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.

Beyond The Black Rainbow

 Beyond The Black Rainbow is a hypnotic, languid, glacially paced mood piece/acid trip that's nominally a science fiction story, but seems more interested in evoking a very specific drug-hazed '70s and early '80s texture, or the memory of watching Solaris or 2001 as a kid without really understanding them.

 Elena (Eva Allan) is a captive in an underground research lab belonging to one Arboria Institute, a cultish group that is devoted to some poorly defined 'better living through technobabble'. There the girl is tormented by Dr. Nyles (Michael J. Rogers), who subjects her to frequent interrogations that include some barely concealed barbs to try and get a rise from her.

 Elena only stares at the floor and barely reacts; Is she consciously ignoring him? Is she tripping balls? Who knows. But there's a bit more going on beneath the surface, as she communicates telepathically with the man (and asks to see her father), and the Doctor uses some sort of giant prism to counter her latent powers.

 As the movie develops, tiny scraps of information are slowly - very slowly - revealed that give you some tools to extract a vague sense out of things; We meet the institute's founder (Scott Hylands), see a (gorgeous, chemical FX-realised) flashback where Dr. Nyles is sent to another dimension (or something), and get a feel for Elena's life in the Institute before she manages to escape, the good doctor always a couple of steps to the side, manipulating things. Oh, and there are a couple of random mutants thrown in for effect, as well as a couple of pimply metal nerds to up the body count.

 It's a very narrow-slice pastiche of styles and elements shot in gorgeous, grainy 35mm with special attention to the production design, a beautiful synth-y score, and lush colour schemes (courtesy of Bob Bottieri and Jeremy Schmidt off psych-rock band Black Mountain, and Norm Li, respectively). Whether you like it or not will depend on how much tolerance you have for this sort of thing, your patience, if you don't mind movies that shoot for style over substance, and if you click with its particular aesthetic.

 Personally, I'm much more of a fan of Writer/director Panos Cosmatos's Mandy, which managed to have a lot more going on while still keeping this careful attention to aesthetics and devotion to old-school weirdness. I had some trouble sticking to this one, and nodded off a couple of times - it's absolutely a late-night movie, but not one to approach if you're even marginally tired. On the plus side, you probably won't miss anything vital if you doze off.

 It is beautiful, though, and compelling at times; I could easily see myself falling under its spell upon a rewatch in different circumstances. But the few scraps of story it contains can't really sustain it, not even before the almost hilariously underwhelming final confrontation runs its course.