Mandy (2018) Reviews

• Something unique

  mts-564-4297622018-09-16

  This really is not for everyone and that is just fine. Also story wasnt anything new or special, just typical revenge story. Really liked how this looked, sounded and felt. Visuals and colours are just outstanding and that was something that hooked me from the start, really trippy stuff in a good way. Music and sounds were pushing this dark overall sinister feel and worked perfectly. And also Nick have us great performance near insanity.

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• David Lynch meets Hellraiser meets Rob Zombie

  shamilton-707962018-11-19

  Just a brief review here summed up in two words...Absolutely Mental.

• All the 1/10 reviews. Most complaining about lack of story and little dialogue.. Oh brother.. This is why transformers and crud is top of the box office.

  MoistMovies2018-09-16

  Im not going to bother writing a actual review of this really great breathe of fresh air film. Plenty of others have done that on here it appears. They've been Pointing out that the film is a simple but very well done genre grindhouse film that throws back to films no one makes anymore, but with modern cinematic techniques. This is just a reply to the people who seems to have no attention span, no imagination, need to be feed useless dialog, have no appreciation for imagery and cant pay attention unless theres tons of plot to sink their teeth into... news flash, not all films without a ton of plot and dialogue are terrible. But by reading a few of their reviews, i highly doubt there is a single film they would like that fits into that category of little dialog and using your imagination to enjoy the experience. This film by no means deserves all these 1/10 reviews, and i bet most of these people only scale the films they watch on either a 1/10 or 10/10 basis... Nothing in-between.. because it seems theres a big trend in cinema of either hate it or love it. And never criticism mixed in with enjoyment. Stupidity in cinema is obviously the new money maker. All you have to do is look at whats being pushed out at the boxoffice. the new star wars, comic films, transformers.. And i dont mind some of those films at all, some i got a ton of enjoyment out of, but they're schlock and many people can see them for what they are, but many are now also considering these top tier films and a standard of film making.. oh boy.. thats a little troubling.. And its obvious a few of those kind of movie goers watched 'Mandy' Because it had very eye catching trailers that would attract all types of people. But then they realized half way through its not all spelled out, and more of a art-house film than your average horror. So now we will get the rating pushed down to a level it shouldnt be. Its a solid 8/10 for what it is. But i suspect in a month or so it will sit at 6/10. This film more than anything has confirmed that ratings on IMDB for films post 2010ish cant be trusted.. The mentality on how people rate films on here has shifted dramatically. Ive been on the site for 15 years. Its probably when they got rid of the message boards that all the brainless ones felt the need to trash the ratings allot more, because they had no place to vent their gases anymore.

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• THERE'S A CHAINSAW FIGHT AND A NIGHTBEAST REFERENCE, WHAT MORE DO YOU NEED TO KNOW?

  aftermoviediner2018-09-13

  Mandy is the latest indie darling/art-house horror/Nic Cage film that is setting the internet ablaze and movie critics reaching for the hyperbolic adjectives. It's almost the perfect film for the current generation of movie goers: it's arty enough for the critics, hip enough for the nonchalant, above-everything crowd, gory and violent enough for the hardcore genre fans and it stars Nic Cage so even the "oh my god he's just so crazy", "so-bad-it's-good" meme makers are happy. Mandy tells the story of loving couple Red Miller and Mandy Bloom. Living in the Pacific north west in 1983, Red (Cage) works as a forestry worker while Mandy (Riseborough) is an artist and works in a local shop. Their idyllic, private and quiet life is soon torn asunder, in a vile and brutal way, by a drugged up, hippy, religious cult, accompanied by three insane bikers. Cage then goes all mental and revengy on them, having borrowed a cross bow from a random cameoing Bill Duke and forging his own, both futuristic and ancient, scythe/sword thing. From there it gets violent, bloody and darkly comic and features a recurring tiger motif, genre homages a plenty and a legitimately groovy chainsaw fight. So let's get into it then. I like Nicolas Cage as an actor. Not in an ironic way, not in an aloof way but just in a genuine way. Does he occasionally over act and does he ever give strange line readings? Yes - see almost any decent actor out there. Actors can become personalities, parodies of themselves and while that might improve their brand, it tarnishes their talent. Will you be a Christopher Walken and acknowledge it but just continue doing what you've always done or will you be a Jeff Goldblum and go full maximum Goldblum, letting it define you? Well I think Cage is sticking on he Walken side of that equation. He does too many movies and the roles are too diverse for you to ever pigeonhole the Cage method. Contrary to popular belief he is not an Eric Roberts, taking any single film idea offered to him. When you look through his filmography and actually watch a few of the films (as opposed to just ironically watching The Wicker Man remake stoned and laughing or sharing memes of his hair in Bangkok Dangerous) you'll find an actor in the enviable position of working in whatever genre likes, telling weird and wonderful stories and having tremendous fun into the bargain. He's not beholden to Hollywood narrow-mindedness or to fan pressure to just keep doing one type of thing. Not many people in the business can claim that. When it comes to Mandy, also consider these two bits of information: Cage was offered the role of the manic, charismatic and egotistical preacher Jeremiah Sand (Linus Roache). This is the obvious Cage role, in a movie with barely any dialogue, Jeremiah has all the pontificating, grandstanding and mood-swinging we've seen Cage do previously. Cage instead pushed to get the role of Red Miller, a role that director Panos Cosmatos intended for a much younger actor. Now, Red Miller has his moments and there is definitely a drizzling of unhinged Cage in the film but the role is also defined by its silence and by its screams, not its dialogue or its mania. I have heard reviews single out a bathroom sequence, where he drinks vodka while in unimaginable pain, as Cage doing his "thing". I didn't find the sequence "classic weird Cage", I actually found it understandable, moving and disturbing. The film really hinges on us following his journey both emotionally and physically. Like a silent film, Mandy relies on its visuals and action to tell its, relatively, limited story and allows for audience interpretation and extrapolation. If Nic Cage's performance doesn't work, if you're not gripped by his plight and pushed forward by his determination for retribution then none of it really works. The second bit of information is that during an interview with filmmaker Kevin Smith, Nic Cage admitted not only to watching Panos Cosmatos' previous film Beyond the Black Rainbow but to watching Kevin Smith's "walrus movie" Tusk. No one mentions the "walrus movie" in an interview unless they've actually seen it. Smith was talking about Valley Girl, if Cage wanted to simply repay the compliment he'd say Chasing Amy, Clerks or something he might have watched at a film festival once. No, Cage dropped Tusk, that tells me a lot about Nicolas Cage. Andrea Riseborough as Mandy says only a few things in the movie and, spoilers (not-really), the plot involves her exiting the film early on. What we can ascertain, however, is that she is peaceful, detached, likes art, fantasy novels, 80s metal, sci-fi films (more on that later) and living out in the middle of nowhere. An unexplained scar on her face and her quiet removal from society indicates maybe some past trauma but that is never developed upon. More than anyone else in the film, her character's apparent passions and taste define the influences on the film. The strong, deep, vivid colour palette of the cinematography, the cinematic references, the metal album cover references, the designs of the bikers and even a few animated sequences all seem to flow from what we see of Mandy Bloom during act one of the film. The other cast member that definitely deserves a mention is Linus Roach as Jeremiah Sands. While no clear philosophy or message comes through his babbling preacher and variety of messed up followers - a hodge podge of crazies, true believers and lost and damaged souls - Sands is a frustrated musician, ego maniacal lunatic, mood swinging abuser and deluded psychopath. On the surface he's just an amalgam of any other clichéd cult leader but, as previously stated, Mandy is short on exposition but shows you just enough of any character that you can extrapolate most of what is trying to be portrayed. The true genius moment of his character is when he puts on his record, hoping that his drippy, psychedelic, pastiche folk stylings will impress Riseborough's Mandy. For those in the know about music and cult leader cliches it is a belly laugh moment. Panos Cosmatos definitely wrote and made this film for people who have seen films like this before but who, probably, haven't seen one presented like this before. In other words he trusts a savvy audience to fill in some of the blanks. I think the artistic sheen on the movie, and clearly very deft cinematic skill with which it's constructed may push some to believe the film is deep in someway but, don't be fooled, this film is an exploitation film pure and simple. Just because they skimped on character and plot explanations, shot it with a bunch of lights and filters, scored it with tension building rumbles and high, unnerving synth tones and left wide gaps for the audience to fill in doesn't mean there's some hidden message or explanation there. It just means Panos Cosmatos knows how to construct a good genre film. He knows that in most horror, action and/or exploitation films you point the audience at a bad guy, put the good guy through hell and with that justify the carnage filled journey of our anti-hero for the remaining 70 minutes. I'm sure there are reasons for some of the tiger imagery and some of the vaguries in the film but its driving force is exploitation, cool moments, grusome kills, mad weaponry, Argento style lighting, movie references all over the shop and hip t-shirts. An easy criticism would be to say it is style over substance and it is, it's glorious, arresting, eerie, difficult, dark, disturbing, mad, violent, deeply coloured and surreal style over substance. There was one scene, however, that sold the whole film to me and made me love it unequivocally - what are you talking about Jon? The chainsaw fight? are you talking about the chainsaw fight because that scene is off the chain! - No, I am not talking about the epic chainsaw battle, although that scene is, indeed, off the chain. I am talking about a sequence that'll probably mean very little to a lot of people but allow me to explain why the Nightbeast scene in Mandy is EVERYTHING. During the opening 15 minutes of the movie as we meet Mandy and Red, see their life together, there is a sequence where the two of them watch a sci-fi B Movie together. They eat TV dinners, at separate tables and do not take their eyes off the TV screen. A TV Screen which is showing Don Dohler's Nightbeast. Don Dohler is the Baltimore native filmmaker who made alien invasion movies, mad horror/action films, straight-to-video slashers and naughty vampire films in the quiet suburbs, at the end of a nondescript cul-de-sac, in Maryland. Unfortunately, in this age of snarky 'so-bad-it's-good' film fandom, some of Don's films have been either derisively enjoyed or simply dismissed by some people. This is a crushing shame because when you look passed their limited budgets and occasional amateur moments, you find a passionate, creative, inventive, weird, gonzo and original series of homemade masterpieces from a person who followed his dream. He should be an inspiration to the backyard John Carpenters and basement Hitchcocks of today - in fact in his home town of Baltimore he has been and indie filmmaking thrives there. This is why the scene in Mandy where Nic Cage and Andrea Riseborough sit so seriously and intently glued to Nightbeast is the best scene in the film. They don't laugh, they don't mock it, they are genuinely into it and this tells us b-movie fans all we need to know about their relationship. I am the first to admit that low budget filmmaking is not for everyone but when you find that person who will, un-cynically, watch a Don Dohler film (or similar) with you, then you have found true love and a soulmate. When I saw that scene, I understood the film. In lesser hands the couple would've watched The Room and laughed at it in an ugly, derisive way and I would've hated it....

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• Style over substance

  dynamiteheaddy-433872018-12-19

  Take away the camera filters and lens flares and you are left with an unoriginal revenge film for which there are many better, there's far too many unnecessary slow-motion shots which stretch the thin plot out unbearably to over 2 hours. Critics seem to be lapping it up for its style but I need more then that.