Ti West

MaXXXine

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Maxine in low cut top

A collection of great scenes in search of a movie, MaXXXine opens with a quote from Bette Davis – “In this business, until you’re known as a monster you’re not a star” – and ends with the song Bette Davis Eyes. Between those bookends, the story of a porn actress (Mia Goth) trying to go legit in the 1980s United States, where Ronald Reagan is promising “morning in America”, Christians are campaigning against satanism in rock music and filth on the screens, and a serial killer is on a spree butchering young women like Maxine. We first met Maxine in X, this trilogy’s opener, when she was a 1970s burlesque dancer with ambitions … Read more

X

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Mia Goth as Maxine

Impressive in every role she’s been in since her movie debut in 2015’s The Survivalist, Mia Goth has been a star in waiting for a while now. While X isn’t every young woman’s idea of getting your name in lights – the nudity, the blood, the screaming – Goth seizes it with both hands. Appropriately, to some extent it’s a story about fame as well – Goth plays Maxine, a young dancer at a burlesque strip joint who heads off into the backwoods to shoot a porn movie with a bunch of other people. All of them will soon, they’re certain, be hitting the big time once the world gets a load of … Read more