Silent Night (2023) - Movie Review

John Woo, the action filmmaker that just about every other action film or even parodies of every other action film over the past forty years owes some artistic debt to, has returned to Hollywood. While his work State-side never really managed to reach the artistic heights of his heyday, as memetic as films like Face/Off and even Mission: Impossible 2 have become, I’m still calling this a moment of potential celebration because… well, it makes the most sense why 2023 would be the year that he would come back. In the same time frame that John Wick, a franchise that simply wouldn’t exist without John Woo’s iconic approach to action thrills, reached its creative apex with Chapter 4, getting more of that grandeur direct from the source is quite the offer.

Saw X (2023) - Movie Review

On the 11^th of October, 2014, I made my first blog post for Mahan's Media titled “Why didn’t I start this sooner?” I named it that partly because I originally started Mahan’s Media as a holdover while I kept trying to get my old YouTube videos together, which took way too bloody long because, as anyone who has read anything I’ve written before will tell you, I’m not that great at editing. But also because I had been writing mini-reviews for myself for quite a while before that. They weren’t as detailed as the thousand-word-minimum stuff I used to put up on here, but there were a lot of them, along with their accompanying place on a ranked list for 2012, 2013, and 2014.

That was the policy with their listings on here too, until I finally realised that listing them in that arbitrary order made it far more difficult to actually find specific reviews that it should have been. I still keep those lists on my computer, and use them for reference when drafting the year-end lists, but I figure being user-friendly should come first, so I rearranged them alphabetically by year when I did my four-year-long clean-up of the blog. Of course, since I still list everything by year of Australian release, there’s likely to be some further confusion but hey: At least I’m learning.

And indeed, the nine years that have transpired since that first post have indeed been a learning experience for me. I started out as an Angry Critic clone who was fascinated by the art of riffing, but didn’t have any formal training in such things, and quite frankly, I didn’t really know what I was doing. Hell, I’m still not sure if I know. All these reviews and listicles have been as much about figuring myself out as figuring out any film or other piece of media that I’ve come across, and I genuinely think that writing so damn much on here has helped shape me into the man I am today.

What began as an obsessive hobby has grown to the point where my high school dream of becoming a paid writer actually came true thanks to FilmInk bringing me on-board. I may miss one or two screenings due to bad scheduling on my part, but I pride myself on my consistency otherwise with a same-day turnaround for any screening my editor sends me out to. I cut my teeth on watching four films a day at the cinema, and doing mini-reviews for all of them between screenings; I’ve put in my 10,000 hours and then some, and in my case, I have been rewarded for my efforts.

Scream VI (2023) - Movie Review

While Scream 2022 wasn’t necessarily my favourite horror film from that year (Mad God) or even my favourite slasher (X), it was an absolute cracker of a release that showed that the franchise was in strong hands, and it’s even gained extra endearment from me as it also served as the introduction to 2022 as a year where horror films came back with a vengeance. And following the example of the Wes Craven’s original granddaddy of meta-slashers, we now have a sequel just a year later and the results are… well, that might take a bit to really get into.

The Northman (2022) - Movie Review

After two certified winners with The VVitch and The Lighthouse, writer/director Robert Eggers has cracked his artistic ambitions wide open with his latest. Shedding his New England aesthetics like a snakeskin, he now sets the stage for an epic historical revenge myth, co-written by himself and Icelandic scribe Sjón and itself based on the Scandinavian legend of Amleth. Yes, for the classics nerds amongst my readership, this is the same legend that inspired fellow classics nerd William Shakespeare in the creation of Hamlet. This film is the culmination of just about every storytelling idea and mood Eggers has been chipping away at over his career thus far, and what results from that is a production that redefines the word ‘visceral’.

Girl (2021) - Movie Review

We’re in niche mode for this review, as I’m once again deciding to review a film purely because I make it a habit of keeping note of any and all names attached to the things I watch. And this is a particularly ‘me’ iteration of that mindset, as I basically grew up on the work of actor and now-writer/director Chad Faust through his role in The 4400. I got into it a bit when I looked at Project Power, but suffice to say, I loved the hell out of that show as a kid and still love it plenty to this day, and his role as the sleeper agent turned superpowered shaman Kyle Baldwin is a big part of that. Naturally, seeing him step into the director’s chair caught my attention, although I can easily see why the film itself might not have the same effect on others.

The Good Liar (2019) - Movie Review

I should really be a lot more sceptical about anything with Bill Condon’s name attached to it. And not just because he’s the director responsible for the Beauty & The Beast remake, either. Looking through the man’s entire body of work, it is remarkably all over the damn place. Working on the scripts for Chicago and The Greatest Showman, directing both halves of the finale to the Twilight Saga, and then there’s his work a few years ago with Mr.Holmes; there’s a lot of range in that sample, and it’s getting to the point where I genuinely don’t know whether anything he’s touched will be good or bad. Still, teaming back up with the writer and lead actor of Mr. Holmes gives this film some hope, so fingers crossed.

Judy & Punch (2019) - Movie Review

Even in an era when distaff revamps of older material are quite commonplace, this one is more out-there than most. It’s a reinterpretation of a 17^th-century puppet show (itself an ancestor of mature puppet capers like Meet The Feebles and Avenue Q), directed by first-time filmmaker Mirrah Foulkes, one of many, many actors who got worldwide attention after featuring in David Michôd's Animal Kingdom. I swear, that movie was designed to break games of Six Degrees To Kevin Bacon.

Mandy (2018) - Movie Review

The plot: Logger Red (Nicolas Cage) and artist Mandy (Andrea Riseborough) live a quiet life in a cabin in the woods. However, that life is shattered when they come across a hippie cult run by Jeremiah (Linus Roache), who takes Mandy as his own... and then kills her. Red sets out on a bloody and drug-addled path of vengeance to destroy the cult.

Upgrade (2018) - Movie Review

The plot: After a mugging leaves mechanic Grey (Logan Marshall-Green) a quadraplegic and kills his wife Asha (Melanie Vallejo), he struggles with adjusting to life without being able to fend for himself. However, when tech whiz Eron Keen (Harrison Gilbertson) offers him a chance to walk again through an experimental microchip called STEM (Simon Maiden), Grey has the chance to both reclaim his life and take revenge against the muggers that nearly took it from him.

Death Wish (2018) - Movie Review

 

The plot: Surgeon Paul Kersey (Bruce Willis) has his comfortable life turned upside-down after a home invasion leaves his wife (Elizabeth Shue) dead and his daughter (Camila Morrone) in a coma. With the police being ineffectual in finding the criminals responsible for the break-in, and Paul knowing that crime is a consistent problem in his neighbourhood, he decides to take the law into his hands and hunt them down himself.

Lady Macbeth (2017) - Movie Review

The plot: In 1860’s England, Katherine (Florence Pugh) has been sold into marriage to Alexander (Paul Hilton), expected to conceive an heir for him. However, when both he and his demanding father Boris (Christopher Fairbank) leave the estate for a few days on business, Katherine is given a chance to exercise some personal freedom. She takes advantage of the situation, starting a passionate affair with estate worker Sebastian (Cosmo Jarvis), and she starts to like the idea of acting as her own person. And she will do anything to keep that freedom.

iBoy (2017) - Movie Review

The plot: After a visit to a friend goes horribly wrong, meek high school kid Tom (Bill Milner) ends up with chunks of his smartphone lodged in his head. As he recovers from the shooting that resulted in said embedding of phone parts, he discovers that he now has the ability to control electronics with his mind. While his best friend Lucy (Maisie Williams) deals with her own after-effects of that same night, Tom, known in Internet circles as iBoy, sets out to find the people responsible and stop the vicious cycle of crime occurring in his neighbourhood.

 

The Killing Of A Sacred Deer (2017) - Movie Review

Mahan’s Media, at its core, is me spilling my post-film thoughts into writing. Sometimes, the film being discussed tries so little that thematic analysis is barely required, while other times, I go out of my way to bring up what I think is relevant to the conversation. The Human Centipede III led me to talking about the U.S. Constitution, Hotel Transylvania 2 got me thinking about the modern attitude to the classic Universal monsters, and Aaaaaaah! gave me an excuse to polish off my high school drama education; basically, I write about whatever I want to write about at that given moment.

 

However, while I do pride myself on being able to discuss media at this level, I will always admit that I am hardly a seasoned expert on any of this. Any grand statements I have made in the past concerning the human condition are mostly personal observations and whatever unifying theories I’ve expressed to explain certain films could very well be 100% incorrect. Every word I’ve ever written here and elsewhere is done with the possibility that I could be talking completely out of my arse on the subject; all I care about is being able to explain the reasons why I hold those opinions, not necessarily whether they are “correct”. I just say what I believe to be true, and if I’m wrong, so be it; I learn from it and move forward.

 

I bring all this up because, every time I get to a film of this nature, I get self-conscious that maybe I’m just too stupid to get it. I’m willing to bet that this is a common reaction to today’s subject, but I’ve never let that stop me before. Hope you’re ready to get both confused and depressed.

The Foreigner (2017) - Movie Review

The plot: A department store bombing claims the life of restaurant manager Ngoc Minh Quan (Jackie Chan)’s daughter. Distraught at losing the only family he had left, he pressures terrorist-turned-government-official Liam Hennessy (Pierce Brosnan) to produce the names of the bombers responsible. As Quan’s desperation for answers reaches explosive levels, Hennessy is under his own pressure to find the culprits, as he digs into his old connections to find the rogue elements.

American Assassin (2017) - Movie Review

The plot: Mitch (Dylan O’Brien)’s life got turned upside down after his fiancée was murdered in the middle of a terrorist attack. From then on, Mitch dedicated himself to getting revenge on the terrorist cell, to the point of getting the attention of CIA Deputy Director Kennedy (Sanaa Lathan). She sends Mitch to train under black ops operative Stan Hurley (Michael Keaton) and prepare for the best chance he has to get that revenge he craves.

Kaabil (2017) - Movie Review

Summer here in Australia means a lot of things: Intense heat, insects flying everywhere, the occasional blackout just make the heat and bugs feel that little bit worse, that sort of thing. Of course, for the country’s cinephiles, it also marks a point of weirdness concerning releases. I say this because every release in January/February falls into one of three disparate categories.

You’ve got the last remnants of the Oscar nominations that get released so that we can be as informed as possible while pretending to give a crap about the Oscars like Lion. You’ve got the scrap heap that wasn’t good enough for a release during the previous year like Monster Trucks. And then you’ve got the first glimmers of the traditional summer action blockbusters to make sure everyone is still awake to see the rest of the year. Today, we’re very much talking about the latter, and considering this is also another Bollywood release, I can’t say I knew what to expect walking into it. Specifically, I wasn’t expecting something this good.

The Revenant (2016) - Movie Review

After how much I dug Birdman last year, I was definitely looking forward to seeing more work from director Alejandro González Iñárritu. So, in prep for this release, I checked out his other filmography… and noticed something disconcerting. While I undoubtedly consider Birdman to be the best film he’s done to date, it’s also the most unlike everything else he’s made so far. Iñárritu’s usual method of story-telling is with numerous interweaving character arcs, some of them seemingly completely disconnected from each other, to convey a specific theme. Birdman, by contrast, is so linear that it is shot and edited to look like a single continuous take (for the most part) and focuses mainly on a single character. It’s kind of like claiming to be a fan of Darren Aronofsky, but saying your favourite film of his is The Wrestler; it isn’t exactly the best representation of the man’s work as a whole. With this new information, I began to anticipate today’s release more shakily than I was expecting to. However, indicative of standard oeuvre or not, I will give this film the benefit of the doubt regardless; I’m not going to just badmouth a Leo DiCaprio film purely based on principle.

The Dressmaker (2015) - Movie Review

I hate the term ‘chick flick’. Like, really hate the term. Not only does it bank on the idea that women only want a very select number of elements in their entertainment, which is pretty damn regressive, but it is also primarily used as a put-down by critics, as if what women presumably want to watch is something to inherently be ashamed of. I’ve discussed films that fit into this category before, specifically romantic shlock like The Best Of Me, but it seems like the term really doesn’t have much reason to be used nowadays. I’ll wait until the release of the Expendabelles before I feel the need for any official eulogy for the term, but gender shouldn’t qualify as a defining factor when it comes to what film is meant to interest a person. Or maybe this is just my fence-sitting naivety shining through once again, I don’t know. Anyway, I bring this all up because this film supposedly counts as a chick flick. I say "supposedly" because I’m still not entirely sure who this film is meant to appeal to, if anyone at all.