By Lynn Venhaus

Another thunderous full-throttle fever dream from visionary filmmaker George Miller, “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” repetitively smashes and crashes a megaton of souped-up vehicles in a savage and dusty post-apocalyptic world.

That loud and noisy thrill ride is expected in the prequel to Miller’s ambitious fourth foray nine years ago – “Mad Max: Fury Road,” which continues his gritty, grungy, and gruesome sci-fi world he created in 1979.

Filmgoers enthralled with this high-on-carnage, low-on-story dystopian adventure will again be dazzled by the extraordinary stunt work, eye-popping aerial feats, and the stunning visual effects as survivors’ barrel through the Australian Wasteland.

Nevertheless, Miller’s reliance on more CGI than its predecessor makes this action spectacle’s excess mind-numbing, accompanied by a grating music score composed by Tom Holkenborg that sounds like an incessant cruise ship’s horn.

When clips from Fury Road play over the end credits, it’s another reminder of how much better and epic it was.

After all, the 2015 film earned 10 Academy Award nominations, and won six – for costume design, film editing, production design, sound mixing, sound editing, and makeup and hairstyling. (This one may duke it out with “Dune, Part Two” in technical categories, however.)

Not to take anything away from the efforts of Anya Taylor-Joy, who is terrific, and so is her remarkable young counterpart, Alyla Browne, in creating the backstory of Imperator Furiosa, the mysterious and fierce warrior who was memorably played by Charlize Theron in the Fury Road installment.

With her striking appearance – shaved head and missing part of one arm, she teamed with Tom Hardy’s Max Rockatansky against the evil Immortan Joe and his War Boys to rescue five imprisoned brides.

Taylor-Joy, who proves her mettle as an action star, is a captivating middle piece in the puzzle established by Browne’s astonishing turn that deftly sets the table for the faster, more furious grown-up.

The youngster was snatched from The Green Place of Many Mothers, and had no choice but to become a rebel, disguising herself as a male, saying little, and staying sharp. In fact, the character only has 30 lines of dialogue for 2 hours and 28 minutes.

The technical elements are first-rate, with Simon Duggan’s cinematography an outstanding achievement, as is the gnarly production design by Colin Gibson, who created “Fury Road” – and that Australian classic “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.” Costume Designer Jenny Beavan, who has won three Oscars, including one for “Fury Road,” continued her punk aesthetic.

But there is little freshness to this dystopian adventure now being told for the fifth time. The resolution takes too long, and the plot holes are obvious in the script, co-written by Miller and Nico Lathouris.

While a movie is only as good as its villain, Dr. Dementus is not a strong one, despite showy antics from a nearly unrecognizable Chris Hemsworth. He’s a preening and pompous buffoon who acts like a carnival barker and controls Gastown with his marauding biker boys.

The supporting cast is nondescript and interchangeable, except for Tom Burke as Praetorian Jack, who becomes Furiosa’s ally. This movie is the first one without Mad Max, although there is a brief cameo that means nothing.

Increasingly more brutal, the Mad Max series began 45 years ago, when a little-known Mel Gibson portrayed the cop whose wife and daughter are murdered by a biker gang. As the world fell in a future Australia, he came a drifter roaming through the bleak radioactive desert.

The 1979 film, which dubbed Gibson’s voice for an American audience, helped usher in the Australian New Wave.

A superior “The Road Warrior” followed in 1981, establishing Miller as an action force. By then in the sci-fi plot, society had broken down to such an extent, after war, a ruined environment, and critical resources in short supply, that it’s survival of the fittest, and an unsettling barbaric culture.

The third film, 1985’s “Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome,” was the weakest, yet Tina Turner’s performance as Aunty Entity was impressive. It wasn’t until 30 years later that Miller revisited this landscape.

Miller has directed them all with bombast, which is quite a departure from his beloved Oscar-winning animated film “Happy Feet” and Oscar-nominated “Babe” and its joyous sequel “Babe: Pig in the City.”

If you’re still interested in watching the Mack Truck war rig and tricked-out dune buggies as bodies pile up amid the swirling dust, “Furiosa” is meant for you. However, my eyes glazed over.

Sure, the wild stunts are appealing — those acrobatic polecats are still tremendous additions as we drive full-speed-ahead into a hopeless world.

“Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” is a 2024 sci-fi action adventure directed by George Miller and starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth, Alyla Browne, Tom Burke, and. It is rated R for sequences of strong violence, and grisly images, and the runtime is 2 hours, 28 minutes. It opened in theatres May 24. Lynn’s Grade: C-

By Lynn Venhaus

Visually stunning, “Three Thousand Years of Longing” is wonder on a grand scale.

While attending a conference in Istanbul, Dr. Alithea Binnie (Tilda Swinton) happens to encounter a djinn, aka genie (Idris Elba), who offers her three wishes in exchange for his freedom. She is a scholar well-versed in mythology and storytelling, and is highly skeptical – after all, so much folklore involving genies turns into cautionary tales that end badly. He pleads his case by telling his fantastical life adventures, and she’s beguiled. What happens next surprises them both.

Far from his Fury Road, risk-taking director George Miller leads us on a less-traveled path. With his flair for the unusual, Miller charts new territory  – his “Mad Max: Fury Road” won six Academy Awards in 2016, so of course the film’s technical elements are superb.

While I am not the biggest fan of the fantasy genre, I can appreciate the technical skill and the amount of difficulty in making it look seamless.

The work of cinematographer John Seale, who came out of retirement for the second time to shoot this movie (the first being Miller’s “Mad Max: Fury Road”), is exquisite — the vibrancy of his framed shots is breathtaking.

The film unfolds like a novel. Miller collaborated on the screenplay with Augusta Gore, adapting A.S. Byatt’s short story, “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye,” first published in the Paris Review in 1994. Like the British author Byatt, Miller puts familiar fairy-tale themes in a contemporary context, commenting on society along the way.

It borrows freely from “Arabian Nights,” that compendium featuring “One Thousand and One Nights,” which brought genies, or djinns, into the modern lexicon. Djinns in Islamic culture are often considered demons, but not here. There is a mystical charm to his powers.

Yet, the stories the Djinn weaves to plead his case are not as captivating as Elba and Swinton are. The pair is far more transfixing in bathrobes than the quixotic spectacles involving the Queen of Sheba and the Ottoman Empire, because those meander and such detours take us away from the film’s more interesting core relationship.

Oscar winner Swinton and Elba, who won multiple awards for his finest work in “Beasts of No Nation,” are endearing in their roles as lonely hearts whose solitary existence have led them to this crossroads. Elba could read my tax returns and I would be spellbound.

Alithea’s skepticism is relatable – it would be easy to dismiss it all as a mirage – but it’s not, and her new discovery is a joyful sojourn, particularly when she returns to her life in London. The two bigoted biddies who live next door are a hoot.

However, understand that the exotic panoply is necessary for the fanciful backstory. It’s just curiously not that engaging – a broad canvas of heroes, villains, royal protocol and expendables.

One thing about Miller, though, is that the guy always has a unique perspective – whether it’s a savage post-apocalyptic world of survival or a whimsical journey of a sweet little talking pig or dancing penquins. (After all, he won an Oscar for Best Animated Feature  for “Happy Feet” in 2006).

Swinton and Elba make us care about their characters’ outcome. Without them anchoring this film so skillfully, I would have checked out early. Still, it feels long even with its 1 hour, 48 minutes run time.

Come for the dazzling cinematic work, stay for the mesmerizing acting.

“Three Thousand Years of Longing” is a 2022 fantasy-drama-romance directed by George Miller and starring Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba. It is rated R for some sexual content, graphic nudity, and brief violence and runs 1 hour, 48 minutes. It opens in theaters Aug. 26. Lynn’s Grade: B.