Mark Hanson's profile photo

Mark Hanson

Toronto

Film Writer and Curator at Slant Magazine

#1 Aspen Extreme fan Product Manager @BayStreetVideo

Featured in: Favicon slantmagazine.com Favicon substack.com Favicon foreignpolicy.com Favicon scotsman.com Favicon metacritic.com Favicon letterboxd.com Favicon lwlies.com Favicon newsbreak.com Favicon mondaq.com Favicon baltimorepostexaminer.com

Articles

  • A Bland Serving of Supernatural Hokum

    3 weeks ago | slantmagazine.com | Mark Hanson

    David Midell’s The Ritual, which is based on the true story of Emma Schmidt’s 1928 exorcism in Earling, Iowa, stresses in a text coda before the end credits that its central event is the most documented of its kind. But with the film playing out in such mind-numbingly derivative fashion, it seems less like Midell and co-writer Enrico Natale studied the documents of this case than they did the hoary tropes of this specific subgenre of horror film.

  • Scott Goldbaum Teaches the Fingerstyle Technique Behind “Taste and Tame”

    1 month ago | acousticguitar.com | Joey Lusterman |Doug Young |Mark Hanson |Luke Edwards

    Scott Goldbaum is an in-demand session and performing guitarist who has collaborated with artists such as Sting, Dashboard Confessional, and Keith Urban. With “Taste and Tame,” an ethereal acoustic rock original, Goldbaum employs a deft tremolo picking-inspired fingerstyle pattern that creates a quiet intensity. It’s a challenging song, both technically and emotionally; Goldbaum composed the music and lyrics after he was diagnosed with a severe heart arrhythmia.

  • Histrionic, Doom-Laden Navel-Gazing

    1 month ago | slantmagazine.com | Mark Hanson

    Accompanying the Weeknd’s album of the same name, Trey Edward Shults’s Hurry Up Tomorrow plays, in many ways, like an extended music video, with a thinly sketched plot painted in broad and illusory strokes. The Weeknd, né Abel Tesfaye, plays a fictionalized version of himself who begins to suffer from sudden voice loss while in the midst of a world tour and encounters a mysterious and troubled young fan named Anima (Jenna Ortega), who’s fleeing a traumatic past.

  • Brian Skiba's Painfully Anonymous Western

    2 months ago | slantmagazine.com | Mark Hanson

    Writer-director Brian Skiba’s Gunslingers is the filmmaker’s second western to reach theaters this year, following Guns of Redemption just last month, and it feels no less hastily assembled.

  • Steven Soderbergh's Spy Thriller Is a Cool Cucumber

    Mar 7, 2025 | slantmagazine.com | Mark Hanson

    Steven Soderbergh’s Black Bag is the kind of old-fashioned caper that the filmmaker can make in his sleep, and unfortunately in this case, it feels as if he did just that. Like the Ocean’s series, the film seeks to pay tribute to a bygone era of genre cool—to a brand of popular escapist cinema where beautiful people casually navigated high-stakes situations while trading blithe bon mots.

Contact details

Emails

[email protected]

Socials & Sites

Try JournoFinder For Free

Search and contact over 1M+ journalist profiles, browse 100M+ articles, and unlock powerful PR tools.

Start Your 7-Day Free Trial →

X (formerly Twitter)

Followers
1K
Tweets
1K
DMs Open
No
Mark Hanson
Mark Hanson @mahahafilm
10 Jun 25

I assume someone’s already on this for Toronto, right? Riiiiiiiiight?

Matt Farley of Motern Media
Matt Farley of Motern Media @MoternMedia

Ask your local cinema to screen EVIL PUDDLE this summer! Tell them to contact me at [email protected] to work out the details. https://t.co/pRrsRqQxYK

Mark Hanson
Mark Hanson @mahahafilm
3 Jun 25

RT @Slant_Magazine: Like any number of Exorcist wannabes, David Midell’s THE RITUAL is a special kind of hell. Read @mahahafilm's review. h…

Mark Hanson
Mark Hanson @mahahafilm
25 May 25

A very Neil Breen coded real estate ad in today’s Star https://t.co/D2zE4MwDQJ