Sunday, August 31, 2025

Mandy

 This. This is the perfect doom metal movie. No notes, other than it's essential.


 Ok, some other notes: Mandy is a drug-soaked, brutal tribute to the sleaziest of the old swords-and-sorcery movies. Set in a version of the 80s that also accommodates cenobite biker gangs and a cult of murderous hippies with access to magical relics, it tells the tale of one Red (Nicolas Cage), a lumberjack whose idyllic life with his girlfriend Mandy (Andrea Riseborough) is terminally disrupted by the aforementioned cult when its leader/messiah Jeremiah Sand (Linus Roache) takes an interest on the woman.

 What follows is a bloody, brutal struggle as Red enacts his revenge and carves his way up through the ranks of the cult and their allies. Crossbows, axes and chainsaws all get their time to shine. It's a deeply psychedelic movie with an immaculately developed ambiance, thanks to director and co-writer Panos Cosmatos' eye, lush, grainy digital photography from Benjamin Loeb, and a beautiful, doom-laden soundtrack from the late, great Jóhann Jóhannsson.

 There are better action movies out there, but I can't think of any that manage to leverage every single  one of their elements to communicate a specific feel as well as this one; The Limey, maybe? In any case, I can't recommend it enough.

No comments: