Hey, where you been?

Mahan’s Media as a blog began with a simple idea: Taking the mini-reviews I was already writing for movies for my own sake, and showing them to… whoever feels like reading what one dude thinks about said movies.

But I like to think that, as my catalogue of write-ups grew, this blog took on a more complex idea: A testing ground for a dream.

A place where I could sharpen my writing skills, continue my self-taught process of learning film criticism and its myriad of different disciplines and perspectives, and turn that into something that might convince someone else that, you know what, this dude knows what he’s talking about. Maybe we should get him writing for us.

And then exactly that happened. Through a collision of random events, I found myself in a position where an editor took a chance with the brain and hands behind all these different reactions and analyses, and decided I should write for them. FilmInk picked me up, and over the past several years, my writing has shown some definite improvement. My perspective on films has gone through several foundational shifts, my ability to convey my feelings and rationalisations has become clearer, and I’ve made connections with people that share this level of intensive fascination and obsession with the medium of film. Some of those connections even began on this humble blog, meaning that what I do here is still having an effect on my work today.

So why haven’t I been posting on here lately?

Top 20 Best Films Of 2023

While 2023 was a turbulent and stressful year for the film industry… it was also a fantastic year for the movies. It built on the momentum from 2022, when blockbusters came back with a vengeance after the lockdowns, and showed a lot of filmmakers going bigger and even taking some genuine risks. Not just delivering big-screen spectacle but actually pushing what certain genres were capable of conveying. What’s more, quite a few filmmakers that I’ve been ragging on for years like Eli Roth, Will Gluck, Guy Ritchie, and Tim Story redeemed themselves with some quality productions this year. Hell, I even got over my problems with David F. Sandberg; regardless of how disastrous that film turned out, this felt like a year where grudges could be forgotten and we were all working towards better days.

It was also a landmark year for yours truly, although if you were going just by what I put up on here, that might require some explanation. FilmInk kept me good and busy through the year, giving me more work than any other year previous, and… honestly, that I got given so many big-name features to look at (quite a few of which will show up on this list) was a solid reassurance that my editor trusted me to get this shit right.

Also, I finally met one of my personal goals and got one of my write-ups up on the review wall at the Dendy Newtown, a cinema I frequent and that tends to have the better selection of all of the cinemas in my ‘area’ (it’s still a bit of a trek from here in the suburbs).

So, as a last hurrah for a pretty damn good year for both myself and the artistic field I’ve dedicated my time to examining, let’s take a gander at my picks for the Top 20 Best Films of 2023. But first…

Top 20 Worst Films Of 2023

2023 was a very turbulent year for the film industry. In an event that I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the basis for its own movie later on down the line, the impeding threat of artificial intelligence on people who actually work to create things led both of the major Hollywood unions, the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild, to jointly go on strike. Deals have since been struck, but between codifying the frankly surreal situation that the industry is in right now post-COVID, and the delays and marketing muffles that resulted from the strikes, it’s a situation that will likely ripple out into 2024 and beyond.

That defining moment goes some way to explain how weird the bad moments of the year had gotten (not saying that media creatives wanting a fair wage and job security is a bad thing, but them being in the position of needing to negotiate for them sure as fuck is). Films with decent and even high expectations fell short, filmmakers try to go big and just wound up embarrassing themselves, and fan-favourite franchises, IPs, and even entire sub-genres hit such a low point that I found myself completely souring on them. Truly, this was a time of sudden, jarring changes.

Compared to last year’s list, there’s also more entries on here that go beyond mere dissatisfaction and right into active irritation and even anger at times, meaning that quite a bit of what’s on here is likely worse than what showed up there. So, let’s join together and flip off the previous year’s trash as it shrinks in the rear view, with a look at my picks for the Top 20 Worst Films of 2023.