#OnThisDay, May 29, 1953, mountaineers Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers confirmed to have reached the 29,035-foot summit of Mount Everest (depicted in Hillary, "Everest" s01e03, 2018)
This week on #MONSTERDON, the weekly monster movie watch party, we've got STRANGER FROM VENUS (1954)! It's apparently so similar to The Day the Earth Stood Still that it wasn't released in the US until years later for fear of legal action. Fun!
Ridley Scott's wildly uneven sociopolitical thriller/carnage porn is propelled purely by star wattage. Russell Crowe's Foghorn Leghorn accent is at least a diversion.
#OnThisDay, May 28, 1863, the all-Black 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment left Boston with fanfare to fight in the U.S. Civil War (depicted in Glory, 1989)
It is an hour until #MONSTERDON, your weekly monster movie watch party! If you don't want to see a bunch of nerdy monster movie toots, set up a filter for the hashtag.
The gasoline mayhem is breathtaking but gets fatiguing, unlike its more focused predecessor, Fury Road. Both Alyla Browne and Anya Taylor-Joy are noteworthy Furiosas. Though their presence isn't enough to save this overlong prequel from a spluttering narrative. What saddens me most is that it's focused too much on the action to build on the feminist fury alive in its sequel.
Well, that movie was cool AF - at least aurally and visually. Narratively, it was a relatively simplified story told sort of OK (story just sort of happens, not a ton of explanation, transitions are abrupt). Interesting to see what they do with Dune Messiah given the changes to Chani's characterization.
Dune Part 2 did get the blood pumping, so I'm going to continue the adrenaline ride with Mad Max Fury Road, a movie I've actually never seen. I guess I'll sleep when I'm dead.
OK, I'm not going to lie, while I enjoyed Fury Road, it did not live up to almost a decade of hype (and memes). The Road Warrior is still the best Max Max film, by a country mile.