David Remnick: I've always thought that 90% of our readers read the cartoons first and the other 10% are probably lying, but maybe I'm wrong. Oftentimes, I'm told they head straight to the film reviews, and these days that means Richard Brody, and our newest staff member, Justin Chang, who became our regular film critic in February after a great and long run at the LA Times. Justin, welcome.

Justin Chang: Thank you, David. It's great to be here.

David Remnick: Well, you joined us just before the Oscars. So you wrote about the nominations in last year's bumper crop of really good movies. Looking ahead now, and we're well into 2024, what should we be excited about for this year? Let me take a wild guess. One of them is a Mad Max film.

Justin Chang: [chuckcles] Yes. It looks like a good year overall, but I will start with probably my least obscure choice, probably everyone's choice. I'm incredibly excited for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, which is the upcoming fifth feature in the Director George Miller's Mad Max cycle. It arrives nine years after the amazing Mad Max: Fury Road, which starred, Charlize Theron as the warrior imperator of Furiosa. This new movie is a prequel and it, presumably, an origin story, in which we get to meet the young Furiosa, played by Anya Taylor Joy. Anya Taylor Joy, of course, can be seen in the year's other big dystopian desert blockbuster, Dune: Part Two. So she's kind of quartering the market there.

David Remnick: Wait a minute, Justin, in the studio's desire to make some money, what took them so long to do a follow up? Why nine years?

Justin Chang: Well, even Fury Road, the journey to making that took so long. As big of a success as it was, as many Oscars as it won, as a huge smash, rightly regarded I think as one of the greatest action movies the Hollywood studio has made, the way that George Miller makes them are incredible logistical undertakings. His insistence on practical filmmaking, on doing as much as possible in camera.

David Remnick: He's anti-CGI?

Justin Chang: I don't know if he's anti, but he does hail from that school that really believes in filmmaking in the most digitally unenhanced sense possible. Now, of course, there's visual effects being deployed, but he doesn't just want to leave it to CGI. He doesn't want to just leave it to post, so the amazing things that you see in Fury Road and in the other Mad Max movies, which started as pretty scrappy independent productions, it's--

David Remnick: In fact, the saga started before you were born. How does the Mad Max saga hold up compared to, say, Star Wars or other long-running franchises?

Justin Chang: Nothing has the reach of a Star Wars, of course, but I do think that in terms of Miller's ability to keep the franchise, the series alive, and make it mean something to a new audience, I will say that he's been more successful than, say, George Lucas was able to do with later iterations of Star Wars. I think for that series to have-- For him to have left it alone for many years and then come back to it so triumphantly I think defied all expectations.

David Remnick: Is there a signature scene in that movie?

Justin Chang: There are many. Because the movie is, in some ways, one long action scene, and it is these sort of just the early moments when you're out there with Tom Hardy as Mad Max and he is strapped to the front of some vehicle, Immortan Joe and his evil, extremely grotesque henchmen, and there's one of them who's on this guitar and it's like this satanic rock concert type of thing, it's really the level of imagination, and you feel like you're there.

Max: How much more can they take from me? They've got my blood. Now it's my car.

Justin Chang: They proceed to do the most incredible acrobatic sequences. It's like you're watching this glorious kind of symphony of an action scene. I remember, at the time, years afterward, the director, Steven Soderbergh, talked about Mad Max and said, like, "I can't believe they're still not filming it." With the things that he managed to pull off, but the early ones, too, going back to the first Mad Max, Road Warrior.

David Remnick: The early Mel Gibson period.

Justin Chang: Yes. Yes, exactly.

David Remnick: It's my vintage. What else are you looking forward to this year?

Justin Chang: Yes, the second movie that I'm really excited about this year is a World War II drama called Blitz. Apple will be releasing it later this year. Not too much is known yet about the story, but the movie stars Saoirse Ronan, Harris Dickinson, and others, I assume playing Londoners, who are trying to survive the German bombing campaign on the city. I'm excited about this one, David, because this is the latest film from the English director, Steve McQueen, who I think is just an extraordinary filmmaker. He's best known, of course, for the Oscar-winning 12 Years a Slave, but he actually started his career as a visual artist.

He won the Turner Prize in 1999. He has this eye for imagery and composition that some would call austere. When he combines this eye with a classical narrative, and in many cases, a historical narrative, the way he does in 12 Years a Slave and Hunger and some of his other films--

David Remnick: Were you a fan of Occupied City that came out in 2023?

Justin Chang: I was a huge fan of Occupied City.

David Remnick: Really?

Justin Chang: That's another reason-- I was. I also feel like I was one of a very too few who saw it.

David Remnick: Right. You're in the minority on that one.

Justin Chang: If I am in the minority. I don't know. I think that movie is going to grow in stature as people discover it. It's interesting because McQueen has-- Blitz is going to be his first theatrically released feature in a while. What I love about him is that he has this sense of history that I think he brings this gravity to, and this great respect for how you represent things. I think I saw it read one logline where it was just several characters caught up in the horror and the chaos of the blitz. I'm very curious to see how McQueen depicts this, given the regard he has had for history so far and the great results he's gotten so far.

David Remnick: What else are you looking forward to, Justin?

Justin Chang: David, my third pick is sort of my cheat of an entry, because I've actually already seen this movie, but it's coming out this year, and I like it so much that I cannot wait to see it again. It's been a while, too, because, full disclosure, I was on the committee that programmed this movie for the New York Film Festival, where it played last fall. It's a movie called Janet Planet. No, relation to the songwriter. It's just a different character named Janet. A24 is releasing this movie sometime this year. I think this is going to be a movie of particular interest to many admirers of the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, Annie Baker, because this is her feature debut that she wrote and directed.

It stars Julianne Nicholson in, I think, one of the best performances of her career, which is certainly saying something. She plays a single mother and acupuncturist, if I'm trying to remember the details correctly, because it's been a while for me, named Janet, who lives in Western Massachusetts with her 11-year-old daughter. It's a mother-daughter love story that I believe Baker has herself described as a story about falling out of love with your mother.

[MUSIC - Beverly Glen-Copeland: Ever New]

Annie Baker: I wanted it to be a complicated relationship with a lot of closeness and a lot of distance and to-- Yes, for it to be a painting that was only fully formed by the end of the movie. So I do believe that she is--

Justin Chang: It's set during the summer of 1991, and it's remarkable-- Not surprising, but remarkable how good Annie Baker is at using the camera to heighten intimacy between her characters. She draws out silences and nuances in a way that's just completely engrossing, even when not very much seems to be happening on screen. I could not be more looking forward to seeing it because it's been way too long and I need a refresher.

David Remnick: Through the pandemic and even earlier, every year, every year we hear some version of the death knell for the movie business, certainly the theatrical release. Then 2023 had a run of films that got people into the seats again. Thank God, not just Marvel films. Was that just a blip or is there a real shift going on?

Justin Chang: It is hard to say. Looking at this year, I think that there is- it's premature, but there is an early sense of, "Hmm, this year is not going to be 2023. This is not necessarily going to be Barbenheimer." A Barbenheimer year is, of course, an anomaly to begin with, but because we're also dealing with the after effects of the Hollywood writers and actors strikes, and so--

David Remnick: There's just fewer films around.

Justin Chang: I think there may be in terms of specifically, American product, studio product. God, I hate calling it product, but you know what I mean. It's like we try to ban the words brand, product, content, but I remain optimistic in spite of all that. I think we have to cling to optimism. Otherwise, what am I doing here? I've found that even when there are constraints on the industry and when the industry is in turmoil, but artists do find a way, and great movies find a way to get made in spite of themselves. I cling to that hope as well.

David Remnick: Well, I hope your optimism is well-founded. Justin Chang, thank you.

Justin Chang: It's a pleasure.

[MUSIC - Beverly Glen-Copeland: Ever New]

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