common sense movie review anastasia

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Parents say (14)
Kids say (48)

Based on 14 parent reviews

Beautiful scenery. Bratty main characters. Frankly terrifying corpse for a villain.

Report this review, i'm 18 and watched this as a young kid, see how it affected me.

This title has:

Good movie for family. But this dark for young kids

A bit violent and very un-historic, with pleasant songs, good but with strong horror scenes, a movie with a russian heroine, beautiful movie. but made for older audiences., love anastasia, inappropriate for young children.

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Anastasia Parent Guide

Dump the typecast bad guy, and you would be close to animation perfection..

The last of the Russian Czars, Nicholas Romanov II, was brutally executed in 1917 with the rest of his family by revolutionaries frustrated with imperial control of their country. The question is whether one of his five children, Anastasia, managed to escape the massacre.

Release date November 14, 1997

Run Time: 94 minutes

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The guide to our grades, parent movie review by rod gustafson.

In the movie, the grandmother of the Romanov family is willing to pay a large reward for the return of her granddaughter. Two enterprising men, both former staff members of the Czar’s family, see this as an opportunity to escape St, Petersburg and perhaps pick up the reward. All they need is someone who can pass as Anastasia. Anya, an orphan girl with no history of her past, fits the men’s requirements precisely—perhaps too precisely. The trio are soon on the train and bound for Paris and the inevitable adventures that will happen to them on the way.

The most discouraging mimicking of Disney is the inclusion of an extreme bad guy, in this case Rasputin. In reality an unofficial advisor to Nicholas’s wife, he is depicted as a sorcerer who after falling through the ice and dying, continues to live in his decaying body. This character seems completely out of place from the rest of the film, and I can’t believe that escaping from revolutionary Russia wouldn’t provide enough opposition for the heroes. With his body parts falling off of him, young children may be disturbed by scenes that include this character.

In every other way, Anastasia is a first rate animation that marries traditional and computerized art work. I appreciated a modestly dressed heroine whose character was based more on personality rather than figure. Dump the typecast bad guy, and you would be close to animation perfection.

About author

Rod Gustafson

The most recent home video release of anastasia movie is march 14, 2006. here are some details….

Anastasia releases to Blu-ray on March 22, 2100, with the following bonus extras:

- Audio Commentary by Directors Don Bluth and Gary Goldman

- Sing-A-Longs

- Anastasia’s Music Box Favorites

- Russian Stacking Doll Game

- Anastasia’s Seek and Find

- Bartok the Magnificent

- How to Draw with Don Bluth

- The Making of Anastasia

- Anastasia: A Magical Journey

- Making of “Journey to the Past” Music Video

- Music Video: “Journey to the Past” by Aaliyah

- Trailers and TV Spots

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors.

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The legend of Anastasia would seem like unlikely inspiration for an animated musical, but “Anastasia” picks and chooses cleverly, skipping blithely past the entire Russian Revolution but lingering on mad monks, green goblins, storms at sea, train wrecks and youthful romance. The result is entertaining and sometimes exciting--a promising launch for Fox's new animation studio, which has declared war on Disney.

The movie's based loosely on the same speculative story as the 1956 feature film starring Ingrid Bergman ; it assumes that when Russia's ruling Romanov family was murdered in the upheaval of revolution, one child escaped the carnage and survived to make a valid claim for the throne. This was Anastasia (voice by Meg Ryan ), granddaughter of the Dowager Empress Marie ( Angela Lansbury ), who herself escaped to Paris and now wearily rejects one imposter after another.

Young Anastasia is seen wrapped in the warm bosom of her family; then disaster strikes, and she spends years in a cruel orphanage, losing all memory of her earlier days. Then as a lithe and spirited teenager, she falls into the clutches of two con men named Dimitri ( John Cusack ) and Vladimir (Kelsey Grammer). They both worked in the royal court and have insider knowledge; their scheme is to tutor an imposter until she can fool the Dowager Empress. The irony, which the movie makes much of, is that this impostor is, in fact, the real thing.

“Anastasia” tells this story within what has become the almost rigid formula of the modern animated feature: The heroine and the hero both have sidekicks, the villain commands nasty little minions, and romance blooms, but doesn't get too soppy.

Much depends on how colorful the villain is, and the mad monk Rasputin ( Christopher Lloyd ) is one of the best cartoon villains in a long time. The real Rasputin became infamous for taking so long to die--he was almost unkillable--and in this movie version he likewise lingers between life and death. His spirit burns on, but his body parts have a disconcerting habit of falling off. His little sidekick Bartok, an albino bat voiced by Hank Azaria, tirelessly screws missing limbs back into place.

Anastasia has a friend, too: Her little dog Pooka, who faithfully tags along. Indeed, every important character is assigned a sidekick; Dimitri has Vladimir, and the Dowager Empress has her faithful lady-in-waiting, Sophie ( Bernadette Peters ). By the movie's end, Dimitri wins Anastasia, Vladimir wins Sophie, and I guess we can be relieved that the filmmakers spared us the Bartok-Pooka nuptials.

The film was produced and directed by former Disney artists Don Bluth and Gary Goldman , whose credits include “ The Land Before Time ” and “An American Tail.” Here they consciously include the three key ingredients in the big Disney hits: action, romance and music. Only the songs disappoint. (Why didn't they do the obvious, and license the title song from the 1956 film?) There are three big action sequences: A storm at sea, as Anastasia sleepwalks perilously close to the briny deep; a runaway locomotive and a wreck, as Rasputin's little green goblins sabotage the train carrying Anastasia to Paris, and a final showdown between Rasputin and the forces of good. The action here is alive and energetic, and the train sequence is genuinely thrilling.

What won me over most of all, however, was the quality of the story: It's clearly set up, so that even younger viewers can understand Anastasia's fate and her hopes. (“I'm not exactly Grand Duchess material here,” she says, “a skinny little nobody with no past and no future.”) It gets a couple of neat twists out of the idea of making Anastasia a fraud who isn't a fraud. And the Dowager Empress, as played by Lansbury, creates real pathos with her weariness: How many more frauds must she endure? Animation is the road less traveled for the movies. Although it offers total freedom over the inconveniences of space, time and gravity, it's so tricky and difficult that animated features have always been rare--and Disney has always known how to make them best. With “Anastasia,” there's another team on the field.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Film credits.

Anastasia (1997)

John Cusack as Dimitri

Lacey Chabert as Young

Jim Cummings as Rasputin

Jonathan Dokuchitz as Dimitri

Meg Ryan as Anastasia

Kelsey Grammer as Vladimir

Christopher Lloyd as Rasputin

Liz Callaway as Anastasia

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Anastasia: Once Upon a Time

Dove review.

A little more retro than the 1997 animated classic Anastasia , Anastasia: Once Upon a Time adds a magical 80s twist to the legend of the mysterious Russian duchess.

Lenin serves as the ultimate bad guy in this tale, as he tries to murder Anastasia’s royal family—the Romanov Dynasty. Rasputin (the animated classic’s villain) creates a time portal for the Romanov family to escape through, but only Anastasia travels through the portal and into a new world. Angry, Lenin hypnotizes Rasputin and sends him into the portal to bring Anastasia back. However, Anastasia isn’t alone. She now has the help of her new preteen friend, Megan, from a 1980s USA.

Megan has her own crisis. She is always bullied and has a tough time finding her place in school and everywhere else, but the girls form a strong friendship. Together, they have a bond that no evil magic can touch.

This film includes a strong message of friendship and sacrificial love, including a scene where Anastasia sacrifices her reputation and the approval of others by inviting local orphans to the palace ball. However, several scenes mention alcohol, like whiskey and vodka. Mild magical violence is scattered throughout the film, but there is no gore. Parents need to be aware of some of the heavier magical elements (i.e. good versus evil), as well as one haunted house-like scene that includes disturbing characters.

Because of some of the scary, magical elements, we award Anastasia: Once Upon a Time Dove-approval for Ages 12+.

The Dove Take:

This retro redo of the animated classic Anastasia hosts new themes of friendship and sacrifice, but parents need to be aware of darker magic and scary scenes that aren’t appropriate for young children.

Dove Rating Details

Swords and guns used, but no blood and gore

Unclear, potential homosexual reference when one character mentions a "partner" rather than a female date to the ball

Mild name-calling, like "idiot"

Reference to whiskey, bad guys seen toasting vodka

Fashion show includes models in tighter, more revealing clothes

Lots of child-like magical elements, Halloween party with witches and a disturbing haunted house-like scene

More Information

Film information, dove content.

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Anastasia Reviews

A passable clone, but for all its technical accomplishments, a movie that does not have the magic.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Jan 10, 2023

Anastasia is another of Don Bluth’s attempts to wrest control of the genre that remains inferior in nearly every way, except one.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 23, 2022

The world of “Anastasia” seems well-developed and lived-in. There’s a sense of realism contained in the film’s scenery.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | May 3, 2022

It's unable to reach the level of emotional resonance that Disney's string of '90s pictures so masterfully obtained.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Sep 9, 2020

As a triumphant return to form after a string of failures, it stands as one of Bluth's finest works.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | May 10, 2020

Overall, Anastasia ends up being a very entertaining animated film.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Apr 19, 2019

It is a film that leaves us with an optimistic, albeit somewhat corny, message; love is the most important thing there is, be it familial, romantic or platonic...

Full Review | Aug 24, 2018

Flawed but not fatally, this ambitious epic's strength lies not just with its haunting melodies, pretty pictures, star voices and kid-friendly sidekicks... What gives Anastasia its edge is that most elusive of ingredients, an emotionally gripping script.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 9, 2018

Anastasia is OK entertainment. But it never reaches a level of emotional magic.

Full Review | Jan 5, 2018

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Sep 7, 2011

It's Bluth and company's skill as artists, as well as some of the better celebrity voice casting in an animated movie of the 1990s, that give Anastasia its merit.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Jan 22, 2011

Beautiful, not factual depiction of missing Russian duchess.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 21, 2010

This enchanting fairy-tale, the first release from Fox Animation Studios, is pure family entertainment.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 18, 2008

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Oct 18, 2008

There is much for tots to enjoy: decent songs, an amusing script and some surprisingly imaginative animation.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Sep 1, 2008

An ambitious, serious but not particularly stimulating musical feature that unconvincingly attempts to graft warm and cuddly family-film motifs onto turbulent aspects of modern history and mythology.

Full Review | Sep 1, 2008

It does veer horribly towards the sentimental at times, but still provides proof positive that other people can do cartoons too.

I have nothing but superlatives for this, a most phenomenal film.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 13, 2006

...it's the typical boy-meets-girl-boy-annoys-girl-boy-and-girl-snipe-at-each-other-as-a-disguise-for-being-fond-of-each-other relationship.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 6, 2006

Bluth has rediscovered the ingredients of quality mainstream animation...

Full Review | Feb 9, 2006

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Kinds of Kindness First Reviews: Unpredictable, Unapologetic, and Definitely Not for Everyone

Critics say yorgos lanthimos's latest is reminiscent of the raw boldness of his earlier work and will be difficult to digest for some, but its wicked twists and turns will keep audiences talking, and jesse plemons steals the show..

TAGGED AS: Cannes Film Festival , First Reviews , movies

It’s been less than six months since the release of Yorgos Lanthimos’ s last movie Poor Things , which won numerous Academy Awards earlier this year. The filmmaker is already back with a new feature, Kinds of Kindness , which just premiered at the Cannes Film Festival to rave reviews. Consisting of a triptych of stories reusing the same actors in different roles, Kinds of Kindness stars Lanthimos muse Emma Stone , who won the Best Actress Oscar for Poor Things , and two of her co-stars in that movie, Willem Dafoe and Margaret Qualley , along with Jesse Plemons and Hong Chau .

Here’s what critics are saying about Kinds of Kindness :

Is it another uniquely weird and unpredictable film from Yorgos Lanthimos?

This is a work of audacious originality, vicious humor, and balls-to-the-wall strangeness… It’s a movie that keeps you wondering where it’s going next. — David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

Director Yorgos Lanthimos serves up a triple helping of strange… At no point during Kinds of Kindness can audiences pretend to anticipate what will happen next. — Peter Debruge, Variety

A profoundly puzzling, dizzyingly disturbing, and dark-hearted set of loosely-connected stories. — Fionnuala Halligan, Screen International

Puzzling, brilliant, and, in all honesty, not easy to like. — Stephanie Bunbury, Deadline Hollywood Daily

The macabre, mischievous triptych is mind-bendingly brilliant… A huge part of the fun is getting caught in the mesh of mind games the film sets for its audience. — Robbie Collin, Daily Telegraph

At a time when cinema is often maddeningly simplistic or prescriptive, Kinds of Kindness delights in its own ambiguity. It also provides no shortage of things to get your teeth into. — Radhika Seth, Vogue

The happily inhospitable Kinds of Kindness can’t help but feel like an allergic reaction to the mainstream success [Lanthimos has] enjoyed… Always interesting, seldom enjoyable, and somehow both smothered and excessive at the same time (and at all times). — David Ehrlich, IndieWire

Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons in Kinds of Kindness (2024)

(Photo by ©Searchlight Pictures)

Will fans of his earlier films enjoy it?

The film is a return to Lanthimos’s smaller-scale style, the blunt chilliness that first made him famous. Kinds of Kindness shares the same DNA as Dogtooth or Killing of a Sacred Deer , morbid little tales that verge on outright nihilism. — Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair

Kinds of Kindness marks a return to the spectacles of personal, familial, societal degradation on which the director made his name. — Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine/Vulture

For those wondering where the Yorgos Lanthimos of Dogtooth had disappeared in the five Oscar wins, the Golden Lion, and the red carpet soundbites of costume parties Poor Things and The Favourite , why, he’s back. — Fionnuala Halligan, Screen International

Kinds of Kindness is not the kind of friendly-surreal outing that The Favourite and Poor Things were. — Steve Pond, The Wrap

Frankly, it makes Poor Things look like a Disney movie. — Radhika Seth, Vogue

Mileage will vary even for devoted Lanthimos fans. — David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

It’s never been easier to appreciate how Lanthimos’s films achieve their singularly disturbed kick by warping our most universal emotions through the infinity mirror of f–ked up things we do to keep them in check. And thank God for that, because it’s never been harder to appreciate one of his films on virtually any other level. — David Ehrlich, IndieWire

Willem Dafoe, Jesse Plemons, and Hong Chau in Kinds of Kindness (2024)

(Photo by Atsushi Nishijima/©Searchlight Pictures)

Is it funny?

Very Funny. — Stephanie Bunbury, Deadline Hollywood Daily

Discordantly amusing…darkly funny. — Fionnuala Halligan, Screen International

Yes, there are hints of the whimsical and comedic tone of The Favourite or Poor Things … You may laugh here or there, but you’ll be thinking more about the choices these characters take and the inherent pain they endure much longer. — Gregory Ellwood, The Playlist

While most of [its] sequences are shocking, a few are incredibly, diabolically funny, and it’s a joy to see Lanthimos having such a blast. — Radhika Seth, Vogue

Much funnier on second viewing. — Peter Debruge, Variety

Hong Chau and Jesse Plemons in Kinds of Kindness (2024)

How are the visuals?

It looks gorgeous… Lanthimos and cinematographer Robbie Ryan make crisp widescreen compositions of their locations and although the visual scheme is relatively simple compared to the director’s recent work, there are still plenty of skewed angles to give it an edgy vitality. — David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

DP Robbie Ryan pivots from the trick photography of Poor Things to meticulous widescreen compositions, centered on some of New Orleans’ least-scenic locations. — Peter Debruge, Variety

Visually, and technically, this stripped-back Yorgos Lanthimos film is a pleasure to watch. Robbie Ryan’s camera seems to relish the limitations and opportunities it offers. — Fionnuala Halligan, Screen International

Here we have something visually closer to the Robby Müller-like vistas and “Americana” in quote marks of Wim Wenders’s Paris, Texas . — David Jenkins, Little White Lies

The polished wood floors, walls and ceilings in Daniel and Liz’s rustic bungalow in the second story, which give the entire episode an increasingly sanguinary glow, deserve a credit of their own. — Stephanie Bunbury, Deadline Hollywood Daily

Willem Dafoe and Margaret Qualley in Kinds of Kindness (2024)

What about the score?

As he did for Poor Things , English musician Jerskin Fendrix contributes an unconventional score that’s frequently abrasive, in keeping with the disquieting tone. It ranges from dissonant tinkling piano to crashing chords, passages by turns chiming and staccato, and choral pieces of feverish intensity. — David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

There’s an off-kilter precision to the entire project, heightened by Poor Things composer Jerskin Fendrix’s use of discordant pianos and stress-inducing choirs. — Peter Debruge, Variety

Does anyone stand out from the cast?

Even if Kinds doesn’t speak to you, the film is a spectacular case study for anyone who needs more evidence that Plemons deserves more leading roles on the big screen. — Gregory Ellwood, The Playlist

Kinds of Kindness is a towering monument to Plemons’ talent; it’s enduring proof that he has a wider range between “desperation” and “depravity” alone than most actors do across the entire spectrum of human emotion. — David Ehrlich, IndieWire

Plemons, an actor with extraordinary range, [is] the standout of a stellar ensemble. — David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

Plemons is the revelation here, an anchor in a cast telling three different stories of penetrating strangeness. — Fionnuala Halligan, Screen International

Margaret Qualley, Jesse Plemons, and Willem Dafoe in Kinds of Kindness (2024)

Will this one have wide appeal?

There are few places the director won’t go. That includes places of darkness, perversity, and mutilation not for the squeamish. — David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

I suspect it’s a film that many will find alienating, or frustrating for its lack of straightforward answers, or simply too excruciating to enjoy. — Radhika Seth, Vogue

Kinds of Kindness risks alienation. Each story ends on a note of puckish discordancy that could be read as a middle finger to the audience, or empty provocation. — Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair

It can be a bit exhausting — anthology films often are, and this one is long — but we can feel the director’s excitement. — Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine/Vulture

The relentless inertia of Lanthimos’s longest movie is an expression of his love for anyone willing to sit through it. — David Ehrlich, IndieWire

Kinds of Kindness feels heavier and longer than I expected, as if reaching for a meaningful resolution that might not be there. — Peter Bradshaw, Guardian

Emma Stone and Joe Alwyn in Kinds of Kindness (2024)

Will it require multiple viewings?

It may not be as thematically cohesive on a first watch as some audiences will wish for, but the longer you mull it over the more the pieces of the puzzle begin to fit and the common threads start to emerge. — David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

I can’t say much jumped out on a first viewing unless it was of the you-have-to-be-cruel-to-be sort. But it’s exactly the sort of film that makes you want to look again. — Robbie Collin, Daily Telegraph

A week after we first screened it, we’re almost (emphasis on “almost”) at a loss to discuss why it left such an indelible impression on us. And we’re rarely at a loss for words, let alone opinions. — Gregory Ellwood, The Playlist

To fully appreciate the dark humor of it all, do yourself a kindness: buckle up and take the whole ride again. — Peter Debruge, Variety

It’s a release that’s guaranteed to inspire obsessive Reddit threads, one which demands to be discussed, and one which should be watched on repeat and dissected frame by frame. — Radhika Seth, Vogue

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Why Disney's Anastasia Faced Backlash in Russia

Anastasia's fantastical retelling of history received backlash for distorting the tragic fate of the real-life Grand Duchess.
Despite criticism from Russian Orthodox Christians and historians, Anastasia's positive message resonated with many viewers globally.
The film's financial success and lasting popularity demonstrate its ability to captivate audiences with its stunning animation and narrative.

Although the film has been popular for many years, Anastasia (originally a 20th Century Fox production before Disney 's acquisition of the studio in 2019) has also received backlash because of its controversial connection to the former Grand Duchess of Russia, Anastasia Nikolaevna. For a variety of reasons , Anastasia made several changes to the real-world history of its title character — namely keeping her alive and setting her forth on a fantastical journey — many people have taken the film to task for its audience. However, much like the folk stories of the past, which often offered a moral message while warping the historical significance of their settings, Anastasia ’s story tries to reinterpret how things played out to offer a spark of hope in the face of tragedy.

While Anastasia 's director, Don Bluth, was certainly tempting fate by choosing this particular subject as the backdrop for an animated musical, it's a gamble that ultimately paid off for him and his studio. Still, backlash was bound to be doled out to Anastasia , and as expected, the most intense response came from the country it's set in: Russia. There are several reasons the film was met with apprehension in the country, ranging from a myriad of historical inaccuracies to perceived religious wrongdoings. The film undoubtedly made a positive impact on its creators and movie-goers following its release in 1997, but it's safe to say the reception wasn't all positive — and many of the issues people had with the film are more than understandable.

Historians Believe Anastasia Creates A Misleading Perception of Anastasia

10 best don bluth films, ranked.

In the same vein as many fairy tales (and especially Disney's adaptations of these stories), Don Bluth's classic Anastasia takes a morbid situation and changes the events to deliver an overall positive message. The film tells the story of a genuine familial bond through its titular main character's search for her lost family. In an admittedly far-fetched plot, which features con men trying to capitalize on a grandmother's search, Anastasia adds a more hopeful element to an utterly tragic story. In reality, Anastasia Nikolaevna was brutally murdered during the political upheaval of Russia's Bolshevik Revolution — a far cry from her fate in Bluth's beloved animated movie. While it may offer little in the way of justice, the film at least offers an escape from the reality that the princess and her family had to experience before their untimely deaths.

Despite the message of hope, historians like Suzanne Massie and amateur historian Bob Atchison believed the film misrepresented the dramatic and tragic events of Grand Duchess Anastasia's death. Atchinson, in particular, noted his belief that the treatment Anastasia received would be like if an animation studio released a film about Anne Frank's life that saw Frank move to Orlando and open a crocodile farm. While not quite as ridiculous as that concept, the idea that the film would distort history for some is supported by the persisting rumors of Anastasia’s survival, which did predate the film’s release but were only strengthened by a new generation being first introduced to Anastasia through Bluth's film. It'd be inaccurate to suggest that this exact thing didn't happen, as many children growing up with the film in the 1990s did indeed believe the tale to be true until educated to the contrary. It may have been smarter for Don Bluth and co-director Gary Goldman to simply mold a story inspired by the rumors surrounding Anastasia. Instead, they opted to present the brunt of Anastasia 's adventure in an earnest way; save, of course, for the film's primary antagonists being a magical take on historical figure Grigori Rasputin and his talking bat sidekick, Bartok.

Many Russian Orthodox Christians Consider Anastasia A New-Age Martyr

'that'd be fantastic': wish actor wants to see a queer disney princess.

During an early screening of Anastasia in November 1997, a woman named Katherine Landsberg handed out leaflets to movie-goers, urging parents to relay the true story of Anastasia to their children and to educate themselves on what actually happened. In part, she was driven by her own family's history in Stalin's Russia; however, she was also driven by a very real devotion to the church she belonged to. As it would become following the executions of the Romanov family, Czar Nicholas II and his family were canonized as New Martyrs by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.

Lansdberg is only one example of many whose beliefs likely led to a less-than-warm reception to Bluth interpretation of Anastasia. The act of canonizing Czar Nicholas II's family effectively made Anastasia a saint in the eyes of the church, so it goes without saying that warping reality to the extent that Anastasia did would rub a certain sect of the Russian population the wrong way. This was likely only worsened by the fact that Rasputin is depicted as a highly magical villain with ties to the underworld. Many elements worked in conjunction to lead to a negative response to Anastasia — especially from those who followed this specific belief system.

Anastasia Wasn’t Met With Backlash From Everyone

Pocahontas is still the most problematic disney princess movie.

It is worth noting that the backlash towards Anastasia wasn't overwhelming — even from many viewers in Russia. At the time of release, several Russians enjoyed the escapism it presented; or, at the very least, they viewed the film as a Western import not worth getting upset about. Even though some of Anastasia’s contemporary relatives found the film distasteful at the time, most Romanovs have accepted the film and its exploitation with equanimity, if not entirely happily. Following its release, Anastasia grossed $81.4 million internationally , which helped make it Don Bluth's highest-grossing film with a total of $139.8 million. This number beat out Bluth's second highest-grossing film , An American Tail , and established Anastasia as Bluth's first financially successful film since his first, All Dogs Go to Heaven .

Rotten Tomatoes' Tomatometer score has Anastasia sitting comfortably at 84% from critics, with a slightly lower 77% from audiences. These are still very impressive scores given how much backlash came out of Russia upon the film's release and given how many modern audiences have deemed it a problematic film in many ways. It's impossible to disregard the stunning animation, impressive voice acting, and beautiful soundtrack, even in spiall the glaring historical inaccuracies. Like many fairy tales — and films, in general — Anastasia takes a morbid situation and is able to craft a satisfying narrative around it.

There is plenty to be said about taking a well-known historical event and changing the reality of the situation to fit a new, more fantastical narrative. It's impossible to objectively suggest it's inherently good or bad; it all depends on the context. It's clear with Anastasia that Don Bluth and his peers weren't looking to demean or degrade Anastasia, the Romanovs, or the Nikolaevnas with their treatment of the source material. Instead, they set out to reinterpret real-life events to add a sense of wonder to what would otherwise be an extremely tragic tale. It may have earned them plenty of backlash in the years since its release, but Anastasia remains a fan favorite to this day—- as has been made quite apparent by Disney hosting the film on its Disney+ streaming service .

The last surviving child of the Russian Royal Family joins two con men to reunite with her grandmother, the Dowager Empress, while the undead Rasputin seeks her death.

Director Don Bluth, Gary Goldman

Writers Eric Tuchman, Bruce Graham, Susan Gauthier, Noni White, Bob Tzudiker

Runtime 94 minutes

Main Genre Animation

Genres Drama, Animation, Adventure

Release Date November 21, 1997

Cast Hank Azaria, Kelsey Grammer, Meg Ryan, John Cusack, Bernadette Peters, Christopher Lloyd

Why Disney's Anastasia Faced Backlash in Russia

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‘fifty shades of grey’: film review.

Bondage stakes its claim on the multiplex as Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele transition steamily from best-seller to the big screen.

By Sheri Linden

Sheri Linden

Senior Copy Editor/Film Critic

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As the tens of millions of readers of Fifty Shades of Grey know, Christian Grey doesn’t do hearts and flowers. The long-fingered antihero of E L James’ 2011 novel is a sexual dominant, practiced and resolute, determined to make Anastasia Steele his submissive without giving her the dreaded “more” — i.e., the dinner-date trappings of conventional romance. Both on the page and in the glossy, compellingly acted screen adaptation, one of the more perverse aspects of their zeitgeist-harnessing story is the breathless way it melds the erotic kink known as BDSM with female wish-fulfillment fantasy of a decidedly retro slant. Hearts and flowers are barely concealed beneath the pornographic surface, and as with most mainstream love stories, an infatuated but commitment-averse male is in need of rehabilitation.

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Review: <i>Fifty Shades of Grey</i>: Where’s the Wicked Whiplash?

Review: Fifty Shades of Grey : Where’s the Wicked Whiplash?

I come as a virgin to the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon, having read not a word of E L James’ three bestsellers — ignorant of the voluminous online commentaries, knowing little of the movie adaptation. So I take notes, like Washington State University student Anastasia Steele, and share them with you.

Here are 15 takes on Fifty Shades:

1. Anastasia (Dakota Johnson in the movie) literally stumbles into a meeting with Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan), 27-year-old owner of a huge Seattle IT company to which he pays almost no attention, since he is instantly obsessed with the frazzled, unconfident, we-won’t-say-mousy Anastasia. Smitten, he proposes that she be his sex slave — under stringent, lavish conditions. She takes the first book to consider his proposal and the rest of the trilogy to … well, you probably know. I don’t. Anyway, there are three.

2. A hundred million copies sold! And apparently it’s the lowest form of prose fiction — less literature than shiterature — with the enticement of gaudy bondage-and-discipline scenes. Inspired by the young adult Twilight series, James wrote for Actual Adults: women, mostly, to whose wishes, feats and dreams the risky romance of Ana and Christian spoke.

3. The Fifty Shades of Grey film opens in a double-whammy four days — Valentine’s Day in the middle of Presidents’ Day weekend — and is expected to stoke a $90-million windfall. For some, it’s a hearts-and-floggers date movie: A couple attends the movie, then he asks, “Dinner or my Red Room of Pain?” And mothers in the mall, they’ll tell their kids to go back and see the SpongeBob SquarePants movie another time-and-a-half. “Mom has some shopping to do” — for fantasies of romance and submission, whips and wisdom.

4. Among the early reviews, the critics are split between favorable and dismissive. And not to bury the lede any deeper, I’ll say while watching Fifty Shades I kept waiting to tumble into derision but never got there. My early curiosity built to a cozy level of admiration, then drifted off into ennui.

5. James (real name: Erika Mitchell) tweaked the Twilight teen virgin Bella Swan into the slightly older Anastasia, and reimagined sensitive vampire Edward as the well-mannered sadist Christian. The result had all the fidelity and floridity of fan fiction. The movie, directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson and scripted by Kelly Marcel, is just the opposite. It’s as if the filmmakers didn’t care much for the book’s literary lapses and dramatic excesses, and set out to make a solidly ethereal romance about a smart girl who realizes her strength when she meets a lost boy eager to fill her power vacuum.

6. Gone is James’s careless jargon; Anastasia doesn’t keep saying “Holy crap!” Diminished, degraded or simply hinted at are The Big Scenes. Johnson and Dornan spend plenty of time undressed (she fully nude, he topless but rarely trouserless or towelless); there are spankings and just a soupçon of wicked whiplash. But the lovemaking is mostly tender, canoodling, cuddling. It’s all foreplay. Creating a genteel R-rated film from a very X-rated book is like making a Mamma Mia! movie without the songs.

7. Sadomasochistic romance ought to be a burgeoning movie genre, because it touches on the power vectors in any relationship, and because each person frequently switches roles of dominant and submissive: you’re on top, you give in. Once in a while such a story connects becomes a film sensation, as when Marlon Brando toyed with Maria Schneider in an unfurnished Paris hotel room in Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris . Mark Rylance took the Brando role, and Kerry Fox the Schneider, in the more sexually explicit art-house drama Intimacy in 2001.

8. Last Tango was so long ago, 1972. Back then, films strove mightily to be as mature and confrontational as novels and theater; and a movie house was the only place that a group of strangers could find public connection to erotic ecstasy and anguish. Shortly thereafter ( Star Wars ), cinema reverted to a kids’ medium and trained audiences to want only spectacle and sensation: action epics, horror films, rowdy comedies — circuses. Let’s go Wow, Eek or Ha together. Watching people make love is not participatory but nakedly voyeuristic; everyone in the auditorium feels weird. They laugh nervously or contemptuously, to prove their superiority to the urgent intensity on screen. Besides, they don’t need simulated sex in a theater; they can see the real thing for free, online at home.

9. But the E L James readership presumably wanted to see writhing, walloped bodies in the movie. Why is it rated R, not NC-17? For the reason most things are what they are in Hollywood: greed. Many theaters would not show a scrupulous adaptation; fewer people would pay to see it. Hence this Fifty Shades of Pale Grey , which underlines the filmmakers’ intuition that this is less a sex tale than a love story.

10. Or possibly a commodity exchange. Christian, a dreamboat in conservative coiffure and couture, is a 50-year dreamboat throwback: a generic James Bond, or Hugh Hefner’s early Playboy man , whose essential accessories included sleek cars, well-chosen wines and a stock of beautiful women. Christian tries to win Anastasia by buying her things (a car, a new wardrobe) and paying her things (attention, respect). He takes her for a trip in his private helicopter, first applying seat belts like airborne erotic restraints, and somersaulting in a glider. It’s a seductive dream of luxe, but maybe more his than hers. She will let her mind lead her heart, in a long, amusing debate in contract law: the terms of Christian’s pre- whup . Anastasia gives it so much scrupulous attention — no fisting, for example — that any signer of a smartphone or health-club agreement would be wise to engage her as an advisor.

11. Ideally, sadomasochism is the most complementary of sexual role-players. You can’t have one without the other. Otherwise, it’s torture. (That’s what safe words are for.) Christian, veteran of 15 previous dominant-submissive relationships, has chosen Anastasia as his next partner. But she needs to decide if pain can give her pleasure. Does she like it? Can she stand it, for love of him? Can she upend his priorities and make herself the dominant? The 514 pages of the first Fifty Shade s book, and the two-hour movie, still haven’t answered that question. Stay tuned for two more sequels.

12. In Christian’s “playroom,” decorated like the upmarket gift shop of a Louisiana bordello, we finally get to the climax: six whacks of a riding crop, which he gently, carefully prepares her for. Even by movie standards, the flogging is more ceremonial than sadistic. It hasn’t nearly the sickening impact of the 40 lashes given Mel Gibson’s Jesus in The Passion of the Christ , or the eight or 10 minutes spent on the torture of poor Patsey in 12 Years a Slave . The Fifty Shades scene is brief and demure. One might like to see the impact of Christian’s whipping on Ana’s emotions: perhaps pain shading into surprised enjoyment, or hardening into the resolve of revenge. But that’s for some other movie. Don’t we all dream up our private ones?

13. So Christian is a shade of Jane Austen’s Mr. Darcy. Dornan, 32 and Irish, is old-school handsome with soft features. He could be the young Colin Firth, minus the sad merriment in his eyes. (For film-history symmetry, Jennifer Ehle, who was Elizabeth Bennet to Firth’s Darcy in the 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice miniseries, plays Anastasia’s blowzy mother.) The producers first hoped to cast Ryan Gosling, but he would have made Christian sulkier, more brooding, more Heathcliff. Manacles on the moors!

14. The movie’s warming revelation is Johnson as Anastasia. The 25-year-old daughter of Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson (and looking like neither of them), she has the gift of signaling her character’s shifting thoughts and feelings through the ripples of smile lines on either side of her mouth. Director Taylor-Johnson relies on closeups of her star as the heroine, the wordless narrator and the go-between, assuring the audience that what goes on will have a measure of emotional intelligence.

15. Having built tension by nicely guiding viewers smoothly through Christian’s courtship of Ana, Taylor-Johnson has little to deliver as a climax, erotic or dramatic. The submissive gets cropped, doesn’t like it and walks out, in an ending that is startlingly abrupt — and, to one impressionable audience of New York critics, the cue for a thunderclap of pig-snorts. The real moviegoers who see it by the tens of millions this weekend may have a reaction more like mine: muted, pleased and restless in turn. We’ll all have participated in an international event that, like the Super Bowl, needn’t be loved but must be endured. And in a movie universe where a grownup couple rarely gets the chance to challenge each other with love and bondage, Fifty Shades of Grey offers the first can’t-miss Date Night film since Gone Girl .

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‘Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga’ Review: The Origin Story of Furiosa Has Dazzling Sequences, but George Miller’s Overstuffed Epic Is No ‘Fury Road’

Anya Taylor-Joy plays the title hellion as a heavy-metal Candide bouncing through the Wasteland, but despite some awesome action moments (and two mega villains), the feeling is one of inflated franchise overkill.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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The first thing to say about “ Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga ” is that it’s not like any other “Mad Max” film. The movie, which runs 2 hours and 28 minutes, is teemingly, sprawlingly, phantasmagorically ambitious. Where “Mad Max: Fury Road” was set over three days, “Furiosa” takes place over 15 years and tells the origin story of Imperator Furiosa in five chapters (which come with titles like “The Pole of Inaccessibility”). The film has a cast of thousands of depraved hooligan bikers with rusty weapons and rotten teeth. At times, it feels like they’re getting ready to gather for Wasteland Woodstock.

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Most people would say “The Road Warrior” is greater. But “Mad Max,” in its cruder low-budget way, had a down-and-dirty B-movie virtuosity. “The Road Warrior” was bigger and grander. I decided — this was part of the fun of the game — that the greatest “Mad Max” film was whichever one you happened to be watching.

A few years later, Miller, perhaps high on his own legend (a syndrome that’s more or less built into being a visionary filmmaker), made “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome” (1985), a threequel that had some splendid things in it — Tina Turner, the Thunderdome showdown — but that also turned into an inflated Jungian fairy tale about “saving the children” (a good idea in life, but not so often in movies). It wasn’t a terrible film, yet the series felt cooked, spent, diminished. It seemed as if “Mad Max” and “The Road Warrior” were too bravura in their drive-by nihilism to keep extending. Miller had made the two greatest action films of all time, and he moved on to other things.

But that, of course, wasn’t the end of the story. In a world of recycled IP, “Mad Max: Fury Road” (2015), released 30 years later, did the impossible. It revived the series at full intensity, sweeping memories of “Beyond Thunderdome” under its spectacular wreckage, and creating a heroine — Charlize Theron’s hellacious buzzcut Furiosa — who was every bit as full-throttle commanding as Mel Gibson’s Max. True to her name, the film was so fast and furious that your eyeballs had to learn how to watch it, to follow the ballistic micro edits. But when you got onto the wavelength, the black magic of the “Mad Max” world was back. It was an epic desert drag-race miracle, a sequel worthy of the first two films — and, in that sense, maybe the third greatest action film ever made.

So what does one do for an encore to that ?

“Furiosa” tells the story of how its title character grows up, how she goes from being an innocent village girl, raised in the Green Place of Many Mothers (where she’s already daring enough to sever the fuel hose on a stranger’s motorcycle), to a kidnapped waif to a resourceful orphan who passes herself off as a boy to a devious hellion who bounces back and forth between dueling postapocalyptic underworld empires: that of the Warlord Dementus ( Chris Hemsworth ), the long-haired-and-bearded ruler of the Biker Horde that first absconds with her (leading them, Dementus rides in the chopper version of a “Ben-Hur” chariot); and that of Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme), the ancient, gas-masked, white-maned cult leader of the Citadel, the colony of white-faced fighter disciples who Furiosa was trying to escape from in “Fury Road.”

“Furiosa,” by contrast, is a picaresque with a stop-and-go rhythm, as the young Furiosa goes from the frying pan into the fire, like a heavy-metal Candide, forming attachments through her survival instincts but never sticking with anyone for long. She’s a lone wolf in a world of scoundrels. Theoretically, that’s easy to understand, but a movie, almost by nature, needs to be about the forging of bonds. And “Furiosa,” as populated as it is with disposable warriors (and characters with names like Scrotus and Toe Jam and The Octoboss and The People Eater and War Boy), feels alienated and a touch impersonal. The film seems more invested in Miller’s elaborate and, at moments, overly digitized extensions of the Wasteland than in the people who inhabit it. In that way, it’s got a touch of Marvel-itis.

The film seems all but designed to show off its world’s-end locations — the Citadel, the skull-faced cliff we already know well, and Gas Town, a petrochemical jungle surrounded by a giant moat, and the Bullet Farm. There’s one spectacular action sequence. It’s plunked into the center of the movie, and it involves a gleaming silver two-section tanker, with a jagged whirring read-end doohicky, the entire thing built out of spare parts, as it speeds along the desert blacktop with rogue bikers attacking it from all sides. We’ve been here before, but it’s sensationally gratifying to be here again: in the unholy thick of speed and murder, with warriors now dying by incineration.

Yet it’s never a good sign, at least in a “Mad Max” movie, when your most dazzling set piece comes in the middle. “Furiosa,” like “Beyond Thunderdome,” wants to be something loftier than an action blowout, but the movie is naggingly episodic, and though it’s got two indomitable villains, neither one quite becomes the delirious badass you want.

When the young Furiosa, played by Alyla Browne, is first captured, we think horrible things are going to happen to her. She is zoomed across the nighttime desert, where the gnarly biker who nabbed her plans to inform Dementus of the oasis she came from (which, in the Garden of Eden opening sequence, looks civilized enough to be the Whole Foods of the apocalyptic afterworld). But then Furiosa’s mother shows up to rescue her — a ruthless warrior named Mary Jo Bassa (Charlee Fraser) who knows how to repair and ride a Thunder Bike and is willing to die to protect her cub.

Then too, there’s something a bit off about how the movie comes close to cushioning the evil of Immortan Joe. This is a ruler who presides over a sick sect of suicide killers, and who extends his royal line by maintaining a harem of sex-slave wives. We know all this from “Fury Road,” of course. But since Immortan Joe’s Citadel is the place Furiosa is destined to end up, the film goes a little easy on it. Immortan Joe and Dementus cut a deal over gasoline, and given how dastardly both of them are supposed to be, the battle between them should have been more lavishly twisted.

The scenes where Furiosa passes herself off as a boy aren’t quite convincing; you have to just go with them. Then she grows up, and Anya Taylor-Joy takes over the role. She’s a powerful actor with a sensual scowl, but here, with hardly any words to speak, she’s at her most stoic. That seems on some level appropriate, especially when she propels herself through an entire road chase underneath a vehicle. But the character is more reactive and less hellbent than either Gibson’s Max or Theron’s Furiosa. For a while, Taylor-Joy’s Furiosa forms a connection with Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke), a road warrior whose main lesson to her seems to be to wear blue greasepaint on their foreheads. Their partnership comes out of nowhere, then fades into nowhere.

More crucial: As much as I loved the character of Furiosa in “Fury Road,” do we really need to see her tangled, deep-dive-that-somehow-stays-on-the-surface origin story? It’s an impulse, at heart, that grows out of franchise culture, and maybe that’s why “Furiosa,” for all the tasty stuff in it, is a half-satisfying movie. Miller creates a volatile world to wander around in, and I suspect a number of viewers and critics will respond fully to that. But part of the genius of the “Mad Max” films is that when they’re pumping on all cylinders, even when they’re as grand as “The Road Warrior” and “Fury Road,” they are also, in spirit, as lean and mean as one of those lethal spiked jalopies zooming down the blacktop. In attempting to inflate his universe into something larger, Miller clutters it with pretension and makes it mean less. He takes his eye off the place where the rubber meets the road.

Reviewed at Dolby 88, New York (Cannes Film Festival, out of competition), May 6, 2024. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 148 MIN.

Production: A Warner Bros. release of a Kennedy Miller production. Producers: George Miller, Doug Mitchell.
Crew: Director: George Miller. Screenplay: George Miller, Nico Lathouris. Camera: Simon Duggan. Editors: Eliot Knapman, Margaret Sixel. Music: Tom Holkenborg.
With: Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Burke, Lachy Hulme, Charlee Fraser, Angus Sampson, Alyla Browne, Daniel Webber, Nathan Jones, Gordon D. Kleut.

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‘Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga’ Review: A Lonely Avenger

The fifth installment of George Miller’s series delivers an origin story of Furiosa, the hard-bitten driver played here by Anya Taylor-Joy.

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In the driver’s seat, an angry-looking Taylor-Joy is shrouded in shadow except for her eyes. Through the windshield, the War Rig and a fire can be seen in the distance.

By Manohla Dargis

Dystopia has rarely looked as grim and felt as exhilarating as it has in George Miller’s “Mad Max” cycle. For decades, Miller has been wowing viewers with hallucinatory images of a ravaged, violent world that looks enough like ours to generate shivers of recognition. Yet however familiar his alternative universe can seem — feel — his filmmaking creates such a strong contact high that it’s always been easy to simply bliss out on the sheer spectacle of it all. Apocalypse? Cool!

The thing is, it has started to feel less cool just because in the years since the original “Mad Max” opened in 1979, the distance between Miller’s scorched earth and ours has narrowed. Set “a few years from now,” the first film tracks Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson), a highway patrol cop who has a semblance of a normal life with a wife and kid. That things are about to go to hell for Max is obvious in the opening shot of a sign for the Hall of Justice, an entry that evokes the gate at Auschwitz (“Work Sets You Free”). You may have flinched if you made that association, but whatever qualms you had were soon swept away by the ensuing chases and crashes, the gunning engines and mad laughter.

Miller’s latest and fifth movie in the cycle, “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” is primarily an origin story that recounts the life and brutal, dehumanizing times of the young Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy), the hard-bitten rig driver played by Charlize Theron in the last film, “ Mad Max: Fury Road ” (2015). Miller’s magnum opus, “Fury Road” is at once the apotheosis of his cinematic genius — it’s one of the great movies of the last decade — and a departure narratively and tonally from the previous films. In “Fury,” Max still serves as the nominal headliner (with Tom Hardy taking over for Gibson), but the movie’s dramatic and emotional weight rests on Furiosa, her quest and her hopes.

As befits a creation story, “Furiosa” tracks Furiosa from childhood to young adulthood, a downward spiral that takes her from freedom to captivity and, in time, circumscribed sovereignty. It opens with the 10-year-old Furiosa (Alyla Browne) foraging in a forest close to a paradisiacal outpost called the Green Place of Many Mothers. Just as she’s reaching for an amusingly, metaphorically ripe peach, her idyll is cut short by a gang of snaggletooth, hygiene-challenged bikers. They’re soon rocketing across the desert with Furiosa tied up on one of their bikes, with her mother (Charlee Fraser) and another woman in pursuit on horseback, a chase that presages the fight for power and bodies which follows.

The chase grows exponentially tenser as Miller begins shifting between close-ups and expansive long shots, the raucous noise and energy of the kidnappers on their hell machines working contrapuntally against the desert’s stillness. While the scene’s arid landscape conjures up past “Mad Max” adventures, the buttes and the galloping horse evoke the classic westerns from which this series has drawn some of its mythopoetic force. Max has often seemed like a Hollywood gunslinger (or samurai) transplanted into Miller’s feverish imagination with some notes from Joseph Campbell. The minute Furiosa starts gnawing on her captor’s fuel line, though, Miller makes it clear that this wee captive is no damsel in distress.

Furiosa’s odyssey takes a turn for the more ominous when she’s delivered to the bikers’ ruler, Warlord Dementus (a vamping Chris Hemsworth), a voluble show-boater who oversees a gaggle of largely male nomads. Wearing a billowing white cape, Dementus travels in a chariot drawn by motorcycles and keeps a scholar by his side. He’s a ridiculous figure, and Miller and Hemsworth lean into the character’s absurdity with a physical presentation that is as outlandish as Dementus’s pomposity and (prosthetic) nose. It’s hard not to wonder if Miller drew inspiration for the character from both Charlton Heston’s heroic champion and the Arab sheikh in the 1959 epic “Ben-Hur,” a very different desert saga.

The power of the “Mad Max” movies partly derives from how Miller supercharges the kinds of stories that are passed from family to family, tribe to tribe, culture to culture, the ones that are embedded in our heads and chart our paths, whether we know it or not. Yet while Miller is a modern mythmaker, he remains tethered to the world — the machinations and conflagrations in the movies at times queasily mirror our own — and it’s worth noting that he’s also a physician. (He was the set doctor on some “Max” movies.) His background helps explain, I think, his attention to the human body, most obviously in the flamboyant stunt work that has become a series trademark, and his delight in showing the whirring parts of bodies, machines and ecosystems — how they work .

Furiosa’s own body is very much at the center of this movie, which shifts directions when, after some power plays and narrative busywork, she lands in the Citadel, the heavily guarded fortress the character fled in “Fury Road.” There, she is herded with some cloistered young women, handmaidens whose sole function is to bear children for Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme), the Citadel’s leader. It’s also there that Furiosa, still a child (and still played by Browne), catches the eye of one of Immortan Joe’s spawn, a hulking predator whose designs on her jolt the story into a different, unsettling register. Miller, smartly, doesn’t overplay this section — and Furiosa evades this creep — but it’s still a shock to the system.

The shock lingers, and darkens the story precipitously. To survive, Furiosa escapes her would-be molester by obscuring her identity and joining the ranks of the Citadel’s chattel workers. She melts into the crowd, and years pass as the scenes blend together and a determined, sympathetic Taylor-Joy steps into the role. There’s more, lots and lots: Furiosa shaves her head and finds a mentor in a driver, Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke, the louche heartbreaker in Joanna Hogg’s “The Souvenir”). Together they and armies of minions journey to hot spots like the Bullet Farm, where Miller dazzles you with his customary pyrotechnics as he finesses the pieces — Immortan Joe and Dementus included — into place.

It takes a while to get used to Taylor-Joy as Furiosa, partly because Theron originated the character with such a distinct mixture of raw anger and deep-boned melancholy. Theron also looked like she could kick everyone’s butt in “Fury Road”; she more or less kicked Max’s, at least metaphorically by becoming the series’ new totem. Taylor-Joy doesn’t (yet) have her predecessor’s physical expressiveness, but like Theron, she trained as a ballet dancer and moves beautifully, with the kind of unforced gracefulness that suggests she can easily slip out of any difficulty. Taylor-Joy’s Furiosa may look too physically slight to handle the Armageddon, but that sense of vulnerability of course serves the story.

My guess is that Miller chose Taylor-Joy as his new Furiosa in part because of the actress’s large, wide-set eyes. They’re enormous; they’re also mesmerizing. They lock your own gaze down, commanding your attention, never more so than when the actress is looking up with her head bowed. It’s an angle that accentuates the whites of her eyes, which shine especially bright in the Citadel’s sepulchral lighting. (Jack Nicholson perfected this menacing technique in “The Shining,” which is why it’s called the Kubrick Stare.) The effect can be greatly destabilizing, creating uncertainty about the character and what kind of hero she’ll prove to be.

Furiosa’s reticence is strategic, as well as a trait she shares with Mad Max himself, the model for her taciturn avenger. While Furiosa is hiding in plain sight in the Citadel, her circumspection protects her, but it also accentuates her existential plight. She’s alone, spiritually and in every other respect, at least before meeting Praetorian Jack (not that they’re chatty). Hers is a lonely burden and, as the story and the fighting continue, it gives “Furiosa” a surprising emotional heaviness which can make this exciting, kinetic movie feel terribly sad.

Scene for scene, “Furiosa” is very much a complement to “Fury Road,” yet the new movie never fully pops the way the earlier one does. As it turns out, it is one thing to watch a movie about warriors high-tailing it out of Dodge on the road to nowhere. It’s something else entirely to watch a woman struggle to survive a world that eats its young and everyone else, too. Miller is such a wildly inventive filmmaker that it’s been easy to forget that he keeps making movies about the end of life as we know it. It’s a blast watching his characters fight over oil, water and women, yet while I’ve long thought of him as a great filmmaker it’s only with “Furiosa” that I now understand he’s also one kick-ass prophet of doom.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga Rated R for dystopian violence and intimations of child predation. Running time: 2 hours 28 minutes. In theaters.

Manohla Dargis is the chief film critic for The Times. More about Manohla Dargis

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What to watch with your kids: ‘See How They Run’ and more

Here’s what parents need to know

Goodbye, Don Glees! (PG)

Touching coming-of-age friendship tale has a little edge.

“ Goodbye, Don Glees! ” is an anime coming-of-age adventure from writer-director Atsuko Ishizuka. The film, which is available with both an English dub and subtitles for U.S. release, follows three teenage friends — who dub themselves the Don Glees — who are accused of starting a forest fire and embark on a trip to prove their innocence. The dialogue features occasional insults (“moron,” “dummy,” “lame,” “hick,” etc.), but there’s no swearing stronger than “damn.” Teens make a few suggestive comments in person and on social media about “scoring” with people, dying a virgin and the attractiveness of three characters. Friends dress up as girls by wearing wigs and makeup and using water balloons as exaggeratedly large breasts. The main characters narrowly escape a few dangerous situations, including a fire and an angry bear, as well as unknown forest terrain. The movie is ultimately a testament to the importance of close friendships and seizing the day during the chaos of adolescence. (95 minutes)

In theaters.

See How They Run (PG-13)

Comic mystery keeps you guessing; drinking, violence, peril.

“ See How They Run ,” which stars Sam Rockwell and Saoirse Ronan, deconstructs the whodunit by creating a fictional murder mystery while filmmakers work to adapt an actual Agatha Christie play into a movie. It’s a brilliant way of introducing the elements of writing a murder mystery. Expect violent moments: Strangling, shooting and struggles are intense, and there’s some blood. There’s kissing and drinking (sometimes to excess); language includes “goddamn,” “horses---” and references to infidelity. It’s set in the 1950s, and the cast of the play-within-the-film is all White, but filmmakers make nods to diversity in the form of a Black screenwriter, a mother taking on a career in a traditionally male field and the suggestion of a gay relationship. Classic cinema fans will eat this one up like buttery popcorn as the real cast of the 1953 West End production, including the likes of legendary actor Richard Attenborough, are made into characters/suspects. (98 minutes)

The Woman King (PG-13)

Memorable, historic, violent tale of African women warriors.

“ The Woman King ” is an empowering historical adventure drama that follows Nanisca (Viola Davis), the general of a 19th-century West African all-female royal guard called the Agojie. The Agojie of the Kingdom of Dahomey (what’s now Benin) — the inspiration for the Dora Milaje in “Black Panther ” — fought off hostile tribes from bordering nations. Expect a high body count, with lots of fighting and intense, often bloody warfare. The Agojie use ropes, spears, finely sharpened fingernails and other weapons in scenes that show dead bodies. A few of the deaths are particularly upsetting. There are also flashbacks to sexual assault and one moment when a suitor strikes a young woman he’s courting. Language isn’t frequent but includes “b-----s” in subtitles. Adults drink; a man’s partially nude body (bare behind, back, chest, abs) is visible; and there are scenes that show embracing and imply that characters had sex. The film is a labor of love from critically acclaimed filmmaker Gina Prince-Bythewood (“Love and Basketball ” and “The Old Guard ” ). Families will want to research the history of the “Dahomey Amazons” to compare what’s been written about the elite army with the film’s plot. (146 minutes)

The Silent Twins (R)

Biopic doesn’t go deep enough; sex, violence, swearing.

“ The Silent Twins ” is a drama based on the real story of identical twins Jennifer (Tamara Lawrance) and June (Letitia Wright) Gibbons, who created an insular world for themselves and wouldn’t communicate with anyone else. The film — which is set in 1960s and 1970s Wales — has moments of violence, including fighting, attempted suicide, bullying, arson and more. There’s also strong language (“f---,” “c---,” etc.), sexual situations and partial nudity (from the waist up). Characters smoke and use drugs. (113 minutes)

Common Sense Media helps families make smart media choices. Go to commonsense.org for age-based and educational ratings and reviews for movies, games, apps, TV shows, websites and books.

Cast & crew

Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1

Chronicles a multi-faceted, 15-year span of pre-and post-Civil War expansion and settlement of the American west. Chronicles a multi-faceted, 15-year span of pre-and post-Civil War expansion and settlement of the American west. Chronicles a multi-faceted, 15-year span of pre-and post-Civil War expansion and settlement of the American west.