MANDY (2018) Blu-ray review

Mandy (2018) d. Panos Cosmatos (USA) (121 min)

Since its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, everyone seems to be going crazy for this art-house revenge flick from the son of George P. Cosmatos (Rambo: First Blood Part II, Tombstone) starring Nicolas Cage, and while I recognize there is plenty to admire, the overindulgent tone left a wicked aftertaste in my mouth both during and afterwards. With a pulsing, oversaturated color palette and (deliberately) lugubrious pacing, we are introduced to a couple (Cage, Andrea Riseborough) living a blissful existence in the backwoods (he’s a logger, she’s an artist) until a strange traveling cult-in-a-camper led by a long-haired Richard Lynch-looking gent named Jeremiah (an excellent Linus Roache) decides to kidnap Mandy with the help of their motorcycle-riding, escaped-from-the-Hellraiser-franchise Cenobites.

RAZE (2013) movie review

Raze (2013) d. Josh C. Waller  (USA)

Two attractive women clad in white tank tops and gray sweatpants stand opposite one another inside a cylindrical brick room. The blinking red lights of surveillance cameras flicker in counterpoint to their panting as each sizes the other up. Then, without warning, they proceed to pound, punch, kick, pull, choke, slap, bite, and savage one another’s bodies until one lies dead and bleeding on the dirt floor. This scenario plays out over and over (and over) again in director Josh Waller’s feature debut, a film that resembles a live-action 90-minute Mortal Kombat video game session, only with more blood, tears, camera angles, and flash cuts (and only slightly more exposition).