Cineast Movie Previews: ‘Mad Max,’ ‘I’ll See You in My Dreams,’ ‘Set Fire to the Stars’

Cineast offers previews of the new films Mad Max: Fury Road, I’ll See You in My Dreams and Set Fire to the Stars.

Mad Max: Fury Road
Tom Hardy plays Max Rockatansky, Charlize Theron is Imperator Furiosa, and they join a team of actors playing freaks and ghouls with names like Nux, Slit, and The Dag in Mad Max: Fury Road. If there’s a film franchise that could be more deserving than Mad Max of the old “in a world…” trailer treatment, it’s hard to think of what it might be. In a world that has been reduced to a barren, dry desert. In a world where humanity has been reduced to squabbling over ever diminishing supplies of fuel. In a world you can tell who are the good guys because they somehow receive proper dental care. The key word: survival. Other than that, it’s a big chase across the desert at breakneck speeds in massive vehicles—some of which appear to be propelled by guys up in the air pushing a big lever back and forth. Wait till they get to an overpass.

I’ll See You in My Dreams
In I’ll See You in My Dreams, East End regular Blythe Danner is teamed up with a bunch of actresses also of a certain age, but it would appear that Danner’s surgeon has put in more work. Danner plays Carol Petersen, a widow who doesn’t know whether she wants to get back into the romance game. Of course, she seems to keep “meeting cute” the affable Bill—played with cigar-smoking charm by that master of the bottle-brush mustache, the honey-voiced Sam Elliott—who has a boat and doesn’t want to be alone. Is it fate? Much time seems to be spent talking through her situation with the other widows, who are played by Rhea Perlman, June Squibb and Mary Kay Place, and sometimes bouncing ideas off young Lloyd, played by a bearded Martin Starr.

Set Fire to the Stars
It’s like Get Him to the Greek, circa 1950. Elijah Wood plays John Brinnin and Celyn Jones is Dylan Thomas in Set Fire to the Stars, which is based on real events. Thomas, a tremendous poet but also a raging alcoholic prone to wild barroom antics when drunk, is scheduled to travel from his native Wales to America for a speaking tour. Brinnin, who reveres Thomas, arranges the tour and acts as a minder, in charge of making sure the poet makes it to America in one piece and stays in one piece for the tour. Brinnin clearly doesn’t know what he’s in for—but, naturally, he also learns a lot about Thomas and the nature of genius in the process.