Popular reviews

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  Review by Branson Reese 12

  Not sure how I'd missed this for so long. It's a fun little B-movie that sort of drags but has a few pretty special things going for it:

  1- It's only set a few years in the future. So it's sort of post-apocalyptic but they still have the news and shit. More post-apocalyptic media should take a page out of this book and calm down.
  2- The budget is clearly so low that all of the car crashes are exciting to watch because you can tell they only had the one take to nail it.
  3- I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure this is the movie that invented the 80s action movie trope of "all bad guys are…

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  Review by Naughty aka Juli Norwood ★★★ 5

  What amazed me the most about the film was the fact that all of the car crashes had to be taken in one shot! I'm assuming this was due to the limited funds! I've seen films with considerably larger budgets that were unable to produce the spectacular vehicular carnage we witnessed in this film!

  It was clear right off the bat that we were dealing with a low budget film, but we soon discovered what it lacked in frills it more than made up for it with fuel injected thrills!

  A visceral assault on our senses!

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  Review by Mike D'Angelo ★★★ 4

  52/100

  What a strange film this is. Structurally, it makes little sense: The opening sequence (which is far and away the zenith) introduces Max as an iconic badass, defined by his shades, clothes, and silence; then he's immediately revealed as a perfectly ordinary family man, sensitive and conscientious (wait what?); then the movie proceeds to methodically turn him back into the iconic badass it had already established in the first few minutes. Even ignoring that circular arc, though, this feels like a very bloated origin story—an entire movie fashioned from what ought to have been the first 35 minutes or so of a much better movie. Gee, I wonder what the much better movie in question might look like? (Gonna revisit that very shortly.) A promising dry run, but I'm baffled by folks like Dan Sallitt who find actual greatness in its roughly 1:5 ratio of formally impressive mayhem to deeply awkward melodrama.

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  Review by SilentDawn ★★★½ 3

  A riveting and minimalist action film of bare-bone badassery and primal rage; George Miller's Mad Max is the one that started it all, and after all these years, It still remains one of the best low-fi experiences that you can have. Miller's directing, Cliff Hayes and Tony Paterson's editing, David Eggby's cinematography, and Brian May's score all comes together into a type of visual shock treatment. You can smell the gasoline radiating off of the screen, and in spite of some rough patches with the pacing and some budget constraints, Mad Max continues to be a dazzling ride.

  Oh, and Mel Gibson is a badass.

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  Review by siobhan ★★½ 3

  if you told me this movie was completely unrelated to mad max fury road i'd probably believe you

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  Review by Simon Ramshaw ★★½ 20

  "I am the Nightrider! I'm a fuel injected suicide machine! I am the rocker! I am the roller! I am the out-of-controller!" - The Nightrider

  Thing is, there isn't enough madness to get Mad Max into the echelons of cultdom that it supposedly deserves to be in. It begins with a phenomenal car chase that uses its meagre budget extremely effectively, and ends with an equally as thrilling crescendo of bikes and one seriously bad-ass muscle car. But in between, the only mad thing is the incoherent ramblings of the villains that threaten to derail the entire film.

  Neither intimidating nor scary, they are a bunch of loons that don't provide the viewer with any visceral reaction. Then again, neither…

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  Review by CinemaCl🎃wn ★★★ 13

  Presenting a fascinating vision of a world on verge of apocalypse, introducing Mel Gibson in what is his breakthrough role & having garnered a strong cult following over the years, George Miller's feature film debut may not look as impressive today as it did back in its days but it still packs in many interesting moments that'll manage to hold the attention of newcomers.

  Set in the wastelands of Australia in a dystopian future, the story of Mad Max concerns Max Rockatansky; a policeman who tries to keep law n order intact in a society that's already on the verge of an imminent collapse. The plot chronicles his vengeful journey as Max attempts to find & execute all the members of an…

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  Review by adambolt ★★★ 3

  average day in Queensland

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  Review by Josh Lewis ★★★★

  fuel-injected suicide machine. the new 4K blu-ray from kino makes that biker truck hit at the very end pop off the screen the same way that man's eyes pop out of his skull. one of the greatest dummy hits of all time, RIP hugh keays-byrne.

  full discussion on episode 108 of my podcast SLEAZOIDS.

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  Review by cameron fetter ★★★★ 4

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  the people who write descriptions for movies on netflix need to be "put through a dark experience". had never seen this before and the fuckin netflix description says "a malicious gang murders Max's family". that doesnt happen until an hour and 15 minutes into the movie! theres like 20 minutes left when they kill his wife! should be illegal. how hard can it be to write a spoiler free description.
  "Max brings his own special brand of madness to the Australian wasteland. Nobody is safe as he takes cancel culture head on."
  "Cars? Check. Australia? Check. Guy named Max? Check. This post-apocalyptic landscape is about to get crazy."
  "Welcome to Australia. Population: Mad Max."
  ^ heres some freebies you fucking idiots

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  Review by Marcissus ★★★ 1

  living in the post apocalypse and still
  logging movies on letterboxd for 0 likes. the grind never stops. it’s a mindset

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  Review by Enfant du Siècle ★ 16

  I ventured to watch Mad Max mainly because of its status as a cult film, and what a surprise I've had. The problem I have with the film is that it looks and feels extremely dated, from the exaggerated music, the bad acting, the cartoon villains and the overall aesthetics that, if I didn't know it beforehand, I wouldn't have imagined it was a story set in a dystopian reality. In addition, the plot is way too simple and feels stretched out into ninety minutes film; it's incoherent, disconnected and at times even chaotic. I found the story so uninteresting, the development so tedious, and the action so scarce and unamusing that while watching the film I took the time…