Everything is to the ‘max’ in Westside at the moment, with the prospect of England offering two more Euro 2024 knockout matches great for business across the area’s many bars, pubs and restaurants.
Meanwhile, filmgoers who book tickets to see either Inside Out 2 or A Quiet Place: Day One in the seat-shaking 4DX screen at Cineworld Broad Street will get a free Pepsi Max (offer ends, Thursday 11 July). A Quiet Place is also screening on Cineworld’s giant, immersive IMAX screen this week.
And Mia Goth is back in slasher-movie territory as her fame-hungry character Maxine Minx – in a car with the number plate MAXXXINE.
Look carefully during a reference to the impact of heavy metal on culture, and you will see Black Sabbath and ‘Trashed’ in a list of bands and tracks.
So whichever way you want to live life to the max this week, Westside has it all… including, of course, the devilishly-fun Black Sabbath bench on Broad Street.
MAXXXINE (18, 104 mins)
This is writer-director Ti West’s third linked film starring young London-born actress Mia Goth and it again explores the impact of media on contemporary culture.
In the first movie ‘X’, set in 1979 and released in March 2022, an adult film crew had to fight for their lives in rural Texas (Chainsaw Massacre territory) when they were caught in the act by their elderly hosts.
A second collaboration, Pearl, released a year later in March, 2023, was an ‘origin’ film set in 1918, with Mia’s other character Pearl lusting for a life in the movies, but trapped on her parents’ farm as a carer for her invalid father when silent movies were beginning to offer escape routes.
It served to improve the premise of the first film as a barometer of the growing slasher genre.
Fast forward here to the 1985 of Ronald Reagan, big hair, video tapes, lawsuits against rock stars, a remake of Psycho and ZZ Top’s 1983 smash Gimme All Your Lovin’ given the full gloss-with-audio-to-match treatment on the silver screen and the opening half of this movie especially is a real treat.
Mia’s porn star Maxine Minx – whose ‘maxim’ is still ‘I will not accept a life I do not deserve’ – returns from ‘X’ hoping her skills as an actress will transfer to the golden side of Hollywood.
Unfortunately, the past is about to impact on her present. Just when she wants to star in The Puritan II, there’s a serial killer stalking Hollywood starlets.
All three of Ti West’s films in this series can be watched independently in any order, but are also designed to complement each other for reflecting the nature of the world at the time they are each set.
The verdict: ***
Despite the threat of showing things that some viewers with fingers over their eyes might not wish to see, Maxxxine’s super-glossy, refreshingly-accurate recreation of life in the 1980s keeps you hooked – the video shop scene is as fab as the soundtrack and the period cars on the roads.
The second half of the plot becomes too convoluted to drive the film on through Hollywood’s cesspool where stars can be made and trapped in equal measure.
Even with Kevin Bacon included as a sideshow and Elizabeth Debicki on top form as a director, this was always going to be Maxxxine’s film – to the Maxxx – with writer-director West keeping an extra grip on his leading character’s fate by doing his own editing too.
Warning! Next week’s In A Violent Nature will be an even more graphic 18-certificate horror…
BONUS
Over at Odeon Broadway Plaza, you can win ‘Mega Minions’ prizes by booking tickets to see Despicable Me 4 before July 14.
Picture credit: Maxxxine / Universal
