whatever you wish to call it—rules the wasteland.

Hey, fella! You're a turkey!

This is Kinemalogue, the cinema blog (it's Greek so that means I'm educated in all the wrong ways).  We will almost certainly discuss things other than movies, from time to time, because there's a lot of things I love and hate that aren't movies and which I will compulsively shout into this vast emptiness about.  But we'll grok that fullness when we come to it.  The primary mission for now is to share thoughts on new, old, and very old movies.

In commemoration of their combined release on Blu Ray, over this troika of virgin posts, I'm gonna tell you what I thought about one of film's most celebrated post-apocalypses, from its humble Ozsploitation beginnings in 1979, through its 1981 breakout into the mainstream and what Roger Ebert (pbuh) infamously declared one of the best movies of 1985, to my hopes for the Mad Maxes to come.

Oh, and: welcome home.  We love you.

MAD MAX

1979
Directed by George Miller

Written by George Miller, James McCausland, and Byron Kennedy

With Mel Gibson (Max Rockatansky), Joanne Samuel (Jessie Rockatansky), Steve Bisley (Jim Goose), Hugh Keays-Byrne (Toecutter)

Standing tall amongst the classic films of our childhoods—or adulthoods, or pre-existences, or post-existences, if you can still get Netflix service at the Omega Point—in any event classic films of the late 70s and early 80s—Mad Max has the distinction of being the movie I think I’d most like to see get remade; because despite its enormous importance to its own franchise, to the genre of badass 80s action cinema, and indeed to the culture as a whole (see how Mad Max taught us not to descend into biker barbarism?), it also has the distinction of being only marginally good.

Rest assured, gentle reader, I do not dislike this first outing in Max’ trilogy, and am not unsympathetic to the fact that it is director George Miller's debut effort.  However, to see Max for the first time in perhaps two decades, after dozens of viewings of Road Warrior and Thunderdome, is almost necessarily to be unimpressed by it.

"Can't we just get beyond Thunderdome?"