Mandy

Year of Release:  2018
Director:  Panos Cosmatos
Screenplay:  Panos Cosmatos and Aaron Stewart-Ahn, story by Panos Cosmatos
Starring:  Nicolas Cage, Andrea Riseborough, Linus Roache, Ned Dennehy, Olwen Fouere, Richard Brake, Bill Duke
Running Time:  121 minutes
Genre:  Horror, action

Nicolas Cage has had a curious career.  A respected, Oscar-winning actor, he has become something of a cult figure due to his prolific appearances and over the top performances, often in very bad movies.  However, when he is in a film that seems to interest him, with a director who knows how to use him, Cage can show what a great actor he is.  Mandy is one such film.  Cage does not have to worry about going over the top here, because the entire film starts over the top and ends up somewhere in the stratosphere.  It is one of the most striking films that I have seen in a long time.

The film is set in 1983, somewhere near the Shadow Mountains in California.  Red Miller (Cage) is a logger who lives with his girlfriend, Mandy Bloom (Riseborough), a talented fantasy artist who works as a cashier at a gas station.  One day, Mandy is unlucky enough to catch the eye of Jeremiah Sand (Roache) leader of the depraved Children of the New Dawn cult.  Infatuated with Mandy, Sand orders the cult to kidnap her with the help of a demonic biker gang known as the Black Skulls, who have a taste for human flesh and a highly potent strain of LSD.  As things go from bad to worse, Red sets out on a quest for violent revenge.

The plot itself comes as no surprise from any number of horror, action, revenge films, and you'll be able to tell right from the start how it's all going to end up.  That is not the point of the film, though.  The point is to bombard the senses with surreal, psychedelic sights and sounds.  The film uses pretty much every cinematic trick in the book, and it makes for quite an overwhelming experience.  The film is very violent, and very gruesome, the action scenes however are handled with flair and genuinely exciting.  The constant, droning soundtrack was one of the last works by acclaimed Icelandic composer Johann Johannsson.  Nicolas Cage gives a powerful performance and ends up at his most unhinged, although he looks positively restrained compared to the rest of the film.  The film gets a lot of mileage from Andrea Riseborough's ethereal looks, and she gives a striking, sympathetic performance in the title role.

This film is an instant cult film.  This is a film that should really only be seen with a like-minded crowd on the biggest screen you can find with the soundtrack cranked all the way up to maximum.  Some viewers may be put off by the film's weirdness and violence, but if you can go along with it, it's a unique experience and well worth checking out.   

Nicolas Cage in Mandy

Brighton Rock (2010)

Year: 2010
Director:  Rowan Joffe
Screenplay:  Rowan Joffe, based on the novel Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
Starring:  Sam Riley, Andrea Riseborough, Helen Mirren, John Hurt, Andy Serkis
Running Time:  111 minutes
Genre:  Crime, drama, gangsters

This film is an adaptation of a novel by Graham Greene, which was previously made into a critically acclaimed film in 1947, directed by John Boulting and starring Richard Attenborough.  In this film the setting is updated from the 1930s to the 1960s.

Brighton, England, 1964.  Violent gangs of warring Mods and Rockers are tearing up the coastal town of Britain, and young gangster Pinkie Brown (Riley) murders rival Fred Hale (Sean Harris) against the express wishes of his gang.  Brown hastily seduces and marries young waitress Rose (Riseborough), who is the only person who can tie him to the murder.  However Rose's boss, Ida (Mirren), was a close friend of Hale's and suspects that Rose can tie Pinkie to the crime and is determined to make her testify.  With the threat of the police, and powerful and wealthy local crime boss Colleoni (Serkis), as well as his own gang increasingly turning against him, the already psychotic Pinkie becomes increasingly unhinged and it is only a matter of time before he decides to silence Rose permanently.

This is a powerful and intriguing gangster movie, which plays more like a doom-laden tragedy.  The main focus of the film is the corruption of the innocent waitress Rose by the sadistic gangster Pinkie.  Despite a memorable riot scene between the Mods and the Rockers, it is difficult to see what difference it made, updating the story to the 1960s.  Also the film suffers at times from being too heavily symbolic, with Catholic symbolism (well, it is an adaptation of a Graham Greene novel) and at times almost apocalyptic portents of doom being layered on with a trowel. 

However, despite the flaws, the film looks good and is stylishly made.  It memorably depicts a bleak and savage world where there is little light or hope.  In the process, it manages to make the seaside town of  Brighton make Dante's Inferno look like an ideal holiday destination.  Sam Riley, who previously made an impression as Joy Divison frontman Ian Curtis in musical misery-fest Control (2007), gives a great perfomance as the monsterous Pinkie Brown, and Andrea Riseborough gives a star-making perfomance as the tortured Rose.  

This is a slow-burning but endlessly fascinating film, which provides enough thrills and suspense to keep fans of gangster movies happy, but adds a bracing layer of darkness and grit to the genre. 

Oh, they do like to be beside the seaside: Sam Riley and Andrea Riseborough in Brighton Rock